Can you take me Jaénough

March 12, 2018

This week wasn't too shabby. It was full, but without us really noticing that it was a full week. We were able to get three solid investigator lessons in. Pretty much the rest of our time was spent making a lot of calls, texts, and Area Book adjustments, and working with less-active members.

On Monday, we had a very tranquil Preparation Day. In the evening we had a FHE with The Goodricks and it was craaazy being in an American family setting again. I essentially had to reteach myself how to speak to kids in English, haha! We talked about the Plan of Salvation, the kids did magic tricks, but we didn't have time for dessert or a game because we had another visit set up with members. It's alright though, because the dessert was strawberry cheesecake. (J doesn't care for fruity desserts. Except apple pie. And apple crisp. And peach cobbler. And blackberry cobbler. And okay maybe it's just strawberries?)

The first lesson of the week was with an investigator named Gabriel. We passed by his place on a whim Tuesday evening (he had been recently dropped for lack of contact), and he was there and anxiously let us in asking what happened to us. He's an older man who, as I discovered during the opening prayer, is evangelical. We taught The Plan of Salvation and I think it went pretty well. Elder Bingham was very good with using scriptures to clarify. I'm not sure how much Gabriel really took away from it, but he seemed open and didn't show any outward signs of doubt or confusion. 

The other two lessons were with José, our older Spaniard friend. On Wednesday, we went over The Restoration again, but mainly focused on the importance of reading the Book of Mormon and prayer. He had read the pamphlet four times and a little bit in The Book of Mormon from the last time we met with him. He still refrained from giving the last prayer, but said he understands a little more now and promised us that he would do it the next Wednesday. We arrived at church a little over half an hour early and José was there! After talking for a bit, Elder Bingham decided to bring him into a classroom and teach another lesson before church started. I was definitely caught off-guard, but it turned out fine and we taught all of The Plan of Salvation. I think José is a lot more comfortable in church now. He even got involved during the class in Priesthood. 

Thursday was weekly planning and member visits with Chari, then Johnny and Jenni. One was a support visit, the other was to introduce the European Area plan to a couple Americans.

Friday was a bit of an adventure. We made a lot of calls and text messages and plans in the morning, then went to Torredonjimeno to visit a member who just moved in that got in contact with the missionaries. She was very happy to see us and she came to church on Sunday. We had a fun ward FHE to end the day and the other elders made probably the best brownies I've had on the mission so far.

On Saturday, we went to Linares to visit our really solid recent convert who is going through a whirlwind of struggle at the moment, but she's handling it amazingly well. When we got back to Jaén, we just had time for studies. We must have entered the twilight zone or something, because in the middle of my language study at 9:00, Elder Bingham got up like he was ready to end the day. I looked at him weird, and he looked at me weird and I said, "Whaaat are you doing?" He said, "It's 10:00." And I said, "No it's 9:00." And then I remembered seeing something about daylight savings on Facebook and thought, "But that doesn't affect Spain until general conference...right?" then we were freaking out for the next 10 minutes and we called the other elders to confirm what time it really was, not entirely confident about what was real anymore. We came to a solid conclusion that it was still 9:00 and went back to studies. I went to bed that night with a newfound understanding of how helpless a lack of basic technology can make us. :P

I still think things are going strong between Elder Bingham and I. Our mediums of working (using internet more as a source of outreach) as of late haven't allowed us to be out and about as often we'd like to be, but we're still definitely doing necessary and productive work, and we hope to be a little more physically involved in our work in the days to come. We've been visiting and working with members in different ways. One thing we've started trying, is reading from the Book of Mormon with members and we've definitely seen some good things come from it so far. It's interesting how something so simple can have such an impact.

The week was still pretty wet and windy, but we had a little more sun scattered here and there. I'll take whatever forms of cold I can get while I can still have it because Spain is HOT. 


Haaave a good one!
Elder Jensen :)


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