Corona Chaos

Well this week started out pretty normal! We had planned 3 exchanges back to back because we get to do a lot of those! 

Our first exchange I got to go to a place way up in Northern Illinois called Woodstock. This place is legendary! It reminded me so much of Hebron because it's in the middle of nowhere! I got to go with the legendary elder Castleton and knock a lot of doors and have a lot of fun! We found some new people that day who let us in their house - a family. It was a miracle. They were saying that all the craziness in the world from the virus was a sign from God that they had to start coming back to Him and getting things together. 

Pretty cool how the chaos gets people humbled up and thinking. We knocked on this one door and this old white dude was like "If I gave you a free cross would you take it?" and I was like "sure why not." Dude comes back out with these two wooden crosses and says "God bless you gentlemen." while I'm frantically like "WAIT! after centuries of being lost......" door shuts. We'll, and least I got a free cross! So that exchange was phenomenal.

Then the next day we were planning on having Elder Anderson leave because it was a Spanish area in the city, but he messed up his ankle on Pday so I left the area again to go with a missionary named Elder Artis to my old zone on the Northside! Except in Spanish.... Didn't understand a thing and everytime I saw a not hespanic I was booking it over to them. It was a way good time though and super fun to be on a bike again.

For the third exchange we had to cancel it due to poor scheduling (our bad) but it was slammed that day. I think I had one of the best days of my mission on this Thursday where we literally taught lesson after lesson on campus. We were SO BUSY! We found several new people, and Elder Anderson and I were getting so hyped about how this area is going to boom! 

Then we got like 5 missed calls during one lesson and found out that church is cancelled and that the world is currently falling apart. And then we went to one more lesson and she told us campus is closing next week. So our superior force of finding has just been taken from us in the blink of an eye, but we're blessed to have found 8 people this week that we've already been able to meet with some of them not at the campus, but at other places.

So then the entire mission is freaking out because they don't know what to do for church and they're wondering if they should quit working and book it to Costco and starting stocking up like everyone else because it feels like it's the end of the world or a zombie apocalypse or something and so we put together this big video call with all the zone leaders and we went to president's house and answered a lot of questions about what were going to do. So we make some plans where instead of church, we'll get those we're teaching to go to a members house on Sunday for a come follow me lesson. 

Then the next day we get word that our missionaries aren't allowed to knock doors anymore! Now our missionaries were really freaking out haha! Besides the city zones or the YSA wards (which is pretty much where I've been the majority of my mission) most areas in the mission have a lot of knocking doors. So maybe the lord is calling our mission to repentance that we're not using members or the technology as much as we should be. So we've gone to president's like every night this week to do these big video calls with all the zone leaders and Sister training leaders where we just figure things out because everyone is paranoid. We've had a few late nights this week so when we woke up one morning to go to the gym we have in the apartment I literally ran into the glass door haha! Not even messing around it was way funny!

Although everything is falling apart and we're not able to work the way we want to, we are learning a lot about how to be creative because we're being forced to be creative. They even cancelled our zone conference because it's a "big meeting." so now this next week we're going to travel around the mission and give Training about how to use technology to find which frankly I've never done because I thought it was dumb so pray for me that I'll be humble enough to accept that I can't always find the elect in the way that I want to haha. So we're having a lot of changes! But we're not trapped in our apartments which is nice and hopefully we won't be.

We found this one girl this week named Jaylen and she's pretty solid! We've met with her twice and she came to do come follow me at a members house with us yesterday! We might get a baptism without ever getting someone to actual church! How cool is that!?

Well everyone stay safe and healthy don't let this Corona get to you and if you do beat it because it's lame and causing me to not talk to as many people as I want to. But oh how great at marvelous are the mysteries of the lord! We are excited to see where this takes us!!

Elder Jensen