The Art of Romance, Spell Check, and Auto-Correct

September 11, 2017

The Art of Romance, Spell Check, and Auto-Correct

My new companion, Elder Smith and I

Hello everyone!

Well, here it is. The first week of my new transfer. Let us start though with the Monday before. Well, more like Monday night. The night before transfers, Brock and Marie called us up (they were some of our investigators) and told us that they were taking us to dinner. That was super nice of them. We spent an hour or two there with them, just talking with each other and having a good time together. I am really going to miss that couple, but I know that wherever they are, the Lord will be watching over them and helping them out.

Elder Jensen, Elder Faimalo, Brock and Marie

Then of course, Tuesday came. Elder Faimalo and I packed up our things, and we headed out to the stake center to go and met our new companions. I am with Elder Smith, who has only been out for one transfer, so yes, I am training him. I am kind of excited for this because this is going to be a whole new experience for me. Instead of looking to my companion for how I should do things, I am now being very much looked to in how I do things in the mission.

Let me tell you though, Elder Smith has taught me many a good thing so far. As soon as we drove back to our area, we got right to work, and found a potential investigator within the first two hours of me being there. That has never happened to me before, but it got me super excited. Elder Smith is also a fantastic example in talking on everyone. He truly exemplifies this, and it amazes me at how successful he is at talking to people and sharing the gospel with them. I am going to try and learn his ways so that I can get better at that.

After we did a bit of shopping, we came back to the apartment, and I could tell right off the bat that some work needed to be done around here. I spent some of this week, and I will be doing it more next week just cleaning things out of here and just trying to help bring some life back to this apartment. It will be work, but it is needed. And that evening I got to met with the Ward Mission Leader, and I am super excited to work with him because he has a great love for sharing the gospel, and just really loves the missionaries.

So Wednesday was District Meeting. I also had a very happy reunion with Elder King, who is a most fantastic Elder that I served with back in my old Zone. Anyway, the meeting. It was pretty cool. Each companionship was challenged to hand out 100 Books of Mormon in one month by our District Leader. So far, we are at 26. Elder Smith and I thought it would be hard, but honestly, if you are talking to everybody and always offering it, people will take it.

So, after District Meeting, we spent 2 hours fixing our area book, because it was left in a very poor state. It needs a lot of help. Thursday was long. We had Weekly Planning, which usually takes forever anyway, but it took us 6 hours because 1. I took the opportunity to learn about each of our investigators from Elder Smith and other things about the area, and 2. We kept getting interrupted by other things. One of those things was we taught one of our investigators, and we got her to come to the church that evening to Institute. She really liked that. I hope she gets to that for a bit because I feel that it will give her friends and help her understand more of what she is reading.

Friday, we began going through our formers list and deleting out people that we knew for sure have no potential (i.e. Moved, no information, very little teaching that went nowhere, etc.). We are going to get more on that later this week, since this is going to be a couple day project. We went around and did some finding after that and then hit up a less-active family that is returning to activity, and we taught their son, Irmuun, who they want to baptize. He is a super smart kid, and he is fun to work with. I know that he is going to get baptized pretty soon.

Saturday was also long. I started it off with some kitchen cleansing, while Elder Smith wrote up a weekly report to the Ward Council. It is looking a lot better in there now. We then tried to do some finding, but that turned into filling out the Stake MCM report, which neither of us really knew how to do, so we probably took a lot longer on it than other missionaries would. That eliminated any finding for that morning sadly.

We did get out to a lesson with a referral though, and we had a pretty good time with her. She has potential, but we just need to meet with her again,which sounds like it won't be happening for a couple of weeks because she is going to be out of town. She has a Book of Mormon though, so we are hoping that she will take time to read that.

We ran into two other people that day near then end of the day that each accepted a Book of Mormon, and we had a good time with both. The first was Luis. He accepted one because we talked about who the people were in the book, and he was curious to learn about them. He referred us to the second person, who was his neighbor, Art. When he opened his door, I knew something was up because of the face he gave us. He then proceeded to go off on us about the Bible and all of these other things, trying to tell us that we were wrong. We listened patiently, and we commented on a few things, and I think we kind of confused him because we agreed with a lot of things that he was saying. I think it is funny when people think that we are so different and wrong compared to their Christian religions, but really, we believe a lot of the same things. People just want to knock on us because we have another book, and they don't even want to take the time to even try to see if what we are saying is right. Oh well, what can you do? Anyway, we eventually got him to promise to read the Book of Mormon, if we read something that he gave us. It turned out to be a little pocket pamphlet thing, that was interesting. But, I am glad that he at least took a Book of Mormon and said that he would give it a try.

Sunday was a pretty good day. We have 9am church now, so Ward Council is at 7:30am. That was kind of tiring, but hey, that meant church was done at noon, so we had more time in the day to do stuff. We were actually able to go out and pass out a few more Books of Mormon to people. That was pretty sweet. Backtrack, we are now officially going to Young Men's each week. Why? I got Elder Smith to go this week, and they actually used us pretty effectively in there. They are having the Young Men teach a section from one of the lessons in Preach My Gospel each week as a part of the class now, and they want us to also help teach that and share some experiences with the youth to help them learn more on how they can share the gospel. It is pretty cool.

Ok, now on to today, which not much has happened yet. We have to go over to the YSA missionaries apartment (YSA stands for Young Single Adult. There is usually a YSA ward in each stake, and it gives YSA age people a chance to meet other single people in their area. I have yet to serve in one, but I think that it would be kind of cool) so we can do laundry because the thing to fill up our laundry card is broken. So, we are off to do that now. I hope that y'all are having a most wonderful day!

Elder Jensen

PS from Elder Jensen's mom: I try not to alter Elder Jensen's letters too much, but there are some sentences that are either so badly auto-corrected or misspelled, that I copy the sentence and send it back to him for clarification. This week, we got the funniest auto correct so far! Here is the original sentence...and my response...and his.

The are having the Yong Men tach a section from one f the lessons in Preach My Gospel each week as a art of the romance class now, and they want us to also help teach that and share some experiences with the youth to help them learn more on how they can share the gospel.

{Mom} So...you are teaching an art of romance class to the young men??😂😂😂. I think this is the funniest sentence goof I have ever seen! What does it translate to? 😘 Mom

{Elder Jensen} 😂😂😂😂😂😂 Gosh, I need to slow down and really look at what I am typing. I guess everyone that got my mass email will get a good laugh. It is supposed to say, "They are having the Young Men teach a section from one of the lessons in Preach My Gospel each week as a part of the class now, and they want us to also help teach that and share some experiences with the youth to help them learn more on how they can share the gospel." I don't know know where romance came from. Stupid auto correct. But, I sent that out in a mass email to other missionaries, so I hope that they get a laugh out of it too. I should probably spell check before I send stuff. 😁