Adios, Kennewick

 Dearest Friends and Family,

I love being a missionary! I can't believe the time has come for me to return home. It truly is bittersweet to think of the wonderful people I will be leaving, but also the wonderful people I am returning to. I will miss all the amazing corn and watermelon! 

I think it would be impossible to sum up everything I've learned throughout my mission in one email. I am so grateful for the experiences I've had--the good as well as the hard--that have taught me to be bold and to trust God, experiences that have helped me build my faith in the Savior. I'm grateful for all the people that listened to the message, and for all the people that didn't. I am so grateful that the Lord has chastened me and taught me humility, and filled me with an indescribable love for the people of this tiny place. Moving forwards I am determined and excited to accept and fulfill whatever assignments the Lord gives me. 

It has been an honor to serve as a missionary, to serve the true and living God. I am humbled to think He let me work in this small corner of His vineyard, and that He allowed me to witness so many miracles. Looking back, my mission doesn't look like a sacrifice, but rather the most amazing opportunity I've had in my entire life. It has brought me closer to God, and closer to my Savior, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. 

I love you all! Thank you for your support and love these 18 months. I know that the Savior lives! His Atonement matters; it will literally save your life. Allow Him to make your life better and easier. Life is hard, but He makes it doable. There was a moment on my mission where I came to the realization that I couldn't do it. Eighteen months loomed before me like an impossibly high wall, and I knew that I, alone, was completely incapable of doing it. I was tired, and discouraged, and hopeless. BUT, with His help, and ONLY with His help, I knew that I would be made strong. HE, Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Redeemer, is what makes us capable of enduring hard things. Nothing else. Trust Him! And trust in His Atonement! Allow it to carry you through to the moment where you can fall at His feet, and He will lift you by the hand, as a good and faithful servant.

Love,

Sister Jensen

P.S. We got in contact with Angela this week! She referred herself to us through the Come Unto Christ website, and she is incredible. She is super humble, and has loved the lessons! We gave her a Book of Mormon and will be teaching her on Tuesday! 

Another Good Week

Dearest Friends and Family,

It has been nice and HOT this past week. We had a finding party with our district (we all got together and called people), which was fun except we had to do it outside and it was 108 degrees! It was still fun. We had some other good adventures this week too! I went on an exchange with Sister Dustin and Sister Anderson (who is reassigned from Brasil) and it was super fun. We helped a family replace their porch light. After installing it we tested it out and it worked so we basically are all professional electricians now. That being said, I don't recommend that you trust missionaries to do all your electrical work...

This week we had dinner with Elder Stapleton, and his family shared their mission plan with us! He is such an incredible example of being a good member missionary. He of all people has a lot of church responsibilities, and it is inspiring to see how he makes time to have us over and to do his own ministering. He and President Rassmussen sent a letter out to every member in our mission encouraging and inviting them to get involved in missionary work. We have already had several members reach out to us! We are excited to help them figure out ways that they can be involved in this great work. 

This week we received a referral from a woman Angela who requested to meet with missionaries through the church website! We are so excited to meet with her later tonight. We have had a good week filled with lots of tender mercies and blessings. We have made lots of good progress with Zayne and Joan. We also had dinner with the Wall family, and we asked them if they wanted to learn more about what our church believes. They said yes, with no hesitation! Lexi (the eight year old) started to read us stories from her illustrated bible, saying "I like reading these stories because they make my heart feel good". Nichoelle even turned to her husband and said, "sometimes I wonder why we aren't members of your church already!" We are so excited to teach them this coming week! They have their own share of concerns, but the Lord truly does prepare people for us to teach.

I love you! And I love being a missionary. I hope you have a fantastic week!

Love,

Sister Jensen

FB Numbers and Service

Dearest Friends and Family, 

We had a great week! We have continued to do a lot of service, including emptying a storage unit, helping a family move, and laying rock for a nonmember in the area. 

Our Facebook page has reached 88,000 people in the past month! That is equivalent to 518 contacts with people PER MISSIONARY in our mission. Crazy! Sometimes it's hard to see the results of our efforts online, but we have actually had a lot of success through our page. 

We had an amazing lesson with Joan yesterday. She has been loving reading the Book of Mormon, but has hesitated to continue learning because of her ties to her family's religion. So yesterday we had a couple members (who are both converts to the church) join our lesson, and it turned out that he went to the same church as Joan growing up! They immediately connected, and the lesson was awesome. She opened up a lot and after the lesson the member said that he felt like he was talking to his mom and had some great insights for us. It was super sweet!

I really enjoyed studying Come Follow Me this week. I especially liked ready Alma 37 and applying it to my own life. I know that each of us has been entrusted with sacred gifts and knowledge from God! As we ask Him how to use it, He can use those gifts to bring people to Him. 

Love,

Sister Jensen

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=602810193771857

The Screaming Banshee

Dearest Friends and Family,

So I have some good news...and some bad. Bad news-- we're back to phase 1, which basically means no more outdoor lessons at member houses or member meals, no gatherings in the church  (so our sacrament meeting will be outside). Good news! The temple will open for live sealings starting in a couple weeks! As of now. I'll keep you updated! 

My new companion is named Sister Shirley, and she comes straight from the at-home MTC in Texas. The three of us have been having a fun time together! Sister Lowe and I have had about a dozen meetings between our zone leadership and social media responsibilities. It has been good though, and it always feels nice when you can give a training knowing that the Spirit is speaking through you. 

A couple weeks ago we invited the Baird family to make a family mission plan. Part of their plan was to host a free carwash and we helped their family wash their neighbor's cars. It was awesome! We met a couple really cool people that we never would've met any other way. Plus, we got to wash some sweet (but really big) trucks. It was a lot of fun. I'm so grateful for their willingness to think outside of the box in order to help us do missionary work! One man in particular, Nick, was really cool. We hope to be in contact with him soon. 

The Air Conditioner saga: Our neighbor's air conditioning unit randomly turned in to a screaming banshee last night. After tossing and turning for hours, Sister Winward and Hurst finally marched outside at about 4am and gave the unit a good kick. It didn't fix anything, but it was satisfying to finally do something. We had a good laugh together in the middle of the night.

We found someone to serve through a Facebook service request post. Our district helped weed for the sweetest family! They recently moved to the area and said we could help again soon. It was awesome to see Facebook help us find some people.

Miracle! While I was saying my nightly prayers, I had a thought that I needed to write Nichoelle (the mom of a sweet nonmember family that fed us dinner) a letter. I fell asleep and forgot about it (terrible, I know!) and was rebuked by the spirit the next night for forgetting. So I wrote a letter, and we went to deliver it. I was feeling a bit discouraged that I couldn't even knock on the door to deliver it, and as I walked up to the door Lexi (the eight year old) walked out on her way to feed the dogs! Soon Nichoelle was outside and they were both able to meet Sister Shirley and invited us back this coming week. It was a great reminder to always follow the promptings of the Spirit! Even if the action seems small, the Lord can work miracles through our tiny efforts. 

We had a couple other really good lessons, one with a part member family we have never worked with before (the Bocchis) and another with Zayne. The work is progressing! God is so good.

Love,

Sister Jensen

Hope Drive

Dearest Friends and Family,

We had another awesome week here! We received our transfer information and I AM STAYING HERE!!! I am so grateful. Sister Lowe and I will be getting another sister, so we will be serving in a trio. Our new companion is coming straight from home, and we are super excited to meet her on Wednesday! 

We helped put on the "Hope Drive" this past Saturday and it was a huge success! It was incredible to see an idea turn in to a reality with the help of the stake presidency, our zone, and numerous members. If you want to see how the whole thing turned out, check out the live drive through video on our facebook page! We had almost a hundred cars come through the drive, a handful of which weren't members of the church. We had many people sign up for service, bible studies, and help doing family history work. Sister Lowe and I were kind of supervising the whole thing, so we spent a lot of time walking between stations and checking on missionaries. It went pretty smoothly, although about half way through the wind picked up (as it does here) and we suddenly had canopies, signs, and traffic cones blowing all across the parking lot. We ran around like crazy chasing after things the wind had caught hold of and had everything settled back down within a few minutes. Whew! It was really fun (despite sore feet and sunburns) and the members are requesting a Hope Drive 2.0 so I'll keep you posted on that. 

We had another Rona scare. The zone leaders of the Tri-City Spanish zone tested positive and now they are sad Elders, stuck inside. The worst part is Elder Newton was supposed to go home tomorrow and now will have to stay here for another week and a half. We have talked with them quite a bit (over zoom of course) since we all do social media meetings and stuff together and they seem to be doing alright and have a sense of humor about the whole unfortunate situation. If anything they have gained a lot of sympathy for other victims of the virus. Our mission is trying to be super careful to protect other missionaries from getting sick, so hopefully the rest of us remain well. 

We were able to pick up a couple of new people to teach this week! They both have been taught in the past and seem ready to continue learning about the restored gospel. We also have been doing a lot of service. Our zone was able to help lay sod for a man that found us through a service offer post on Facebook. He isn't a member, but now has a great relationship with the missionaries in his area! We also had a district tennis lesson with Diane (the woman we met playing tennis) and she absolutely loves missionaries now. We said a prayer with her and she said it made her day!!

I hope you all have a wonderful week! God is good!
Love,
Sister Jensen

Corona Scare

Dearest Friends and Family, 

Happy 4th of July! We had the sisters over to our apartment for the holiday and made BBQ chicken, corn on the cob, and ate the most delicious watermelon I've ever had. It was a fun day! We went over to the Stapleton's backyard and Elder Stapleton set off a firework for us, even though it was the middle of the day. It was awesome! 

Good news: our county has officially moved to stage 1.5! Apparently that doesn't actually affect missionaries at all (except that the Elders can now go get haircuts, yay!), but it's nice to know we're moving forwards. As soon as we hit phase 2 we will be able to go in member homes, so that is pretty exciting. This week our mission had a small Corona scare. Some missionary in the Kennewick East zone thought he had the virus, which led to that entire zone being stuck inside (not allowed to have contact with anyone). Which affected us since the APs had been with that zone the day before and were also homebound...along with our zone leaders who live with them. It was pretty crazy for a couple days. We found out today that the missionary literally just burned his tongue from eating too many wasabi peas and was being dramatic. Oh Elders. 

This week we taught Makenna! She is almost 8 years old, and is part of a part member family. She is awesome, and is excited to meet with us. We also taught Russell outside of the church, and it was amazing to see him in person again. He and Salenea are doing super well! His countenance has completely changed since before he was baptized. He seems so much more confident, and so happy. I am so grateful I have been able to be a part of bringing the gospel to their cute little family!

Next week we will be receiving 47 new missionaries, bringing our mission to around 210 missionaries--more than our mission has ever seen! We've been told that almost every companionship will become a "tri-panionship" which is going to be super fun. 

I love being a missionary! I am so grateful to be able to serve, even and especially during these uncertain times. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. It doesn't matter how many people argue, disagree, discourage or contend, nothing can change the fact that God has spoken that truth to me, and I understood Him. For me to deny God would be stupid. We're all imperfect in our own ways. But I know the Book of Mormon is true because it has helped me to change. It has taught me how to access the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. To think that there is something that you can't overcome would be to deny that very Atonement. I don't know what you struggle with but I know you can overcome it because I have complete faith in the Atonement, and it's power to change the very nature of people. 

I hope you all have a wonderful week!!

Love,

Sister Melia Jensen

One Hundred Days of Quarantine

Dearest Friends and Family,

This week went by like the blink of an eye. We reconnected with Zayne this week over text and he was able to have his apartment dedicated and receive a priesthood blessing of comfort. We couldn't go in of course, but we introduced the members on the doorstep and met them after. They were awesome and were able to teach him a bit about the Holy Ghost and invited him to read from the Book of Mormon.

A couple days ago we were walking into our apartment, juggling Tupperware from our dinner, books, water bottles etc. when we saw a man. We waved, and he ran over to us and said "My girlfriend wants to join you!" We got some contact information and sent her off as an awesome referral. The situation reminded us of Richard!

This week we also had zone conferences. I had the opportunity to do a training about finding people during quarantine and it was super fun, if super scary and pretty spiritually draining. It was fun to be in the mission home for a couple of days though!

COVID-19 updates: Washington is opening up by "phases" depending on the county. The counties that make up most of our mission are still in phase 1, meaning we still can't gather and businesses can't open. The state of Washington just made it illegal to be in public without a mask. On Wednesday we will celebrate 100 days of quarantine! It's pretty hard to believe we are now as busy as ever when I could barely stand being stuck inside for a couple weeks at the beginning. I am so grateful Heavenly Father has given us so much work to do despite the circumstances!

Love,
Sister Jensen