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