Week of Neatness

Good afternoon wonderful people! This week was pretty eventful if I do say so for myself! So, where to begin!

I'll be honest. I made a mistake that made me look like a bad missionary. There was this one guy were teaching. And he made a mistake in his life. And so he was talking about this mistake that he made for literally like 2 hours. I was going to lose it. Apparently the missionaries are equal to therapists or something. And there was only one light bulb in a room made for three light bulbs! and I kid you not I fell asleep during a lesson.

To my defense it wasn't really a lesson to him I swear he thought this was like a therapy session or something. I don't even think he noticed, it probably just looked like I was reading the Book of Mormon during the lesson - OK I'm actually going to call it a situation we were stuck in, not a lesson. But legit I probably fell asleep for a solid 5-10 minutes during this.... situation we were stuck in! So I know it makes me sound apostate, but it happened and I will confess my sin haha. My companions didn't even know it for a while but one of them squeezed my arm when he figured out, so they'll never let me hear the end of that.

Well another crazy thing happened, we had our very last amazing super good Tedinos pizza with our main favorite member Andrew Pearson. He's moving to Wyoming and then maybe back to Utah. He's truly been the coolest. He is one of those people that I never would've gotten to meet unless I would've gone on a mission so pretty much already proof that I made a good decision. He's gone though so it's sad but I'm happy for the man.

We had an exchange with our zone leaders this week and so I was in a trio with Elder Dorminey and Elder Olchewsky. Don't ask me how to say it cause I still don't know haha. But we had a lesson with one of our new members and I was able to give him a blessing! Being able to give priesthood blessings has already been such an awesome thing for me because it really helps me learn how to listen to the spirit. I feel like listening to the spirit is a difficult thing for me, but when you give priesthood blessings it's necessary that you do it. Being able to give priesthood blessings has helped me feel the spirit so much and I'm so grateful to be able to serve others with priesthood blessings. It's been really eye opening for me.

Another cool thing that happened this week was we got a random call with an 801 area code which I recognized to be from Utah. we answered and it was this guy named Ben. He was just in Chicago for a couple days for work and apparently he was riding in a taxi that was stuck in traffic for like an hour and so he started talking to the driver who's name was Volodymyr (Vlad for short) but they got talking and eventually the gospel was brought up and Ben thought that Vlad seemed to be really receptive and looking for a change in his life, so he got his contact info and then called us right away.

He told us he wanted to meet with us for dinner to talk about his referral. Thanks to Ben we were able to get Vlad to church the next day and we were able to meet him. This was such an awesome thing for me to see! We had a member who was just in town for a couple days and he was magnifying his call as just a member of the church! missionary opportunities are everywhere even if you're not a missionary. We're still in contact with Ben because he's grown quite a relationship with Vlad and he might Skype into some of the lessons in the future. I thought it was really cool that Ben got out of his comfort zone to talk to a random cab driver.

This week we were also able to teach that African family that I had mentioned earlier. I don't get to teach many families being in the YSA ward and the SA branch, so I love these opportunities. These people are truly some of the nicest people in all of Chicago. I love being in their presence. We were able to teach them the plan of salvation. It's seriously so fun to be able to teach people with kids! I miss my neighbors the Wittwers and challenging them to duels with Nerf swords. It kinda makes me excited to be in a family ward, but also I'm enjoying the area I'm in right now. I love my two companions. We just bought some matching ties for zone conference. It's going to be so awesome. Hope everyone has a good week!

Elder Jared Daniel Jensen

Pics:
Last Tedinos with Andrew Pearson :(
The Chicago trio
The Chicago trio chillin on my bunkbed
The city in the distance
Dinner with Ben
We actually look like preppy dads.

Trio Life and Too Many Jensens

(BEFORE I BEGIN MY LETTER THIS WEEK I HAVE AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT MOSTLY TO MY FAMILY BUT STILL IMPORTANT) 

So the new missionaries came this transfer! And we definitely welcomed two more Elder Jensens into this mission. There are literally 5 Elder Jensens and one Sister Jensen in this mission. And yes one of them is named Jared. 

There are TWO Jared Jensens in this mission, so if you ever send any letters or packages you have to put Jared D. Jensen or Jared Daniel Jensen on them because I already got a call from the mission office and they told me to send this out. I know it's weird that there is another missionary with my exact name! Just a different middle name.  :) 

I am in a trio as the subject declares and it is so awesome. Watch out Chicago. There's three of them on the streets now. Elder Jensen, Elder Bolton and Elder Dorminey are their names. I have loved every second of the trio life so far it has been so fun! I've heard trios can be annoying, and I thought that it might be inefficient because there could be a missionary not doing something and wasting time. But as we are in an area that could have two companionships for one ward, the trio has already proved to be extremely effective! 

This week was again super super busy, and it was really nice to be able to have three minds on the work. But it's been really useful when other missionaries are passing off YSA's to us because then we can split up with different companions so that we can get to know more people. I have no idea if that made sense but yeah. Another cool thing about it is college campus finding. There are three of us just walking around the campus and we split up and talk to a lot of different people. It's super fun! I am always a little stressed I'm going to lose my companions but it hasn't happened yet. There are some times where it's annoying because not one of us can be left alone so like if one of us wants to go to the fitness room in the morning all of us have to. And yes, I am the one who wants to go to the fitness room in the morning and all of us have to. But they don't mind. It's good times. 

So let me tell all you about my new companion. His name is Elder Dorminey. He's actually been here longer than Elder Bolton. He's AWESOME! I love him already and Elder Bolton still of course. They're two very different people and one them occasionally gets annoyed by the other. But they get over it haha. He takes a lot more pictures though so now I don't need to take any! Yay! 

Our new district is a little different than last time. Just like two missionaries are different though and the district leader changed. He's a funny dude. 

We had a baptism this week! Her name was Grayson. We didn't really teach her until the very end of her missionary lessons because she was taught in the area that she lived. She wanted to be baptized in the YSA though so we planned out her baptism and it was super crazy but it all worked out! 

Church yesterday was probably like one of the wildest days though so far. We are constantly like trying to get people to church on Sundays so lots of like texting and calling and sitting with people were teaching at church. So it's very nice to have three people especially at church. Oh yeah, and I had to give a talk in church. And I actually literally didn't even have time to prepare a talk. And it might sound like I'm a lazy but I swear. The only way I could've had time is if I did it during my personal study, which now I'm thinking might have actually been a good Idea... Anyways I went up there with a couple scriptures of quotes talking about faith and I literally spoke for 15 minutes! I'm proud of myself because I gave a 15 minute talk with no preparation and people said "good job on your talk" and it wasn't even good but I don't care it was crazy. This is missionary life. Because of my mission I feel like I'll be more confident in throwing together lessons and talks in the future. So thanks mission :) 

We got pizza with our favorite member, Andrew Pearson, this week. He's moving from Chicago soon! I'm so sad but also happy for him. We'll probably only be able to eat dinner with him one more time. So that was really fun but it was probably the unhealthiest meal I've literally ever had in my life. I went to bed that night feeling bloated and forced my companions to go to bed but still managed to go running the next day. 

This week has been good for some of the people were teaching and bad for others. We've had a couple of ups and downs for many of these people. Some people slip into old habits. But we're trying to do our best to help them out. The only way to truly help others is to invite them towards Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can help them. I've enjoyed being a missionary because I've been able to see how we can teach them how to do that. The power doesn't really come from missionaries; it comes from the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Miracles can happen because of him and what He has  done for us. 

Oh we did have one crazy lesson this week where it was a pass off and there were five missionaries and one member present -- two sisters and us. It was super crazy and not your average missionary lesson. So also something I noticed is that sisters might just be a lot better than elders. The sisters with us taught with so much better power than we did I felt and I kind of questioned why the church just doesn't send out sisters. So to all those girls who are questioning if they should go on a mission or not: Maybe think about it a little more because trust me sisters are really good at what they do. 

One more thing I want to share is the power of priesthood blessings. I've been trying my best to learn how to listen to the spirit lately because I feel that is something that I don't completely understand. But being able to give a priesthood blessing this week helped me know that the spirit speaks simply and quietly. You just need to be ready to recognize it. And sometimes it comes through ways that we would have never guessed like through simple positive thoughts. I've learned that every positive thought should be followed, because often it is the spirit that we just struggle to recognize. Being able to give priesthood blessings has helped me recognize that. If you have a good thought to do something that could help another just do it, because it might be coming from God, even if it's like a simple smile. You'll never know what effect you can have on someone else's life. 

That about sums up my week I think. I hope all of you are doing awesome and I wish you the best! 

Love,

Elder Jared Daniel Jensen -- the one that has fluffy hair. 

(Good heavens next thing I'm going to have to do is put my social security number for someone to be able to recognize which Elder Jensen I am.) 

Pictures:

1. The Chicago Trio (sounds like a band) 

2. Us with Andrew Pearson. Love that dude. 

3. J groove made me this shirt.  

4. Grayson's baptism with the other elders who taught her photo-shopped in the pic

5. This is called a coat rack! They don't have them in St. George :)  

Weather Make Up Your Mind

This week was really good, a lot better than last week! I decided that Chicago is a really great place! But I never want to live here, haha. The weather cannot choose what it wants to do. At the beginning of this week it was pretty hot and humid. And then on like Thursday it was like 40 degrees. I actually woke up that morning and I was thinking "oh that's not that cold I've been in colder weather than that in Utah." But one problem is the humidity. It makes the hot hotter and the cold colder. So that day where it was only 40 was like the coldest day I think that I've ever experienced in my life. No joke.

And the wind.... Oh my goodness the wind cuts through all your layers. I thought it was so cold and I told the people we are teaching and my companion and they keep saying reassuring things like, "Oh this is just the beginning of Fall! You haven't seen anything yet!" Apparently it gets like 50 degrees colder than this and even goes into like the negative 10s in the winter. It's gonna be crazy and I'm going to freeze haha. But today it’s a little warmer and it feels good. 

This was the last week of the transfer and a new one starts tomorrow! The assistants called us yesterday and told us we would both be staying! But our YSA ward just merged with the one from the Southside, and so now it is doubled in size. We told the president it would probably be wise to get another set of missionaries here because our area is the biggest in the whole mission and probably takes up three quarters of the mission. But instead he's going to give us another companion! Starting tomorrow we're going to be a trio! Elder Bolton, Elder Jensen, and Elder Dorminey, my friends. It's going to be awesome. It's probably just going to be for the next 6 weeks but I'm excited. 

It's going to be nice to get a new elder here because it's been crazy. We haven't had a lot of finding time because of all the people were working with and how far a lot of them are from each other. And with the new ward merge we just got some more people transferred to us. We're going to have a baptism this Saturday for a girl named Grayson who was taught by some other elders, but will be getting baptized in the YSA, so we basically are just going to be doing some of the last couple of lessons with her and the new member lessons. We have a lot of new members to keep up with and it's awesome, but crazy. So it'll be good to have another elder. 

We had a really cool experience this week. We found this YSA on the street named Jennifer, and she told us she was from Africa! (Uganda to be more exact) but we were able to set up a return appointment with her, and we came to teach her the next day, and her whole family was there! It was so awesome. I've never been able to teach a family before because I'm not in a family ward so it was so fun.

We'll probably have to transfer her family over to some other missionaries in our district but it was really cool to teach them, and we might still work with them a little bit because three of them are YSA age. They told us all about Africa and how they loved it there and in Chicago it's super cold haha and then they fed us some African food and it was pretty dang good. Some of the other elders in our district teach a lot of people who have moved here from Africa usually Nigeria, and they are awesome people. They have such a great love for their families and it's so awesome to see the unity they all have. This family we taught actually had 7 kids and all of their names started with J just like my family! It was super cool. 

Another really cool thing that happened this week is I saw miracles with having faith. One of the people we’re teaching is named Jarius and he is so awesome. He's been taught by missionaries for like 8 months now, and he's been put on date for baptism multiple times. However, this is the closest he's ever been be prepared for baptism. He's come from a rough past and has worked hard to prepare for baptism.

We taught him tithing this week, and I'll be honest I was kinda scared. Teaching tithing was something that I always knew would be a hard thing for me to teach because it's something that I feel like I’ve struggled with myself in the past, and although I've seen the blessings that come from it I always thought it would be the hardest for people to understand. But we taught Jarius and he instantly accepted, and knew it was what he needed to do. He told us he had no money and that he was even just getting by as a lyft driver, but he would do it. As soon as he accepted paying tithing he got a call and was able to learn he had new job opportunities to earn money.

On Sunday he told us he barely had any gas and didn't know if he would be able to make it to church, but he knew it was where he had to be. He came to church and paid tithing with the 10% of all he had and trusted that it would be OK. He shared a powerful testimony in church that he was putting his faith in God and that he knew he was in the right place and that he felt the best in his life when he came to church or met with the missionaries (he calls us the brothers sometimes haha). It was so powerful. After that we saw a ward member press some money into his hand, and I was able to see the blessings that we can receive by having faith in God although we don't know what will happen. Jarius has been one of the biggest examples of faith I've seen and he's amazing. He's still preparing for his baptism at the end of October so we're hoping for the best. He's awesome. 

Another fun thing we were able to do was get dinner with our fav member Andrew Pearson. We go to this place called Tedino's like every Friday with him but he might be moving soon so we got a picture in front of the place, even though it's blurry, cause it might have been the last time. 

Another member dinner we were able to go to was with some girls from the YSA and we've been really trying to help them fellowship Maya, one of the girls we are teaching.  They've all become good friends and we got pizza with them. It was kinda weird to be eating dinner with just my companion and three girls our age and unless there is another male there we have to be in a public place cause that's the rule with member dinners so we just ate some good pizza in Papa John's and it almost felt like a high-school hang out or something until we shared our spiritual message. It was a weird throwback, but it was fun, and it's awesome to see the friendships build between the members and the people were teaching. 

It's been a good week, and I'm excited to see where the next one takes us. We had 9 new people come to church yesterday and it's really hard to keep track of all of them while we're at church so I'm excited to have a third member of this group. It's going to be awesome. I hope all of you have a safe week and hopefully are able to stay warm because I probably won't. (If you're in St. George you'll be fine haha) 

-Elder Jensen

Pictures:
Dinner with fav member Andrew Pearson at Tedinos

Dinner with Maya and members Bailey and Rilee

Chicago deep dish home

The board of efficiency (now much more names haha)

A blurry picture where it looks like imma be destroyed by a fire bender

A grand district :) 

General Conference and Dece Week

Hello everybody! I hope all of you enjoyed conference as much as I did! I heard a lot of missionaries say "the mission was the first time that I stayed awake during all of conference." I'm sorry to say that I still failed and fell asleep for a couple of talks oops but I was awake for pretty much all of them, so it was better than usual.

First of all, President Nelson has once again amazed us all and I have no doubt that man is a prophet of God. Wow, he knows how to receive revelation alright. I think my favorite talks were definitely his about using the name of the church properly and Neil L. Anderson’s was also one of my favorites. I truly know that by using the name of this church it can bring the spirit stronger than just by using a nickname. I think it was pretty bold and impressive how he said that just by using a nickname for this church can be a huge victory for Satan.

The adversary is doing everything he can to destroy this church, and even taking away the name of Jesus Christ is a simple but huge victory for him. Let's not let Satan win ok? Let’s do our best to follow the prophet and try to use the proper name of the church even if it is long, and trust me I would know because people pretty much ask what church we are every day. "What church are you?" Us: "Oh, we're members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." Them: ????? Us: Have you ever heard of Mormons? And they usually have, so it’s going to be kinda hard to get out of that habit. I swear though somehow they always think that we're Jehovah’s Witnesses, from Colorado city, or the Amish. It's a work In progress. 

So this week I went on another bike exchange with a good fellow named Elder Lorentzen who is also from St. George. So every time people asked where were from and we both said, “St. George,” they were like "Oh this St. George place must have like an academy for preachers." So that was interesting. I rode a bike again and it was so fun but I accidentally broke it, but then we fixed it so it's all good. And I almost biffed it twice because it was a special roadbike called a Fixi where the back tires always move with the pedals and there is only one gear. But I survived. 

This week we had to do a lot of planning. Last weekend we got like 4 referrals in one day and many of them are going to be passed off to us by other missionaries so we had to plan for them. It's a good problem to have that we're trying to organize all of the people we're teaching. I'm not complaining but because of that we didn't get any new people we found :/ it's OK though because those usually aren't the most reliable anyway. 

It’s somehow like warm here again. The weather cannot make up its mind for reals, it's so messed up, haha. But everyone is continually warning me about the winters, they say it's always dark and cold and just like a big city of pure sadness, so I'm probably going to freeze. They have these things here called coats that they didn't have in St. George. Oh and these things called scarfs! I thought those were only in the Harry Potter movies to have pride for your house but here once it gets cold they're real! It's so exciting! 

Speaking of Harry Potter every time I meet a fan you better know I freak out. Me: "You like Harry Potter?!" Them: "Yeah of course…are you even a real fan? How many times have you read the books?" Me proudly with my chest puffed out and a smug look on my face: "16 times!!!!" Yeah I'm the biggest nerd and whenever I meet a fan I nerd out on them and let all my Harry Potter knowledge flow out of my system. They are probably like, “what is wrong with this guy,” but ya know, it's great. Hopefully by the end of my mission I'll be able to say that I've read the Book of Mormon more times than I've read the Harry Potter series. 

Funny story this week…I'm not going to use any names but this guy at the church came up to me and was like, "I'm from St. George! Do you know my family? The _______, and my little sister ________?" I instantly say, "Oh my gosh, Yes! I've kissed that girl!" Awkward pause...but then we laughed about it. I hope haha. I feel like saying that to a member is about the same level as going to a random person on the street and saying, "Hi, we believe in Mormonism and we did plural marriage! But not anymore!" No, you don't want to start off a conversation with that. But it's OK, it's all good because I usually start off by saying we believe in Jesus Christ when talking to random people but I'm going to have to find a new way to start talking to members then by saying that I kissed their sisters. Elder Bolton was laughing so hard I was like oh my goodness. 

Well, I guess that’s about all the interesting stuff that happened this week. Oh one more thing about conference! When they were announcing the 12 new temples, everybody was like screaming when a temple in their area came up and then at the end they say “Washington County, Utah and everybody kinda laughed like, "Oh President Nelson we thought you were going to say Jerusalem and hype us all up by saving the best for last, but Washington County? You silly goose why would you save that lame one in Utah for last?" Yeah, I wanted to scream my head off when I heard that because I basically heard "There will now be two St. George temples," so I was the one with the loud gasp when I heard that. So that’s super awesome. 

Well my good friends I think that about sums it all up. Continue being awesome cause it's good and bye until next week.

Pictures :

Awesome Harry Potter Gryffindor backpack 

Neat Pic pose

New member and squad fam (for some reason we were watching women's session but I loved it and it was awesome so I'm happy)

Us with a new member named Nishan

Apple juice mmm

Biking in the City

Hello everybody! How's it going?! This week was pretty awesome and eventful. We started out by doing an exchange. This was my very first ever exchange so I didn't really know how the whole thing was supposed to work but it was pretty cool. I went on an exchange with the district leader, his name is Elder Thompson and he is the coolest. His area is way smaller than ours so they are on bikes. And they don't just focus on the YSA so this made it a little different.

For those of you who don't know a missionary exchange is like where you trade companions, and it's like a sleep over in a way. So we started off the day the same, and then we went to go do some finding. His way of finding was different then Elder Boltons, so it was interesting to see some different methods.

First of all I felt like we literally talked to everyone in sight when we had the chance. In the YSA we don't really talk to everybody because we're trying to shoot for those young people. But oh my goodness he just went up to the first person he saw and got into it so fast like I'm used to talking to the person for like a hot minute about other stuff and slowly ease into the gospel but no he flew into it.

Honestly I didn't mind it that way because we could easily pick out who doesn't care at all and who would just like to talk a little bit. We told people we could stop by later and give them a free copy of the Book of Mormon or the Bible with a message and we ended up getting 6 people that day who gave us their contact info so we can get in touch with them, and one of them was a YSA so we're going to get a hold of her. It was really interesting and I enjoyed it. I’ts actually pretty fun to talk to old ladies about Jesus haha because in the YSA it's a little different. 

OK so in his area we had bikes. And let me tell you, biking on a mission isn't what I imagined it to be. Maybe it's because I'm in the city and it's a little different elsewhere, but when I imagined biking I would imagine myself riding with the wind through my hair on a sunny day while here comes the sun by the Beatles is playing in the background. Let me tell you it is not like that at all.

In the city a bike is considered 50% a car and so you're on the road. You get fined if you ride on the sidewalk. It's horrifying. The song I imagined was not by the Beatles. It was downtown by macklemore. It was so fun though. However there were definitely places I had to really think skinny thoughts when I was slipping in between two cars or something. I feel like it works really well in the city though because you don't need to worry about parking.

So yeah it was pretty awesome, and the next day Elder Bolton and I were able to borrow the bikes for a dinner appointment where there was no parking and it came in handy. So I'm going on another exchange tomorrow with Elder Thompson’s companion, his name is Elder Lorentzen and he’s from St. George! Except he went to Pineview... Booooo. But I'll get a little more of that biking excitement. 

We also had zone conference this week! it was awesome. We had lessons from the zone leaders, the sister training leaders, Sister Bingham, and President Bingham. OK so they're all wizards. I feel like I learned so much it was so awesome. Zone conference really pumped me for missionary work, and excited for some new techniques. We learned tons of good stuff. 

Another fun thing we did is we got dinner with one of the members, the legendary Andrew Pearson. None of you know who he is but he's the coolest guy and he takes us to dinner like once a week to this authentic pizza deep dish place and it's soooo good, it's almost on Domino's level. It's called Tedinos, it’s like our place haha. 

Friday and Saturday were both very busy, we had a lot of lessons planned and got a lot of new referrals. We're working with lot 3 sets of referral sisters and they help us out a lot with some of the people we're working with. 

Oh yeah now I remember something interesting. When I was on the exchange with Elder Thompson, right in the heart of his area is a school called Moody Bible institute. They are all Christians who go to this school, but they don't believe members of this church are Christian. At that school they teach things about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that are a little off, they've kinda told them that we're not Christian, so whenever we say hi to a random person and all the sudden they're interested, it's usually cause they go to that school and they want to bash. :/

They bring up like the same ten points every time. It's always that revelations scripture that says man shouldn't add to the Bible. It's interesting because they think that this church isn't Christian because it doesn't believe in the trinity. The trinity isn't what makes a church Christian, its if they believe in Christ! so yeah that's a little odd, one of them wouldn't read the Book of Mormon because he thought it was a living book of the devil. So yeah we try to avoid them now because they aren't really in the mood to learn about the church just fight it. So that was kinda an experience. 

Church this Sunday we had 4 new people come with us! It was awesome. Jarius is one of the people who came and he is doing so well. So church is always awesome but next week we have conference! There was a member of the 70 at our church yesterday and he told us to start preparing because it's going to be a huge historical conference. He told us that we should start preparing a lot of good questions before because conference will help us answer those.

He shared a powerful testimony of the prophet. One of the new people who came with us said she thought it was really cool how we have a living prophet, and how it makes this church more unique. I truly sustain President Nelson, and I know that he is the prophet of this church. He is an example to all of us and if any of you haven't looked at his talk on revelation at the last conference maybe check it out because it's amazing. It's answered a lot of my questions. 

So I think that's mostly my week! I hope all of you have an awesome week and enjoy General Conference! Love you all! 

Elder Jensen 

(Pictured: Bike Ballers, Pizza, Missionaries)