International Baptisms

These have been a wild past two weeks! Sorry for the lack of email last week we had to switch Pday to Thursday and I figured it would be easy to just do a double letter for this week! 

We had Zone Conference, President Shumway is the man! Talked a lot about member missionary work it was Flippin sick. Also Elder Vargas and I threw down an obedience training which was pretty rad if I do say so myself! Or I guess you could say it didn't end up in a complete disaster. 

After the Elder Bodily's first Zone Conference he was so pumped to go to work and we went to Martins's house right after in which Kudi (Martins's roommate) offered us some food a little hesitantly because he said “no thanks” last time. This time he was so hyped that he was like "yes I'd love to try some food!" and she said, "You are not strong enough to have amala and ocra. You will have rice and beans and stew." So I was able to eat the amala (which is called chocolate fufu. It doesn't really taste like chocolate sadly; it's just a darker color.) It was gnarly, lots of fish, tough chicken, and spicy soup. AND I POUNDED IT.

Elder Bodily was still not able to finish the food and he's such a softie! It was really spicy and he was taking a sip of water after every bite. Martins in his booming Nigerian accent said "BODILY. YOU CANNOT EAT LIKE THAT!" and took the water bottle away. Every time Elder Bodily tried to speak he was cut off by: "Bodily. Eat your food." He checked his phone and martins took it away haha. It was so funny. In the end he wasn't able to finish and Martins said "Look at Jensen! He ate all of his food! He is the champion! He will sleep so well tonight!" Poor dude keeps getting roasted. Martins made sure to post the whole ordeal of his white friends eating his food on Facebook haha. 

I was able to go on exchanges with Elder Butler this week and he's a homie! We tried to clear up the whole day so we could go on a finding blitz in Englewood and the very first contact was in a mid-drug deal. We tried to introduce how to be spiritually high rather than physically, he wasn't exactly interested. But it was a sick day walking the streets finding the elect. 

We had MLC and it was really good, Elder Vargas (the other ZL with me) and I went to Naperville and we left our companions to stay in Englewood for the day, and they had to ride bikes -- two greenies on bikes in the hood. It was so awesome and they had a SICK day. So it was pretty legendary!

Since we had a Pday switch we went with that same companionship and hung out together on Thursday because they were the only ones who had Pday that day, so we decided to do something a little different and hit up China Town. Chicago is like the coolest place. In one neighborhood it’s like straight up only African Americans (where we are), in one neighborhood it’s all Hispanic people, and in one neighborhood it's all Chinese people and Chinese places. IT WAS SO COOL! I was telling Elder Vargas that it would be interesting to go tracting in China Town and he said "Yeah let's try it!" He goes to the very first door he sees and with a puffed out chest he knocks it. Lady answers who is definitely from China. "Hey, we’re missionaries...” The usual...   "Uhhh... No English."

Elder Vargas stands there for like a solid 10 seconds thinking of something to say because usually when they say that he starts going off in Spanish. "So what language do you speak?" 

"Mandarin." ".... OK we'll uh, have a nice day I guess!" Well this is why my boy from Spain was called to speak Spanish haha. 

The rest of the week wasn't really too crazy, we got to go on exchanges with the AP’s and I went with Elder Weinmuller and we've officially been on 3 exchanges together now so he's an ultra homie. It was super awesome. The AP's are always the best examples and they help me know what I can improve on so it was an awesome exchange.

Something super awesome, this week I noticed on the upcoming baptisms that my old area Hebron was having 2! Eric and Carri! I was able to call them on Saturday and talk to them before they got baptized. It was way cool! It was a little less than I year ago when my companion, Elder Buckway, and I knocked on their door! This is the first baptism I've seen from knocking doors in my mission! It really does work and there are those out there!

Also this Nigerian lady named Omolara, who is a member, called our number a few weeks ago and was like "my whole family is in Nigeria and they need to get baptized before September 10th and I need your help!" I literally had no idea how to help so I called Elder Bell and he showed me how to do it and we got all their info and sent it to the referral center and hoped for the best. She had me call the missionaries in Lagos Nigeria about the situation and I couldn't understand a word they were saying over the phone because they were both Nigerian missionaries and it was an international call so it was super fuzzy. Hoping the point went through we went on with our week and she came to us yesterday and told us her whole family was baptized this last weekend. So Elder Bell and I did some of that international missionary work! It was pretty awesome haha.

Well, that about summarizes these last two weeks. Sorry not a whole lot of details but it's been pretty crazy. Hope you all have an amazing week and count your blessings!

Elder Jensen