DECEMBER 9TH 2013


                                                         LA SEMANA MEJOR




Well, I might have to say that proselyting wise, this was the best week I´ve had in the mission.  Friday was absolutely incredible!  We decided to spend the majority of the day contacting and finding new people, and we ended up teaching 4 lessons from just teaching.  But even better was seeing how the people we found were totally prepared to hear the message of the Gospel.  The first man we found standing in the middle of the city, as if he was just waiting for something.  We went up and talked to him, and at first he wasn´t to interested.  He kept bringing up his Catholic background and the same things we hear from every Argentine.  5 minutes into it and he still wasn´t too interested, but instead of giving up we felt like we should keep teaching.  We found out that he had a Book of Mormon but had never really read it, and had a brother who was a member and he really admired the faith that our members had and wished he could have that kind of faith.  Well, we pulled out a pamphlet of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and taught him about faith, and then later went on to explain the importance of prayer and the Spirit.  Right before we left we asked if we could leave him with a prayer.  You could tell he felt a little awkward about it, but he said it was alright and we left him a prayer in the middle of the street.  At the end of the prayer he had tears in his eyes and promised us to read the pamphlet and that he would read the Book of Mormon and was going to go to our church on sunday!  Sadly he lives in San Nicholas so we won´t be able to keep in contact with him.  But we´re passing him as a referral to the missionaries up there.  

 

The next person was a teenage boy who had apparently lost his dad about 10 years ago.  We taught him about the Plan of Salvation, and how he could know these things to be true through prayer and the spirit.  Once again we left him with a prayer outside his house and told him to pay attention to his feelings as we prayed.  We asked him how he felt after the prayer and he admitted that he could feel something.  We´re planning on visiting his whole family this coming week.

The last person we taught was by far the coolest.  We were on our way to a less active family and a man caught our eye who was sitting on the curb.  We went and talked to him, and all we could do was introduce ourselves as missionaries when all of a sudden he started asking us if we had a church, and where it was, and what time it started.  Turns out that he had travelled from out of town, to Ramallo, for the sole purpose of finding a church.  He took our appearance as some kind of sign.  We taught him some of our beliefs and ideas and he eagerly promised to go to church the week he didn´t have to work on sunday.  We´ll definitely be keeping our eye out for him and hopefully we can pass him on to the missionaries in his area quickly!  

To say the least it´s been an awesome week!  And to top it all of, Elder Topham and I received our Christmas Packages!!  What better way to top off the week?  

Well I hope all is well with all of you!  Things are going great over here in Ramallo and we should be having another wedding/ baptism this week!  

Les extraño 

Con amor

Elder Jensen

DECEMBER 2ND 2013



                                                            MORE FUN FACTS

1.  WEIRDEST THING I HAVE EATEN:  CHICKEN HEART

2.  EVERYBODY LOVES COLDPLAY HERE

3.  EVERYDAY BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12-5 THE TOWN SHUTS DOWN AND EVERYONE TAKES A NAP EXCEPT FOR US.

4.  I HAVE EATEN MORE BANANAS THIS WEEK THAN I HAVE EVER EATEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.  (WASN'T MUCH OF A BANANA PERSON UNTIL NOW.)

5.  STILL TERRIBLE AT SOCCER

6.  SCREWED UP ON A WORD DURING A LESSON ON THE PLAN OF SALVATION.....I SAID RENO INSTEAD OF REINO.  LONG STORY SHORT,  I TOLD OUR INVESTIGATOR THAT WE WILL GO TO ONE OF THE THREE REINDEER AFTER THIS LIFE.

DECEMBER 2ND 2013



                                            IT'S GOING TO BE A GREEN CHRISTMAS

Well I hope Thanksgiving was awesome for all of you.  We didn´t do too much, I think we bought an alfajor to celebrate but that was about it.  But I honestly don´t feel too bad about not doing anything.  Well this week went better than the last!  We finally received the money to pay the deposit on our new apartment and we should be moving in this next week!  We also met with a less active family who wants to baptize their 9 year old girl, so we´re hoping to get working on that!  And we´ve had quite a few people who seem interested and want us to come back, so we´ll see what happens!  As for some of the fun things here.  The humidity is killer!  It was only 9 o clock this morning and I was already starting to perspire during my studies.  And air conditioning is non existent so it´s impossible to escape it.  But oh well!  It may help me from gaining too much weight down here.  This past week we had our first Carne Asado, which is pretty much an Argentine barbaque and it was by far one of the greatest things I have ever had in my life.  It really is going to be tough going back to American beef.  The pizzas down here remind me a lot of the pizzas from Europe too, so that should make you all a little jealous!  Oh and a few days ago I ate chicken heart...  It was actually pretty good believe it or not!  As for a typical day for us, we wake up shower eat breakfast and start our personal studies by 8, afterwhich we plan for half an hour, and then we head out to do a little work in the morning, then we come back and finish the rest of our studies after lunch until about 5 (we do studies in the afternoon here because everybody else decides to take what we call siestas, in other words, a man made excuse to sleep and be lazy, between the hours of 12 and 5) and then head back out and work until 9:30 or 10.  President has us work in the morning and later in the evening so we can avoid the heat.  And as for the work we do probably an hour or so of contacting and then visit less actives and future investigators with lessons mixed in.  It´s crazy!  In total we have over 200 members in this area alone, but only 30 come on a regular basis.  A lot of work to be done to say the least.  Well I´m gonna try and get some pictures sent today!  I love you all and hope things are going well for you!  It sure sounds like they are.  Just got an email from Caleb, and it kind of made my day to hear that Bama´s no longer first.  Was kind of getting sick of them.  Love you all

Elder Jensen

NOVEMBER 25TH, 2013


                                                             HEY!!!


How´s it going family?  Things are going well down here in Argentina!  The heat decided to cool down a little which was nice.  And it sounds like Thanksgiving is right around the corner  for all of you.  It sounds like Evie is going crazy with Catching Fire being out now, and Caleb got the MVP?  that´s awesome!  Nothing terribly exciting has happened this past week.  The mission office still hasn´t sent us the money to pay for our new apartment, so we end up spending close to 3 hours a day just driving to and from our proselyting area.  We do have another marriage and a baptism coming up soon which will be exciting though!  And for a special zone activity we´re watching Planes so that should be cool!  I finished my entire triple in spanish this past week as well!  And I´ve already started the Old Testament so we´ll see what exciting things I´ll learn from that.  I love you all!  I hope things are going great for all of you and hope things continue to go well if they are! Happy Thanksgiving

Love, Elder Jensen

November 18th


                                                          FUN FACTS

1.  GATORADE COMES IN GLASS BOTTLES AND THEY HAVE AN APPLE FLAVOR.  (IT WASN'T TOO BAD).

2.  WE REALLY DO HAVE TO CLAP TO GET INTO HOUSES

3.  SOME STORES WON'T HAVE CHANGE, SO THEY WILL REIMBURSE YOU WITH CANDY.

4.  MILK COMES IN PLASTIC BAGS

5.  THEY EAT A LOT OF HORSE MEAT, IT LOOKS AND TASTE LIKE HAM SO I DON'T COMPLAIN.

6.  THE MEAT HERE REALLY IS INCREDIBLE

7.  THEY USE PIECES OF BREAD TO SCOOP THEIR FOOD OFF OF THEIR PLATE.

8.  EVERYBODY DRIVES MOTORCYCLES HERE.

November 18th
                                          Holy Heat

Well it sounds like the snow finally started falling back home.  As for me, Wednesday it was 98 degrees Farenheit and humid.  And according to the branch president, it´ll hit around 112 by January!  Haha exciting stuff coming up!  This week it seems like our patience was being tested a bit.  We did a lot of contacting this week with little to no success, until the end of the week.  We found a father and his two boys who we contacted and accepted a Book of Mormon.  A few days later we decided we should drop by them again and see if we couldn´t get into the house.  Only one of the sons was home but he invited us in and we were able to start up a conversation.  He started off by saying the same thing as a lot of people here say, that he respects all religions, and we all have the same God etc.  We got talking to him a little more about what we believe, and he began to take an interest in what we were talking about and started asking us some questions.  He wanted to know why we thought there were so many churches on the earth, and why not just one church.  He wanted to know if we believed in a life after death, and what we knew about that. And many other questions that had been troubling him, that his own church couldn´t seem to answer.  Needless to say, we were jumping from one pamphlet to another, giving him a good overview of our beliefs and briefly answering his questions.  We´ll be heading back to his place in the following day, and hopefully things just take off!  Another cool thing, is I finished the Book of Mormon in spanish last night!  And I can see a huge difference in my language skills after finishing the book!  I´ve jumped into the spanish Doctrine and Covenants hoping that both my language skills will increase even more and my understanding of the Gospel will continue to increase!  Every day continues to be an adventure here, from teaching outside with bats flying over our heads, to accidentally flooding our apartment!  I love it!  I´m growing everyday with each new experience, and I continue to see the hand of the Lord more and more in every aspect of my life.  I hope things are going well for all of you!  I love getting all of your letters and I apologize for not writing everybody back individually!  This truly is the work of the Lord

Elder Jensen

November 5th 2013

When it rains, it rains for days and floods the streets.

Trying to stay dry!

                                                   
                                                                 Filtering our water

                                                             Just having some fun

                                                                 My comp Elder Topham

                                                                Parrots are everywhere

                                                 A baptism that I participated in my first week

                                       A giant centipede that we fished out of the church drain

                                                 Some of great treats that I have discovered