Twelfth Week Email

ha..........haha..........hahaha so I'm in Korea. It was pretty strange to walk off of that plane and every single person that I could see was Korean.  I also literally did not sleep a single minute on the long plane ride over so I was exhausted when I got here. We took a long bus ride down and talked with President and Sister Furniss for a few minutes and passed out haha. I was so tired! I'm at the mission home and I'll meet my trainer tomorrow. I love all of you and I still can't take this smile off of my face.

 

Elder Jensen

 

p.s. went to the bath house this morning... enough said

The Cool Kid in the Future

Ryan left yesterday afternoon from San Francisco and made the 13 hour flight to Seol, South Korea. Then the 3-5 hour drive to Daejeon!

We even got to hear his voice and he just couldn't be more excited! He will miss the MTC and the teachers there. But he's excited to learn more about the culture and start testing out his Korean, for which he said he knows nothing.

Eleventh Week Email

3.20.2012

Dear Family & Friends,

So we have a teacher named Brother Peterson and he's a pretty shy guy. Well we found out this week that he has a sense of humour because he loves making fun of us for going to Korea on Monday and being scared out of our minds haha. He loves saying things very fast in middle form with connectors and different verb forms that we have never heard of haha he's the worst. We tell him that all the time so don't worry. But I thought I would start my letter off with that story because everyone in our zone got a reality check the other day during a departing missionary zone council. We talked about what was going to happen as soon as we got there and we recieved our travel itinerary. I'll be leaving the MTC at 5 in the morning and taking off around 8. I'll arrive in San Fransisco around 9 and have a 4 hour layover. After a nice long lay over in San Fransisco I make the very long trip to South Korea. The Native Koreans were telling me that the total flight time to travel between here and South Korea was 24 hours and that's not including our layover in San Fransisco. Once I land in Incheon I'll have a 5-7 hour drive (Depends on traffic which is horrible in Korea). So it's going to be a pretty fun couple of days traveling and doing nothing but sitting in a seat. But even if it was 40 hours of travel I would still be as excited as I am right now.

 

So I'll tell you how my p-day isn't going to be very relaxing. So for the past couple of weeks we have been working on Elder Hem's Family's Temple work (the Elder from Cambodia) and this week we were all suppose to show up at 8 to do a session as a zone. Well we usually go at 7 so we thought that we would just get our laundry done before the Temple so we could have a nice relaxed p-day. So we woke up at 6 to go put our laundry in and went straight back to the room to shower. After a cold shower we ran back over to put our laundry into the dryers and to my suprise my washing machine didn't work. So I threw it into another washing machine and ran over to the cafeteria to get a small breakfast. When I got back guess what happened?... The new washing machine hates me so it decided that it didn't want to work either haha. It would basically fill up with a little water and sound like it was going but all of my detergent on the top was still there. So I basically didn't care and threw it into another washing machine. We ran up to the Temple because we were running a little behind and we barely made it in time. After the session we usually go to the Temple Cafeteria where they have real food but we missed breakfast by 5 minutes so that didn't make me very happy. Especially when it was my last Temple time for the next couple years. So we walked back down to the MTC and went and checked the laundry... I'm kidding it finally worked. We went and got our haircuts and picked up a few things from the book store and now I'm sitting here writing all of you. So that's my last p-day so far and I still have a huge list of things to do. After I get my laundry I'll probably go do a practice pack just to make sure that I come in under weight and there won't be any problems the day I leave. I also have to do all of the small things like shine my shoes and drop my suits off to be dry cleaned so it's going to be pretty busy. Oh and I forgot to mention that I owe my Dad a thankyou (I promise this relates to all of these things). So the second week I was here I lost my debit card up at the Temple and if nobody claims it they shred it that night. So I have just been using my ATM card for money and it was pretty hard considering the ATM here is always broken. So I wrote home to my Dad who handles all of my personal things and I told him that I needed a new one. Well I thought my last debit card fit my personality pretty well, it was a nice picture of a golf course at sunset.... Apparently my Dad didn't think that fit me very well (honestly why would it?) So he took it upon himselft to make the big decision for my backround on my new debit card THAT I HAVE TO CARRY FOR TWO YEARS. It's a beautiful picture of all different kinds of Roses..... So thanks Dad I hope I get beat up for it haha. My District calls me pedals sometimes and they have a good laugh so I'm happy that I can provide them with some humour haha. But that ties in with my day because everytime I have handed it to somebody to buy something they comment on how cute it is.

 

So anyways the language went pretty well this week. I have had a few dreams where I would say some pretty basic Korean lines. TRC wasn't too bad this week and our progressing investigator lessons went great. We have been learning so many new things in the past week and on top of that we have to keep up on our vocabulary. I love having the Native Koreans around because they love helping us. I make all of the Korean Elders give me a hug before they leave their room every night and they have to tell me that they love me haha. We love just filling up our entire room with Elders and talking all night long so I'm sure that I'm going to miss these times.

 

Well It's been a pretty good week though even when everybody is getting a little stressed for the trip. I've been having such a great time with everybody here and I love my District and my Zone. I love all of you back at home and I'm so grateful for all of the support that I have recieved while I have been here. Just a quick reminder I probably wouldn't send anything after Thursday including Dear Elders. We don't get Dear Elders on Saturdays so I probably wouldn't get it in time and it would probably sit in a box in the mailroom for a while. Well next time you get an e-mail from me I'll be the cool kid in the future (16 hours). I love all of you and I hope you all have a great time here and I'll keep all of you in my prayers.

 

Elder Jensen

Pictures!

Are you excited as I am for pictures??

Elder Jensen and his companion:

Tenth Week Email

03.13.2012

Dear Family & Friends,

Well not a whole lot happened this week so this letter might be pretty boring. 2 weeks from today I´ll be laughing pretty hard because I won´t be able to understand a single thing that anyone says to me haha. But I´m so excited and we actually get our travel itinerary this week. We were also chosen to be host this week so that should be pretty fun to get some new missionaries and help them find their rooms and their classrooms. It honestly seems like yesterday when I was dropped off in the Ute mobile and as I was walking away I had the family that was screaming like a bunch of crazy people haha.

   TRC was pretty interesting this week... We had a 40 minute lesson on revelation through the Book of Mormon with a native Korean who is going to BYU right now. So basically a lot of the women in Korea are pretty shy when it comes to talking to men especially two Elder´s who stumble through the Korean Language (except our Native Korean Sister's). Our TRC Volunteer would not say a word! haha I asked if she could share an experince she had while studying the Book of Mormon and she laughed a little and said no. I would ask her some deep questions expecting some longer answers back and she would respond with yes or no haha. One time it didn´t even make sense when she answered with a yes so I went and asked Sister Judd if I said it right and she said that I did. At the end of the lesson we had her say the prayer and she was saying it so softly and Elder Brown and I were sitting there with our arms folded and heads down when it just goes quiet. We couldn´t even hear her say Amen. So that was a TRC that I wrote about in my journal.

   I can´t even begin to tell all of you how much I love the Native Koreans that we have here. There's an Elder Ahn here and he is hilarious. It seems so ridiculous to me that all of them can speak english amazingly. The first time Elder Brown and I saw the Native Korean Sisters I told them my name and asked what their names were and I asked them where they were from. As soon as I said that my name was Elder Jensen in Korean they just screamed haha. Apparently Koreans think that it's the funniest/coolest thing in the world that these two Americans can speak very broken Korean haha. This new District loves teaching us though. I have like 12 pages of Korean sentences that I just write out when I'm learning new 단어 (I hope that Korean word turned out and if it did it means Vocabulary) it sounds like Da-no. Anyways I have a lot of these sentences written out and the other day Elder Jeong came in our room and asked if I had any questions and he literally went through all of them and if there was something that needed to be fixed he would explain it and show me how to fix it. The Elders come and hang out in our room every night though so it's pretty fun.

   We had another chance to meet with Mary this week (김서은) and that was pretty fun. She has been keeping her prayer chart up to date and her Book of Mormon chart. I guess the Provo mission is the highest baptizing mission these days so the Elder's are just going non stop. So when Sister Judd went up to meet with Mary and the Elder's this week I guess they showed up 45 minutes late and they taught a quick lesson about faith and had to run out the door for their next appointment. So I guess Mary wasn't challenged to be baptized this week. They invited her to a baptism on Saturday at noon and she told them no because she had to meet with her missionaries at the MTC haha. I still don't know how I feel about that... I'm happy because she wants to meet with us but at the same time she could have gone to a baptism.

   Well that's my life at the MTC right now. I'm up to about 20 words a day and reviewing as much as I can. I'm trying to write out a lot of lesson plans and keep all of them organized. Our language lessons are getting harder and harder but everyone seems to be doing pretty well in District D. I worked out, played basketball, ran, and ate healthy food for the past couple weeks and I still gained a couple pounds haha so I have no idea what else I can do.They even allow us to go work out on P-days now and I have been doing that so I'm out of Ideas haha. Ohwell I'm that kid gaining weight at fat camp.

   Sorry that this week was a pretty boring week. But I love all of you and I'm so grateful for all of you in my life. I'm so happy to be here at the MTC and I think that I might actually miss it... If I ever have time to think while I'm in Korea. We got some letters from the Older District that left before us and they have gone non stop since they landed I guess. But I still can't wait to get there!

 

젠슨 장로

Ninth Week Email

03.06.2012

Dear Family & Friends

Well this last week seemed to fly by and 3 weeks from this exact moment I will be in Korea so I'm starting to get hit with a reality check. So much has happened in this last week it's hard to choose something to talk about. I'll start with Mary our investigator who comes to TRC every saturday. Well Sister Judd has been meeting with her and the missionaries throughout the week and we have written her Korean letters so we were so excited for her to show up to TRC. So we get to TRC on saturday and Elder Morris and Elder Keetch had a whole lesson prepared on how we can recieve revelation through prayer and they even made a little chart and bought stickers so she could track her praying and reading of the Book of Mormon. Well we got to TRC and she wasn't there. So it was kinda sad to see Elder Morris and Elder Keetch be so prepared but there was nothing they could really do so after a 40 minute lesson in Korean about prayer we headed back to the class. Sister Judd was giving us a lesson on how we could do everything right but at the end of the day it's up to that person and how they use their agency. As soon as she started to teach Korean her phone went off and it was Mary's host mom and it said that they were here so we had a unscheduled field trip back to TRC. Mary is the tiniest most shy person I have ever met but at the same time she had this huge smile on her face and she couldn't stop laughing. We all went into a room and introduced ourselves in Korean and told her where we were from and she told us a little about herself. Than for some reason Sister Judd (I have this strange ability to know when Sister Judd is going to choose me for anything) asked me to tell Mary why I'm serving a mission in Korean. They were simple sentences and I shared a quick story about going to Texas and it was probably the best I have ever felt while being here at the MTC. She even asked a few questions back sometimes and I answered so it was just an awesome experience. After all that Elder Morris and Elder Keetch were able to teach their lesson and they did amazing. As we finished up and she handed back some Korean letters that she wrote for us we headed out of the TRC building. We did not say a word all the way back to class. I think it kind of hit us right then that there are actually people out there that we are going to be teaching. We have been stuck inside this bubble called the MTC for almost 2 months now and we have been so sheltered from the world and to have an experience like that was such a blessing for all of us. Her host Mom told us that she has been loving all of the letters that we write her and she loves reading the Book of Mormon. They read every night as a family and since the Korean Book of Mormon can be pretty hard to understand she reads from the Book of Mormon stories for kids.  Her Mom told us that at first she never really seemed interested in reading every night but now it's to the point where she will go and sit in the front room and if they don't show up on time she says "Mom.... are we going to read now?" haha. Mary was so embarrassed after her Host Mom told us that story. And it sounds like the Missionaries are going to teach her the 3rd lesson and challenge her to be baptized this week so we are all on edge right now waiting for any little piece of news we can get from Sister Judd.

   The entire experience reminded me of a lesson that Sister Judd had taught us at the beginning of the week. We came into class and she wrote in big letters on the white board "In moments of pure happiness miracles happen" and she had a list of random things below that. She told us stories about her mission and how this saying has helped her in her life. I remember sitting in that little TRC room with all 8 of us facing this little Korean girl and her Host Mom and we must have looked so strange. Here's a bunch of Americans, a Canadian (Sister Kwok), and a German who are speaking very broken Korean and have these huge smiles on their faces. That was my first real moment with an Investigator. She went out of her way to come to TRC and bring us our letters and meet us. When Sister Judd asked if she wanted to bring her other friends who are in the student exchange program with her she kind of hesitated. I guess all 9 of them are going to church with their host family's so Sister Judd didn't see why it would be a problem. Mary ended up telling her that she didn't want to share us with anyone else haha.

   Another moment that happened this last week was more on the funny side and it was something that we all needed. It was late after planning one night and we were just EXHAUSTED. I'm tired all of the time now so I'm sorry if I'm all over the place in the e-mail. Well we promised our teachers that we would stay in the class until 9:25 every night. So as I sat there with Elder Brown, Elder Anderson, and Elder Breckwoldt I was just zoning out. Elder Brown is one of the funniest kids I know and he has gotten to the point where the smallest thing can throw him into a laughing attack. Well I was just messing around and I turned off the light in our class room. We sat there for a couple minutes and I was playing with my flashlight when I told them that I was going to wait until somebody looked through the peep hole on the door and I was going to shine my flashlight in their eyes. Apparently this was hilarious because Elder Brown lost it. He has the funniest laugh so as he was laying on the ground laughing I started to laugh a little bit. That small laugh ended up as another laugh attack. Eventually Elder Anderson lost it and Elder Brown is rolling on the ground, I'm face down on the ground with my back pack smashing my head, Elder Anderson is face down on his desk, and Elder Breckwoldt is sitting in his desk thinking how stupid we are. It was exactly like the times where I would sit in the Warnick's living room with Brock and Chandler and we would just laugh because we were so tired from a full day of golf. One person would make the other person laugh and that would make the other person laugh and it was just an on going cylce of torture. It made me how much I love it here and how much I love being with my District for 16 straight hours a day.

   Other than all of the craziness it has been just an awesome week. Our Native Koreans who leave with us in 3 weeks got in yesterday. We attempted to go find them last night but they were already sound asleep so I can't wait to meet them today. I loved the last district of Natives and I can't wait to spend the next 3 weeks with this District.

   Well that's all of my happy stories for the week and I hope everything is going just as great for all of you back home. I'm really loving the language and we have had a few good days so we have been studying outside now. I'm up to about 20 new words a day now and I try to review all of them throughout the week. My District is amazing at Korean and I'm so happy I'm able to have the oppurtinity to meet with all of them one on one every week and just get to know them a little more and help them with anything. I'll send home my SD card this week to Tawns so hopefully all of you can see some pictures. I love all of you and I'm so grateful for all of you.

 

Elder Jensen

Eighth Week Email

02.28.2012

Dear Family & Friends,

So time seems to be flying by here at the MTC. Today was such an awesome experience at the Temple. We got our new district in and in the new district there is an Elder named Elder Hem. He is from Cambodia and his english is a little broken but he can understand a lot. Well since he has never left Cambodia in his life he has never been to a Temple. So our zone got permission to go to a later Temple Time so that we could go through with him. Seeing someone go through for their first time is such an amazing experience. It brought up a lot of memories of how I felt when I went through my first time. It still amazes me that this 19 year old Elder from Cambodia has the exact same beliefs and knowledge of the gospel as I do. It reminds me of how great missionary work is and how privelaged I am to be here right now. I honestly can't thank everyone back home for everything that you did for me to make all of this possible. And as we left the Temple after our amazing Temple breakfast we walked outside and that's where Elder Hem saw his first snow storm. He saw some snow fall last night but right now it's snowing pretty hard. I love seeing all of our Arizona kids and Elder Hem just be so amazed at the fact that it's snowing. We all laugh at them but I couldn't imagine the feeling of seeing something so strange and out of the ordinary.... Especially with less than a month left on my stay at the MTC.

   So a long with our new District we got some more roommates. Elder Breckwoldt moved into our room last Tuesday to be Elder Anderson's companion and the next day we got Elder Rice (he's such a teddy bear and I make him tell me that he loves me everynight) and Elder Dyer who is our little country boy and we love him. He sings with his family members in a band called Dyer Highway and they actually have some albums on itunes. The other day when Elder Anderson and I were acting so put out because we had a rough day (we acted that way just to scare the new Elders) I had Elder Dyer sing to me haha. Everytime we have one of those days Elder Anderson and I go buy some Sangria (it's a mexican beverage and I can't explain the taste) and we go back to our room and just yell random things. Well he ended up singing a remix of one of my favorite country songs and he called it Sangria lullabies. I won't tell you the name of the real song but I can say it's by Brad Paisley. But he made up his own lyrics to make it a lot more happy haha. He'll just be sitting in his bed and he'll start singing a song about spreading the gospel in Korea. I love those two Elder's and we have a great time just hanging out in our room everynight.

   Well the Korean is coming a long and the "investigator" lessons are getting a little rough because they are getting longer and more conversational but Elder Brown and I are doing pretty good. So some cool news is that we have TRC every saturday and it's where members come in and we teach them a lesson in Korean and they help us out with a lot. Well the cool thing about this is that there is a 15 year old girl who goes by the name of Mary in america. She's attending Timpview on a student exchange program and she actually ended up coming to TRC last saturday. I guess she has been meeting with missionaries but she has been struggling with the language barrier. So the Missionaries actually told her about what happens at the MTC every saturday and her host Mom brought her down. So we found this out as soon as we got to TRC and Sister Judd (our teacher) actually has all of her information and she is planning on meeting with them everytime they have the missionaries over. We all wrote her a quick letter last saturday in Korean and it sounds like she'll be back for this TRC. So basically our entire district is coming together on this one to be her 9 missionaries and she is our first investigator! Another great thing that happened at TRC was that Brother Ball stopped by and had Elder Brown and I teach him the first lesson for 40 minutes all in Korean. We miss him a lot but he stopped by twice this week basically just to say hi.

   Well here's the Korean lesson this week. We have been covering indirect questions this week to really start asking questions to make our Investigators actually think and have to respond.

so here's the sentence:

 Sister Kim have you ever wondered how Jesus Christ Atoned for our Sins?  

Well basically it goes:     

Kim Sister Jesus Chirst Our SinsFor (connected) how Atonedpasttense (connected) wonderedhaveyouever (connected)  

 And that sounds like:   

 Kim-cha-meh-neem-kay-so-nun  Yeh-soo-ku-ree-su-do-kay-so Oo-ree-eh Sok-chwae-rur-we-heh-so Oh-toh-kay Sok-chwae-ha-shyot-nun-jee Coom-coom-heh-bo-sheen-jo-kee Eet-sum-nee-kah 

And I have to honorify a lot in that sentence because I'm talking to someone else.

   Well I love learning Korean and now that we have the sentence structures covered it's all about getting vocab. Right now my goal is 15 a day and I review those 15 words 5 days later just to make sure. So I'm constantly working with about 30 words a day. Our second Councilor in our branch presidency is a genious. His name is Brother Stoddard and he has every scripture in the Book of Mormon and New Testament memorized. He has a system worked out where you memorize a scripture one day and review it the day after. Than you review it on the 7th,14th, and 28th day and somehow that makes you retain knowledge better. There's just so much going through my head right now I'm starting to get a headache haha.

   Another cool thing that happened this week is that we passed our halfway mark last week or the week before so we have leadership changes. Elder Brown has been the Senior companion because they do it alphebitcally (or however you spell that) so I became the Senior Companion this week. But the other thing they do is switch District Leaders so I still can't get that memory out of my head of Brother Stoddard coming through the door and looking right in my eyes. So long story short now I'm the new District Leader of District D and that means that I have to get the mail and attend three meetings throughout the week. It also means that I have to take care of any issues within the district and I conduct all of our district meetings and district study times.

   I hope everyone at home know how much I love it here and how excited I am that in 4 weeks from today I'll be in Korea. I love all of you so much and I'm so thankful for everyone back home and all that you do for me and have done for me. An-yang-heh-kah-se-yo (I can spell it a lot easier in Korean than in english)

 

Jensen Chang-no

Seventh Week Email

02.21.2012


Hey Tawns

  Well another spiritual growth week at the MTC. I had told you about
everyone that was heading out but one that we hadn't planned for was
Elder Gibbons (My roommate from California). I had told you in recent
e-mails that Elder Gibbons was probably one of the best kids I know.
Well with him going home last thursday In my eyes he seems even
greater now. He had some things he needed to work out and he took the
right steps to get it done. Both of our Teachers were amazing through
all of it and they actually gave him their number's. So we have had an
update on how he's doing and it looks like he can come back maybe
before the year is done so if you could give him a shout out through
my facebook every once in a while I'm sure he would appreaciate it.
Dealing with that was pretty rough on Elder Anderson. Elder Anderson
is one of the funniest kids I know but he can cover a very broad range
of emotions very quickly so our room has done everything that we could
for him. So if everyone could keep him in your prayers for now that
would be really appreciated. Elder Anderson is getting better though
and our district acts like our family whenever we have rough times we
use our sense of humour to get by. So after Elder Anderson just paired
up with me and Elder Brown. he was reassigned to Elder Breckwoldt on
Sunday so Elder Breckwoldt is moving in to our room tonight. And we're
also getting a new district tomorrow. That also means that we're
getting two new missionaries in our room tomorrow so that should be
fun except for the fact that we have to give up some closet and drawer
space haha.
  So funny moment on the week. We have literally lost our minds here
and we're only half way through. Everyone made a fake iphone on a note
card and everyone pretends like they text eachother and that they
check facebook. So the other night we crawl into bed after everyone
came into our room and we had a good time. Elder Brown always passes
out so fast and never wakes up but Elder Anderson and I have a hard
time getting to sleep. So after about 5 minutes of dead silence I hear
him make the vibrate sound and he literally got out of bed ran over
grabbed his phone and pretended like he was texting. He pretended for
about 2 minutes straight and when he text he says everything out loud.
So he finishes up and he puts his phone down and after another minute
of silence I just lose it. We both ended up laughing for about 5
minutes and waking Elder Brown up. So if anybody is worried about my
sanity trust me it's completely gone haha.
  I'm still loving it here though and it's actually starting to
settle in that I will be leaving here in 6 weeks. A lot of the Asian
missions left today so after our planning session last night there
were a lot of goodbyes and I think it settled in with everyone that in
6 weeks I won't be able to understand a single thing anybody says to
me haha. I'm getting a little jittery about it though and days seem to
be going by slower and slower. The other day we walked out of TALL lab
which is a computer program to help us learn Korean. Well since it's
the MTC they always have people out on the sidewalks or in the
courtyards practicing street contacting so we get stopped by a trio of
sisters who were going to argentina. Well apparently we all looked
terrible to the point where they called us out a little bit on how
days can be rough but they knew we were here for a reason. So after we
all felt bad about looking like that we set a goal to try to say hello
to as many people as possible with a smile on our face for this week
and we're going to see how we feel at the end of the week. That's a
big thing for Korea though with the members there. Apparently if my
companion and I have had a rough day and we're walking home with our
heads down and a member see's us. The member will call our Mission
President and tell him that we're not doing our part on having a good
attitude and that he needs to talk to us. I guess that happens all the
time and the Mission President's in Korea take it very seriously now.
  Well we have reviewed all of the sentence structures that we will
use in Korea now and now it's all about getting vocabulary to plug
into those sentence structures. Also we have to memorize so many
sentence markers because that's how they can understand what you're
talking about in Korean. And as of right now the only thing all of us
can talk about is only church related and it's in high form. I can't
even tell people what I want to order for food or even ask where the
bathroom is at (I think I'm going to go look that up right now).
Sister Judd has challenged us to learn a ridiculous amount of vocab a
week and we reached it last week as a class so of course she raised
the bar. I carry these little flipbooks they sell at the bookstore
with me everywhere. One of our goals is to study them while we're
standing in the lunch line and also to study them while we're walking.
I think my brain is starting to get use to taking this much in so my
headaches aren't as bad at the end of the day. Another new thing this
week was that we can't have notes in our lessons anymore which isn't
too bad because I was only writing simple sentences out in english and
forming them in my head in my lessons. I we God's Love feelcanthat
(they are all combined in one word) know. That's how I would say that
I know that we can feel God's Love. (Cho-nun Oo-ree-ga Ha-na-nee-meh
Sa-rang-urr Nu-keer-soo-eet-da-nun-go-sur Al-go-eet-sum-nee-dah) that
last dah means that it's the end of the sentence so they don't use any
periods and if it was a question it would end in Kah and the sentence
markers would change a little bit. So there's a quick Korean lesson
for you and it is constantly running through my head these days.
  Well I love all of you and I'm so grateful for this oppurtinity to
be here and I'm going to keep on giving it everything I have.

Elder Jensen

P.S. my second councilor of my Branch Presidency is Ken Jennings Jr.
a.k.a. father of Ken Jennings the third who is the Jeopardy champion.
And his son contributes a lot of his knowledge to growing up in Korea
when his parent's were mission president's in Busan. They didn't have
a TV and he wouldn't go out a lot so he would just study at home a
lot. They know everything about everything. I know people say that a
lot but we literally got a history lesson on red velvet cake the other
day when he saw some of our cupcakes. fun fact!

Sixth Week Email

02.14.2012


Dear Family & Friends,


Well I'm not going to lie Sunday and Monday were pretty rough. But
not in a way that made me miss home. It was more rough in a way of
spiritual growth. Whenever I think about growth now I compare it to
when I was actually growing and sometimes how I had growing pains. So
Sunday was rough because we heard a talk from David A. Bednar that he
gave on Christmas here at the MTC. I loved the talk and I really
encourage anyone to listen to it. He talked about Christlike Character
and obtaining Christlike Attributes. I have never had a talk just get
to me in that way. Something I will always remember is instead of
turning inward and thinking about my self in my times of hardship I
can do the Christlike thing and turn outwards. Through turning
outwards and helping people that are going through the same thing we
can truly be happy and not become the natural man. He also talked
about having a testimony was not enough. It's being converted to that
testimony that will help all of us endure to the end. After a few
impersonations of the cookie monster which he compared to the natural
man I lost it. Seeing an Apostle do a pretty good impersonation of the
cookie monster and call something stupid I couldn't believe what I was
hearing. After the talk was over 2,000 missionaries stood up basically
in silence and walked back to the dorms. Our entire room dressed in
complete silince and I just sat and reflected at what I wanted to do.
   After all of that reflecting time it was time to say goodbye to
the older district. I loved our older district and it was pretty sad
to see all of them go. I had told you about staying in a room with
Elder Hunter and Elder Hunt when I was sick but another Elder that we
got really close with was Elder Coates. Elder Coates seemed like the
manliest Elder here. He was so layed back and made everyone felt
included and it helped out a lot that he had a New Zealand accent and
that he grew up there and moved to Idaho a year ago.... Well the older
district had Brother Ball (my teacher who is from New Zealand) when
they first got here but we ended up getting him. Well anyways Elder
Coates knocks on our door and comes into our classroom and tells us
that he has something to tell us. He tells us that he wants to
practice his American accent and he says "Hello my name is Pete Coates
and I have never been to New Zealand." After we laughed at the perfect
American accent we had an awkward silince. Than he followed that up
with "Seriously I'm from Idaho and I have never left the Country."
THEY LIED TO US FOR 5 WEEKS! Apparently they came up with this plan
when they had Brother Ball and Elder Coates would just ask him
questions about his life and use it in his story. He kept an accent
for 5 weeks straight! I felt like I didn't even know the kid. On top
of not knowing this Elder Coates pretty much we had to say goodbye on
Sunday night. We had to write in journals for everyone in the older
district and for the native Koreans who left and it was pretty sad to
see them go. And to follow all of that up Brother Ball told us
yesterday (Monday) that he was taking an internship with his professor
to consult for a huge company in Salt Lake and that Saturday would be
his last day. We were all heart broken yesterday but at the same time
we all knew what they were going out to do and that it would be the
best thing for them.
  So we still have one member of the older district Elder Hunt who
leaves this next monday to Canada and it's going to be another sad
weekend. So as we were walking to lunch we walk through the doors and
I tell my district if anyone else tells me they are leaving today I'm
going to lose it. LITERALLY right then I hear my name. I turn around
to see Sister Stanford who is going to France. I went to Highschool
with her and we have talked a few times since I have been here. She
tells me that she was leaving today and my face just went blank. I
hurry and put a smile on and told her good luck and that she's very
lucky to be leaving. I never heard the end of that from my district.
Sorry if this is getting hard to read but I'm still in disbelief about
all of it haha.
  So I guess on a happy note I'll tell you about the Korean mess ups
on the week. So I'm in TRC and we are teaching members about recieving
revelation through prayer. Well we have a native Sister Korean and a
Korean Brother from west valley. So we're trying to speak Korean the
entire time and this Brother only speaks english while he is doing his
homework. After he tells us that the New York Mission was the best
mission ever I try to force out the line that I lived in New york for
3 months while laughing. So I start with "chonun new york shee..... I
lived in new york for 3 months haha" Elder Brown lost it at that
point. And on top of all of that the room was ridiculously hot so
Elder Brown border line yells that it is so hot in there he can't even
think of what to say haha.
  Another mess up was the Trio of Elder Morris, Elder Keetch, and
Elder Breckwoldt. They're giving a lesson on the commandments and they
have our "investigator" read the ten commandments out of the Bible.
Well it took them 20 minutes to read out of the wrong book in the
Bible. Turns out they were reading Numbers 20 where it talks about
Miriam dying and water coming from the rock and the "investigator"
could not stop giggling. So after that mix up they talk to her about
the word of wisdom and Elder Keetch starts to list off a bunch of
stuff like Tobacco, Alcohol, and Drugs he goes to tell her that we do
not partake of them. Well turns out the word to partake and the word
to smoke are very similiar. So the "investigator" was told that she
had to smoke all of those things. She asked them if we were suppose to
smoke all of those things and they thought that se was telling them
that she did smoke and that it didn't affect her health. So Elder
Morris thought we can't really come back at that so he says Nay (yes)
and that God commanded us to smoke these things. So she asked them if
they all smoked and they just said yes again. After that they just
continued with the Lesson haha.
Here's some other Lines for all of you
The plan of Salvation is for every deer.
Through Prayer God eats us.
I have a boyfriend who is not LDS (that was said by and Elder)
  I just love the Language and hearing all of these great stories
every day. We have been working on using longer compound sentences and
another project we have been working on is writing our conversion
story. I have spent three hours on mine and I'm only a page in haha.
It's great to see everyone else around me pick up the Language and it
really strengthens my testimony that the gift of tongues is real. Sure
we have had our rough spots and I know we're not going to be able to
understand a single thing once we get to Korea but I know that we have
all learned so much. Well I love all of you and I hope all of you have
a great Valentine's day. All of us Elder's will be crying ourselves to
sleep tonigh with some ice cream... haha we really joke about things
we shouldn't joke about in our district haha.

Elder Jensen

p.s. I speak Isla and Kairie as my Valentine's! No Dear John's from
those two. They have to love me haha.