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)