Ambulance Speed Wheelchairs

This was a gnarly last week of the transfer, and I'm stoked to say we got our calls and I'll be staying here in Englewood for another one! This will be my first 6 month area and I'll be getting another new missionary and training again while staying zone leader. (Now I'll get to do 12 week for the 3rd time. This time it's going to be way easier though because there will be an English zone and a Spanish zone so the other zone leader will be way close and we'll be able to be a lot more accountable than when it was just one massive zone that was twice the size of all the others. Good ol Elder Bodily has now graduated 12 week and will be heading to Chicago YSA!! (The glorious area of my beginning). It's going to be an awesome transfer though and I'm way excited!

So right after P-Day last week we went to go teach those who we had scheduled and we saw a glorious sight. On the South Side I'm pretty sure people don't understand the purpose for crosswalks because they literally just don't use them, and they're always standing right in the middle of the road or walking across the street without even looking. Like I have almost hit so many people, but luckily I have avoided it.

So anyway, there was this lady in one of those electric wheelchairs (you see a lot of those too) and she was moving along in her little wheelchair right in the middle of the road instead of using this miraculous creation we call sidewalks. Suddenly we hear a siren (what else is new) but this time it was an ambulance and it was right behind her and she was still just speeding along as fast as that little chair could take her, and the ambulance honked so loud haha. She finally got on the side enough for them to pass her and she flipped it off and was cursing the ambulance. And then she proceeded to ask us for a quarter. Now that is what I call a celestial spirit right there haha.

We had our legendary event for October in the Hyde Park ward this week. This time they did a haunted house which is the biggest event that the ward does. They always need all hands on deck and the ward mission leader requests that all the missionaries in the ward help. It was way fun, and the YSA elders including my old comp Elder Dodson came to help as well because they had some people coming. Elder Dodson, Noble, and I were in the "art room" and so it was a room that was covered in black paper and splattered with some glow paint and black lights, and then all of us wore black morph suits that had the glow paint all over them as well. It was way cool we'd try to blend into the wall and scare people. So it was probably one of the more interesting ways of proselyting but like 1400 people came and 100 families signed up requesting that they wanted a new church home and would be willing to have missionaries visit, and 3 of the families we are teaching came as well. It was a ton of fun!

We also had a legendary zone conference that was super rad and Elder Vargas and I only had to give a roleplay of how to contact normally and naturally so you know we pretended to contact hood families playing basketball, but of course some of the Spanish missionaries were part of our role play so we were slightly contacting a African and African American and Mexican family. The zone conference was way awesome though!

I was able to have my first “call the police” moment this week in the middle of the night! It sounded like there was a drunk husband who was abusing his wife at our neighbors so we called the police and they came and we went back to bed. We live in Hispanic nation and still something pretty wild! Glad it got all figured out though, Chicago Police dudes are jacked.

Everyone have an awesome week, until next time! 

Elder Jensen 

Double Exchanges

This week was another great one! We had two exchanges this week, one with the assistants and one so that our district leader could go with Elder Bodily. 

Exchanges with the AP's was fire. Elder Van Tassell, my old companion, came here with me and we were reliving the good memories. We stopped by several recent converts that we had baptized while we were here together and we definitely got fed two large dinner meals before 10:00 AM. I don't know why Nigerians eat dinner food for breakfast. It was way fun though we couldn't stop laughing (but our stomachs were in pain) every time they offered more. I almost threw up that day haha. It was a super fun and busy day! Elder Bodily went to the Spanish area again because of the complications with the split zone leaders, and of course he got roasted that day because he couldn't speak Spanish. 

Our other exchange was awesome too, Elder Bodily stayed here and I went to South Shore with a missionary named Elder Noble who is an ultra homie. While we were there we went into another Nigerian building kind of like the one that we have and found like 5 potential new people. We also had a miracle because I had contacted this one lady named Kemmy before who lived in their area, but the address I had received wasn't right and she ended up falling through the cracks. As we were walking out of the building I saw her and recognized her. She remembered me and told me I had a good memory. It was a miracle to catch her again and this time we got her information so those missionaries can go and see her again. 

Many of our recent converts had the awesome opportunity to go to the temple this week for the first time to do baptisms for the dead. Some of our friends including: Chukwudi, Segun and his wife, Darlene, and all the converts of the other missionaries. Darlene was especially excited to tell us all about the temple the next day at church. She had an awesome experience and is excited to go again. Many of the recent converts were able to baptize each other and be witnesses and they absolutely loved it. 

The fall is officially here! It was wild actually on Thursday morning it was still pretty warm like 60 degrees but mid-day it quickly dropped to 40. The next morning I decided to go running because I wasn't ready to give up outside exercise yet and now I'm brutally sick and can't do any exercise so to all those paying attention don't go running in the cold it's a poor idea. 

Last off the Nigerian couple we eat with every Sunday said we were able to have another set of elders over so we invited the ones who are in the South Shore area of our ward and they made us enough food for an army. Four of us and we still had to pound like crazy. It was so fun haha. 

That’s about it for this week, a picture is worth a thousand words so I'll just send some of those. 

Elder Jensen 

The Memories

Good morning everyone! This was a great and fantastic week. To start off we went to MLC this week which was super awesome which meant that I got to go with superior master other zone leader, Elder Vargas, who is my hero and who is slowly teaching me how to sing the Phineas and Ferb theme song in Spanish (don't worry I'll get it eventually) so that was a blast. It's pretty cool because Elder Vargas and I and the STL's in the Chicago zone were all in the same district back in Naperville so it's pretty cool and Elder Dodson was there too so we had to take an OG district Pic.

It was also sick to see my homies, Elders Bell and Howe, from the MTC. Exactly one year ago we were at new missionary training together and now we were all at the MLC! Pretty fun stuff! So, after MLC Elder Vargas and I went back to his area in Espanol nation and we planned for our training in the zone meeting the next day and we really struggled because we get distracted pretty easily and by like 10:25 we were somehow having a Waterbender Vs Earthbender battle and then we realized we had to get to bed so much of the training was planned through sleep talk and the next morning... But the deed was done! 

We had a pretty cool musical fireside that the missionaries were invited to go to and it was sick because I got to see my old companion Elder Dodson again and he brought one of the investigators good old Jarius Groves (stage name J-groove) to the fireside! I was teaching Jarius when I was being trained last year and it sounds like he's doing well and is preparing for baptism this month! So it was a really fun event.

So as you all know this weekend was general conference! I made a goal this year to stay awake the entire time (something that I've literally never been able to do in my entire life) and I failed my goal miserably and feel asleep at least during one talk in every session! I only have one more conference in my mission and it sounds like President Nelson was hyping it up so I WILL stay awake the entire time during this one. It is possible. Conference was bomb though, we watched one session with Darlene and she was diggin it: "Oh, President Nelson, how I love that man! His voice is just so soothing, I could listen to him all day!" So that was pretty fun. The rest of the sessions we just watched at the church and brought some people to watch it there with us. 

On Sunday Darlene got her patriarchal blessing and she was so excited to share the experience with us. She said the three most powerful experiences in her life were when we gave her the blessing of healing and she walked, when I confirmed her a member of the church, and when she got her patriarchal blessing. "It's amazing! It’s like your voice isn't you anymore! And I feel something; it starts from my head and goes down my body! This feeling of warmth and peace! The first time I was scared because I didn't know what it was! But now I know it's the spirit!" She's literally the best. We took her to a lesson with us last night and she has the most powerful testimony. She is definitely is one of the coolest recent converts of all time. 

Well I don't have a whole lot more to add this week, but hope everyone is amazing! 

Elder Jensen