Week 47

Area: Ottawa, KS
Companion: Elder Cox
 

So this week started off pretty cool. A member asked if we could help him out in picking up some food for a local food drive. Even though it was cutting about 3 hours out of our P-day. We meet him at Walmart and he had the money that was donated. As we start shopping we ran into a less active family and were able to have a good contact with them. Then later we saw an investigator couple and were able to set up an appointment with them. Then a worker asked us why we were dressed up and we were able to explain that we were missionaries, and he had actually lived in Utah for a while but wasn't a member, I didn't know that was possible. Then as we left the same less active lady was leaving and we helped her put her groceries in the car. So yeah the Lord knows his children and places them where they need to be. It was a testimony builder to me that service really opens the gates for so many blessings.

On Wednesday we helped a member rake his leaves. I had never done it before and I didn't realize that it is kinda physically demanding. I didn't really realize it until later that night but I was really tired. I made it through nightly planning, no doubt with the help of the Lord, but then in our prayer to close planning I totally fell asleep. Then I guess Elder Cox just left me there. About 15 min later we were sitting in our chairs writing in our journals and Elder Cox started talking to me and I fell asleep again. So then I just gave up and went to bed.

Thursday for Thanksgiving we were invited to a family's dinner in Lane, Kansas - a town that might have 100 people in it. But it was pretty cool and awkward at the same time because they are the only members in their family so everyone else had no idea who we were, but they were extremely nice and the food was good.

The rest of the week was just trying to contact people and trying to find new investigators. No luck yet but we are doing well with less active members, we had some cool lessons this week as well.

Thank you all for all you do. It is really quite amazing the amount that I have been able to experience. I couldn't trade it for anything.

Elder Jensen

This was a good purchase.

 

 Elder Cox didn't believe me that I could sleep in a bath tub, so I did.

Week 46

Area: Ottawa, KS
Companion: Elder Cox
 

This week has been fun, it was a little bit of a slower week but still good. Not much happened at the beginning of this week, just talked to a lot of people who weren't interested in the gospel, yet. We learned that both Elder Cox and I are staying in Ottawa for another transfer. And this transfer has both Thanksgiving and Christmas, so that's gonna be exciting. Both Elder Cox and I gave talks on Sunday again. His was on Faith so I talked about Hope. Hopefully it was alright. 

We have decided to try to visit more active people and to ask for more referrals. We haven't seen any fruit from it yet but hopefully this will increase the number of solid people we find.  

We didn't have too many people sign up on our dinner calendar this week and it gets dark so soon now. What we have been doing is making active member visits around dinner time and it usually only takes 2 maybe 3 houses before someone offers us dinner in exchange for a message. So we are still getting in and sharing the spirit with others!

It was rather interesting though, I think we might have become marriage counselors or something. There is a couple in the ward that is struggling and we actually helped her move out (super awkward by the way) but bishop had asked us to try to stop by both of them separately and see how they were doing. We hadn't been able to get a hold of the husband but on Wednesday he actually texted us and asked if he could receive a blessing. Then later she asked us to come over and they were both there and we gave her a blessing as well. It was a very sweet experience and an example to me that real people have real life problems. I think they are handling their situation in the most adult and mature way possible, and that is what will probably save their marriage. 

We have been given many service opportunities and been able to give many blessings this week and it has been amazing. 

There is a less active member that the missionaries have been visiting every week for probably years now, but he is finally coming back to church. He seems to like it and he's been back for about 3 weeks now, and the ward is talking about giving him a calling! 

Anyway, that is my life in a nutshell. Work hard, have fun, the gospel is true everywhere, God loves all of us.

Thank you for all that you do.

Elder Jensen

Week 45

Area: Ottawa, KS
Companion: Elder Cox

This week has been good. On Tuesday I went on exchanges with Elder Merrill in the Heritage Park ward. We had dinner with a family whose son just entered the mission field. So they had lots of questions and they basically adopted the missionaries as their proxy sons. They made really good food. It was about 7:00 and pitch black outside but we didn't have anything else to do so we knocked on the door of a potential and a guy hurriedly opened the door and then he looked confused and turned to someone else and said "oh it's not her". Then there was kinda an awkward silence and Elder Merrill said "sorry we're not her" then he basically told us to go away.  

I have had problems with my iPad. The software that the church uses to control the ipads unenrolled itself. So we got a call from Salt Lake saying that I had to fix it. Which ultimately led to me having to completely wipe my iPad and starting it again. So since I didn't have the passcode to do that, I had to just enter my passcode wrong so many times and it wiped it for me. But it took a couple of days to be able to do it because of exchanges. So we got a call on Wednesday and the guy from Salt Lake said I had to do it soon or they would "have to.... take action". So I figured I better do it. And it took so flippin long, like 4 hours. 

President Boyack (the stake president) went out on a team up with us, it was awesome. We just sat back and listened and learned about eternal life. It was super cool.

Saturday we drove all around the middle of nowhere with our ward mission leader, who was sick. Now I might be getting sick, but all is well.

Today we went out to literally nowhere and somewhere, I'll send some pictures.

Elder Oram, Elder Jensen, Elder Parker, Elder Cox

Thanks for all the support you guys send. You are awesome. Make it a good week.

Elder Jensen

 

Week 44

Area: Ottawa, KS
Companion: Elder Cox

Well, overall this week has been relatively  normal. On Halloween we carved pumpkins at P-day, then we went home and did weekly planning.

I went on exchanges this week with Elder Smith, my district leader, who was also my MTC companion. It was cool to see how much we both have grown. 

Thursday we had a recent convert couple take us to this place called Louisburg cider mill. They grow their own apples and make basically everything under the sun with them. It was cool. We were able to see them make cider and donuts and then we ate them, so that was a plus. 

A cool miracle that we saw this week - a member had a baby but they had a couple packages arrive at their house the same day. So they asked us to pick up the packages. Then a couple days latter we felt like we should stop to see if they were home even though they weren't supposed to be back until the next day. We stopped by and they literally had gotten home maybe 1-2 minutes earlier and we delivered their mail and helped them bring everything in. You know you're doing something right when you show up just at the right time.

We received a referral from church HQ. It was in a town at the far south end of our area about 45 minutes away. Because of miles we only get to go down once every 2 weeks and it was going to be a little while until we could go down. Then about an hour later our ward mission leader called us and asked if we were available to help him do some service down in that town for an elderly lady the next day. So he drove us down and we did the service, changed in a super nasty garage with a wide open door that couldn't close, and contacted the referral. She was a very nice lady and we taught her about the Book of Mormon and she accepted one. We will be going back next week!

Sorry this email is a little bit shorter, but not that much exciting stuff happened this week I guess. Thank you for all of your support. Make it a good week!

Elder Jensen