Sis. Jensen, March 5, 2014

My dear family,

Can you believe it?? I've been out a month! Woo-hoo! Apparently in mission speak, that means it's my "birthday". I am one year old. It's kind of sad when you think about it because that means I'll die when I'm 18. Anyway, it's actually all of our birthdays! Sister Mortensen has been out eight months and Sister Anderton has been out six months. This month has felt like an eternity and I'm looking forward to the next month not being quite so long.

I feel bad that I haven't told you about our investigators but that's mostly because we haven't had that much activity. This area only opened about 5 months ago so it's a relatively new area. And with it being a pretty religious town, not very many people feel the pressing need to listen to us. But I am proud to report that we had two awesome lessons to non-members last week!

The first was with B. When saw her two weeks ago, the whole lesson was off. We don't know why but the Spirit left and refused to come back. We left that lesson feeling really weird and it took us a while to get the Spirit back after that. We were extremely cautious going back to see her this past week because losing the Spirit as a missionary is never good. But we showed up and she had made us lunch! It was great! She had already been reading the Book of Mormon when Sister Anderton and Sister Mortensen knocked into her so went over what she was reading and talked about the Atonement and prayer. We gave her a Restoration pamphlet to read and we're seeing her on Wednesday to go over that.

The other person we met with is a lady named C. She is married to a less active member of our ward and he asked us to come over and teacher her a little more of our beliefs to her. The sisters before me have met with her a couple times before this and have talked about various things. Saturday night we decided that we needed to establish our purpose and if we felt prompted, give her the Restoration lesson. Thankfully Sister Anderton has a wonderful pair of "bold pants" (editors note:  not sure what this means) and was able to tell her why we were there: to invite her to receive the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. With that out of the way, we taught her about the Restoration. This is probably the first time I have felt the Spirit so strongly in a lesson. It was THERE. The Spirit just filled the room as we bore our testimonies and as Chris, her husband, bore his. It was an incredible experience. I wish every missionary experience I had was like that. I am so grateful for the Holy Ghost. It is essential if we want to do the work Heavenly Father has given us.

Door knocking is going a lot better now. I am learning to give all of my worries to God and trust Him. I am learning to be myself as I talk to people. Nobody likes talking to a stuffy missionary robot. People are more willing to listen to you if you connect with them. We meet all kinds of people when we knock on doors: the good, the bad and the anti. I think I should make a "Door Knocking BINGO" card. You never know who's going to answer the door and apparently it gets more exciting in the summer when people don't feel the need to wear clothes after 4pm. Yay, door knocking.

We've seen a lot of miracles this week. We ran into a lady at the store on Monday who sat by some missionaries on an airplane and stopped us to talk to us. We found some less active members who haven't been seen in months. Everything in my bag fell on the ground which allowed us to get into a building we wouldn't have gotten in if it hadn't. We got a ride to the church one night which allowed us to have enough miles to make it until the end of the month. We taught two wonderful lessons. We had a powerful lesson on a door step. One of our less active members came to church and brought her family. It's the little things every day that show me that God is always looking out for me and my companions. Keep an eye out for those miracles! ;)

I love you all so much! I wouldn't be able to do this without you! Stay warm and appreciate the green! It's still white and brown here haha.

Sister Jensen