I'll Be Here for Christmas

December 06, 2018

I'll Be Here for Christmas

Here we are again! Another week come and gone. For those of you keeping track at home, you should be expecting about 12 or 13 more of these letters from yours truly. Kind of a weird thought...

We were able to keep ourselves occupied for the most part. Monday and Tuesday were a little slow, but things picked up shortly after starting with Wednesday. We woke up at 5:30 to catch the 6:45 bus to Bilbao so we could have our interviews with President Galli and our district meeting since we were all up there together. I thoroughly enjoyed both the interview and the meeting. From there, Elder Benedict and I parted ways to have exchanges with the zone leaders because we're out in the middle of nowhere and they hardly know who we are. I teamed up with Elder Eiguren (he'll be playing at Boise State as TE this coming season, so be on the lookout) and bussed back to Burgos to work for the evening. We taught English class, talked to some people in the street, Philippe passed his baptismal interview, it was a good time.

Unfortunately, Elder Eiguren left his bag on one of the city buses so we spent the following morning going all around town figuring out where to recover items lost on city buses. We finally located the bus barn way out in the industrial part of town (we had already called and confirmed that his bag was there) and retrieved the bag from a couple cranky, overly-suspicious Spaniards that were--from the looks of it--on the way out for mediodía. It was like, a 1-minute process. Chill, Antonio. We're not here to steal anything. Anyway, nothing was stolen because he only had a Book of Mormon, a study journal, and a copy of The Miracle of Forgiveness in English in there. That afternoon he bussed on over to Vitoria to have an exchange there, and I ended up waiting at the station for a little under two hours as Elder Benedict traveled back from Bilbao. That evening we had a plan fail on us, and...another plan fail on us. No probs. At least we had any plans set at all.

Working hard at the food drive.

Friday was a fun one. We volunteered to help out with La Gran Recogida de Alimentos (food drive). The two of us stood in the entry vestibule of a Mercadona and passed out fliers and accepted/organized donations. We were signed up to work from 9-12, but when our replacements were supposed to come, only one showed up. We stayed and kept helping out until 2:15 because (1) we were hungry and (2) a supervisor for the event came and stayed so we could head out. I explained the Word of Wisdom like three times that day because everyone was imploring me to grab a cup of coffee to warm up. It was a fun experience, though. It was nice to see all types of people from all backgrounds donating everything from a small bag of sugar, to a shopping cart full of preserved food. Alejandra called us that morning to set up a visit for the evening which was completely out of the blue. We hadn't been able to meet with Alejandra at all for the past two weeks. We taught a third lesson with her and invited her to be baptized on the 22nd of December and she gladly accepted. Hopefully we can meet with her a lot more and get everything squared away to get her prepared for that date. She's always talking about her baptism and whatnot, so it really is just a matter of when we can teach her everything. At the end of the day, we helped a member set up the baptismal font. Philippe was also there getting his white clothes prepared.

We managed to keep Saturday pretty full. We had weekly planning, made baptismal programs for Philippe, filled up the baptismal font, and had the baptismal service. Everything went well. The entire thing was pretty much run by members. Talks, testimonies, musical number, the baptism, everything except for the opening prayer carried out by an Elder Jensen. Philippe will make a very nice addition to the branch. After the baptism, we drained the font and put it away...This place needs a chapel.

Philippe's Baptism

We had a quality Fast Sunday. After church, a man came into our chapel to pray. His name is Boris and he came here from The Ivory Coast. He is really nice and had met with the last companionship of elders here, but lost contact. Today he decided that he would turn some things around and start going to church, so he did. He was caught up in helping a friend that morning so, as I already mentioned, he showed up after the meetings and during choir practice. Elder Hetzel started getting to know him, as did we, and set up a lesson in Elder Hetzel's home that evening. He accepted and Elder Benedict and I met up with him and walked him to the apartment. He has a pretty crazy story about how he arrived Spain, but he acknowledged that he definitely was receiving some unseen help to get him where he needed to go. We felt that we should teach him the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so we did. He happily accepted a baptismal date for the 22nd as well. As we discussed some of his questions we ended up teaching the Word of Wisdom and he seemed fine by it, albeit a little surprised at first. We ended the day meeting with Rubén, reading the Book of Mormon with him.

So yeah! Pretty occupied. Transfers are next Tuesday which will put an end to this awkward 7-week transfer. Having a second companion thrown into the mix for the second time has really thrown me off and I really have no solid concept of time anymore. Also, I guess there's a chance that I'll be heading out, making Burgos a one-and-done, but nothing is certain as far as I know. Only time will tell.

Keep an eye on that inbox next Monday; there should be a nice little spiritual thought attached to the end of the next email I send! ;)

I'm glad to be out here, and I'm happy to see tangible "progress" in this area. It's a good break from the usual. This is a good cause and I hope I can be anxiously engaged in it until the nametag comes off the lapel.

Have a good week!

Elder Jensen :)

P.S.

A member painted these. After some form of stroke (I believe) a while back, he has limited use of his right hand, a major limp, a partially forgotten vocabulary, and has trouble getting out little more than brief phrases, and yet he painted these. To me, he has been a fine example of how you can still be funny, lighthearted, and talented even when you're broken. Just thought I'd throw that in there.