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

                                                     November 5th 2013

Well, I´m finally here!  And I´ve already fallen in love with this place!  The members here are incredible and every day seems to be an adventure.  My parents may have a tough time getting me to come home at this rate!  Of 

course it´s completely different than the states and some things will take some time to adjust to but I honestly love this place!  My new companion is Elder Topham and he´s from around the Spanish Fork area, so I´m not completely lost down here.  We are in a little area in the Buenos Aires province called Ramallo and cover two pueblos (small towns) with a branch of about 30 active members so there´s quite a bit of work to be done here.  I got here just in time to attend the baptism of 5 children, 2 of which were convert baptisms, and we have a couple who are going to be married this Friday and baptized on Saturday, so a lot of exciting stuff ahead.  A few fun cultural things about Argentina:

-In argentina they refer to Americans as Yankees (the pronounce it Shunkees) and that´s all we´re ever called. And because their accent uses a lot of the sh sound my name down here is elder Shensen.

-Down here they have stray animals everywhere, especially dogs.  That took a little getting used to, and they love to run along side bikers so they follow us around quite a bit.

-The food here is incredible, they have a cookie down here called an Alfojor and it´s by far one of the greatest things I think I´ve ever eaten

-The insects down here are huge!  I ended up fishing a giant centipede-like thing out of our Church´s draining system the other day.

-Argentine´s have a great sense of humor.  And so does my companion....  My second day in Ramallo we visited a family, and when we arrived the father started shouting at us telling us to go away and that he was tired.  My companion just kept on talking to him, and he ran inside the house and came out with a shotgun and started my direction.  Thought I was gonna die to say the least, but turns out it was all set up and planned.  I´ll have to get my companion back later.  Well I don´t have a whole lot of time to write much so that´s all I´ll say for now.  Hope everything is going well for you all, and everything has been going great down South. 

Elder Jensen

Tuesday October 29th 2013

Jake finally arrived in Argentina!!!!!

Jake with his mission president, his mission presidents wife, and his companion Elder Topham

                                Jake with all of the new missionaries that arrived in Rosario

                                               Jake with President and Sister Giuliani
                                               Either the are very short or he is very tall!