Monday, March 18, 2019

Good Tidings of Great Joy in the Form of a Potato

Good afternoon everyone! It’s that time of week again where I stressfully look through my journal and camera roll and try to think of cool things that happened this week! Of course cool things did happen, because they always do as a missionary! But I am starting to get a little weaker and remembering all of them! But I will do my best. 

First off, this week we had a straight up power lesson. Like have you ever had those people who have been looking in the church for over like 3 years and then finally you and some power members help bring that good ol power spirit and then bam! All of the sudden they say they want to be baptized!? Yeah that happened this week!

We had a lesson with some members and someone who has been looking into the church for quite a while. Elder Jensen and I turned to each other in this lesson and looked at each other with shock and happiness and excitement on our face. Shout out to the Dumas family in our ward for knowing how to bring the spirit like no one else. The person we were teaching is now on date for baptism in like 3 weeks! (cause she has to go out of town booo) but it was seriously the coolest experience ever! 

Also this week we had zone conference which was actually a legend as usual, President Bingham probably only has like 2-3 zone conferences left before he finishes up his mission and so they'll probably be legendarily powerful until he leaves. We learned some straight doctrinal fire of course and the Holy Ghost likes to make your heart feel on fire like the whole conference but then you gotta act on what you learned.

We learned a lot about how we can improve our studies and so we've been trying to do that. I learned that I am actually not a very good teacher and have basically everywhere to improve so hopefully I can do that haha. President Bingham is an amazing teacher, sometimes I wish we could just have like an army of President Binghams because then they would be missionary animals. But a small army of two Elder Jensens is pretty good too I guess. 

So also I got a cool package from my wonderful sister Janika and her wonderful husband Brandon, except it wasn't really a package it was more of a potato with the address written on it, which is actually quite impressive I didn't know that was possible and all the missionaries were very impressed. It even had a shipping cost of like 5 dollars and 40 cents! Now that is about the cost of a Little Caesar’s pizza in Indiana (not St. George, they are abominable and make them 6 dollars and 43 cents) but I could just tell that this simple "Happy Birthday" potato had so much thought into it and I couldn't have asked for a better birthday present, and now I think it would be wise to send many happy birthday potatoes for their birthdays! 

Ok so this week we had stake conference and we were able to go to both sessions because we had some people were teaching at the adult session. Actually it was pretty interesting they had a dinner for the mission president and his wife, the stake president and his wife, the 70 who was visiting and his wife, and then the people we are teaching. So we still don't know how that dinner went but we are very curious haha. It was probably a pretty cool experience for this family we are teaching. That's like me having dinner with the pope. Except if I had dinner with the pope I'd probably "accidentally" quote some Bruce R. McConkie. No just kidding that's a joke. 

So stake conference was awesome and President Bingham spoke there too and gave some super awesome challenges and the whole thing was focused on the gathering of Israel so we're hoping the Valparaiso stake is going to get missionary hype. It'll be super grand. 

We also had lunch with this family in our ward, the Smoots, and I know I was going to mention the legendary Brother Smoot because he is one of a kind, and probably one of my most favorite people in this ward. So how do I explain this man? He is probably almost 7 ft. tall, like 300 pounds, and is the biggest teddy bear ever. Also, Elder Jensen calls him a unicorn, because you'll never find one like him. Brother Smoot says he wants to be himself, so he wears a sweat suit to church and a fanny pack, and also he ties a skunk tail and another tail of some black creature around his waist so that it hangs off of him. Sometimes he even has his toenails painted; sometimes he wears those skirt things that the islanders wear because he thought it was cool.

Like every time I see this man I always know I'll never find one like him. Something awesome though, he is a spiritual powerhouse. He bears his testimony every single fast Sunday and it always has some interesting story about him and then he brings the spirit at the end every time. There has not been a fast Sunday that has passed where he hasn't born his testimony. We invited him to a lesson and he is an animal (and not just because he rocks the animal tails) but he is awesome. I took a picture with one of his tails because it's pretty funny haha. Apparently he goes to the gym for like 6 hours every single day because he's retired. He said he does the stair master like a super human. What a legend. 

Oh yeah, also it was St. Patrick's Day and apparently that's like a huge holiday here? Like everyone is hyping up this corned beef and cabbage? I thought that we were only supposed to wear green?! It’s way more hype here than Utah. Thank goodness it's pday today because if we went knocking now everyone would probably be super hung over just like on New Year’s day. 

Well anyway, this week was great. I know the church is true. Goodbye until next week! 

Pics:
1. What a lovely potato
2. Birthday pt. 2 thanks Dumas's
3. Me and my boy Ron 
4. Me wearing Bro. Smoot’s tail
5. Me and Bro Smoot
6. They spelled John wrong, but it's the thought that counts.  







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