It has been truly such a privilege to teach her. She's the most prepared person to receive the gospel so far that I've taught. Catelynn had been looking for a church that worked for her for the past 4 years. All of her searching has led up to this moment and it's been so awesome to be a part of it! As soon as she got confirmed at church right after church she set up a temple recommend interview and a patriarchal interview with the bishop and we're going to try and plan a temple trip with her this week and with some members of the ward! It'll be awesome.
It
hasn't been easy though the last week before baptisms are always so
stressful and its just another testimony to me that these people are
doing the right thing because Satan likes to play some games. Catelynn
said she had temptations that week but she stayed strong and after she
was baptized and confirmed she said that while she was confirmed the
spirit "hit her like a spiritual brick." It was super awesome.
This
week church was super awesome because it was fast and testimony meeting
and we had Catelynn's confirmation so everyone who had played a part
and had attended some of her lessons went up and bore their testimony
and it was super hype and missionary work excitement is cool. Right
after a member came to us and told us that his daughter had invited a
friend to church the past 5 weeks and that she was prepared to take the
discussions with her family. It was super awesome! I'm so excited to be a
part of the work here it's truly so exciting! So we taught Alijah and
his mom this week and invited Alijah to bear his testimony this Sunday
and he said he would. So on Sunday I sat down by him in church and
whispered, "so are you going to go up there?" and he says "NO! I'm
scared!" and I was like "yeah same here, let's go do it together." so we
went up together and bore our testimonies together. He is such a
stud, it was awesome. Also he is perfecting his juggling skills and I
feel like a proud older brother haha.
At
church we had 6 people were teaching come and Elder Jensen and I were
so happy because we hit our church goal for the week, but we realized we
still needed one new person to teach to hit our new person taught goal.
We hate not hitting our goals as missionaries, it tends to be kinda the
worst and so we texted all of our potential people that we knocked on
this week, stopped by some of them in fear of not hitting our goal. And
then I turn to elder Jensen and say... "well there's always ______" I'm
not going to say her name because she's a little nuts and we dropped her
because she's not ready for the gospel at this time. So we went and
visited her. She's still crazy. We couldn't bring ourselves to make her a
new person taught because she clearly still wasn't ready for the
changes she had to make haha.
We said "so _____, how have you been?" she
says "well I've been good! I've pretty much given up smoking!" when we
walked in her house there was clearly a smoking smell so we asked,
"congratulations! when was the last time you had a smoke?" and she says
"well, I had one today at about 11." We visited her at 4 people. She had
successfully "given up smoking" for a total of like 5 hours. So we
said, "_______, you still want to follow Jesus Christ and be baptized a
member of the church of Jesus Christ right?" and of course she says yes.
So we said "will you throw away those cigarettes right now?" and she
said "well I can't! they are grape flavored! Really you should lick one
and taste it for yourself!" I can't say that this was a temptation for
me to lick this grape flavored cigarette haha. So we learned our friend
here wasn't exactly ready for the change yet, but we'll get her haha.
Indiana people love their smoking and their soda.
So
frantically Elder Jensen and I turn to each other and still need a new
person to teach this week! And one of our potential people texted us
saying that he had some time open up and that we could meet him at
Starbucks so we rushed there, taught a restoration, made a new friend
because he's super awesome and he even invited us to go see captain
marvel with him haha. And we hit our goals for this week. Yay!
So
this week we taught this guy the restoration and he was Muslim and
didn't really believe Jesus Christ was the son of God and we were going
to teach him again and so we went to his house and instead he invited us
to his church! so the Jensen twins might check out this church with our
boy Rafi this week. Funny story, as we were looking where this church
was catelynn had told us that was one of the churches that she had
attended in the past. It was crazy she's literally searched everywhere
before she found the church of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints.
This
week I've finished Helaman and started 3 Nephi. And I've learned be
humble by Kendrick Lamar. Like that seems to be the main theme of the
whole thing. I got so excited about these gnarly chapters that I started
to write another back up talk on them. It'll be fun.
So
in the end we learned the Hebron is the promised land, and the Elder
Jensen the blonde is a great guy, and that after this week I won't be
able to sing 8TEEN by Khalid anymore. It's OK haven't been able to
listen to it for a hot minute anyways, but have a fantastic week
everybody!
Elder Jensen
Pics
Catelynn's baptism and Elder Jensen and I trying so hard to take majestic pictures by this water tower and sunset.
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