What an interesting week! I love the Holiday season, but, if I'm honest, it was a bit of a difficult week for missionary work. We had a lot of lessons get cancelled, then rescheduled, then cancelled again. The progress with our people was painfully slow this week between Thanksgiving and finals at the college. BUT, we still saw some miracles and had some fun.
The night before Thanksgiving we met up with Omar and some of his friends (Miggy, Cyrill, and Fernando) and we all watched the new Christ Child video (a new video of the story of Christ's birth put out by the Church). We had everyone bring pie (since they had mentioned at volleyball that they didn't really have Thanksgiving plans) and we all ate pie together. It was wonderful to be with good friends with good pie talking about our Savior.
We spent Thanksgiving with two member families in the branch--the DeMilles and the Eppichs. I couldn't have asked for a better Thanksgiving. I am grateful to be serving with such good members.
This week we took a walk along the river and started contacting people about "Light the World", the church's service initiative for the month of December (check out LighttheWorld.org to sign up for daily service prompts). I was reminded of how grateful I am for this beautiful Earth that God has given us to live on. We met some interesting people along the Columbia! We walked past a couple Russian guys and when we asked what they were doing they shouted back, "Looking for gold!" We laughed a little and asked it again. They said, "No, really, we are treasure hunters! It's just a hobby, really, but someday we want to go pro." And they showed us a series of metal detectors and other tools that they were using to find treasure. It was pretty cool, and very unexpected. When we told them about the Christ Child video they got so excited. I was like, "Yeah, it's an awesome video about Christ's birth! It's all in Aramaic--" And the guy said, "I LOVE Aramaic! That's the language that Jesus would have spoken." They were more than happy to take our information and then continued with their treasure hunting. You meet so many interesting people as a missionary!
We received a referral this week for someone named Bryan. We were a bit weary about it because of the information in the referral, but he turned out to be really cool. He said that he was really interested in our service opportunities (so we talked about Light the World) and has invited us back on Wednesday.
Yesterday we had the opportunity to help do a sacrament service at Avalon, a retirement community within our stake. I will forever have a special place in my heart for the elderly, just as I will for young single adults. The spirit was really sweet, and the love of God was so tangible at that little meeting.
Please pray for Quirino, Naio, and Dia! We have faced a lot of opposition this week and we have some ground to win back. But I know that faithful prayers bring miracles! I will keep you all updated and let you know the miracles next week. They are all on date to be baptized and have a desire to be closer to Christ, but that doesn't make the journey easy. Family opposition, work, school, addictions, temptations, and numerous other things are doing their best to distract and discourage the hearts of these good people. Your prayers will make a difference!!
Love,
Sister Jensen
P.S. We got a tiny skiff of snow but nothing like what hit Utah and Idaho, if anyone was curious. We mostly just have tumbleweeds so far.
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