SISTER JENSEN: Winter Carnival

Dear Family,

Whenever someone asks Sister Smith and me what we have been up to lately, the answer that immediately pops into my head is always, "Driving!" I have never driven so much in my life, we probably average around 100 miles of driving every day. Some days it is around 250 because of our district meeting in Weiser. All of this driving time does give us plenty of time to ponder and talk about everything, and we get to appreciate all of the beautiful surroundings, so I will try not to complain too much :)

On Monday night we had another lesson with the one of our investigator families. They are a super busy family and we have been trying to meet with them for a while, and we finally had a lesson last week. We addressed some of their concerns and just talked about the lessons. This last Monday we were miraculously able to meet again and teach them the Restoration. It was the first time they had heard it, so it was really fun to teach them and see some things click in their brains. They are such a great family, the type of people that you just know will be a huge blessing to the church.

Last Sunday we did a fast for another one of our investigators. We did this mostly because we just forgot to fast at the beginning of the month, but we really were concerned about her. We taught her the first lesson and she is just so golden but she cancelled our lesson last week. So we fasted that she could continue meeting with us. We texted her on Tuesday to see if there was another time we could meet with her, and she responded saying that she thought we were meeting that day, and so we did! We taught her the Plan of Salvation and she was again just so receptive. We we hope she will continue learning and receive a witness that this message is true.

We have been going through some names on the ward list that haven't been visited in years. We tried this one name and got to the house and found out they had moved (which is the case for most of these). So we talk to this lady who lives there now, and it turns out her husband's mom is a member, but was away for the winter. Her husband wrote his mom and said that us simply stopping by made him remember how much the church had done for him and that he has a desire to give back.

Friday was the beginning of Winter Carnival, which is a huge deal. Sculptors from all over come here and make these elaborate sculptures out of snow and ice. There was this big parade on Saturday, so we went to volunteer at the community center, which was doing a pancake breakfast. I was on egg duty, cracking the eggs and whipping them up in the mixer. I think I cracked around 60 dozen eggs, it was quite a lot. But we got to meet several people we were volunteering with or serving. After the breakfast was over, we couldn’t leave because all the roads were blocked off, so we decided to go down and watch the parade. We met some members who brought their friends from India, who were extremely friendly and shared some Indian snacks with us. Then we met another member family from Meridian who had a prime spot so we went and stood by them. Their daughter, who was not there, just got called to the Nauvoo mission so it was fun to talk with them. The parade was Wizard of Oz themed, with the tagline "There's Snow Place Like Home" and it was quite a long parade, I thought it never would be over, standing there in the cold. We were able to easily get out of town and the traffic wasn't nearly as bad as everyone hyped it up to be.