Bus Stops and Bike Tires

This has been another fantastic week in little Nigeria/Southside! You know, sometimes I feel like Ammon going to preach to the Lamanites. We're preaching on the streets to "wild and hardened and ferocious people" (Alma17:14) (oh, except for the Nigerians) and we love every second of it! I've been asked several times to marry the Africans daughters, (Alma17:24) and instead we always just offer to be their servants, because we're not just trying to get married just yet.

We had lots of Nigerian food this week, and yesterday we had two Nigerian meals in a row. I was about to throw up, but hey now they want "Pastor Jensen" to bless their child that's about to come, and they said they want to name their baby "Jensen Oluwaseun Rotimi." Wouldn't be the first time I've had to bless a baby haha. 

Elder Levanger has been able to try many different types of new food including Moi Moi (which is basically like a fish loaf), cow leg (literally straight fat no meat), and Jollof rice – that stuff is  10/10. He doesn't enjoy it, but my boy can put it down so much better than my last companion haha. 

We've seen some more amazing miracles this week! We had 10 people come to church again and we now have 10 people on baptismal date for December! Yesterday at church one man we brought, named Gabriel, pulled me aside and said "Brother, I have decided I want to start attending this church regularly." Super awesome! The two families we've been teaching are doing really well. Our ward mission leader Brother Pope had the Rotimi Family and the King family over to his house for lunch yesterday along with some other families from the other companionships and it was super great for them all to friend each other. 

The weather at the beginning of the week was FREEZING! But we began to see better weather so we hit the bikes again for the past few days. I love riding bikes a lot more than the bus because it's kinda like running and I love running! It’s been a blast, at least until Sunday morning haha. We rode to the Lowe building to go knock on several individuals’ doors to get them awake and so that they could get themselves ready for church.

We woke a lot of them up but a few of the people we were going to ride the bus with ended up canceling so we were just going to take the bikes to the church, but we came out and Elder Levanger had a flat. So we rushed to catch the bus because I knew it would take like a solid hour to figure out how to fix it and we got to church late but luckily all of our people there had already been once so they knew where to go and what to do. Still got the sacrament! 

For some reason we always seem to miss our bus and we have to wait like 15 minutes so it's super shady when everyone sees these two white dudes on the Southside just booking it and running as fast as we can, but hey promise we're not stealing anything we're just servants of the lord trying to catch our bus! 

Also on Saturday night riding our bikes home we got little Caesars pizza on the way home and rode with a pizza on our handlebars. It worked! Most legendary form of pizza transportation I've ever seen! Except the pizza was a little cold but hey whatever works! 

We had stake MCM this week with the Stake President and the Mission President and the Chicago stake is looking like we're about to see some miracles drop by in December! We are all so excited! 

Other than that this week has been the usual, loving life and surviving the cold! I love this place! The lord has definitely taught me a lot about patience and waiting on bus stops and bike tires. Good thing I have an awesome companion who is an awesome example to me! 

Everyone have and awesome week! 

Also Dallin H. Oaks is coming this next week so this is going to be sick. God bless Chicago! 

Elder Jensen