To Melo and Beyond!!!

[2016-06-18 email]

Well its official!!!  I am leaving the offices!! so that means no more saturday pdays!! that and i am leaving to a new area! So having been within 10 minutes of the mission home for the last 6 months, looks like president decided to send me as far away as possible! my new area is called Rio Branco and it is right on the border of brazil! and my new comp is going to be Elder Guerra who is also from brazil, so i am totally learning portuguese! this is going to be amazing! Literally of all the areas in the mission i think i would have picked this one, its having success, there are plenty of members, and the three missionaries that i am going to be living with are all super awesome and work super hard so i am really hoping to just jump back into the work! But i am going to be leaving for my area on wednesday and i am going to be taking about a 6 hour bus ride out to brazil! 

So this week has been nuts other than finding out where i am going.  Me and elder Peterson walked through the other mission for like an hour on monday when we went to change the oil and so i got a ton of photos! then on wednesday we had dinner with the cooks to say goodbye which was really sad, and this sunday we are going to have one final "dessert" and they are going to bear their testimony and its going to be awful! i have really grown to love them both in this time here! 

But we have got to get ready for more changes, and i have got to go, but thanks so much for the letters and i hope you guys have a great week! see you next monday!!! 

Love Elder Jensen

Elder Bio said that he could "milk" more alfajores than me... we both ate 12 and about died...it was a tie.

Celbrating Elder Petersons one year mark with the most unhealthy pizza there is! chicken fried steak with pizza coverings and french fries.... 

Google Street View

[Post from Elder Jensen's Dad]

Looks like Elder Jensen and one of the other office Elders made it onto Google Maps during a past transfer:

You can check him out at:

www.google.com/maps

Last week as secretary.... :)

[June 11, 2016 email]

Well its officially my last full week as secretary and honestly i can´t believe it! these last six months have been so amazing and hard! and i am super excited to leave the offices but at the same time i am going to miss the time i have had here and especially the time with President Cook and Hermana Cook! luckily though i am going to be here this week and we are going to have a farewell for them and have dinner with them to say goodbye. its going to be a very sad dinner, and they are going to be missed.  

But this week last week, was pretty normal.  Me and Elder bio were able to get out a lot more in our area and were able to have a couple charlas with some investigators this week, and we finally had a charla with Pablo (the guy we found in the streets like 4 weeks ago) and he is so excited to come to church and loves it but he just has so much that is going against him right now! his work won´t let him change his schedule to be able to come to church, and his girfriend is going through a really hard time with her family that she lives with, and she likes the church when she comes but she doesn´t have that desire to come, and so pablo is trying to find a new job or fix his schedule and get his girlfriend out her house to get her in a better situation, but i really think that he is going progress, he just has such an icredible spirit and even though he is 22 he understands the importance of the church and wants to keep coming.  So we are really praying hard and trying to do everything we can for him.  

Then today we are also super excited cause the financiers are going to have a baptism!! They are both super excited and have worked so hard to get to the baptism and to help Oscar make it to his baptism, so we are all excited here!

Other than that... not much is going on here... I hope you guys have a great week, and i will talk to you next week with the news of where i am going!! Love you all! 

Elder Jensen

We had another Toddys night this week so that was super fun. Of course all of our stomachs hurt like crazy afterwards haha.

last group foto before changes start! 

Cab Driver

Hola a todos! 

This week was really good and a lot less stressful then last week! We were able to get a lot of stuff done and we have officially started preparing for changes (for the last time!!!) But anyway for the last 4 weeks or so, i have been the taxi driver of the offices because no one else can drive and finally this week, someone else got their liscence!!!! So i have been relieved of the stress of driving everyone!! and with all the emergency changes we have had, i have had to drive with the assistents everywhere! which was kinda fun at first but man it was a lot of driving!! there was actually one day where i drove to all my old areas! it was kinda fun to see them again.  But this week, has been really good.  President cook, had his last "council" with the zone leaders yesterday, and we didn´t really do much but it was still sad to see that he is leaving.  

That and this Friday after the meeting with president, i went to do a baptismal interview! it was  such a cool experience to have! the financiers have been teaching a man for the last month or so who is really from peru but has been living here for the last 4 months, and the financiers when to go visit his sister and he started taking the charlas from the missionaries! we had the interview yesterday and his baptism is going to be this next saturday the 11th.  But it was just such a cool experience to interview him and just see the change the gospel has had in his life! he has completely changed his life around and has truly had his change of heart.  he gave me such a big hug and smile after i told him he had passed the interview cause he had been so nervous! i am super excited for the baptism next week.  

As for our investigator... we haven´t had much time to leave this week, and the 2 charlas we had set with the couple that we are teaching fell through.  they sent us a message right at the time of the charla both times saying that they couldn´t come.  So we are going to try to have another lesson with them on sunday.  They are such awesome people but we have very little time, and we have just as little time, so its been really hard to organize the time with them.  But only 2 more weeks as secretary!!! and then back to normal missionary work!!!! 

Have a great week, and i love you all! 

Elder Jensen

what a week!! or 2... or 3...

[May 28, 2016 email]

Hola!!! 

Sorry about last weeks letter, i know it wasn´t the longest letter... but i only had like 10 minutes to write, so sorry!!!  but ya we are having a lot of complications in the mission lately and several missionaries went home for a various of reasons, that and we have 2 more that potentially might go home this week.  Its been really hard for the assistents and president because we should have like 200 missionaries in our mission and right now we have like 182 or something like that, so they have had to close some areas and find some "short term" missionaries to help fill in the missing spots.  That and i am the only one who can legally drive in the offices, so i have spent almost all my week driving! Which is a bummer because due to all this stuff is happening we have only been able to leave and work in our area 1 day this week! and like 2 days in the last 3 weeks! i love what i am learning here and the chance i have to be with president, but i am so ready to just return to being an "normal" missionary... but i just have to work hard for the next 3 or 4 weeks and then i am going to leave the offices! So ya there really isn´t much to write about this week, other than emergency changes and stuff like that... but as i have been thinking about my time here in the offices and what i have learned i realized the other day that the greatest thing i have learned here is to rely on the Lord.  There are so many times when we are getting ready for a flight or some emergency that we weren´t ready for, and i just have to stop to say a prayer, cause i don´t know what else to do... and everytime that i have looked for the lords help, it has come.  About 2 weeks ago we sent a missionary home, and we found out on monday morning, and he left monday night at 1 am.  and so we got everything ready and showed up to the airport and everything was fine, we sent him through security and about 10 minutes later he came back out, and aparantly there was a problem with his visa paperwork, and we ran to customs and just all over the place and the lady who was working didn´t understand what we wanted to do and we had gone through this same process before but the worker was just making it so much more complicated and the whole time i was just praying that this elder could make his flight.... he entered through security with 2 minutes to catch his flight... he made it... I have said this so many times and every single one of here in the offices recognize that the work we do, wouldn´t be posible if it wasn´t for the help we get.  It truly is a miracle the mission hasn´t burned to the ground! 

Well that is my thought for the week... Have a good one and know that i love all of you!!

Elder Jensen

me and bio chilling one night

jamming to hyms in traffic

massive uruguay flag

Dinner with some members! super amazing!!! 

talk to you next week!

[May 21, 2016 email]

Well i don´t have any time to write you guys today because there are some emergencies going on in the mission and i have to drive the assistants around.  So i just want to say that it was amazing week, we had the last conference with president and hermana cook, and i am really going to miss them when they leave.  That has been the biggest blessing of being here in the offices, the chance to really get to know president and hermana cook and to just be around them.  I love all of you guys and hope that you have a great week! and i will try to write some more today if i get the chance but no promises! 

Love Elder Jensen!!!