ULTIMO SEMANA

Time has flown by here in the CCM!! and I’m super excited  to get to Ecuador!! we leave on Tuesday at 1:30 am and fly to Bogota Colombia, then on to Quito! really excited and ready to get outta here.. 

We had our last few lessons with aldair and aurora this week.  We’ve a lot better at teaching and I feel a lot more confident in my Spanish now, but still far away from fluent.. 

Sad news though, one of the hermanas in our district decided to go home last week on Thursday so that was pretty tough on us as a district, and really tough on her compañera hermana larsen.. she ended up having to move to a different zone and district..  

Not much else has happened though..  just prepping to leave.. we had to pack everything to day to weigh it and stuff before we head out.. that was fun..    ish..  

just a lot of goofing around and learning all day..  I hope were well prepared for the field.. We’ve put in a lot of effort and I hope it all pays off.. hoping the language comes to me well out there..

Excited for general conference in a few days.. if you guys don’t already, I challenge you to take notes on each talk you watch.. I’ve found that in each devotional I’ve heard down here, I’ve gained so much more when I take notes and it’s been a huge help for me... soo ya really excited for that!

not much else.. just getting ready to leave..

well, that’s about it.. I’m sure next week will have a lot more stuff to talk about.. but as of now I’m just stoked to be out here and I’m ready to go!  

con amor

Elder Jensen

New Haircut

i'm good with it.. at the hair place, the lady sais  dos, tres, o cuatro.. I said cuatro, but basically got a dos.. there were two ladies cutting hair.. the one I had I think cuts to her preference.. the other lady left it really long on top for everyone else, but I'm fine with it.. its currently too short to spike up in the front but oh well, I think it still looks pretty ok

 

 we totally rigged up a sweet bench press on night! haha

​

our district con Pres De Oyos

SO READY TO LEAVE THE MTC

It officially feels like I’ve been here my whole life!!! It’s been a pretty slow week here and super ready just to leave already.. the routine is like the same everyday so that kinda stinks but it’s been a fun week.. 

I just want to go to Ecuador soooo bad..  It gets to a point here where it just gets too repetitive, and I’m bored with class allllll day.. sure it helps.. but im still bored with it. Lessons are good and stressful.. We’ve had consistent lessons this week with aurora.. all really good, and aldair lessons have progressed.  We taught aldair yesterday and it may have been the best lesson we’ve ever had.. we just threw out all the lessons for a one lesson and really just talked about faith and repentance.  We taught out of the first 8 verses in Enos.  He said it was a really good lesson and that we’ve come a long way from our last lesson.   so that was a really awesome experience.  It feels awesome when you can get your point across and they can actually understand... only can get better from here though! 

Mexican independence was last week and that was really fun.. We had real Mexican food and watched a big presentation of like Mexican dance through the ages.. that was cool, but also they all looked kinda the same soo it felt like the same dance for like 1 1/2 hours..  There were a lot of fireworks that night, but not as much as I was expecting.. 

 Pretty routine week so far, so not much out of the ordinary has happened..  but I do have a cool experience.. kinda weird though.. sooo in the dorms we have random times where the water turns off in the whole building so we can’t shower use the bathroom brush our teeth, etc..  It’s pretty annoying sometimes.. Well I got caught up doing stuff, and kinda forgot, and let’s just say.. we couldn’t flush.. 😑.  sooo that was both funny and kinda weird but we had ppl who needed to shower and we had to flush that toilet.. haha.. soo we remembered the specific prayer devotional from like week one and decided we should try it.. So we got everyone in our house together (me, haslam, ericksen, dougherty, emmelkamp,and gehring) and we said a specific prayer.. I said it first, but we decided it wasn’t specific enough cause we just asked for it to turn on at 10:15..  So when that didn’t work, ericksen said it saying everything we needed to do, that it would turn on by 10:21 by his watch that the water would work.. We all believed it would work, so when 10:21 hit, we all ran in and tried to turn on the sink, but it didn’t work..  but we kept trying and by like the last few seconds of 10:21 on his watch, it started to drip out the faucets.. we tried the shower and it started dripping too.. Over the next like 3 minutes, all the water came back in the building.. I know it was kinda silly, but our prayer was totally answered.. real awesome experience.. 

 Well that’s about all that happened to me this week..

Not much else to report on..so I’ll try to send out a  bigger email next week.. and I’ll take more pics next week

 

Love,

Elder Jensen

 

 

Having fun with my the district!

 

 

this is me and hermano celiz, who was both cesar and aldair.

 

 

Half Way Done!!!

Feels like forever here already!! haha.

Well not much happened this week.. still working on the language and getting better at teaching.

Went to the temple again today and this was a lot better experience.. a lot easier doing stuff in Spanish this time.. Honestly one of the coolest temples I’ve seen

 

Long week but its been pretty awesome!  not much crazy has happened cause basically each day is the same.. 

our two investigators couldn’t be more opposite! Aurora is soo receptive of our message and she does her hw and more.. she always has ?´s prepared about stuff we taught last time and is really engaged.. all our lessons with her are really good.  Aldair is a much different story.. He’s not interested but keeps inviting us back.. (not like he has a choice tho haha) but ya he never reads and give like 2 word answers.. after our lessons with him we basically get wrecked by feedback... idk, I’d probably be a lot more discouraged if our lessons with aurora weren’t going so well. 

 

Not much happened this week, but we did have service this Monday..  basically a ton of missionaries met outside the tienda, and I’m talking like almost 40.. it was like 70 % Latino and the rest like just our district.. This guy on a bike told us to follow him and he took off.. we started out walking until Elder Baumgartner ran back yelling to us to run or we won’t do service.. so our district ran and the Latinos walked... we get to the place and waited for the rest to arrive.. when we got there, he separated us from the Latinos.. we thought it was so there would be a Spanish group and an English group for better understanding of what task we would do,  but it turns out the whole time the man was saying first district to get there would be exempt from service  because they obeyed him.. 

Pretty sure the Latinos hate us cause after we learned that we all started to cheer!  haha, I guess those who obey are blessed haha..

We had some cool devos this week from Provo, Sunday was M Russell Ballard, and Tuesday was Quentin L Cook.. Both really awesome and made me super excited to go to Ecuador. I’ll share some things from both real quick.. In elder Ballards he talked about a lot of things, but one thing that stood out a lot was that if we have faith and trust in the Lord, then there will be nothing that will stop the progress of the Lords work.   One other thing that I really liked was that while we are on our mission, not only will we come to know God and Jesus Christ, but our savior will come to know us as well! really cool promise.  Elder Cook´s was really awesome, and probably my favorite of the three we had.  he talked a lot about D&C 31.. really good short chapter about missionary work.. he told us that he was part of the missionary committee that put together PMG (Preach My Gospel) and he told us that Pres Hinckley wanted the lessons to be non-memorizable so we had to learn and understand the doctrine.. that’s why PMG works so well.  He told us about the 4 Loves of a mission: 1. Love your companion- you can always learn something from them; 2. Love the people- respect them and their traditions and culture, they´re God´s children too and were there to serve them and bring them to Him; 3. Love your mission president- Elder Cook said that often times missionaries are chosen for specific missions b/c they want them to be with a specific missionary pres.. really cool thing to hear and I’m excited to meet pres Murphy!; & 4. Love the Lord- he’s done everything for us, and we’re here for a short time to help him!

really great message and he ended with his testimony that on our missions we’ll have very sacred, personal spiritual experiences that shouldn’t be shared at every opportunity.. He told us that he’s had many of these experiences that he wouldn’t share with us, but testified to us that he has heard the Lord´s voice and seen his face!! that was such an amazing testimony, and made me super excited to get to Ecuador!

 

Well that’s about it this week! Love to hear from you all and I’ll talk to yall next week!

Love

Elder Jensen

left something out... soo this week is Mexican Independance day.. soo usually everynight its pretty loud here in Mexico, with fireworks and sirens and this weird talking street sweeper at like 3 am, but the nights of the 15/16/17 apparently are crazy.. we’ve been told that we won’t get any sleep those nights.. especially since we got jipped and stay in dorms when there’s a ton of casas on the property.  the dorms are right next to the wall of the ccm sooo there really is no chance of sleep... also on the 15th they do some fiesta thing with real Mexican food so that should be really cool! well that’s about it.. looking forward to that.

 

 

 here’s what my room looks like.. we're in a little apartment with two other companionships, this is just our room in the whole thing.

the Mexican candy bars in the tienda as well as the juice there is flippin amazing!! I get one like everyday with our card allowance of 100 pesos a week!

 

Week 2

Time is flying here in the CCM.. Crazy I’ve been here 2 weeks.. While in the moment, it seems like it is taking forever, but looking back on each day, it actually is moving so fast.  I really love my district and were all getting along real well.  It’s fun just hanging around together and helping each other out with Spanish.

 Ohhh Spanish.. still really tough.  School has been a big help with that in general, but I’m still a long way from fluent.  We finished with Cesar last week and now we have two investigators. One is Aldair, and he’s played by the same guy as Cesar, our afternoon teacher Hermano Celiz.  He’s really tough to teach because he has no basis of religion really at all.. you’d think it would be easier to teach someone like that, but he really has no idea about anything.. its like teaching a kid.. So that’s pretty tough but I’m hoping it will get better soon.  Our other investigator is Aurora.  She’s played by our morning teacher Hermana Arnau.  She also really tough.  She has a strong catholic background and likes to compare stuff to her religion.. and she likes to talk.. We ask a simple question and she goes on for like 3 minutes.. Soo with our level of Spanish, were lucky to grasp half of what she says.   of well, both very opposite types of investigators but real good prep for actual field work in Ecuador.  

 Already getting tired of the ccm.  It’s the same thing everyday and were non stop in classrooms.  minus the 30 min of meals and hour of gym its basically all day in the classroom learning español.. let’s hope it pays off!!

 Got to go to the Mexico City temple today and that was super awesome!! doing a session en español was really cool, and tough at the same.. Definitley will never forget that experience..  It’s a really cool looking temple too! I think we get to go back one more time and its next pday i believe, so I’m excited for that!

 We had a great live devotional from Provo yesterday.  Elder Chistofferson spoke along with his wife.  Sister Christofferson spoke about how we are called by the Lord to serve him, and at the same time Satan is trying so hard to make us want to go home.  "Who do you want to win?"  What makes that decision easy for me is that we know who is going to win this fight everytime... The Lord.  Of course it’s hard to leave behind friends and family, but I want to be on the winning side and do what I was called to do.. Christofferson spoke about Teaching Repentance and Baptizing Converts.. He said that repentance is our message, and that it is Christs testimony.  We need to tailor each lesson to the individual were teaching and help them to repent and overcome their individual probs.  He also said Repentance is turning to God and a change of heart to the will of God.  My favorite thing he said was a quote by President David O Mckay "it is greater to be trusted, than to be loved"   God loves us, but can he trust us?  He told us to be the kind of missionary that God, our mission president, local members, our companions and or families can trust.  Be a rule-keeping, hard-working missionary.  It was a really amazing devotional, and we have the opportunity to hear from another apostle on Sunday and next Tuesday live both times as well I believe.. Idk well find out soon.  

 Super excited for what’s to come and I miss you all!

 Con Amor,

Elder Jensen

Mexico City Temple with Elder Haslam