Hello Everyone! It's been another great week here in Woodland Hills!
This week was PACKED! so I'll try to condense everything into a nice weekly email...
First off our area is on FIRE! It's awesome! We were sitting down in weekly planning and we realized that if everything goes as planned (which it usually doesn't) we should have 5 baptisms in the next few months in our area!!!!! That would be amazing!
I'm gonna talk about 2 experiences this week that stuck out to me and probably just preach a sermon so strap in.
First, we helped this Jewish family move some stuff a few weeks ago and they invited us over for dinner. We went over and it was awesome! A lot of fun, good food, and good times. But the thing that stuck out to me was during dinner, we started talking about their beliefs. But they didn't seem to know. We asked if they believed in an afterlife and they all just kinda looked at each other and laughed and said that they weren't sure what the Jewish belief was! It blew me away. I couldn't imagine life without this Gospel or about the knowledge of God's plan. I hope we all take some time to learn more about it and fully appreciate what a gift this life is. And if you haven't had the chance to hear about God's plan for us, feel free to ask me any questions :)
Second, this last week Mmakgabo was kinda MIA. Like she was dodging our calls, texts, we tried stopping by and nothing. I was so sad but I felt a quiet assurance that everything was ok. Well that assurance was backed up this weekend. We went by on Saturday and she was finally there!!!! She told us how as soon as she started meeting with us she felt good, but not shortly after obstacles started popping up left and right for her. As a missionary, this seriously happens all the time and we were about to teach her that it was the adversary trying to keep her from this happiness, but before we could get the words out, she beat us to it! She started telling us how she knew that this was from God and that Satan is trying t stop her. She said that she was going to trust the feelings she got as she read the Book of Mormon and "take a leap of faith." This woman amazes me. She has the strongest faith and is so willing to follow God's plan. So we had a lesson with her and her son Thabang (TK) that night and taught them about Lehi's Dream. They loved it and we put TK on date for July 1st as well! It was sooooo cool! please keep them in your prayers though. They need as much support as they can get.
The last thing I wanted to talk about in this email is attitude. Our mission has had a big focus on attitude recently and I had a thought jump into my mind. When I was in Young Men's back home we had to go out once a month to collect Fast Offerings. Now most 12-14 year olds weren't completely ecstatic about this and you'd often hear the phrase "We HAVE to..." But I had a leader who would always remind us, it's not that we HAVE to, it's that we GET to. I've been thinking a lot about that and how it relates to missionary work and even life in general. When it comes to responsibilities, there are 2 kind of attitudes. You can choose to look at it as if you have to, or that you get to. There's a sentence in preach my gospel that goes something like this, "teaching the restored Gospel is your responsibility and blessing" and I love that. I am so blessed that I get to be a missionary. My mission is truly a gift from God. I hope we can all have an "I get to" attitude. It truly is a life changer.
Other weekly highlights:
-Driving by Drake, Adele, and the Kardashian's house
-MLC
-Playing basketball with TK after our lesson, and when we scheduled another lesson with his mom he said "Can I come???"
Love you all!
Elder Jensen
