This
week was awesome! A little longer than usual because we switched our P-day on
the holiday, but it was super legendary and now we're going to bike to the
temple today anyways which will be LEGENDARY!
For those of you who
may know, there is one rough thing that comes with opening an area. It's not
the lack of people in your teaching pool because we have a lot of fun finding
those! Or the lack of knowledge in the area, but the lack of food in the
apartment because you're the first missionaries there! So basically we live
"paycheck to paycheck,” on our missionary funds and only eat eggs haha.
But this week was
crazy because we found two African families, and they keep giving us tons of
food! We found one family from Benin. The mom's name is Yvette and every time
we go over she says she has to make us dinner. So we've had tons of fufu,
Jolloff rice, and white rice and spicy stew. We're super grateful! It's cool to
get fed by people were teaching haha. But the problem is every time we go over
there wanting to teach she's like: "I must make you dinner!" and then
starts to cook. I don't get it! Honestly, I can imagine her telling her
friends, "yeah we have these 2 white boys every Tuesday and Friday night
so we can give them a bunch of our food." She speaks better French than
English, so we got her a Book of Mormon in French and she's been reading it.
She has 2 kids above the age of 8 and this family would be so solid except they
work on Sunday and with a slight language barrier it's been a little difficult
to help her understand priesthood authority and why we need to be baptized by
proper authority. They're so awesome though so keep them in your prayers to get
those Sundays off!
Another family we've
been teaching is this single mom named Jennipher (I know it's spelled weird)
and her daughter Precious. Cool story about Jennipher, my trainer and I
actually found her up here on the Northside a year ago! We taught her a few
times when I was a brand new missionary but then I got transferred. But when I
came back we picked them back up and started teaching them! They also feel the
need to give us African food every single time. It's pretty awesome! We're
really pushing go get both these families to church but it's going to take some
patience and persistence and prayers.
This week we were able
to finally get some people at church which we were pumped about! 2 older
African American men named Slade and Eric both came. Slade told us he's not a
joiner and doesn't need to be baptized, but in the last hymn of sacrament meeting
I saw him tearing up a bit. This man CAUGHT THE HOLY GHOST! So I think he's
softened up a bit. Super cool.
We had 2 exchanges
this week with both of our DL's this week. The first one I went with a
missionary named Elder Pingel which was legend! We got fed Jolloff rice three
times on that exchange which was hilarious; my man was sweating up a storm! It
was a super good time!
2nd exchange was with
my good man Elder Howe who I was with in the MTC. It was a blast to finally
have an exchange together and hit the streets of this awesome city! We found a
new person and had some awesome lessons and finding!
This week last of all
we also had this awesome leadership meeting where they had all the district
leaders and zone leaders and sister training leaders meet up at Naperville and
we had this cool special guest named brother Littlefield who was a mission president
in California. The dude is a beast and unfolded PMG before our eyes! Can't wait
to apply some of the stuff he taught us! The more fun part though would have to
be the party van of 8 elders all the way to Naperville!!
Hope everyone has an
amazing week!
Elder Jensen
