Full of Gratitude

Dear Family & Friends,

My heart is so full of gratitude today for the marvelous blessings that my Heavenly Father has given to me! Especially for my wonderful family. Mom, Dad, Jake, Kayla, and Brayden, you will never know how much each of you has influenced me in my life. I love you all SO much. 

It has been another fantastic week! 

Monday: P-day! We had a lesson with Dani in the evening. She is from London, about 22 years old and SO nice! It was a great lesson. 

Tuesday: Leadership council! It was such an amazing meeting. President shared with us some things that he learned from Elder Teixeira while he was here. We learned that sometimes we think investigators aren't progressing because they aren't "golden" but in reality it's just because they don't know how. We learned how to teach someone to pray and read our scriptures. We should give them an example of a personal prayer during one of our lessons for them to listen to because public prayers are different than personal. SO cool!!! After the meeting, we went on exchanges to Rugby. I stayed in Rugby with Sister Warner. We did a lot of finding and found some awesome people! It was just really good to get to know another sister and learn from her as well. 

Wednesday: Exchanged back in the afternoon and headed back to Coventry! We had a lesson with Dani. It was SO good. We decided to implement what we learned in leadership council and say a prayer. I said a personal prayer out loud. It was really weird to do it but the spirit was SO strong. Dani thanked me after and said that it helped a lot because the first time she tried to pray she didn't do it like that. SO COOL! After, we had a dinner appointment and then had a SECOND dinner appointment with our investigators, Sarah and Kristina. Haha. That was fun. We taught them after, and did the same thing with the prayers. It was AMAZING. The spirit was SO strong and I was crying and so was Kristina. It was so powerful. It made me realize how important it is that we say our personal prayers out loud as often as possible. 

Thursday: We had district meeting the morning. Elder Packer asked me to train on the 5 love languages and how they relate to missionary work. it was such a cool district meeting because Elder Packer asked 3 of us from the district to speak on things that we are passionate about and relate them to missionary work. One of the Elders in our district, Elder Unice is 24 years old, has a business back home and spoke about what makes a good salesman. Then, Elder Watt, who's 22, from Scotland talked about football, as he played semi-professional before his mission. We learned that if you want to "sell" something to someone, like the gospel, you need to be passionate, persisent, have knowledge about your subject and be confident. We did finding after that and taught Leevoy. We had a DA after and then came back for weekly planning. 

Friday: crazy day of lessons and finding! Sorry, running out of time to email.... haha so just imagine a fun-filled day of missionary work!

Saturday: In the morning all the women in the stake went to the church for brunch and then we all watched the women's conference. It was amazing!!!! Sarah came and absolutely loved it. We were all in tears. After that, we went to Nuneaton to help the sisters in their area. We did some finding with them and then all drove back to Coventry for General Conference at 5:00. We taught Edison before that the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he committed to be baptised on May 3rd! That was awesome. 

Sunday: We did a couple hours of finding in the morning then came home for lunch and then went to the chapel at 1:00 to watch conference till three. It was SO good again!!! We stayed at the chapel after that to watch the session from 5-7. 

Some insights/things I loved from Conference...

I LOVED elder Holland's talk. So true that people want smooth Gods- they want a god that won't rock the boat, if even row it. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to defend my faith. I know what it feels like to have people criticize you for your beliefs, tell you that you're brainwashed, that it's just a nice story, or a crutch. Some people are so angry at God for the things that have gone wrong in their lives and are so blind to the MANY things God has blessed them with. They deny the existence of a God because they don't want to accept the consequences of their decisions. They want to live their lives without responsibility... and then they wonder why they're unhappy. If there is anything that I know for certain it's that God does live! He blesses us immensely! Obedience to the commandments brings happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come! There will always be consequences for our actions and responsibility. But only through consistent good decisions can we progress to become like our Heavenly Father and experience true and everlasting joy! The Gospel of Jesus Christ is more than just a good fable. It is truth and it will never change. It is a beautiful and perfect plan. I love it and I love that I can experience it alongside with some of the most wonderful people in all history! I love you all so much. Remember to defend your beliefs with courtesy and compassion- but defend them! 

LOVE YOU ALL!! 

Sister Jensen <3