Apostles are Awesome

This was a good week! The earlier part of it consisted of what I like to call "The Grind". There was a lot of walking, contacting, a couple trips to the train station to find the best route to another referral in a pueblo (Side note: Even if the schedules were in English I would not understand them. 'Cuz they be crazy.), calling, and a little more walking.

Random Cool Thing: On Tuesday, a man stopped *us* whilst crossing a bridge and asked us about our family history center and other related info. I had no idea because our family history center has been dormant for as long as I've been here, but we were able to give him a little flyer that had the info with who to call and what not. We were finishing up at correlation later that day when a random guy poked his head into the doorway and asked us if this was the place for family history stuff. We told him as much as we knew and gave him a little folleto tambien. I guess we have a cool little Spirit of Elijah vibe going on over here.

We were going to meet with Borja and Ytala on Wednesday, but he had an unfortunate eye injury and we couldn't meet due to him needing to recover. We are going to see how he's doing today. We need that man baptized gosh flip it! Hopefully we can meet this week and get that re-invitation taken care of. It should go well.

I feel like Milena is improving. She's been to church the past two weeks, we've been consistently meeting with her, and now she has a desire to start The Book of Mormon again. To help her with that, we gave her a little "read the BoM in tal days" sheet and a Book of Mormon (she accidentally left hers in Colombia after her trip :P). Hopefully she stays with it! I'd rather not witness another member fall away in this city. Well, I don't believe she's anywhere near that point; I know she wants to try and she will see a rebudding testimony :)

Fast-forward to Friday: We did our studies in the morning, then boarded a Seville-bound bus after lunch. There was a ward activity going on at the chapel, so the zone leaders just had us meet there. I was able to reunite with Elder Wilson! I don't think I've really mentioned him before, but he's in my group and we became good friends in the MTC. Now he is in Cáceres (my district) and I hadn't had the chance to catch up with him until then. After grabbing some food at the activity, we went our different ways with the various Seville elders that were taking us in for the night. We had about an hour left in the day, so we went on spilts with Elders Ramirez and Rasmussen. I went out with Elder Ramirez, and he contacted literally everyone. Whether someone was pulling out of a parking spot with the window down, in the middle of a crosswalk as the light was about to change, watching TV by their open, ground-level, apartment window, he did not care. It was a bit much to say the least, but more experience on seeing how other missionaries approach a conversation on the street. I slept on a tiny couch and soldiered through the night. We woke up at 5:30 the next morning and boarded a Málaga-bound charter bus with the rest of the zone at the Seville chapel around 8:00. Fast-foward again to Málaga: We loaded off at a chapel and joined the other missionaries that had already arrived in the parking lot and arranged for the group picture we were going to take. We were still waiting for a couple more busses to arrive when the black SUV pulled up to the chapel and out came President Johnson (Europe area president), his wife, and Elder Holland. For those of you just tuning in, this weekend was the mission-wide conference with Elder Holland. We were still waiting for two busses, and they decided to have everyone already there shake the hand of these general authorities right then to save some time from doing it later. I shook the hand of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland and looked into his eyes as he searched my soul through mine. I wish I had looked a little longer. The other busses arrived, we took the picture, then filed into the chapel.

President Johnson and his wife had some very good words of encouragement, purpose, and love, there was a musical number that consisted of an arrangement of our mission hymn sung by 6 missionaries throughout the mission, and then Elder Holland spoke. I honestly have no idea how long the conference was. I did not care about time, I was there to listen. I'm still gathering my thoughts and notes on what I learned, so a part two to this conference will have to come later. Sorry, haha!

Afterward, I was able to have a happy reunion with the rest of my group, we all were given a sizeable sack lunch, then the mission parted ways. We went all the way back to Badajoz and got back right at the end of the day. I was very tired all of Sunday, but I'm good now. 

This week will be different because one missionary from each companionship in the district is going to Málaga for residency, leaving Elder Cobbley, Elder Wilson, and I without companions back up north, so we're figuring that out. We also have a zone meeting tomorrow in Seville. This will be fun to figure out!

I have zero family emails at the moment, so I hope all is going well on the home front! 

Elder Jensen :)

3rd Row, 9th in from the right, big smile.


Sister Johnson, President Johnson, and Elder Holland

Sister and President Anderson




Elder Newman (Jacob's MTC companion), Elder VanMoos (Jacob's current companion), and Jacob.





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