Thursday, November 24, 2016

Area: Ottawa, KSCompanion: Elder Cox
 
Email address:  kenneth.jensen@myldsmail.net  
 
Mailing Address:
Elder Kenneth Jensen
Missouri Independence Mission
517 W Walnut St
Independence, MO 64050

This week has been fun, it was a little bit of a slower week but still good. Not much happened at the beginning of this week, just talked to a lot of people who weren't interested in the gospel, yet. We learned that both Elder Cox and I are staying in Ottawa for another transfer. And this transfer has both Thanksgiving and Christmas, so that's gonna be exciting. Both Elder Cox and I gave talks on Sunday again. His was on Faith so I talked about Hope. Hopefully it was alright. 

We have decided to try to visit more active people and to ask for more referrals. We haven't seen any fruit from it yet but hopefully this will increase the number of solid people we find.  

We didn't have too many people sign up on our dinner calendar this week and it gets dark so soon now. What we have been doing is making active member visits around dinner time and it usually only takes 2 maybe 3 houses before someone offers us dinner in exchange for a message. So we are still getting in and sharing the spirit with others!

It was rather interesting though, I think we might have become marriage counselors or something. There is a couple in the ward that is struggling and we actually helped her move out (super awkward by the way) but bishop had asked us to try to stop by both of them separately and see how they were doing. We hadn't been able to get a hold of the husband but on Wednesday he actually texted us and asked if he could receive a blessing. Then later she asked us to come over and they were both there and we gave her a blessing as well. It was a very sweet experience and an example to me that real people have real life problems. I think they are handling their situation in the most adult and mature way possible, and that is what will probably save their marriage. 

We have been given many service opportunities and been able to give many blessings this week and it has been amazing. 

There is a less active member that the missionaries have been visiting every week for probably years now, but he is finally coming back to church. He seems to like it and he's been back for about 3 weeks now, and the ward is talking about giving him a calling! 

Anyway, that is my life in a nutshell. Work hard, have fun, the gospel is true everywhere, God loves all of us.

Thank you for all that you do.


Elder Jensen

Saturday, November 19, 2016

Area: Ottawa, KSCompanion: Elder Cox
 
Email address:  kenneth.jensen@myldsmail.net  
 
Mailing Address:
Elder Kenneth Jensen
Missouri Independence Mission
517 W Walnut St
Independence, MO 64050

This week has been good. On Tuesday I went on exchanges with Elder Merrill in the Heritage Park ward. We had dinner with a family whose son just entered the mission field. So they had lots of questions and they basically adopted the missionaries as their proxy sons. They made really good food. It was about 7:00 and pitch black outside but we didn't have anything else to do so we knocked on the door of a potential and a guy hurriedly opened the door and then he looked confused and turned to someone else and said "oh it's not her". Then there was kinda an awkward silence and Elder Merrill said "sorry we're not her" then he basically told us to go away.  

I have had problems with my iPad. The software that the church uses to control the ipads unenrolled itself. So we got a call from Salt Lake saying that I had to fix it. Which ultimately led to me having to completely wipe my iPad and starting it again. So since I didn't have the passcode to do that, I had to just enter my passcode wrong so many times and it wiped it for me. But it took a couple of days to be able to do it because of exchanges. So we got a call on Wednesday and the guy from Salt Lake said I had to do it soon or they would "have to.... take action". So I figured I better do it. And it took so flippin long, like 4 hours. 

President Boyack (the stake president) went out on a team up with us, it was awesome. We just sat back and listened and learned about eternal life. It was super cool.

Saturday we drove all around the middle of nowhere with our ward mission leader, who was sick. Now I might be getting sick, but all is well.

Today we went out to literally nowhere and somewhere, I'll send some pictures.

Thanks for all the support you guys send. You are awesome. Make it a good week.


Elder Jensen

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Area: Ottawa, KSCompanion: Elder Cox
 
Email address:  kenneth.jensen@myldsmail.net  
 
Mailing Address:
Elder Kenneth Jensen
Missouri Independence Mission
517 W Walnut St
Independence, MO 64050

This week has been full of miracles and fun times. Monday we got to go down to Chanute (my first area) and see some sweet people. It was a ton of fun and it was awesome to see people again. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures. 

On Tuesday the Gardner Elder's water line broke so they slept over at our apartment. That was fun. I will say the result of that night was a squirrel hide, some funny videos, an assortment of flavored chicken (including grape jelly) and a LOT of ice cream. 

We also got to do some service putting up plastic sheeting on a super old house from the 1800s. I had catfish for the first time, which was super good and I carved a pumpkin.

We street contacted someone who apparently is a former investigator and is super friendly toward missionaries and is having us over next week. Then I found someone who used to live in Rigby! Small world.

The wards chili cook off was Saturday and it was super good. There was buffalo chili and chili with cinnamon and I had chili with ghost peppers in it. Basically every redneck, hillbilly thing you could think of, it was probably there. And there were lots of non-members there, some of them were actually pretty interested, so that will be cool. I also got to eat squirrel. Kansas man.

Sunday I was really focused on getting a solid new investigator, and I fasted and prayed. Then right after church we got a text from our zone leaders who said "there is a member whose son just moved to Ottawa with his non-member girlfriend". So we went and met them. The address was right but the name was wrong, but they let us in anyway. They were really nice and willing to have us come back! Prayers are answered.
 
Anyway, this week has been pretty awesome. I am loving it out here. It's a lot of work, but the reward of helping someone is incomprehensible. Thank you for all your support. Keep moving forward.

Elder Jensen

I asked for pictures that included his face since he hasn't sent any for a few weeks - and this is what he sent.....