Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Semana Encantadora!

Such a great week! Pretty much the opposite of last week, so that is good. :) Here is the run-down:
Monday: Just your normal p-day. Email, laundry, groceries, violent games at the church with the Elders. All that good stuff. :) The Bishop and his wife fed all 6 of the missionaries in our ward, so that was fun to go to their house. After dinner we had some extra time so we went and saw Linda and Ann so that Sister Cole could meet them. Those 2 are just the sweetest! After that we came home and just had a chill night.
Tuesday: CRAZIEST DAY EVER. Who would have thought that today I would be in Des Moines all day speaking Spanish. Yep. Exchanges are the greatest! :) Usually when we do exchanges, the Hermanas just come to our area and we all take different towns. This time they decided I needed some time away from Winterset so I went to Des Moines with Hermana Phelps.  It was so great... except that I only know about 10 words in Spanish. Haha pretty much all day I just nodded at everything they said and just passed out Mormon.org cards like candy. :) I am very proud of myself though... that night we had dinner with an Hermana in their branch and she fed us a big ole' plate of spaghetti with a GIANT heaping mound of shrimp on top. I choked down about ten pieces of shrimp and was havin a hard time so I distracted Hermana Apaio while Hermana Phelps ate the shrimp off my plate. Haha it was pretty stealthy. That night we had a really amazing experience! We weren't quite sure where to go so we sat in the car for a couple minutes while Hermana Phelps looked through the people on her GPS. I looked over for a second and told her we should visit one of the Former Investigators she had on a list. She said that she had never seen that name before and didn't even know it was on the list. So we prayed about it and decided it was a good place to go. Went and knocked on the door, and an investigator they haven't been able to find for about 2 months answered the door. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?! Heavenly Father is so good. We were able to get her contact info and make an appt. Such a cool experience! Just goes to show that the Spirit can help you no matter what the situation is. :) A lot of the people we were suppose to see ditched us today .:( 
Wednesday: It was so weird being back in my area! Haha I felt like I had been away for about a week! And I will admit... the English was nice. :) We just did a lot of finding today! We did that for a couple hours and then headed to the Greens. We planned on teaching Karma but they weren't home so we ended up teaching Karissa the Plan of Salvation. Haha that girl is so cute. She just loves Jesus so much, it's inspiring. :) Towards the end of our lesson, Karma came in just bawling. She is going through some really rough things right now, so we invited her to just listen to the end of the lesson so that she could feel the spirit. Then Shadae came in and pulled out her computer. A couple weeks ago, we had showed her the church's youth website and she came and sat down and said, "We should listen to a song." Why yes, we should. Totally inspired! I pulled up this song and the spirit was undeniable. We testified to all of them of Father in Heaven and Jesus Christs love for them. It was a very powerful moment. I absolutely love this song...
https://www.lds.org/youth/music?lang=eng
That night, we had dinner with the Turners. They are such a fun family! They have 7 kids and 4 are adopted from China. All 4 of them have some kind of disability, and they are just the cutest. They had us laughin all night!
Thursday: Kind of a crazy day! We had to be in Des Moines at 10 for our new trainers meeting which was just fantastic. President and Sister Jensen, and the Assistants all gave wonderful trainings! After that we did our studies and then headed to district meeting. We had a little bit of time after that so we decided to do some finding in Van Meter. It was weird... haha it felt like a ghost town. Out of the 50 doors we knocked, 1 answered. Haha very productive day.
Friday: Weekly planning session! We did that for a while and then headed to the Jackson's for dinner with all the Elders.  Pretty interesting... they have a 5 year old son named Jaden who is so cute and just so crazy! So we we were all just sitting in the living room waiting for dinner to finish cooking and Jaden just comes over and lifts up the skirt. Just lifts it up. Those poor Elders... haha. Luckily, I wore leggings instead of tights today. Tender mercy. Oh, the life of a Sister Missionary. :) That night we experienced a miracle!!!!! We had some time before going home so we decided to find this less active who I have never met... I had left my GPS at home and our map was lost, so we went purely by the spirit to find this guys house. No joke, within 5 minutes we were knocking on his door. Such a blessing!
Saturday: Probably one of the busiest days of my mission. We were just running around everywhere today! We got a lot done though, so that is good. We were in Winterset today and started out tracting in one of the trailer courts. We were there for about 1 hour and found 4 potentials, and set up 4 appts. for next week. That never happens. We were literally in shock the whole time. Trailer park miracles people. That's not somethin ya hear everyday. One of the people we found was Binky. Binky was very skeptical at first, but eventually let us sit down and we just listened as she told us her life story and some really hard trials she has had these last couple years. It was such an amazing experience to testify to her that we were sent to her for a reason, and that this is what she is looking for. We left her with a Restoration pamphlet, and we will see this week what she thought about it! After that we did some Mormon.org time, and then headed to see Beverly, the 86 year old recent convert. We went and painted her nails again and read her an amazing talk from President Eyring. (https://www.lds.org/ensign/2012/05/mountains-to-climb) Before we headed home we went to our appt. at the McCalls. I love that family! In these 7 months I have been here (oh p.s. I turn 7 months on Friday. Holy moly. Freaks me out. Had a crying attack about it last night. No shame. ) Anyways, I have seen the McCall family grow a lot in these 7 months I have been here. They are such a great family! Can't wait for the day when they will be sealed as a family.
Sunday: Great Sunday as always. :) Church was amazing, and the talks and lessons given were truly inspired. We had an apptWest Des Moines that night so we decided to do our studies at the church to save in miles. I never realized how loud the church was until then... haha goodness gracious. Once we finished those, we headed to the Elgs and had dinner with them. Then we headed home and did some training. Woooo. This week seriously was FULL of so many miracles and tender mercies. Wouldn't ya know they have a mormon message which portrays this perfectly... :)
http://www.mormonchannel.org/video/mormon-messages?v=911029453001
I love this video. As a missionary, I have learned to become more aware of the tender mercies in my life. I have noticed just how much Heavenly Father is aware of me, and how much he blesses me. That is probably one of the greatest things I have learned in my 7 months here in Iowa... if we take the time, we will notice all the Tender Mercies the Lord gives to us. We just have to look. One thing that I have started doing is every night I write down just a couple tender mercies from the day, and truly it has changed the way I approach each day. I am excited to get up and get going, so that I can look for more. I invite and encourage you all to try this for a week, and I promise you will begin to be more aware of the many blessings around you that you Father is Heaven has blessed you with.
I love you all so very much. I am grateful for the examples in my life who have helped me get to where I am. I am especially grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ. He has held me through a lot of tough times and even the good times. I feel very blessed to be counted among one of His missionaries. I love this work. I love this Gospel. I love my Savior and Father in Heaven. God bless!

-Sister Jensen
"Is this Heaven? No, it's Iowa."
My companion is a champ. Sometimes when you have been finding all day you have to get creative... as in knocking on the window of a car with two people inside makin out hard core and asking them if they want to learn about Jesus Christ. But hey, when you make an appt. with them for the next week I would say it is a success. :)

Raccoon River Valentines dinner from February. One of my favorite
people ever... Kathy  :)

"I thought I was serving in Raccoon River. No one told me it was
Raccoon Road... kill." :)