Dilligence

Dear Family,

We basically just walk up and down this highway
 and go into the neighborhoods on the side.

All us missionaries here in Malacatán have been working so so hard! The great thing is that the Lord has blessed us so so much in return!

After the awesome miracles that our zone had in conference we have seen a lot of fruits and a lot of baptisms. The Sister Missionaries in our ward had their first baptisms in Malacatán and they baptized 9 people! It was such a spiritual baptism service and the ward really came to support all these new converts. The really cool thing is that a lot of members got to perform the baptisms and one of them was a youth who has recently come back to church and is preparing to serve a mission. He got to baptize his 2 nephews. The Spirit was so strong as we got to see so many people experiencing the peace and joy of a forgiveness of all their mistakes and a new life as a follower of Jesus Christ.

Elder Cook and I worked pretty hard this week. One cool thing we tried this week was to make a small calendar for one of the people we are teaching so that she can see if she is reading in the Book of Mormon each day and praying daily as well. We left specific passages for her to read each day with a thought and I really think that this will help her to come to feel and know that what we are teaching her is true. I think the fun thing about missionary work is that there is never one secret to success. We have to rely on the guidance of God and really adapt to the unique challenges and situations.

One super fun thing here is to play soccer since the Central Americans are just so so good at it. Today we were playing with the Tecún Úman zone and an Elder from Costa Rica on our team kicked the ball up in the air and then did this sweet back flip bicycle kick to score a goal! It was so entertaining! I will probably miss seeing crazy soccer plays like this after my mission.

This week we had a couple of moments that really helped me see how important it is to work diligently to bring the gospel to everyone we can. A few times this week we had worked for several hours and not seen any success and we felt a little bit like giving up. But we decided to keep looking for people that the Lord had prepared for us and we always seemed to be led to somebody who was incredibly receptive and ready to learn about the restored gospel. They were very special moments and a testimony to me about how important hard work and diligence is.

I am so grateful for each testimony building experience I get to have as a missionary and to get to meet so many incredible missionaries and people who have such great faith in the Savior Jesus Christ.

Love,

Elder Jensen

Our very loud Lámina roof when it rains

the little alley we walk to our house

Marriage and Baptism of a Family

Dear Family,

I had a super fun week! Also, I can`t believe I have a year in the mission! That scares me!

On Monday we had a fun trip up to Reu for the district leaders and Elder V. and I enjoyed eating lunch in a fancy restaurant in Coatepeque. It is probably the best food I have tasted on the mission. I ate this amazing crepe and steak sandwich, soo good! We also talked about the miracles our mission had in conference and played some ball with President.

We worked really hard this week with the G. Family so that they could really meet all the members of the ward and feel excited for their marriage and baptism. We had a cool moment reading in the Book of Mormon in 3 Nephi 27 when they really understood how important it is to be baptized so that Christ can heal us from all of our mistakes. Everything went great with their marriage and we enjoyed eating some cake together afterwards. Our ward mission leader (named Mahonri - which is an awesome name) planned a really nice baptism service and a lot of members showed up and we all felt so happy. The G. family has 3 small boys and that is fun for me thinking about our family as well. I think ever since our last temple trip I have really focused a lot more in finding and teaching families that can one day enter the temple and be united together forever. It is so cool!

This week I also had some really awesome experiences as I was doing some baptismal interviews. It is incredible how much people need to feel the healing power of Christ`s atonement. When we make serious mistakes the guilt stays with us for a long time if we don`t let the Savior take that upon himself. I really am understanding the process of repentance as well and it is such a cool opportunity to help these people understand how they can enjoy relief from all of their mistakes and feel clean. I also understand much better the ordinance of baptism and I really want to help as many people as I can feel these awesome feelings of joy!

It`s hard to think about how much has happened in a year in my mission and how amazing the whole experience has been. I have worked really hard and had a lot of fun doing it and I hope that it will be just as awesome in the next year. I know it will go soo fast and I need to take advantage of every minute! I hope to help a lot of families receive all the blessings of the gospel and make it to the temple one day! I am so grateful to be here in Guatemala and to serve such amazing people with so much faith!

Love,

Elder Jensen

Our awesome chapel in Malacatan (stake center too).

Acool view from the house in San Rafael (on divisions doing interviews).
 The mountin is Tajamulco (the tallest) from very very far away

Painting with a member in his house.

General Conference

Dear Family,

This conference was so fun because we worked so hard! Here in our zone we saw a lot of miracles and some fun stories too.

We were so hyped up this week to bring a ton of people to hear the prophet at conference and coming into Saturday and Sunday I was so excited. The Lord really helped us find a lot of prepared people willing to come listen to the prophet and we had it all planned to bring a lot of people. Before each session we split up with the members to bring people and we started off slow on Saturday but on Sunday we just went crazy looking for people. Before the afternoon session on Sunday I took another crazy Elder with me to go find someone, anyone, in our area to bring to conference and we decided we would not go alone to conference! We looked and looked and finally found a pretty cool 16 year old that got ready really fast and went with us to conference. It was really fun. We ended up having 9 people in conference and the G. Family came! They are preparing to be married and baptized this week! 

Another fun thing we did was on Friday we got together with the Sister Missionaries in our ward to go invite the whole Benson High School (owned and worked my members and named after the prophet) to conference and then we went to another High School and then came back to the Benson to teach and invite even more kids. I think we invited over 500 students to conference and it was so awesome! I felt like a Book of Mormon prophet inviting everyone to come and listen to the prophet. Of course Elder Cook and I figured out how to get everyone laughing and excited for this conference. I`m not sure how many of them came but it was definitely a fun memory. 

Our whole zone will be working hard this month because we had 136 people in conference and we will be going back with all of them to help them keep progressing in the gospel!  I have to say that I just loved the Spanish talks that were given and the Spirit is so much more powerful when it is the actual voice of the speaker. How awesome for the Chapines (Guatemalans)!

Now that there is no conference this week we will see if it is still as exciting. We are planning a big group baptism this week because almost every area has people preparing for baptism and it should be really cool. I am just so grateful to be here and see that the Lord is guiding our work. We really saw success as we went and visited all the members in our area that have stopped coming to church and find new family members that are now ready to hear the gospel. Plus the members in our ward are so ´pilas´ (this word literally means batteries but is used for someone energized and ready to get to work). 

I am so grateful that the Lord has restored his gospel to the earth and that he speaks with a living prophet and councils and guides us through him. How fun to tell people that there is a prophet like Moses speaking today and we got to go listen to him! I love this work!

Love,

Elder Jensen

San Pablo Falls

A school in Malacatan named after the prophet Ezra Taft Benson, owned by a member of our ward.

Dear Family,

I think that this is going to be one of the best times in my mission when I will get to work harder than ever before!

After dividing the limits of our ward, we have started working in our area and it has been a little bit hard since most of the work was up in the city and not down where we are. We have started to find a lot of new people and get to know all the members who have stopped going to church. The amazing thing is that even though we work far from the city, we have had so much support from the members of the ward. They have come out to visit with us and help us meet new people who used to attend or find friends of theirs that we can teach. I think without the members here in Malacatán we would be struggling a lot right now. I am not sure how this ward got so much excitement for missionary work, but I love it!

We had a really cool experience with a family that we are teaching. The husband is V. and the wife is A. (The G. Family). They have 3 small boys and they are a very humble family. At night we have lessons by candle since they don`t have energy in the house. They attended the Sunday before I came and we have been trying to help them put a goal to get married and baptized. We had a lesson with them a couple days ago where we decided to teach clearly that they must get married so that they can progress and that this is necessary for their salvation. They said they will prepare themselves. It really helped me see how important it is to speak clearly and help them understand how they can return to God`s presence. 

Today we went to this huge waterfall in San Pablo and the air coming out of that thing was incredible. We got so wet from just being at the base of it because it was massive and so beautiful. 

The wind in this waterfall was so strong and awesome!

With my comp, Elder Cook, we both got soaking wet.

The most exciting thing is that this week is General Conference. There isn`t a better time to bring people to hear the living prophet and the apostles. We are going to work really hard to bring at least 10 people to the conference and help them feel the Spirit of the conference. I am so excited!

I hope you all have a great week and can also bring some people to come and hear the prophet`s voice!

Love,

Elder Jensen

On a hike we did to a waterfall in San Pablo.

Malacatán!

A cool guy in our area in Malacatan who owned me on pushups
and had a punching bag. He was really awesome!  
He got baptized in the church when he was 12 or 13.
He had a sweet belt that was a dead snake.

Dear Family,

I´ve had some fun getting to know my new area this week! I am going to miss Santo Domingo but I am looking forward to some new and awesome experiences.

It was pretty tough to say goodbye to everyone in Santo Domingo because I really loved all the members and people that I had worked with for so much time. I feel so blessed for all the incredible memories and miracles and my experiences there have changed my testimony. I might get to see some of these converts again in the temple I hope!

I am now in Malacatán. Our ward is called the Libertad Ward and I guess our area is the part of the city that reaches down to the next town called Catarina. The chapel here in Malacatán is so incredible. I am sure that it is the best chapel in the mission. Today we enjoyed playing basketball in the 2nd floor court in the chapel. Yeah, it is pretty cool. The other crazy news is that they put  2 sister missionaries in Malacatán for the first time in 4 years! We will be sharing the ward with them. The ward was only of the 2 Elders but now they doubled the missionaries by putting in the sisters because this Ward is one of the best wards in the mission. Our ward has a ton of return missionaries who are ready to help us and a lot of amazing new members that have some powerful testimonies. I think that this will be a really amazing time in my mission.

Me, Elder Fifita (from my CCM group) and my comp Elder Cook.

My companion is a really new missionary named Elder Cook. It has been cool for him because he has had to show the whole area to me and also the 2 new Sisters (Sister Barba from Arizona and Sister Cabrera from Honduras). He has a month and a half in the field and his Spanish is pretty impressive and I will be helping him improve as well (which will help me too). The fun thing is that I am learning to teach more simply with him which will help me a lot. Elder Cook is from San Diego, California and has a lot of awesome energy. We are going to work hard and help this ward to grow a lot.

This week we made a division in the area so that the Sister Missionaries can work and we have been working kind of further out from town. The people are a lot simpler and there a few members that have gained a strong testimony and find whatever way to make it to church (since it is a little far). We had a fun activity on Sunday called the Mormon Battalion where all the members meet up in the afternoon and we head out on splits to visit a ton of people and teach them and invite them to church. It is fun and I love seeing all this excitement in the members!

With all these new adventures I have felt a little tired but I feel so grateful that I get to serve the Lord in a lot more ways and help even more people feel the purifying power of the atonement. I also love serving here in Guatemala, even if we run into random wild horses and old men who can do clapping pushups!  I love it here and I love serving my Heavenly Father!

Love,

Elder Jensen

My comp and I found some wild horses.

Feliz 15 de Septiembre

Dear Family,

¡Feliz 15 de Septiembre! Happy Guatemalan Independence Day! How fun to see everyone proud of their country and all the crazy parades!

Today we got to see a couple of parades which were pretty fun. There are all sorts of things that pass in the parade but I think my favorite was seeing a guy with a backpack looking thing that had a ton of fireworks attached and then they started going off and I was hoping he wouldn`t catch on fire or start flying into the air for all of those pyrotectics but it turned out ok. The only thing I didn`t like was that last night at midnight they did a `torcha ` or a torch run. There were a ton of motos and tuc tucs honking real loud at 12 and 1 in the morning right outside the house but it kind of made me laugh. A lot of fun and crazy traditions.

This week the whole mission got treated to a little de-stress activity. We got to go to Xetulul! (Shetoolool). It is a sweet theme park that has a sweet roller coaster and other fun rides. I was kind of running around like a little kid and really excited because it made me think of going to Kings Island and things like that. 

The other really fun thing this week is that today we went to an area in our zone called Chicacao (my CCM comp is there). The Elders there had heard of a cool waterfall just out of town. We hired a pickup driver to take us all there and it was crazy because we went way far out into a mountain. We finally got the permission of the owner of the land to let us go towards the waterfall. We brought a member from Chicacao who already knew the place. We started to climb up this mountain and not before long it started pouring rain. I am so glad I thought to bring my poncho because that saved my camera, wallet, etc. After a lot of rain and mud and climbing we got to a point to see the waterfall. Going down was also an adventure because it got all muddy and we got to slide a little bit ... without wanting to. It was a fun and wet memory.

The really great success we are having is with all of the converts from the past months. Almost every single one is attending faithfully to church and some of them have begun to comment on the meetings and help establish the church here in Santo Domingo. A. will start to help with the seminary class and F. is working to prepare for a mission in a year. We had a priesthood meeting in J.`s house and he was making some really good comments and advice to the other members. It has been so fun to see their progress and see that the Lord does work miracles in places like Santo Domingo.

I am so grateful to be a missionary and bring the good news of the gospel to all of God`s children. I know this is the Lord`s work because he leads it and always moves it forward. I am so grateful for the time I have had in Santo Domingo as well. I don`t know if I will stay or leave but either way it has made a difference in my life being there and getting to be a part of people`s lives and helping them receive blessings!

Love,

Elder Jensen

Faith in Every Footstep

Dear Family,

We worked pretty hard this week and we had a couple of days where it seemed like we walked around town several times but I guess I will have some strong legs when I get finished with the mission.

After all the great miracles in the past months we have wanted to keep up the pace and keep working our hearts out. It was kind of funny because we had a day where almost nobody let us into their house. We taught several people just standing in their doorway but by the end of the day we basically just fell into our beds. The next morning we were like zombies because as we were studying in the morning I kind of feel a sleep as I was telling Elder Perdomo what I had learned that morning and when I kind of woke up he was asleep too at his desk. But I guess that's a sign that we are working hard!

A puzzle I made for S. Each piece of the puzzle
has a reading assignment in the Book of Mormon.

I think the biggest miracle of this week is that S. and L. (the family that we have been teaching for months) came to church together for the first time this past Sunday. It was such an awesome sight! The fun thing is that they got to sit with the family of the Ward Mission Leader (who is a long time friend of Sebastian it turns out). We had a great lesson with them where Lucy bore her testimony of the church to her husband and we made a puzzle for S. with scriptures from the Book of Mormon so that he can read each day and pray so that Heavenly Father can help him know the book is true. There is a part in Preach My Gospel that I love that says ´Nobody can know the spiritual truths without prayer´ (or at least that´s how I translated it to English). We are helping him pray and turn to the source of all truth so that he can know that what we teach is true.

As we were walking along this week I noticed this really cool house that looks a lot like a house in the states. I kind of felt curious to see who lived there and I saw a dad outside playing with his daughters and I kind of said hi and he asked us to come in and visit with him. It turns out that he was really involved in religion but had kind of moved away from that because he felt left by his congregation. He had heard about the church before and had a lot of doubts but has begun to read the Book of Mormon and is intently trying to receive an answer. He is a really amazing person and loves his family a lot. The weird thing is that when we teach him outside of his house I feel like I am in the states because he has a swing for the kids all sorts of toys and it feels a little weird but I love visiting with him! I really hope he keeps praying!

This week we had a really neat meeting with the Stake President of Mazate and with President Ruiz where they really talked about the vision of the stake to split and really become a strong part of Zion. It made me feel really excited and helped me realize what a huge part I have in establishing the Lord´s kingdom in the earth and in Guatemala. It is so fun!

This week I think I decided that I will have to hire a Guatemalan chef when I get back. I am just loving the food here and maybe I will just have to start a restaurant and sell all my favorite Guatemalan dishes and maybe some drinks in bags like they sell here. I think people would go crazy for that.

I am so grateful to be one of the Lord´s helpers here on the earth and help find his children that need to feel his love. This week we met some wonderful people who really just needed someone to help them with their spiritual needs and it is so cool to see the gospel fill that empty spot in their lives. I love being a part of this work!

Love,

Elder Jensen