Unexpected Transfer

This week was one of the most incredible weeks in my entire mission! I know I start off a lot of these emails like that, but it really was! Got some super good work done and saw some super incredible miracles. 

It's crazy because although I've only been in Lakeshore 2 for one transfer I'll be leaving this transfer and going to be the assistant to the president. Back to the good ol Naperville Zone out west! The AP's cover the west Chicago YSA ward so it's kinda cool I will have hit both the YSA wards the mission has. It's going to be awesome and I'm excited to see what's next in the life of missionary work and missionary leadership!

My new companion will be Elder Anderson and he's a legend and a Spanish missionary. They usually have one English assistant and one Spanish assistant because of all the exchanges. It's going to be way fun! I'm sad to leave Lake Shore 2 this fast though, I have grown to love this place quite a bit in our short amount of time here! Miracle after miracle! 

This last week in the area has been incredible. We had 5 people come to church and we were way excited about that, especially because we opened it! We also found some families this week to add to our teaching pool! This area is incredible! 

We went to church with our friends Jenipher and her daughter Prescious. They are awesome and it was fun riding the train with them down town to go to church! 

We also had our friends Robert and Carl come to church. These are two dudes from the hood of Chicago so it was super fun going to church with them as well. Robert only has one tooth and had a big smile on his face at church and told us, "I like this! I wanna come back again!" He's a legend haha. 

This week we had MLC to set a goal for March and April, and were trying to break a mission baptismal record in March. It's going to be incredible and we have been able to see the Lord prepare people to be able to reach it this month. I got to go on double exchanges with my main man Elder Safley so that was super fun! We also put together our zone meeting for the next day and gave an awesome training about finding people! I love giving trainings a lot! Also Elder Safley is a wizard, so how could I not love giving trainings when he is helping me?! President also came to the zone meeting too so that was pretty cool! 

Other than that we had an exchange with a set of YSA elders and I took an elder here with me named Elder Ebert. It's way cool because his older brother served in the exact same mission as my older brother Jase, and since California Arcadia Armenian speaking is probably a minority were assuming they were in the same district at one point. It's a small world! 

Man this place is so awesome! I'm going to miss it so much but maybe I'll get sent back at the end of my mission. (On a better note I won't have to eat any Nigerian food for a little while haha)

Have an awesome week!

Elder Jensen

Train rides to church 

Elder Ebert 

Good Friend Sam Passey from YSA last year

Exchanges with the AP's

Short Week

This was a short week because last P-day was on Wednesday, but it was a really great one!

We had exchanges with the AP's which was awesome; my boy Elder Van Tassell came here with me to the Northside. We've gone on like 6 exchanges with each other now and were also companions at one point, which means he's on the level of ultra homie. It was a great day of finding the elect on the cold streets of Chicago!

Other than that almost everything was the same old stuff, finding new people, teaching them, and trying to get them to church. This week we had an almost "south side" moment because we committed like 10 people to come to church and made plans to get them there and then 1 showed up. On the south side our ratios were usually worse, making plans for 25 people and getting one haha. But hey if we get 100 people committed then we just might get a lot of people at Church! There's the goal for this week!

We found an active Nigerian member who said he's down to come out with us to teach this awesome new family we found, so we're really looking forward to that this weekend and hope their schedules will align. Getting member present lessons are extremely hard in the city. We've been trying really hard to get some here and it looks like we're going to be getting some this week which we are pumped about!

We biked to the temple last week which was awesome but my tire was bulging the next morning and now I might be rocking a bike with the wrong size of tire for a little while haha should be interesting. 

Missionary work is the best; life in Chicago is awesome although I'm so excited for winter to be over so it can be hot outside like Southern Utah. Hope everyone has an amazing week!

Elder Jensen

Long Legendary Week

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 

The Network

This week has been super fun again! We've been able to do a lot more finding and even a lot more teaching now that we're starting to get a teaching pool more set up!

On Wednesday we had our zone conference which was super good! We learned a lot about the worth of souls and it made us all want to go and work super hard! I got to go on an exchange with the other zone leader Elder Safley the night before so we could plan our training and it was super awesome! It went well!

We have one Nigerian woman named Ayo who we are teaching pretty consistently, but we're struggling to get her to church. We're pretty sure she's going to make it next week and are really excited for her. She's been really good at giving us referrals. Her building is a gold mine. She gave us some Nigerian spaghetti this week and Elder Christensen was dying haha. I pretend like I'm fine but I guess it's hard to pretend when your face is red and you're sweating haha.

The coolest thing though is after our lesson with her we asked if she had anybody we could go and teach and she told us to follow her. She went to her neighbor’s door and started slapping it with her hand, kicking it and yelling in Yoruba haha! Her friend opened the door and they were jabbering off in Yoruba and then Ayo says in English, "These are my friends! They preach to me the word of God! I would love for them to come and preach to you as well." So her friend gave us her phone number and said we could come by next week! The Nigerian network continues! We saw stuff like this all the time in Englewood, and we're trying to get it rolling here!

That's about all for this week! Most of the rest was just finding on the street and loving life! Hope everyone has an awesome week!

Elder Jensen 

Cars = The Worst in the North Side

This week was another super awesome one! We've been continuing to hit the streets again every day to find the elect. My only problem is just calling all the numbers during daily planning that we worked so hard to get the day before. Only like 1/8 pans out and it drives me nuts!!! So in order to find as many people as we can, we just have to talk to even more! Then we'll find more! This week we found 7 more people to add to our teaching pool which was awesome. Some of the ones from last week have already dipped out which is kinda sad, but that's just how opening an area goes!

This week we had MLC. It's so weird to be a zone leader for any zone other than the South side zone, I had been the ZL there for so long that MLC was different for some reason haha. It was so good though! I got to go on a double exchange with my boy in the YSA Elder Safley, and he doesn't have a car either. So we needed to grab the car from another companionship, and got to his apt by 9:00, and then realized they didn't have a parking space.... So we drove around for LITERALLY 2 HOURS trying to find a place to park! There are times I just want to curse this wicked city. Thank goodness I'm on a bike. So we didn't get in until 11:30 that night. We tried. But MLC was straight fire, and then in our zone meeting the next day we gave an awesome training about exceedingly great faith and it was LEGENDARY! It was so awesome!!

We were able to get in with this Nigerian couple as well that we street contacted into last week, and they made us some spicy Jolloff rice and Moi Moi (the fish loaf stuff) and it was Elder Christensen's first time having Nigerian food and he was suffering! It was so funny. But it felt good to be teaching Nigerians again! We've already found quite a few up here and there are several buildings just like the Lowe building! They just have better security so it's harder to get in.

Also, for some reason this week as we've been out and about we've found ourselves in several nursing homes; one visiting a recent convert, and two others for people we had contacted. But all the workers there are Nigerian! And it's crazy because some of those Nigerian workers are now in our teaching pool and have led us to some more buildings filled with Africans! That's been the funnest part about opening this area, just having a day with nothing scheduled, and then seeing where the Lord takes you throughout the day.

On one of these days, Elder Christensen wanted to wear a trench coat, so he looked like a Jehovah’s witness. So of course we had to take some JW model pics. (And that day a lot of people just happened to ask if we were JW, probably because of Elder Christensen's trench coat. He decided he never wants to wear it again.)

I think the coolest thing that happened this week was when we were far north in our area, I saw GABRIEL! One of our recent converts from the South side! He was running and jumping towards me yelling "ALAGBA JENSEN!!" (Means pastor Jensen) Haha it was so awesome!

This week was awesome and I'm pumped for another! Stay blessed!

Elder Jensen

JW 

Comp unity 

How to sew a button 

Gabriel 

  

Lake Shore 2

This week has been AWESOME! My new area is super cool. I mean it has been one of the dream places to go since the beginning of my mission in YSA, and it covers where I used to live, so I'm a little familiar with the area. Still trying to figure it out completely though because it doesn't have the same grid system as the South Side does, so it a little harder to find your way around. It's right off the lake though so super cold! 

My new companion is named Elder Christensen, and he's been out for 3 months so just finished training. (No more 12 week YESSS!!) He's from a place called Jerusalem, Utah which I didn't know existed and I don't think anybody else does either. It's like by Moroni, Utah which is another place nobody probably knows where it is. So he is yet another country boy companion I've had in the big city! He's super awesome, really great at talking to people, especially white people which I'm not good at because I just came from the South Side.

This area is way diverse and so I've been pumped to find a lot of people from Africa this last week! I can't help but want to talk to them a little more, even though God is no respecter of persons.

Since we're opening this area, we've been finding all day every day for the past week! No knocking doors because it's the city, so we hit the streets every day! And because we didn't really have a teaching pool, we did public transportation instead of riding bikes for the most part because we needed to talk to more people anyways. But we were stoked and blessed to find 10 new people to teach this week and now we kind of have a teaching pool! 2 of them are Nigerian, and 4 others are from Uganda and Ethiopia. It will be super cool to teach them!

Were also in a ward with another companionship who's actually a trio, but there are no boundaries so occasionally we'll see them street contacting. We went on exchanges with them last week and the problem is now they're starting to hit up some of our Hotspots to find a lot of good people haha! It's pretty legendary though!

Sorry it's a little short, this week was mostly just finding and next week we'll do a whole lot more finding because we are trying to get that teaching pool huge! Pray for the hearts of the people in Chicago to be prepared! Have an awesome week!

Elder Jensen 

Seeya Southside

Holy smokes! My time on the Southside has come to an end! I've been here for 5 transfers and have grown to love this place so much!

We got our transfer calls yesterday and I will be leaving to the Lakeshore 2nd ward which is straight up to the Northside of Chicago! Still in the city, still on bikes (thank goodness because parking is terrible up there). I'm going back to the zone that I started out my mission at and I've even been on exchanges to this area before! Still a zone leader as well. I'm super pumped!

The last week of this transfer has been absolutely legendary. It has gotten extra COLD this week. Like its 3 degrees right now with a wind-chill making it like - 13 degrees. So we rode the bikes as long as we could but frozen snow and more flats made us have to call it quits for the past few days.

We were able to do exchanges with the Assistants this week which was super fun, Elder Van Tassell, one of my past companions, came down here with me. It was super fun, we had an incredible day on the bikes, went in for an appointment at 4:00 pm and came out to find an inch of snow on the ground. Right before an appointment 3 miles away... So we biked in some gnarly snow and as we were going there was snow dumping from the sky, and of course my companion took his bus card again so we didn't have a bus pass haha. By the end of the night there was probably like 5 inches on the ground and somehow we got 2 flats, so we had to tap out and scramble 2.50$ to hit the bus part of the way back, and then walk. It was SO MUCH FUN! We got to see all the recent converts we baptized together, and it was pretty cool to say goodbye to all of them and of course eat a lot of Nigerian food. 

Darlene has been hearing all the stories about the Nigerians feeding us and she has also wanted to feed us so bad, but always says "if I cook I'll kill you!" so this week she got us a pizza and we had probably the most normal member meal I've ever had here on the Southside haha. It was super legendary and lots of fun! 

Other than that we've been doing the usual finding, teaching, and soon baptizing. One of the families we found is progressing really well and will be baptized by the end of February. We're super excited for them! 

I'm going to cut it short this week, but I hope everyone's week is phenomenal! 

Elder Jensen 

Pics:

Gabriel and Ronke 

Darlene's BOM 

EJ the wannabe thug and I 

Bisola and Eniola 

Snow biking 

District pics