Guatemala Retalhuleu Mission -Elder Jensen: In the news!

The famous photo of us that showed up in the news.

Dear Family,

It`s been an action packed week! We spent most of the week preparing for our big mission activity on Friday, a play we acted out about the first missionary lesson, the Restoration of the church. It was a really well planned act and we adopted the idea of the Jenga block example I have always used. We were able to act out how God has always called prophets and later I got the chance to explain in front of the 200+ people that showed up the example of the Jenga blocks. Something amazing is that I absolutely have no fear to speak in front of tons of people now, and in Spanish. Maybe when I have to do it in English I will be afraid again but in Spanish it comes on almost naturally. But getting back on topic, it was a really cool presentation, and Elder Merrill, my last comp, got to be Joseph Smith and after everyone wanted pictures with him. Poor guy, he told me his eyes hurt pretty bad from all the camera flash. A little over 50 investigators showed up from all parts of the zone and it was a big success.

I think the biggest miracle for us was that a recent convert named M. brought her teenage daughter to this presentation we did. She had pretty much lost interest in the church and wasn´t going with her mom anymore (because in the past she went a lot to church). She had never come to the decision to be baptized either. But, after watching the act we did on Friday she came on her own to church with her mom and as we visited her in the evening and watched the video of John Tanner´s baptism, she picked her own baptism date for this Saturday! It was a super awesome moment and we are excited to help her this week to be ready for baptism on Saturday!

I have really enjoyed seeing all of my good friends from the Central ward here in San Felipe (where I served about a year ago). The best has been seeing that K. and her family (the first person I baptized) come to church each week. Her older brother M. started coming to church for the first time about a month ago. I was able to talk a little bit with him after the event Friday to help him with a lot of his doubts that kept him from being baptized. After a long conversation I was able to see that he had never gone through a process of repentance in all his life. He was carrying a large load of guilt and didn`t even know how to be free from it. As we met again on Sunday I had the biggest impression that we both just needed to kneel down and he needed to offer a true, heartfelt prayer. As we did he offered a wonderful prayer and after described a warm feeling he felt in his heart and that that heavy burden was gone! It was a super cool moment and M. is now preparing to be baptized this Saturday. The sister missionaries that are in the Central ward will be helping him to be ready.

People seemed to look at my companion and I a little differently this week. Later we found out why when one of the members told us we were famous. We were a little confused as to why we were famous when he explained that a picture that showed up on the internet and in the newspapers had us 2 right in it. The article attached didn`t talk anything about us but it was fun to see our picture there. We had stopped earlier that week to talk to one of the members of the ward as he stood on the street campaigning for one of the political parties and some random newspaper photographer had taken a picture of us with them and that is why we got to be famous this week! (I will send you the picture that showed up all over the internet news websites of Guatemala)

In our zone meeting we got a little bit creative. We had seen a small problem that many areas weren`t teaching a very large amount of lessons. The only thing I could think of is the parable of the sower that plants a ton of seeds in a ton of places, next to the path, in the rocks, with the weeds, and in good ground. Well, we bought these giant beans that looked like seeds and we gave each missionary a little paper telling them which ground they were (stony ground or weeds, etc.,). Well we showed them that when we randomly planted only 6 seeds, we almost got none in good ground, but later when we worked harder and planted 16 or 17 seeds a lot more of them fell in good ground and gave us fruit. It was fun throwing all those seeds around at the end and we`ve seen a good affect in the zone after. Although it wasn`t fun cleaning them all up after.

There are more things that happened, like the power going out for several days, a day that my companion took the keys of our house with him on divisions and we had to break in, and other little crazy stuff but I ran out of time and space! I am just so grateful for the chance to be working hard here in San Felipe and see more miracles this week!

Love,

Elder Jensen