Dear
Family,
This week was crazy
and went by so fast! I think I will just have to go day by day.
Monday
We went to Ontario for
P-day and with the zone. We played Ultimate Frisbee and about 30 minutes in it
started pouring, so I was soaked for the rest of the day. Also one of the
elders got hit in the face with the frisbee and half of one of his front tooth
was knocked out.
Tuesday
In the morning we went
to go do service for a lady who recently had neck surgery. She has three horses
in her backyard so we got to brush down two of them. It was super fun, I loved
just brushing them down in the beautiful weather, mountains in the background
and that fresh country smell. I kept on saying to Sister Moa-Sam Fong, "I
just love my mission, don’t you just love your mission?" That day we also
taught J. We talked about the
restoration and Joseph Smith. She has a good testimony of it, and it was cool
to hear her share it.
Wednesday
We had zone conference
in Ontario this day and had to leave around 7:45. Baker City and La Grande
are in a different time zone from the rest of the mission so that makes timing
a little hard sometimes, but I love it here because it is light when we wake
up. But it does get darker earlier than in Idaho, hopefully that will change
soon. Anyway, we had a really good zone conference. We received some training
about how to help the members invite their friends to the temple open house.
After zone conference we went on exchanges with the Sister Training Leaders. I
went to Middleton with Sister Sellar for the day. Middleton is one of the best
places in the mission to serve, though it is not quite as pretty as Baker City.
But I hope to serve there someday.
Thursday
I was in Middleton in
the morning. We tried contacting former investigators and didn't have much
luck. We went tracting before going into lunch, and we were about to knock on
this one door when this man opened the door, saw us, and urgently said, "I
don't have time to talk right now, we have an emergency!" and then he just
stood outside talking on his phone. We went to the next house and then in a
couple of minutes the fire truck and the ambulance showed up. We didn't really
know what to do with ourselves after that, but you can just come across all
sorts of things when you tract. We left for Baker around 1:30 then
exchanged back. We then had a lesson with the W. family about the temple. I am
seriously so excited for them to be sealed! And they are excited too, I will
write more about them when I get to Sunday. We also got to go to Addiction
Recovery with one our investigators. Addiction Recovery is one of my most
favorite things ever, definitely one of the hours in my week where I feel the
Spirit strongest. I would encourage everyone to read and study that manual,
even if you don't have an addiction to drug and alcohol because it is just all
about overcoming the natural man through the atonement of Jesus Christ.
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Friday
We taught J. again. We
talked about the apostasy and watched the restoration video. This time one of J.’s
older children joined us for the lesson.
Later, J. told us that he has been asking her a lot of questions. He
seems like a really good kid.
We had to leave Baker
City around 6:30 pm because we had mission conference in Nampa that
began at 8 the next morning. So we went and stayed with a couple of sisters in
Meridian that have a really nice house with tons of space in it. So it was
super fun to spend time with them, I just love our sisters.
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Saturday
Okay, I am not sure if
I mentioned this super exciting news in any of my letters, but ELDER BEDNAR
CAME TO OUR MISSION!!! That is what the mission conference was for. It was
Elder Bednar, Elder Sores, Bishop Waddell, and Elder Erekson. I wish I could
put this meeting into words that accurately describe what it was like. We heard
short talks from the other general authorities for about the first hour. Then Elder
Bednar spoke for the remaining hour and a half of the meeting. A month before
this, we were asked to read four of his talks in preparation for this meeting.
We read Ask in Faith, Converted unto the Lord, Seek Learning by Faith, and
Always Retain a Remission of Your Sins. He talk to us a little bit first,
and talked about in the church we have a lot of really stupid cultural norms.
He told us that one thing that people in the church do is take tons and tons of
notes during talks and then never refer back to them. Then he set a guideline
for the meeting that we were not allowed to write down anything that they said,
we could only write down things that the Spirit taught us. This was so hard for
me, because they made so many great comments but I did my best. Then he had us
stand up and share what we learned from studying and applying these talks.
After a missionary who had volunteered explained what they learned, Elder
Bednar would ask them how they had learned it. This went on for a while, then
he had us share what we were learning from this pattern of learning. Then, he
opened it up for questions. And he told us that if we had a question already
prepared to just throw it away and not ask it, he wanted us to ask things that
we felt impressed upon by the Spirit to ask. I had tried to come up with a good
question in the month leading up to this, and just couldn't so I didn't feel
too chastised. The whole time though I really wanted to ask him a good question
but felt I couldn't come up with anything good. I know it was just my fear
stopping me. But the questions asked by the other missionaries were really
awesome and there were some really good insights shared. Elder Bednar is so
funny, there was so much laughing. And he just tries his hardest to be so real
with us, I really appreciate that about him. After questions he asked again
what we were learning from this teaching model. I was just really impressed
upon about the importance of the Spirit in our teaching. The Spirit is so
vital, and we should never get in the Holy Ghost's way by drawing attention to
ourselves. Also, it really hit home to me how acting and not be the object that
is acted upon is so essential to our conversion. Afterwards we got to shake
hands with all of them. And I also got to see Sister Shurtleff! It was so good
to give her a big hug and spend a little time talking with her. She is an
amazing missionary, I was so blessed to be trained by her.
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Sunday
This was fast Sunday for
us because we have Stake Conference next week. I love how this is my third
stake conference on the mission. Anyway, taking the sacrament three times was
just as wonderful as ever. On exchanges Sister Sellar shared with me something
that she read in an Ensign article. She had read that the time we spend
pondering and remembering the Savior during the Sacrament is like the hour that
Christ asked His disciples to watch with Him in the garden of Gethsemane. I
just loved that insight and applied it this Sunday. In our third Sacrament
meeting one of our recent converts got up and bore his testimony. It was the
realest, sweetest, most sincere testimony I have ever heard in my life.
He basically just got up there and talked about how he always felt so good when
he came into the church building these past couple of years for scouts. He was
so impressed by how happy all of the church member were, and how he wanted that
happiness too. He then expressed how he is the happiest he has ever been. Later
that day he and his brother were ordained to be deacons in the Aaronic
Priesthood.
Obviously, I had a
really awesome and jam-packed week. I just can't believe how fast my time as a
missionary is going, it is just crazy to me. But I am so thankful for this
enormous blessing I have to share the gospel, to help people come to know their
Savior. I know with all of my heart that it is true!!!
Love,
Sister
Jensen
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