Bada-Home Sweet Home

November 6, 2017

There was not much time spent in my area or with my companion this week. Again.

We spent Monday evening and all of Tuesday in Seville and in busses. When we arrived in Seville, we still had some time left in our preparation day, so we went to the big cathedral there. It was pretty cool. 

Temples are a whole lot prettier though. 

Zone conference was really cool; almost the whole conference was in English which felt pretty weird. Nice, but weird. I learned that 6 of the 16 missionaries in my [MTC] group (me included) are currently in the tri-zone, so that was a fun little reunion. 

Elder Bennasar of the Seventy presided. Yesterday, I learned that he is a chairman for the Paris temple committee, and he has his own Mormon Message about how he did intense rock climbs and stuff. He shared a cool message about 1 Nephi 17:7 and revelation. There were essentially three things he shared.

1. Act on the first prompting to receive more.
2. Often times, God will ask us to leave our comfort zone to encourage our progression or to help us receive guidance with more clarity. (Rise up from resting in the land Bountiful and go into the mountain)
3. Don't expect to receive divine instruction for complex naval architecture without first doing the basic getting up and going to the mountain.

Wednesday didn't have too much going on. The main part of the day was helping Augustín (first member in Badajoz who feeds us every week) with his basement-backyard-bottom floor-type-part of his house. He's redoing the whole thing, so he had us hammer off tile, plaster, and brick on/in the wall and clear out an already well-established pile of debris in the middle of one room. He only had three masks (there were four of us) and two pairs of gloves, so I ended up being the designated wheelbarrow man with one glove and no mask. So I spent about an hour or so walking back and forth between a room filled with billowing clouds of crud from the demolition going on and a debris pile behind his property (my guess: probably not the most legal thing) with a rusty wheelbarrow that was falling apart as I used it. I got to work out my body AND lungs. We had studies and a correlation meeting that evening, so that was our day.

Servicio

We had our piso check Thursday morning (passed) and weekly planning. After lunch, I had to drop off Elder Van Moos at the bus station because he had to go back to Málaga for residency again, so I began my my three day adventure in a trio with the other elders of Badajoz. Here is where I insert the mission president letter quote:

"With Elder Cobbley and Elder Recio, I was able to visit Fátima's parents and share a little message on Friday. We were hoping to share the Plan of Salvation with them, but the conversation led to essentially our lives on the earth and the challenges we face. We showed "The Will of God" where Elder Christofferson shares the story of the gardener and the current bush and afterward, they said that was exactly what they needed to hear (they're going through a rougher patch with their store) and we told them about the self-reliance course currently going on in the branch. They were pretty interested, but I don't know if they've been able to go yet. That was a positive experience. We also helped one of their investigators organize her shop. On Saturday, we had to go to my piso in the morning because a man from the insurance company was coming to take a look at our shower (there's been some leakage issues over the past few weeks that are getting taken care of slowly, but surely) and I was able to handle that pretty well. I kind of surprised myself with how much I understood, but I wasn't able to say quite everything I wanted to. Still working on that one. That evening we had a noche de hogar with a member family and Fátima, a non-member, and a less-active member all showed up. It was a good turnout, and we had a quality discussion on faith. Fátima had a couple comments that really helped answer a question that the less-active member had about why bad things still happen to good, obedient people. I was speaking in Spanish almost always while I was in the trio, and now I'm definitely a little more comfortable with my conversational Spanish; however, it was nice to have Elder Van Moos back as my companion."

Sunday was pretty full. After church, we ate lunch, then Elder Van Moos had to deal with reporting, then we went to a branch council meeting, followed by a noche misional and then we ended the night with writing President Andersen. Fasting always makes the day seem to go by faster. Funny, you would think the opposite would occur.

Anyway, that brings us to today. It wasn't the greatest day since we had to wait in our piso until a little after 12 for an insurance guy to come and do a 10 minute little touch-up on our shower. I got a haircut. I figured out the perfect wording for the guy to make it so finally the style wasn't ridiculously European, my hair is now a little more uniform and will grow out normal. I had to do my own little trimmings here and there over the past few weeks because of the last one I got and how uneven and trendy it was :P That's about all the notable stuff that happened today.

I'll be sending some pictures of zone conference and such. Have a good week, family and friends!

Elder Jensen :)