Sunday, October 2, 2016

Week 70-September 26, 2016

Week 70-September 26, 2016

The city that never sleeps

the city that never sleeps. I thought that was funny cause sometimes it feels like as missionaries we never sleep... there you go thats my best attempt at being witty and clever with that dang subject line! itll probably be a while before i try doing another one

We had a crazy busy week and got so much done and it seemed as if we never stopped. we were just going and going the entire week. It was great- we saw a lot of great success! Fernando (a guy who referred himself a few weeks ago online) had left last week to go back to spain and get his family and he came back this week and came to church with them! i have never spoke so much spanish in my life than the past few weeks. His family is Columbian and they are a fantastic family.. fernando is a funny guy but also a great father and he is very hard working. His wife and son are so cool too. His son is 12, about the same age as mandy! They came to church and it was fast and testimony meeting so i got up and sat behind the father of another columbian family in the ward and asked him to bear his testimony for Fernando and his family in spanish. he did, and it was great. it was the first time he stood up at the pulpit for 25 years he said. Then after sacrament meeting, the father of the columbian family and a byu study abroad student who served her mission in guatemala took fernandos family into some little room and started teaching them L1 while we were busy with the other investigators who came to church. LOL. we joined them later on and it went great.

another family from bulgaria that asked us for directions during the week came to church after we invited them.. it was sweet! they didnt understand a word but they speak a tiny bit of spanish so we communicated with that. 

pawel progressed a ton this week. we saw him 3 times in the polish members home and he has finished the book of mormon for his 2nd time now. what a stud. he says he'll probably finish it again before his baptism. love that guy. came to church and spent the 2nd and 3rd hour in nursery with the polish members son cause they showed the womens GC and her son loves pawel. what a champ!

it was an exciting week! we had 3 exchanges last week and they all went well. 2 of them were with greenies and that was a blast :) the other was with someone in his 2nd transfer; he is from spain and to improve my spanish we spoke only spanish the whole day together (tried.) i even prayed in spanish! hahaha im just practicing for fernando and his family.

Dad: Kwaku is doing well. we taught him on tuesday and he cut me short in the middle of something i was saying and asked us if he could be baptised. he said that he is tired ofh is church cause its run like a business and he could feel the difference as he walked into ours last sunday. he said his spirit recognized that Jesus is in this church. Hallelujah! but he didnt come this sunday and we didnt see him since cause his wifes sister is in the hospital and they are with her.

the ward here is great- i love them! they are so friendly and welcoming to all the people we bring. they just reach out and treat them as part of the family like i havent seen any other ward do before. its such a great feeling as a missionary to see members reach out and make your investigators feel welcome at church. 

we didnt do so hot as a zone this week. we have some good plans though. 

a couple of funny moments- this week i started talking to some young girl about our age who was really dressed up and had lots of make up on while we walked out of the tube and she gave me a really weird look and then ignored me and walked towards some guy standing against the wall waiting for her who gave me this weird look and then kissed the girl and they walked away together. Elder Mthombeni and i laughed pretty hard... poor guy thought i was trying to steal his girl

overall though this week a couple things stood out to me as key lessons. one of which me and elder Mthombeni deliberated about and thought long and hard about. it was that people progress and get baptised when the missionaries teaching them arent afraid to be themselves. too many missionaries (including ourselves for most of our missions) just turn into a robot. at some point, conversion has to first be to the missionaries before it will be to the gospel. 

my comparison is this: early 19th century americans needed to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet in order to become converted to what he was claiming and teaching. in a similar way, missionaries are the carriers of the message and as such people need to be converted to a certain extent to them before they will believe what we teach. interesting huh? brings up a lot of questions but i think its true.

Anyways, i love this gospel. I couldnt be happier and I know that i definitely couldnt work this hard and learn so much without divine help and i know the Saviour is strengthening me to fulfill this calling. I love Him and Im proud to be His representative.

Have a great week!!

Love you
Elder Jensen

No comments:

Post a Comment