I love Guatemala!

Dear Family,

Things always stay interesting here. I think that is why it is so hard to write such a small email about so many things!

First we had our multi-zone conferences on Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday we had to start early the conference in Malacatan for that half of the mission.  So we went Tuesday night to sleep in a super awesome hotel in a place called San Rafael. Let’s just say they have hot shower water and it was extremely hard to get out of the shower (more than 2 years and my body still hates cold showers). 

They were awesome conferences and we showed a pretty awesome video of us opening our mission calls and a few other people who served here and everyone highly enjoyed that and was reminded of the joy we should always maintain here in the mission field. We also got the chance to show a cool video of President Monson in a talk called "My brother’s keeper." He talks about the worth of a human soul and that helped us all remember the worth each soul has that we teach every day and we should strive much harder to teach our best.

This change the first missionary from Brazil is coming to the Reu Mission. It was funny because while I was in the office for a moment the office phone rang and it was someone trying to speak Spanish to us. It turns out that it was the travel people from Brazil trying to see if the missionary had gotten here. I was super confused because I thought it was a joke of somebody saying they spoke Portuguese but as we talked more I realized it was serious and it was super funny because we were trying to speak very simple Spanish for them to understand and trying to pronounce Portuguese from google translate. Eventually we somehow got the message across that the missionary was still in the CCM. At the end of the call the guy yelled out in English "I LOVE GUATEMALA!"

Another memorable moment of the week was that on Saturday there was a baptism from another ward scheduled later in the day. The only problem was that we had to fill the font and we have no key to open the door to the fun. Well, we brainstormed a good solution. We set up a table and put a big stack of chairs on top to be able to jump into the font over the big glass wall protecting it. It seemed simple but when I was standing up on top getting ready to jump in it seemed twice the height! I finally just yelled "anything for a baptism!" and jumped in. I had a nice landing on the back of my feet and later on my rear end but nothing broken or injured. My companion said he felt like it was slow motion as I fell through the air to the bottom of the empty font.

The small moments my companion and I have to work together in our assigned area are very special and the Lord has blessed us lot. This week we had the chance to talk to a member of the church that hasn't been attending for a long time now. She was excited to tell us about some of her family members close by that we could teach and she referred us to one of her brothers who we taught yesterday. As we taught L. and his wife, T. I was happy to be teaching and testifying again to a family (even though as we taught my companions bench broke in mid-lesson, now the second time that has happened to my companions). We hope to have some good lessons with them this week and that they can have some strong spiritual answers as they read the book of Mormon.

I am excited for another week of hard work and helping the mission. It has been really hard for me to think that soon I will no longer be in this land I have grown to love so much and I will have to say goodbye to the people that now have a special place in my heart. I am so grateful for the chance I have had to serve in the lands where Lehi’s descendants walked and lived!

Love,

Elder Jensen

The famous day of the dead dish, FIAMBRE.