In the words of that age-old hymn...

December 18, 2017

It's that wonderful feeling,

Feel the love in the room 

From the floor to the ceiling,

It's that time of year,

Christmas time is here.

Hey!

We had interviews with President Andersen on Tuesday and our Christmas Conference on Thursday. The rest was filled with various meetings with members and...honestly I don't really know what else happened with the time.

We are making progress with Liliana! We have been teaching her the commandments and she's been very open to accepting all of them. We haven't had contact with Iván again. A less-active member named Adolfo that we visit every week came to church with his non-member family this week and they had a great experience! We also picked up a new investigator named Jhon. We're still getting to know him and gauge where he's at in regards to interest.

The Christmas Conference was awesome. We drove down to Murcia (#carbenefits) and the conference started with a two-ish hour long talent show! It was MC'd by two elders dressed as "two of the 3 magi". I will now provide a list of the talents and I won't explain too many right now. If you'd like further explanation of some, let me know:

Granada: Super Powers
Us* (Jacob told us he sang Joy to the World while his companion played drums and each verse was in a different musical style, like original, night club, beat box, and then harmonies together)
Jay Leno: The District Follow-Up*
Almeria District Caroling
Hna Lake y Dillon Silent Night
Kebab Eating Competition*
8 Vasos a Día
Elder Anderson's Grown Up Christmas List 
White Pants (Darrington, Holowell)*
Hna McKeon Piano
Jaén Elder Libre (Newman, Bingham, Harris)
Murcia Elders 3 Kings Meat Slap*
Cartagena Sisters Other Arms Get Ready for the Day Vlog
Elder Holowell ate a banana, kiwi, tomato, zucchini, crud load of spinach, and a bell pepper in two minutes
APs y SuSHEs Nordic Invasion*
Elder Salazar Letra (rap)
Elder Tabilo y Biegel MAGIC
Hna Malcolm y Smith Away in a Manger
(Talents with an asterisk are ones I will explain next week)

After the talent show, we walked over to a big plaza and sang a couple hymns as half of the Spain Málaga Mission. We came back and had a quick zone meeting, then I received SIX packages of varying sizes. That was a pleasant surprise. We had a very powerful conference on charity. Just Sister Andersen and President Andersen spoke. After the conference, a member made a huuuge pan of paella that fed all of us well. After all was said and done, we were giving a ride to a couple elders from Alicante and were driving for about half an hour when we received a call from the Murcia zone leaders telling us that Elder Hansen left his bag in the chapel. Sooo we drove alll the way back, then to Alicante, and then we got home at the very end of the day.

I'm sorry, this email is going everywhere. Today, I decided that since my family gets to have an early Christmas, I get to have an early Christmas! So I opened my packages and had a little fun with taking pictures and what not. I'm not going to lie, I almost teared up with joy when I saw how many quality pens I received. I got myself a coat today as well! Merry Early Christmas to me!

Next week's email will be much better, I promise :P

Elder Jensen :)

Merry Christmas,

Merry Christmas,

Merry Christmas, 

and happy holidays!

Packages from Brandon's parents and his Aunt Debbie

He got our package from Amazon Spain: Star Wars tee, Hot Tamales (his fave), Pilot Precise 12 pk pens, and the green tie adorning the little tree in the top picture. Oh, and the tree. :) We are also sending him a photo album filled with pics from home. Humble Merry Christmas, but he's happy, and we're grateful.