I knelt down to pray...and woke up an hour later.

January 22, 2018

I knelt down to pray...and woke up an hour later.

Helping at the Eagle Scout project

Hello Everyone!

This week has been an interesting one, and I think that biking constantly is getting to me. Tuesday I woke up and did my normal stuff, until personal study. I knelt down to pray, and I knocked out for at least an hour. Oops. I woke up just in time to see the address by President Nelson. Now that was really cool. If you haven't head, President Russell M. Nelson has been called as our Prophet, and President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His counselors are President Dallan H. Oaks, and President Henry B. Eyering. That was a really cool thing to watch. After that, there was a press conference where they answered a bunch of questions for the media, and hearing all of their answers to these questions, and some of them were really hard questions, were amazing. I loved it. After that, I tried to get moving, but I passed out at least two more times for hour periods. That was bad. We did get out eventually to do some stop by's, and those were a little fun to do because there was still a bunch of snow on the sidewalk. If you know anything about snow and bikes, you know that they don't always agree with each other. We were walking for a bit that day.

Wednesday, I did not have to teach District Meeting, and I will tell you why later. That afternoon, we went and taught the Plan of Salvation to Ana. The interesting fact about that lesson, was that after our lesson, she was going to a Wake(kind of like a Viewing for a funeral). Man, she ate it up. She loves the Plan of Salvation. What was cool was Sister Mathusek's father was there, and she went and talked with him about a bunch of deep stuff about the Plan. We did not get to stay for that though, because we had to get moving. We went and talked with Sister Washburn after that, and we were mostly distracting her kids for a bit so she could have a break. Both of her kids have special needs, and she has her arms full all day. Then we went to have dinner with a member. Turns out, the husband was actually an excommunicated member, and her reached out to us be use he wanted to take the lessons again, and we were happy to be able to help out with that. Heck, he is at church every week and is basically the perfect member, so I am pretty sure that nobody really knows about that bit. He is such a humble and knowledgeable guy, and I am happy to be able to work with him.

Thursday stunk, because we hardly got any work done. We had done a ton of traveling the day before, and neither of us even heard the alarm, and woke up probably around 10:30. Yeah. So, we hopped on our studies, and rolled right into Weekly Planning, which took forever as per usual. Malik also swung by and talked with us for a bit, and that was a nice brain break. Then we sped off to the Doxey's for dinner. Man, Brother Doxey was super nice! So, I had been using my scarf as a face mask since forever, and he noticed that, and he just gave me a really nice face mask that I can use while bike riding. Oh, I love it!

Friday was Zone Conference, which is why I did not have to teach District Meeting. It was a long day, let me tell you. We got picked up at 7, and we got to the Schaumburg Stake center around 8:30, and we hung out there until 10, which is when Zone Conference starts. We may have been banging our heads on the wall, at least until other missionaries showed up. Zone Conference was basically our day though, because we were there afterwards because our ride, the YSA was getting interviews, but President just sent all of us home instead, and said he would do them later. Oh well.

Let me tell you about Saturday though. We got to help out with an Eagle Project that morning. We went out into a forest preserve, and spent about 4-5 hours clearing out Buckthorn and Honeysuckle. Man, I had so much fun with that. It was some work sometimes, because some of these plants had grown pretty thick, but it was so satisfying to be breaking so many things. It was fun. And we got a bunch of doughnuts out of it, so that was a bonus. We came back to our place to do some planning, but that didn't last too long, because a lesson just popped up, and we hauled some butt to get over to it. We taught Claudia with the Gutierrez family, and that was a really cool Restoration lesson. She is Hispanic, and Brother and Sister Gutierrez taught a bunch of stuff to her in Spanish. I just kind of sat there, smiled, and acted like I knew what was going on. The lesson went very well though, because Claudia wants to learn more. So, from there, Brother Gutierrez gave us a ride to our dinner, and then we went home.

Sunday was pretty cool. We got to hear two farewell talks from departing missionaries. Man, it sees like so long ago since I gave my farewell talk. They were really cool though, especially since we had 6 investigators at church. After church though, we went home, changed, then got our bikes from the Gutierrez' home(we had left them there the previous night to save time)and then biked on over to see the Isome's. Man, that was sad. Mr. Isome told us what was happening in his life right now, and it was basically an hour and a half of just one problem after another. His life, and that of his family, is just being constantly run into the ground. We gave him a blessing of comfort though, and he felt really good after that. I just hope that we can get him the help he needs, because as missionaries, there is not a whole lot that we can do.We set him up with the Bishop though, so we will see how it goes from there. After that we biked back to see the Gutierrez's, and they fed us a nice dinner of Salmon tacos. Those were excellent! Then we came home, and cleaned all of the mud off of ourselves.

So, that is about it for me this week! We actually have a lesson later today, but it will be past 6pm, so I will tell y'all about it next week. I hope that y'all are doing most excellent wherever you are at!

Elder Jensen

PS (from his letter to Mom): I am feeling a little more like a Senior Companion, and I like it. It is helpful when you and your companion actually get along well to get more into that role. Let me tell you, Elder Smith is a great elder. He and I share an absolute love for Star Wars, and that has been a great bonding point for us, though I think he knows a lot more than I do.

The face mask that Brother Doxey gave me.