Week #76

Brody is doing better than ever. He had a great Christmas Day. In fact, he didn't want it to end. He wanted to tell everyone thank you for your thoughts, prayers, cards, and gifts that you sent him for Xmas. He  told us that skypeing on Christmas was like a dream. He said that it was weird and that he felt like he was in a different world than the rest of us. He is hoping the next 6 months go by fast. On to week 77. 

                                                                                                                                                                       
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!
So this past week was super crazy! it flew by and was a really busy week. first of all we had zone conference and it was sweet. we had a couple of trainings and then we played games for the rest of the time!Christmas eve was super fun. we went over and saw our new investigators that are teenagers and played games with them and ate dinner. they are so cool, i love seeing them and teaching the gospel to them. Christmas day was awesome! i got to skype with my family and that was really good! it was almost like a dream haha and it went by so fast. i also got to watch a movie, i watched Big Hero 6. Christmas day was just pretty much a party! i thought that the day after christmas was going to be a really hard and bad one, but it wasn't! i actually had an awesome experience. so we went and saw our new investigators Maria and Mario. they are like teenagers and early twenties. we taught them the Restoration. and before the lesson i was kind of like "oh great i get to teach the Restoration, i have only taught this lesson like 500 times so far on my mission." and i kind of started to get bored but we taught the first half of the lesson and then we watched the video of the restoration. during the video it hit me that Mario and Maria had never heard of anything having to do with the Restoration. and right then i stopped complaining in my head and learned a super valuable lesson. these people have never heard of the gospel, they don't know that there is a prophet today, they don't know where their loved ones or they are going after this life, they don't know that Heavanly Father and Jesus Christ are 2 separate people, they don't know that they are children of God, they don't know why there are so many churches in the world today, and some of them might not even know that Christ suffered for them. i can't even imagine if i did not know those things. it helped me to love the people more that i am serving and teaching. and that is my job as a missionary, i am here to share all of that good news. after that experience we had a great rest of the lesson.  After the lesson we played a cool game with them.... haha so there are jelly beans that come in a box and some of them are good flavors and some of them are bad flavors but you don't know which is which. so you have to spin a little wheel to find out what you have to eat. the flavors were so gross. some of us even puked haha. but it was a blast! i hope you all had a great christmas and that you all have a great new years! i love you all! Elder Jensen

Merry Christmas from Elder Jensen

Week #75

Brody is still doing well and making good progress in his new area. He sent us a box of mexican candy. There is enough here for all of you. Feel free to stop on by and grab some. You should come and get it while its fresh rather than wait until next Halloween. We are looking forward to Skypeing with him on Christmas day. He wanted to thank each of you for your support and wish each of you Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

                                                                                                                                                                     

what up everyone!?

so this past week has been a pretty good one! it was super busy. to start off we found some sweet new investigators. it is mario, maria, and ivan. they are like 20 years old and they are awesome, they came to church and invited us over for christmas eve. we are excited for that! this past week i went to fresno for a meeting for the district leaders and it was really good, there were trainings from President Clark, and the assistants, sister clark, and a couple of other missionaries. this next week i have the Christmas zone conference on wednesday. 

this past week i got to go and interview someone for baptism, it was one of the coolest experiences of my mission and the guy i interviewed was sweet, he was so prepared. i took a picture with him, i will send it home. 

the branch had a christmas party this past week, it was awesome! we ate mexican food and a lot of people came. like 15 investigators came!
i have a lot of cool plans this next week for christmas! i look forward to hearing all about all of your christmas's! i hope you all have a great week! that is about it from this last week. i love you all! 

Elder Jensen

Week #74

Brody is doing well. He is finding success in the mission field. He said he really misses Elder Olsen. It was nice to see him at the baptism. Amie asked him if he likes being district leader, he said he has to help other elders with their problems. He recently had to comfort an elder that found out his cat back home had passed away. Hahaha. One of his good friends Elder Guereca just came home. Amid and I went to his homecoming. It was at spanish branch. We were fortunate that a young lady sat behind us and interpreted the entire meeting. Elder Guereca said that Brody was one of his favorites and will be at the airport when Brody arrives home. Brody sent some pictures that will be posted to his blog. Make sure to check them out. He is in some real nice joggers. I only hope he sends me a pair for Christmas. We can't even decide what his current style is. We are in the process of setting up Brodys Skype with a young man from Livingston named Nacho. Only 11 more days until we Skype him. Thanks for all of your support in Brodys behalf. 
                                                                                                                                                                          
Hello Everyone!
so things here have been pretty crazy as of late. i have been really busy! but it has been a good week! this last week i went on exchanges with an Elder in my district. i have to go on a lot of exchanges now because i am district leader. exchanges are pretty fun though. this past week we had zone meeting and i gave a training on "Fire in the Bones" which is pretty much motivation and desire. it was a lot of fun. i also gave another talk in sacrament meeting, that is back to back weeks now haha. one really cool thing that i got to do last week was go to a play. we went and watched one of our investigators in a high school play. we had a lot of fun, i took some pics so i will be sure to send some in this email. yesterday Gloria got baptized, Elder Olsen came back for it and baptized her! it was sweet to see him again and to be able to see Gloria get baptized. this next week is going to be pretty crazy as well, i have to go up in the mountains to do a baptismal interview and i have a district leader meeting with President. also this week is the branch's christmas party and since i am kind of the only white one... i got stuck with being Santa Claus hahahaha. it should be fun though! that is about it for this week. i love and miss you all, i hope you have a great week. Elder Jensen

"I'm flying Jack!" 

Week #73

Brody was very brief this week. He did open up a little during our conversation. He didn't admit it, but I wonder if he is thinking about being away for another Christmas. I am sure it is very difficult for missionaries to be away from their families this time of year. He was upbeat an positive about the work that is going on there. It sounds like much success lies ahead. The other two cities he is covering are Winton and Livingston. He spent a short time in Winton a few months back. He was excited that his little sister has decided to play basketball this year. I only wish he was here to coach her. Thanks for all of your love and support for Brody and our family. On to week 74. 

                                                                                                                                                                           

well hello everyone! 

so this past week was not too eventful. so on tuesday we went to the mission office and i got my new companion. his name is Elder Hopkins, he has been out for about a year and is from Virginia. 

the work here in Atwater is going great, we are going to have a baptism this sunday, her name is Gloria! this past week i also went to the farewell and saw some members from my old areas. i will send some pics with them. i also said goodbye to Elder Guereca at the farewell. so i now cover two other cities other than atwater. yesterday we had stake conference and it was pretty cool! 

we are working with a couple of families right now and we are excited for them. that is pretty much all that has happened lately! i love and miss you all! i hope you all have a great week! 

Elder Jensen

P.S. Happy Birthday this week to the best sister in law ever!

Week #72

Brody told us today that he is almost to his sexy six. That means he has 6 months to get his body back before he gets home. I don't think three Thanksgiving meals helped that out much. He is getting a new companion. He wasn't sure yet who it is going to be. He is however pretty sure he is staying in Atwater. One of his good friends, Elder Guereco is coming home this week. He is from Mexico but his family moved to spanish fork while he was out. Brody asked us to go look him up this week. That ought to make for some interesting stories. Thanks for your prayers and support in Brody's behalf. 
                                                                                                                                               
Well Hello Everyone,
how are you all doing? how was everyone's Thanksgiving? my thanksgiving here was pretty crazy. so we were almost like normal people on thanksgiving haha. we weren't suppose to go and teach people, we were only allowed to be with people that invited us to do stuff with them. so we played in a "Turkey Bowl" early in the morning! it was a lot of fun! after that we saw some kids playing basketball outside so we played them. it was 5 Elders vs 5 high school kids on the basketball team. We beat them! it was a lot of fun. after that we went with a Samoan family to a party and played some more basketball and ultimate Frisbee. then we went and had lunch with a family and ate Lobster, fish, and shrimp. it wasn't the typical thanksgiving meal but it was way good! then we went to a couple of other houses and ate more! we ate so much that day! this past week we also had an activity and watched 17 miracles! we had a pretty good turnout and it was a fun night as well!we set a solid baptismal date for the 13th of december with a woman named Gloria! so we got transfer calls this week and Elder Olsen is leaving and is going to be a Zone Leader! we are pretty bummed because we wanted to stay together. the way we do transfers now are different. so i won't know who my companion is until tomorrow! it will be interesting. well i hope you are all doing good! have a great week! i love and miss you all! Elder Jensen

Week #71

Brody emailed us this morning. He usually emails late in the afternoon. He claims it was because the internet was down in Atwater and so they had to get a ride over to Merced to send an email. He claims that this morning was the only time he would have to email us. I think he had another Pday all planned out. Brody seems to be doing good up in Atwater. Transfer calls will be coming this week. It seems like he just barely arrived in Atwater and already transfers are here. He seemed to be in good spirits today. Thanks for your support. On to week 72.
                                                                                                                                                                                                         
Hello Everyone, so this past week was pretty good. we found a couple new investigators that seem pretty solid. so one of them is named Noberto, he was a referral and we went by his house and right from the start he was joking around with us. he invited back yesterday for carnitas! it was a birthday party as well, so we met all of his family and got to know them. they are awesome and hopefully solid! he told us he wants to be a missionary haha so we asked him if he wanted to go on teammups with us and he told us yes! he is not even a member and he wants to go out teaching with the missionaries. he is really cool, we are excited to work with him. another lady we found is a part member family, her name is Elizabeth she is from porta rico and has only been in the states for like 2 months. she seems really cool as well. this last week i also went on exchanges again, i went with an Elder that has only been out for about 2 months or so. it was my last exchange for the transfer. this week is actually transfer calls, i can't believe that the call is already here again! i really hope i get to stay with Elder Olsen for another transfer. so something crazy that happened this past week is we were sitting in dinner and then we heard like 10 gunshots. there was a driveby like right next door. it was crazy!  yesterday at church i gave a talk in spanish on the holy ghost for about 15 minutes. that is about all that has happened lately. i hope you are all doing well. have a great thanksgiving! i love and miss you all! Elder Jensen

Week #70

Brody hit the 2/3 mark this week. Time seems to be cruising along. As you can see, Brody is really busy. He emails two days late and only sends a few sentences. He was on for a very short time today. He mentioned that things were still going really good. He had a lesson to get to today and explained that is why he was in a hurry. He also sent several pictures of him at Yosemite. You can check them out on his blog. Thanks for you prayers in Brodys behalf. 

Hello everyone, 

so this past week has been really crazy. I don't have too much time so I will just summarize it real quick. so I went on like 3 exchanges this past week so that was nuts. I went on one with the Zone Leaders. we also had zone conference this last week. we are still working hard with our investigators. 

this last Monday we actually went to Yosemite with a member. it was really cold and there was snow! I can say that I do not really miss the cold weather in Utah!! haha I will send plenty of pictures.

so I have been hearing a lot about things in the news lately from everyone! it sounds like the world is pretty dang crazy! I know it can be pretty scary. I only have 3 words of advice.... "FOLLOW THE PROPHET!" the prophet knows what to do.

well that is about it from this week, sorry it is so short. I love and miss you all! have a great week.

Elder Jensen

Yosemite!