From Utah To Uruguay: Change Week!!

[Apr 2, 2016 letter]

Well this has definitely been one of the craziest weeks of my mission! It was really good, but there was definitly some hard moments but some really good ones. First we started off the week on a really good note, Gonzolo invited us for dinner because i hit a year and he took the five of us (2 financers and the 3 secretaries) to this amazing restaurant in our area, and it was amazing!!! i ate the best food i have had since i got here! we ate every type of meat that exists, chicken, steak, cow intestines, kidneys, and brain! it was such a good way to get change week started. oh and if he sent you guys the photo of us there, i would like to have it.

Then changes started.... and since i have my new comp, i am now the lead secretary which means i had to teach my comp and take care of everything this last week, everything was going smoothly until Wednesday morning when we were in the bus terminal with all the missionaries and one of the brand new missionaries just starts having a crazy amount of pain in his stomach and basically falls to the ground! luckily the mission nurse was there and figured out that he had kidney stones! so we ran him to the hospital and now he is doing totally fine, but man it scared us! but the poor elder! it was his first day, he had just met his trainer and was just about to leave to go to his first area, but no, he spent the first 2 days in the hospital! but he made it to his area alive and healthy again!

Then all day thursday we had to take all the "dying" missionaries to the airport, and this was hands down one of the hardest days of my mission. One of the things we have to do as secretaries is what we call "the Veil" and that is when we send the missionaries through the security and say goodbye to them, and only the missionaries, president and hermana cook and us are there, and everytime we give the veil it is super emotional and hard. But this time was really hard, we had to send off several people that i knew at 2:00 in the afternoon and then later at 6:00 we had to drop off Elder Oliveira (my second comp in the mission) and saying goodbye to him was one of the hardest moments of my mission. He has been one of my best friends here in the mission and the hard part is that i just don´t know if i am going to see him again in this life. Honestly it was just as bad as leaving salt lake a year ago and honestly it makes me scared to go home! believe it or not after being secretary and seeing what it is like to go home, I kinda don´t want to! Of course i can´t wait to see all of you guys but its really hard for the missionaries to go home and its going to be hard. There was a good moment though, Laura and Freddy (from Parque del Plata, my first area) came to say goodbye to them, so i got to talk to them again after 6 months of not seeing them, me and elder oliveira just talked with them for like 2 hours before he got on the plane and it was amazing to catch up with them and see the difference the gospel has made in their lives.

And now we have General conference which the first session was amazing!!!! littterally i loved every single talk! and Come Thou Fount and the end of conference was sooooo good!! i am super excited to watch the rest of it! but ya that has been my week basically... i hope you guys have a great General Conference and another great week! Love all of you guys!

Elder Jensen