Transfer Travels

Elder Sanchez, who had me and my comp as zone leaders (in our room).

Dear Family,

It is super funny to see people´s expressions when I tell them that I have more than 2 years in the mission. The funniest is with the members or with the nonmembers that know we are only here for 2 years.

The big moment of the week was the visit of Elder José Alonso of the Seventy. He asked have a leaders council with all of the leaders in the mission on Tuesday and boy was it amazing! I guess this visit had President Ruiz pretty stressed but we were able to help out as we prepared an evaluation of the whole mission and some goals for the year during the leaders council. After getting ourselves prepared we actually were able to find some good solutions in the meeting and Elder Alonso was pretty pleased with everything we presented and talked about. One thing I really took away from his visit was how vital it is to submerse ourselves in the scriptures. He shared a few stories from the New Testament and was able to show us that in each one there was symbolism to the atonement and the plan of salvation. It was amazing!! One thig that I loved was his explanation that we shouldn´t have any fear at all to share this message with everyone in every moment, the people will be the ones that will have fear at times to accept it but we should never ever have fear or doubt in sharing it with others.

 

Where all the  zone leader training and leaders councils happen.

After that my companion and I have a challenge going on. We have decided that in every single tuc we get in we are going to boldly invite each driver to be baptized in the church and also invite everyone who we ask for directions (which we do a ton since we are in a ton of random places we don´t know each week). We have actually had some very spiritual experiences so far doing that and we are able to continue ministering to the people even though we aren´t in our area that much.

Another interesting note from the weed were out 2 emergency change adventures. First, on Tuesday we got to leave at 6am to take a couple of Elders to their new areas in San Marcos (3 hours away). The most memorable moments were somehow getting our poor pickup to start up in a gas station after many failed attempts, asking a ton of directions in the mountains since my comp and I have never been there (and many of the first attempts at asking directions were members of the church that helped us tons). Once we got up to the mountains we were able to talk to both of the zones.  We showed a cool video from Elder Christofferson about daily bread. We talked about that we can't just not study and hope that the Lord is going to make everything go okay, we have to humble ourselves and remember him each day like the Israelites did with the manna. It was fun.

Today we also worked with another round of emergency changes. This time my companion didn't make the same mistake as he did Tuesday (on Tuesday, after doing an experiment of sleeping on our tile floor he woke up at 2:30AM thinking that it was time to go and got ready to leave and discovered that it was still 2:30AM). But we still got up early to go to a place called La Blanca (a town just above a beach called Tilapa). It was another fun journey and we enjoyed listening to some Christmas music (since there is no Halloween or Thanksgiving in Guatemala we thought we would jump ahead) and also some cool CES devotionals. It was a fun day and we were able to come across some amazing Betty Crocker brownie and cookie mix so we are excited!

Riding a bike in La Blanca.

Getting to the house in La Blanca, a place close to a beach called Tilapa below Pajapita.

So much more has happened but my mind just can´t find all of the details. I am just so glad for the change of heart I have been able to find serving the Lord. I was thinking a lot on the scripture in Mosiah 5:2 that talks about not wanting to do bad things ever again and I am working make that change 100% in my heart for the rest of my life!

Love,

Elder Jensen

First house ever seen with CARPET.