Monday, February 29, 2016

Keep yourself anchored

 February 29, 2016

This week flew by because we were so busy! We have so many people to fit into our schedule and not enough time in the day so we sometimes have to skip lunch. It stinks but as missionaries we have to sacrifice our own comforts and wants for the good of others.

We took Anne to the Los Angeles Temple visitors center on Saturday. We called in advance and asked the tour guides to put an emphasis on church attendance because she is really struggling with that. She hadn't been back to church in over a year since she canceled her baptism. The spirit at the Visitors Center is so strong and Anne could feel it. It brought her to tears a few times and as we walked around the temple we told her how one day she can have baptisms for the dead done for her husband and that they could be sealed together! She wants that more than anything. We set that as a goal for her to reach and I think it'll help her get ready for baptism faster. The next day Anne was at church! I guess the Temple trip worked! We were so excited to see her and so was the ward. And a miracle has happened since we started teaching her...now her little 7 year old grand daughter wants to come to church with her and learn! She asked if she could get baptized and I told her she could when she's 8. Then I told her how I got to baptize my little sister and bore my testimony about how good it feels to be baptized. It's amazing how Christlike little children are. We definitely need to become more like them in order to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

We met with Pamela again and man she's killing me! She said "I have no doubt that this is true! I know it's true. But I don't know if this is the path that I need to be on right now." AHH Pamela!!! This is the only path for you! We have tried to emphasize that the Lord gave us the Gospel as His plan for all of us to follow but it's not getting through yet. We're gonna keep working on helping her see this as the path for all of us. We also met with Janelle and she's doing good still. She's not progressing too much but she keeps inviting us back to teach her more and it seems to make her happy. Also she's become really good friends with the member we bring with to the lessons. Members are the key to missionary work. Without them making commitments is so much scarier for investigators.

We have been teaching a man named Hikmat and his family from Afghanistan. We feel like we enter a different country every time we meet with them.  It's pretty cool! LA is so diverse! He and his family are the most kind and friendly people I have ever met. He's a project for sure but I understand how hard it would be for him to change his religion from Muslin to Christian.

We have been teaching English to a few people. We teach Bahrahm (a member in our ward) who is from Iran. We are possibly going to start teaching our Russian investigator, and maybe Hikmat's family too. We found this man named Sarabjeed, he is from India. We gave him a card and he told us he spoke little English, but he loves God, and he knows there is only one God. We told him we could order him a Hindi Book of Mormon and teaching pamphlets. He wants to meet with us and we are also going to start teaching him English! I'm so excited for all these teaching opportunities.  You might be thinking, how are we going to teach these people when we don't speak all their languages? Ammon taught Lamoni and converted his Kingdom, with the Lord, and in His strength, we can do all things.

The Akopov family is awesome! She is from Ukraine and he's from Russia. We taught her the Restoration this week and told her about how we have a living Prophet on the earth. She said she felt "happiness" inside her as we taught her and she also said that all her life she had yearned to feel happy after church...but every church she ever went to made her feel sad. She told us that this might be what she has been looking for her whole life. We are so excited to bring her and her husband to our church!! Eddy is still doing great and we have a few other Recent converts and less actives that we are working with.

Message of the week: This is a really cool analogy that Elder Horito told me: When you surf you always try and stay in the shallow water where it's safer. There are no sharks and you can still find good waves but...there are always tempting waves in the deeper waters that seem much much better. Sometimes you find yourself drifting out to the deeper waters to catch bigger waves, the waves may be better, but the risk is higher as well because deep water is where the sharks are. Satan always tries to pull us deeper out to sea by tempting us with bigger and better waves. At the time it seems enticing and safe so we start to drift further out where the sharks can get us. It's not worth the risk. Keep yourself anchored, and don't drift out to the deeper waters because there are always sharks waiting to pull us under.

Love you guys and I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Jensen


We took Anne to the Los Angeles temple visitors center on Saturday.


Hikmat from Afganistan