Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Spring Rain --> Winter Rain and the week I tried to be German

What it is everyone?! How's it going? How's the family?

This was a pretty good week over here in Oregon. We had a lot of fun stuff mixed in with equal amounts of craziness and excitement, but a good week nonetheless.

We were able to have some awesome lessons this week. One of my favorite developments as of late has been a new family that we've been working with; Stephen, Fawn and their four kids. We actually found them a while ago when we blitzed in our area for new investigators. We've been meeting with them fairly regularly over the past little while and they're SUPER involved. We found out that Stephen is actually a member but has been inactive since his youth and wants his family to have a life in the Gospel. Even though Fawn doesn't have a religious background and the kids are young, they're all very interested and retain a lot of information. I'm excited to see where they go from here.

On Thursday, we had our quarterly interviews with President Russell. It's always a great time to get to meet with President and talk about the Gospel. You know you're on the right track when you get sat down, get asked "Is there anything you want to discuss with me? No? Alright!", have a 5 minute conversation and then you're done. It's a good time.

Now on to the German thing. So there's this member in the ward that met this German lady named Babsi online and decided to marry her. I know, it's kinda weird but just wait, there's more. So the member, Brother Black, wants Babsi to learn about the Gospel but she doesn't speak English well, or basically at all. Brother Black also has some rather eccentric views about the Gospel so you can see where this is going. Brother Black asked us to teach Babsi. On Wednesday night we went over to the Black's for dinner with a family in the ward who's daughter speaks a little German. We have dinner and things are good, but then we come to the lesson. For starters, Babsi didn't know that we were trying to teach her, so she was a little confused during the whole situation. We usually try to establish some expectations with the investigators before we start teaching, but Brother Black didn't like that. He kept telling us to just start going and the Spirit would connect with her. Which is true, to an extent, but when the investigator doesn't know they're being taught, there's not much we can do. What was supposed to be an hour lesson turned into THREE, all through Google translate and a high schooler's German education. It was extremely confusing, but we were able to get the message across well and hopefully she will be receptive.

Other than that not a whole lot has changed. Ray is still super solid and is pumped to get baptized on the 9th. Everyone else is doing just hunky dory and things are swell.

On a more spiritual note, this week I decided to start using a study journal, more than just the notes app on my iPad. It's made a HUGE difference in the way that I study the scriptures and connect with the messages found in them. I encourage everyone to try it out for yourself, it'll change you life!

And now I'm off to the temple. I hope that everyone has a fantastic week. Talk to you all later.

Love,
Elder Jensen






The whole temple crew






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