Hello, hello! Thank you for all of your letters and love!! It really lifts my spirits to hear from all of you, so THANKS! (not that my spirits are low). This week has been hard trying to find people to teach. We knock on doors and try to talk to as many people as we can, but it's a struggle for me to navigate quickly and simply to the gospel like it says in preach my gospel--or at least in a way that is meaningful and invites the spirit. I'm working to be better at that. It's hard though! Missions are hard! But one thing that I've learned is to be patient with myself and I'm working on being more humble. I don't think I've ever noticed so many weaknesses of my own than I have out here in the past weeks. It's the refiners fire I tell you. I am very happy though, despite our lack of progressing investigators. How blessed we have been though! I had my first baptism this last Saturday! James! He is 25ish? I didn't find him but have taught him weekly with Sister Toledo. I think I talked about him in previous emails, but I've never met someone so prepared for the gospel. We gave him the lesson on the word of wisdom and he was telling us how he's used to his cup of coffee in the mornings but he would give it up. He was telling us how he used to drink alcohol pretty often and he would tell himself, "okay, I'm going on a cleanse for a few weeks" or something like that, and then a friend would be in town and any self-restraint that he had was gone and they'd go out for drinks. He had a really good old time friend in town the week before his baptism. He said his mom called him saying, you must have had a really good time with Taylor and went out for some drinks. He was so proud to tell her (and us), that they had a great time but he had the self control not to drink. He takes pages and pages of notes on everything (the lessons we teach him, sacrament meetings, people talking to him, etc)! He wants to be as prepared as he can. He's really amazing. His baptism was wonderful and he asked Sister Toledo and I to sing. I was thinking, uh, James!? Are you SURE!? ha! We dragged the other Sisters from the other ward into it. He was so touched that people from the ward came to support him. He said he didn't think anyone would be there. What a blessing. He also received the priesthood yesterday.
Mom, thanks so much for the package!! We can open packages any day and I actually got it last Monday after emails. It was so great! THANK YOU!! The shirt, the NUTELLA, stickers, my favorite Utah mints, pudding, and everything was amazing. I hope ya'll (let's just embrace the fact that I'm a Southern girl) had a great 4th of July! We.... knocked doors and got POURED on! The rain has been crazy this week. We were tracting in Haile Plantation again--the wealthy area again. It's a really big area. Sometimes the rain is a blessing. A man opened the door and said he was jewish but was sympathetic to two Sisters with umbrellas going from door to door in the rain and invited us in. His wife was there so we accepted the offer. They weren't interested in our message. She was Catholic so we just talked to them. A beautiful house with the view of the golf course right in their backyard. We got to know them and talked about our church. We asked if we could share a thought and they allowed us to after getting to know us. Sister Toledo shared something and then I talked about the pioneers and Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. I got a little bit emotional talking about Joseph Smith and his sacrifice to restore the gospel. I talked about how I knew the Book of Mormon was true. The spirit was so strong. We knelt down in prayer and prayed at the end. They accepted a Book of Mormon and we asked them to read and pray about it. They said they would! The wife even said: "I'm really interested to read this." They weren't really wanting discussions, but I hope they will read it and call us. It was a tender mercy for us.
Well, I'm going on too long here, so I'll end, but I just wanted to say what a remarkable time this is for missionary work!! President Craig is fabulous to answer your question mom. We met him at our Zone meeting and he is a really, really hard worker I can tell. I'm thrilled for the future. We will be getting Ipads within a year and tracting will turn to a thing of the past. Anyway, a quote that he shared that is by Elder Perry said this about the huge increase of missionaries:
"This is a most remarkable era of the church. It is rivaled by only three other events in this dispensation; the first vision, coming of the Book of Mormon and the receiving of the priesthood by all worthy males."
What a statement! It is truly incredible. I can't wait to see what the future holds. I was reading the Ensign this month about Modern Pioneers by President Monson. It made me ponder on the words of my patriarchal blessing saying I am basically a pioneer in this day and age. He defined pioneer in the talk as someone preparing the way for someone else to follow. I thought to myself: who am I preparing the way for?The answer came in a flood to my very soul. I (as well as thousand of other missionaries and members sharing the gospel) are preparing the way for the second coming of our savior Jesus Christ. I know with all of my heart this statement is true. This gospel is true. It really, really is. If you just experiment upon the word, The Book of Mormon and pray to know for yourself, the Lord will testify of its truth again and again and again.
Love you all! It sounds like you're having a wonderful summer! Mom, I haven't got the Amazon package yet (it's probably in the mail today or something) but I can take it to the UPS store next Pday or I'll just give it to someone. And to answer your question, the other sisters are in the Gainesville 2nd ward and they live out of our Gainesville 3rd ward area.
xoxoxo
Sister Jensen
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