Ryan's baptism! Robert baptized him.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Friday, May 24, 2013
Sun!
Well, it has been QUITE the week! I am just starting to feel really good now that the sun has decided to show its face in England! Haha. This week really has been great. I have seen miracles happen and I am so excited for the work to move forward in Nottingham. I have a strong testimony on the tender mercies of the Lord and was able to experience one this week. Sister Merrill and I were contacting some potentials when we got a phone call from the Elders. My district leader, Elder Frary, said, "Sister Jensen, have you lost your planner?" And I said, "No, why?", he said, "Are you sure?" So I looked in my bag, and sure enough it was missing! So it turned out that the Elders had just gotten done with teaching a lesson down the road and Elder Frary had an impression to take another route than he usually does and what do you know, I had dropped my planner! I don't know what I would do without that thing because it has all the phone numbers and addresses that I need. I was so touched that my Heavenly Father is so aware of me that he cares enough to send an Elder to find my planner. It was such a great experience. This week was also the baptism of Ryan!!! I don't think I have ever been so nervous or excited in my life! It was the first time that I was basically the only one putting together the baptism and it was a miracle that it all came together like it did. We had a great turn out from the ward and Ryan even brought a few of his friends. Robert, our recent convert was also able to baptise him! Well, before the actual baptism started, we had a prayer and a hymn, and then a talk on baptism. After, Sister Lewis (who was able to travel back for the baptism), my companion and I all sang I am a child of God. Except that for the first verse, we sang it in Chinese. Ryan was so caught off guard. His face immediately lit up and he started to cry. It was a very special moment that I will never forget. Robert then baptised him and it was so cool because he said the prayer in english first and then chinese. I think that was probably one of the most proud moments I've ever had! Haha, sometimes it feels like my investigators and recent coverts are like my children. I just want the best for them and to see them progress toward eternal life. Well, today is bank holiday so I don't have much time to email but I just wanted to let you all know that I KNOW this church is true! We do have a father in heaven that loves us beyond comprehension. He wants the best for us and wants to help us if we will only turn to him. I know that is true. I love you all!
Sister Jensen
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
Transfer 3
Dear Family and Friends,
It has been one CRAZY week!!! Monday night we got the call from our District Leader about where everyone was going. I was to stay in Nottingham and Sister Lewis was to go to Harbourne. So we spent most of our day on Tuesday preparing for Sister Lewis to leave. It was nuts trying to visit everyone and somehow fit everything she had into two suitcases. Haha. On Wednesday we took the train to Birmingham to meet all the new missionaries. They fed us lunch first and then we had a meeting with President in which he announced who would be training who. I am training Sister Merrill from South Ogden, Utah. She is 19 years old and ready to work hard! She's really sweet and is always doing service for me. It is really weird going from being with only one person for 10 weeks to being with someone completely different. Haha. But it's been really good. We took the coach back to Nottingham and then got straight to work. We taught Ezekiel and Robert that night and while we were walking to the bus stop, we met an African guy named Chijioke who gave us his address and agreed to let us teach him. We will be teaching him the restoration tonight! We have had tons of miracles this week! It's amazing to see what can happen in missonary work when you have faith. We stopped by some potentials this week and came in contact with Sam, a mother of two who invited us back to teach her in two weeks and Sarah, also a mother of two who we will be teaching on Monday. Tonight we will also be teaching Stewart, who is about 20 years old and belongs to the quaker religion. So that could be interesting! We also met a guy named Frederick, who is a catholic guy from Africa. He gave us his phone number so we will be scheduling an appointment with him for this week. The work is picking up and I am so excited to see what will happen! So, Ryan will be getting baptized this Saturday. He hasn't smoked at all for two days, and I am so proud of him. My companion and I are not eating any desserts or sweets this week to help him out and hopefully make him feel like he isn't doing it alone. Matt and Jerry will also be receiving the priesthood this week! YEAH! It's so cool to see them progress. I love it. We are also going to start teaching English classes to our Chinese friends and they are going to bring friends with them. Hopefully we will be able to find some more people to teach that way. I am so excited! I know that the Lord is preparing people all over the world to be taught the gospel. I can see it. It is a great game that we are involved in, but the victory has already been announced. We can see it on the scoreboard. The funny thing is that we are all still on the field deciding which jersey we will wear. I hope and pray that you will all use your common sense and choose to be on our Heavenly Father's team, where victory is sure.
I love you all,
Sister Jensen
Monday, May 13, 2013
My Amazing Family!
My AMAZING Family!
It was SO amazing to be able to see you all and talk to you yesterday. I am blessed to have such a great family. Thank you for all of your love and support. Well, it has been such a busy week and I am really excited for the week to come. There will be a lot of good and sad changes. I think that they will be splitting the Nottingham district in half and adding a couple more teams so that will be fun. We should be getting some phone calls today to get more information about what is going on. But as for today, I will just be helping my companion finish packing and I think we're going to go to Nottingham City Center to do some shopping, then the last lunch with our district. We have a Dinner Appointment with some members tonight and then we will be teaching Ryan after. Wednesday we will take an early train into Birmingham and then I will meet my new little greenie! It's really exciting. I have thought back to that first day in the mission office when I was so nervous to meet my trainer. I think I am more nervous now though to meet my greenie than I was to meet my trainer! It is a big responsibility but I know that the Lord will carry me through the hard times and I will be stronger because of it.
Dad, I will be sure to get my bike fixed before I start riding it again. So don't worry :) We will probably have to get my greenie a bike sometime this week so we'll just sort it out together.
Well, I don't have much else to write- we about covered it all yesterday, but I'm sure I'll have plenty to write about next week. I love you all so much and I'm so grateful for all that you do! Remember to at all times do missionary work and sometimes use words :)
I LOVE YOU!
Sister Jensen
Friday, May 10, 2013
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Another Great Week!
My Dear Family and Friends,
It's been so great to hear from you all this week! I am so sorry about how long it has taken me to email! It has been and will continue to be a very busy week! Monday, all the libraries were closed for Bank Holiday and so we planned to do our emailing on Tuesday. On Tuesday morning we had to take a train to Loughborough to meet up with the Zone Leaders there, who then took us to Birmingham. My companion was called as a Sister Training Leader and so she had to attend Leadership Council at the mission office. While she went to the meeting, I got to go on splits with the Sisters in the Wylde Green area (which is the area surrounding the mission office). It was really great to see another area! Sister Vance and I, did some finding and taught the Restoration to a lady named Gwen. It went really well and we got her on a baptismal date. We all met up again at the mission home and Sister Rasmussen had made us all tacos (which was such a nice change from the usual beef, potatoes, vegetables and gravy)! It's always nice to see the Rasmussens and feel a little bit of home. Well, we were supposed to be back to our area to email at 4:00 but we didn't end up getting back until 5:30 and we had a Dinner Appointment at 6:00. So that is why I am so late!
Well this past week has been a good and busy one! We have the sisters from Lincoln in our area for exchanges and it was so good. I got to go out finding with Sister Medvescek (she is from Slovenia and she goes home this transfer). It was great to learn from her. We knocked on some doors and didn't have much luck but she taught me alot about finding. We had a really bad experience with this guy who kept bashing on our religion- saying that Joseph Smith was just a con man. He knew a lot about our religion but it was all fragmented. He didn't seem to have much understanding of the atonement at all. He told a story about Martin Harris and the 116 pages that seemed close to the truth but was tweaked just enough to make it sound absolutely terrible. That's how the devil works! He gives us many truths with just a small lie to decieve us. That was my first experience like that and I did my best to just bear testimony to him. It was actualy kind of funny because every time I bore my testimony about something, he got VERY uncomfortable and would then just throw something else out there to argue about. It's sad to see people that are so hard-hearted like that, but I hope that maybe he felt just a little something when we were talking to him. I think it's interesting that people look to the internet and other sources to find knowledge about spiritual truths, when the people who write such things are the people who are trying to tear our church down. There is little sentence in Preach my Gospel that I love which teaches about this. It says, "No one can know of spiritual truths without prayer." I know that this is true. Prayer is absolutely esesential when it comes to gaining a testimony of spiritual things. We cannot rely on any other sources.
So, this week will be a bit insane! We have two companionships coming to our area to do exchanges this week. I got a phone call from President Rasmussen a couple days ago extending the call the train this coming transfer. I'm not sure if I will be staying in Nottingham, but most likely. I'm really excited for this opportunity, and pretty nervous too. But I'm sure it will be a great learning experience for me. So, I will be going to Birmingham again on Friday for a training meeting. Most of the girls from my MTC group are training as well so it will be really cool to be there with all of them!
Well, I look forward to skyping with you all in 4 days! WOW! It will be so great. Write down questions that you have and I'll do my best to answer them.
I love you all so much!
Sister Jensen
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)