Sorry this is so late. I have been out of town and didn't have any way to pass it on. As you can tell by reading Brody's email, he is doing great. He is having some great experiences. The countdown is on here at the Jensen home. He only has 12 more days. Thanks for all of your prayers and support.
Hello Everyone!!!
so this past week has been a great one! i should have quite a bit to write about! i have been super busy and working really hard! i have a couple of stories about investigators to share as well that really made my week great!
okay so first off, we have an investigator named Tiana. she is super cool and we have been teaching her for a while. her previous beliefs were that she believed in praying to her ancestors and stuff. we started teaching her without a belief in God. overtime she has come to know that God does exist. this last week she pretty much taught us the restoration and told us that she has no doubts that God is real and that the stuff we teach is true. it has just been really cool to watch her growth and how she has come to know that these things are true and that God does exist. we are planning on setting a baptismal date with her in an upcoming lesson.
we are also teaching a girl named Kayla. we found her by just talking to everyone on the street. we have seen her a couple of times and it has gone great. she really understands the importance of our message. we invited her to pray if Joseph Smith was a prophet and if the message we share is true. a couple of days later we went over to see her and she told us that she prayed... she said that she had a dream and God came to her in the dream. She said that God told her to listen to us because we were sent as representatives and that we shared the truth. it was such an amazing experience and just a testimony builder. the work we do as missionaries is SO important! she should be getting baptized in July. it is kind of sad that all of these people are getting baptized and i won't be here. we set a baptismal date with a family of like 8. they all came to church and said that they can't wait to be members. there are so many miracles happening out here!
okay so as YSA missionaries we get to do some pretty cool stuff. we teach people everywhere. for example, we taught lessons in Jamba Juice, Cold Stone, and Starbucks this past week haha. we have a lot of fun and it is really cool to teach people my age about the gospel.
so i have a couple more stories.... we are teaching this girl named Tajeray. she plays basketball for the college here in merced and is super cool. she came to church with us and wants to get baptized as well. it was really cool because she told us how much we have helped her. that she can tell that we love and care about her more than people that she has known her whole life!! she has had a rough past but i know the gospel can help her. i am not quite sure how the atonement and all of that works but it does. it is crazy to think that an event that happened over 2000 years ago has impact on our lives and that it is that powerful. it is eternal!
we talk to everyone on the street! one day we stopped a women and just opened our pamphlet and talked about the first vision. she started crying and asked us the quesion, "do you always make people feel like this in such a short amount of time?" she felt the spirit so strongly and knew what we were saying was true. she wasn't in our area so we told the other missionaries to stop by.
i have a couple more stories but i will save them for the end. one cool thing i got to do this week was play sports a couple of times. we play basketball on friday and saturday night. also one day this week there were a bunch of kids outside and they wanted us to play soccer with them. so we got out of our car and played! it was awesome! somehow Elder Harrison and i beat them hahaha! i will send a picture of that.
i am not sure if i mentioned this last week but we were out at the University of Merced and we were teaching a lesson at about 10:00 at night. we were at a table and i saw a raccoon. everyone told me that it was completely normal but it eventually got closer and closer to me. before i knew it the raccoon was under my chair and it was about to attack me haha! luckily some kids walked up and the raccoon got scared and ran away. it was so scary because i didn't know where it was and it was right under me! anyways while we were there we were teaching our friend from China. his name is Eric. his concern is that his mom doesn't want him to join our church but he wants to. we had a lesson on doing God's will. We asked him the questions "if you were to see God tomorrow what would you say to him and what would he say to you?" he answered the questions very humbly and honestly. after that he looked at us and asked us the same questions for an example. i was shocked and taken back.... it really pierced me. i was speechless. it was a great experience to think about it and really evaluate myself. i realized that i have so much to work on in my life still. my only desire is to stand clean before God and do what he would have me do. it is hard but i know it will be worth it.
now for my last story that really hit me hard this week. so we went down to fresno to the mission office to pick up some packages for the zone. after that we went to wendy's to eat with a member that Elder Harrison knew down there. as we were there a guy came in with a walker. he was homeless and just had some change. i watched as he got in line and looked up at the menu. i noticed that about 3 people gave him some spare change as he was waiting. when he got to the front of the line he had just enough for a small burger and a drink. i felt so bad inside and i felt true and sincere love for this man. i continued to watch him as he got his food and wen to his table to eat. before he ate i watched as he looked around and smiled to everyone that had given him some spare change. after that he bowed his head and prayed. i am sure that he was thanking God for the food that he had. i started to cry in the middle of Wendy's. here we have this homeless guy with nothing basically and he is thanking God for what he has. i really admired that because i have so much and i am not grateful enough for what i have. i have really been studying the topic that we are all children of God the past two weeks, and as i saw this guy a scripture rang in my head..... it is in the book of Romans and it says-
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.
we are all children of God. i saw this man and i pictured him as my brother and i saw him as he truly was and the potential that he has. this man in the middle of Wendy's is a beloved son of our Heavenly Father. He has the potential to become like him as all of us do. we are joint heirs with Christ! i believe that hardly, if ever we understand our divine lineage and divine potential as sons and daughters of God. i know that this is true, i know that we have a loving Heavenly Father and that he loves everyone. i am looking forward to this next week!
i love and miss you all! i hope you have a great week! i will see you soon!
Elder Jensen
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