General Conference

April 9, 2013

How are you doing? I'm doing well. General Conference was awesome! Elder Jorgensen and I took the front runner train down to Salt Lake to watch the Saturday morning and afternoon session. We brought one of our friends with us. His name is Trenton. He is a 25 year old inactive gentleman. He is making progress though. :) He is reading the Book of Mormon pretty consistently. We will have another lesson with him on Sunday, We'll see how that goes. We had a few other lessons this week and a couple of baptism interviews done in preparation for the 2 baptisms this week. Yesterday we had a traveling trainer come with us. They are basically like traveling APs. We are staying pretty busy, especially out in Bear river and Honeyville. Do you know if I have a missionary plaque? Did Ian have a plaque?? Well got to go. Hope all is well. Take care.

-Elder J

John's In Bear River

March 31, 2013

How is everyone doing? Good to hear that Easter went well. I got your Easter package yesterday. That was nice. Thank you. So how are things back home? What is Ian up to? Do you guys still watch that show "The Voice". It's kind of like American Idol. Well one of the singers on the show lives in Rexburg but, he is from Bear River (where I am serving now) and he sang at one of our Easter Sacrament meetings. It was pretty cool. Their names are Fred and Danny Hayes. So this week has been pretty good and busy. We taught a lot of lessons and will have 2 baptisms next week, for these girls named Sassy R. and Gracy V. We drove up to the Huntsville Valley to help some other Elders make some visits since they were out of a car and are in a pretty big area. Huntsville is super nice. That is close to where all the cool ski resorts are in Utah, So there are a ton of mansion vacation homes there. There are also a lot of Catholics there. What religion are Nanny and Grandad? Catholic right? What type are they?? We were going to take this Catholic guy to General Conference with us, but his wife just divorced him so he moved away somewhere. Now we are taking this guy named Trenton and his dad who is a very Less active member. Also we went and checked out the Brigham Cemetery and we found the grave stone of the prophet, Lorenzo Snow. That was pretty cool. For P-day today we are going to go golfing with one of our ward mission leaders( if it doesn't rain). This will be my first time golfing! Also this week I'm going to try grilling again. I think I might BBQ some Colby ribs. Do you still have the recipe for that? Could you email that to me? That is pretty cool that Ian is looking into a BYU school. I had a Bro Lemon as my science teacher at Rexburg and I just had dinner with his dad yesterday. It's a pretty small Mormon world out here haha. Glad to hear you guys are doing good. Have a good week. I love you.

Love, Elder Jensen

Happy Easter

March 24, 2013

 The mission is going well and the week was good. The weather has been pretty crazy.  It was pretty hot one day and then it snowed for 3 days so we had a few inches of snow, but then it warmed up again and it all melted. Yesterday and today it got back down into the 40s. We got the car back yesterday, so we have been staying busy and are getting a lot of work done. We picked up a new investigator from a part member family and taught her on Monday. Her name is Sassy. She is 9 years old and wants to be baptized. She is really elect, but doesn't really believe in the being resurrected part. We taught her the Plan of Salvation and the gospel of Jesus Christ and focused on faith. This week we went to go teach the foster kid, but we found out that he ran away to join the family gang down in Ogden. The police are out looking for him, they also think it might have been a kidnapping. Sunday we had a mission wide fast to help get miracles coming so we can baptize people and reach the mission goal for the quarter. I also had to give another talk on Sunday. The topic was on the Savior. I thought that it went pretty good. Today for P-day we went to the Brigham Temple and did a session. That was really cool. We might go hang out with a priest who is preparing to go on a mission. He said he would take us bow shooting today. We didn't get a chance to see the peacocks yet so we plan on doing that if we have time. That should be fun. After that we have a few lessons. One with a new Gator we picked up and another with a less active mom, who wants to get her 8 year old son baptized. How is work going? Ian is applying to BYU-I? That's a good choice. I don't know if I would like Provo unless I was doing a sport there..What is Ian going to do during the summer? Also, do you know the Prince of Egypt movie soundtrack?? I've been trying to get it to listen to on the mission, but I can't find it anywhere. Also when is Rhea's Birthday? Well I got to go. Happy Easter!! :) Take care. I love you.

Love, Elder J

Happy St. Patrick's Day

March 19, 2013

Hey family,

How is everyone? I'm doing great. Happy St. Patrick's day! On Sunday we had corned beef and cabbage as well. It was really good. I had to give a talk on St. Patrick's day, and that went pretty good. The wards here are only half full so the lesser amount of people made me less nervous. How is Ian doing? Does he still have the "RM goggles" on? Seems like he is getting used to normal life quickly. What does he do all day? I can already tell that it will be weird to come back and not have a companion with you all the time. So this week has been fun. We had a couple lessons almost everyday. We are staying busy. The 14th was Pi day so we made some treats and took them to some of our gators and ward members that have really help us out in this area. The weather here has been really nice and warm. It cooled up a little bit yesterday and actually snowed! That happened as we were tracting, so that kinda took us by surprise. It is also super dry here. So I have had some pretty gnarly nose bleeds the past 4 days. What is the weather like in Fairbanks? Last Tuesday I made a new scripture case from scratch out of leather. It looks really cool. I will have to take a picture and show it to you guys. This P-day we are going down to Ogden to shop and to go bowling. I'm not a big fan of bowling, but Fat-Cats gives missionaries free bowling on Tuesday, so we are going and seeing how it is. Then we will probably go play a zone vs. zone basketball game down in Far West. We have an elder who is 6'8" and he can dunk like no other, so I think we will win. We also have a member with a white peacock farm, So we might check those out today out in Honeyville. Last Tuesday we started teaching this man the missionary lessons. His name is Fred. He is hilarious. He is kind of stuck in the era of hippies. He is old and has COPD from all the smoking and drugs he did. We asked him how many years the doctors gave him till he dies and he said, "I got as many as I want man" in a really Tommy Chong under the influence type voice. I don't know if he is in denial or if he is just crazy. But his wife says the doctors gave him 5 years and it's already been 3 and a half since then. He says that everything we teach him is true. He already has read the whole Bible and Book of Mormon and believes it all to be true, and that baptism is essential to make it back to live with Heavenly Father, but he still doesn't think it is right for him. He told us that he doesn't have a reason why, but he just isn't ready yet. So we will see how that goes. Hopefully he opens up more so we can understand what his real reason for not wanting to be baptized is. The kid that went to jail is doing a lot better. We talked about the Word of Wisdom with him and he really took it well. We also have a lesson with him tonight. Most likely we will teach him about the baptismal interview questions and why you need to be following certain rules and commandments before you are baptized. Well I have to go. Hope everyone is doing well. I love you.

Love, Elder John

I need a haircut...and more music!

March 10, 2013

I'm doing well. How are you? Mission life has been a blast. I really see why/how this mission is so special. Anyways today is P-day and we are going over to a bishops workshop and we are going to make leather scripture cases. That should be fun. Also I'm getting a haircut cause my hair is way too long. We had a General authority come to our mission last Thursday. And I had to gel my hair down a ton to make it look short ha. It was Elder Clayton from the Presidency of the 1st quorum of the 70, He gave a really nice talk about the Atonement and about being a better missionary. Missionary work has been interesting this last week. 7 lessons canceled on us! So we taught like 2 lessons the whole week, that was a little frustrated because all we did this whole week was go tracting and nobody was interested at all. Tracting is like the least affective way to do missionary work. The one investigators who got put in jail for selling/doing drugs who is only 15 is out now. We will teach him tonight and see how he is doing. We got conference tickets for the Saturday afternoon session so we will be taking one of our investigators down to Salt Lake for that. I'm sitting on the balcony section so maybe you guys will see me..If you watch conference he he I know Nick and Brianna will probably be sleeping :) That's exciting that Ian will be home soon. Make sure to take pictures and send them to me. He should be with you guys when I Skype on Mother's day right?? Also could you guys send me some CD's with conference talks and good church music (not MOTAB) General conference talks are free online, It think you just have to do some formatting to get them on a CD. So I have been trying to learn to play the Ukulele on my Pday, It's really hard though. Maybe Nicole can send me some pointers and some notes to help me learn since she played guitar. Also I tried sending you guys a package but it got returned to me in the mail and said the address is wrong..what is Nicole's mailing address??? Well I hope you all are having a great day. Make sure you keep me updated on everything. I love you.

- Love, Elder John

Transfers

March 5, 2013

Hey Guys,

I'm doing well. Today was transfer day, but I ended up not getting transferred. I'm pretty happy about that. My comp and I are both staying in the Brigham North area. It's a pretty cool place. We live on 400 N main in Brigham if you want to Google map search the trailer park ha it's pretty ghetto. I think this is Ian's last day in the mission. That's pretty cool. When will he be back home? We had a baptism last Saturday of a boy named Travis. He was pretty golden so it only took 3 weeks from the time we taught him till his baptism, so that was really cool. We have a few more investigators that are pretty prepared for baptism. We should have 3 by next transfer. It would have been 4 but this foster kid we were teaching got arrested for having marijuana in school. :( it was weird because he is only like 14. All in all it has been a good week. Hope everyone is doing okay. I love you

Love, Elder J. Jensen