Seventy-Third Week Email

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   Hey there everybody! So Gwangju... It's been a fun one so far. I think I realized this week at how comfortable I was in Jeonju haha. But the work is progressing right so what more could I ask for. Our bishop did stand up last Sunday and announce a pretty great program and everybody can feel the giant push for missionary work. I couldn't be more happy to be serving a mission right now. This last week was pretty interesting though. We had a mission tour for President and Sister Furniss leaving. They are officially on a plane right now and we have President Shin in the office right now. I can't wait to see President Shin this thursday for his welcoming tour. He was so amazing at the MTC and I can't wait to see what will happen with the mission.

   But I do have to admit it was pretty hard to say goodbye to President and Sister Furniss. They both have been so amazing the entire time since I have been here. President has always been such a great example of a Priesthood holder for me and he had to leave all of us with advice on how to do better like always. I think the one thing I will always remember about President and Sister Furniss was their love. Interviews with President were the best things. We would get to a point where President would just call it straight up. I grew up being lectured and told what I need to do by my dad and those interviews were just like that. And being sick I would always love being taken care of by my mother, grandma, or sister and since they can't be here in Korea the next best thing is Sister Furniss. I'm just excited that I will always be able to remember them and they were just another blessing that I received because of my mission.

  Well life is great here and I'm going to have a great week. I hope all of you have a great week as well.

Elder Jensen

Seventy-Second Week Email

Hello!

   Well today is transfer call day but as usual I still haven't received my call and everybody else has. But other than that my day has been great haha. It has been a pretty nice week just being able to meet with all of our investigators and our member's.

  But I do want to say happy father's day to anybody reading this. As usual I got an e-mail from Tawns telling me they were sitting around talking about the torture they put me through as a small innocent child. Leaving me behind on snowmobile trips because the Puma (very small snowmobile) couldn't go as fast as their brand new ski-doo's. I have been thinking about what I wanted to say today in this e-mail and all I could think about were those kind of stories I experienced growing up haha. That's all I could tell some of our member's about last night as we were visiting them. We were sharing a message about love and I was telling the children that they need to learn from their parents and I went to go share experiences and everybody was laughing at all of the stories about how our Dad taught us lessons haha. And Brother Kim thanked me for sharing some new techniques for raising his children that he wanted to give a try. And as he said that his children looked terrified and I apologized to them for spreading that kind of torture haha. But as I was showing them my family picture book and telling them about all these stories I couldn't imagine growing up any other way. I tell everybody that I'm a person who shares experiences and I do that because everything I have experienced growing up was just so great. The trust I have in my Dad is a little different. As I think about how he taught me to swim by telling me to jump off the diving board and he would catch me.... he didn't. Most people would say that I couldn't trust him but I do have the trust that whatever torture he is about to put me through and no matter how much he's going to laugh he really has only one purpose in teaching me in a way that I will never forget. Here I am years and years later telling these stories to these Korean people and it always makes for such a great time. These are the kind of memories I never want to forget and I hope I can continue to share with so many people on my mission. 

   I was reminded of another couple stories at church yesterday. Every week we have a youth give a talk and as he was coming down from the stand to sit with his family in front of us, he sat down and told his mom thanks for writing the talk and everybody around us started to chuckle. I remember when I was starting to go back out to our Providence ward and I was given the same exact assignment. Being on a mission has made me realize so many of my weaknesses and one of those has been my knowledge in the gospel. So there I was as a 14 year old with an assignment to give a talk on agency. I was completely lost, and had no idea where to even begin. My Dad recognized that and he had a talk ready for me by church the next day. My Dad has always been supportive with any decision that I have made especially as I have chosen to serve a mission and continue in that direction. Especially when I got back from Texas the first time and I went in to work that monday and asked if we could talk. We sat down and I told him that I needed to give my two week notice and he was very professional and said okay and said now that was done he told me that he was now asking as a father and wanted to know what was going on. And I told him everything that was going on and how I wanted to move to Salt Lake to prepare for my mission and there wasn't a second of delay. It was immediate support and that kind of support has always provided so much guidance in my life. It's hard to even put into words the things I have learned from my Dad but I hope if any of you get anything out of this is that my Dad's children love him. And who knows where we would be without those kind of lessons we learned from him growing up. Sure we still put the fun in dysfunctional but I know that if I am ever in trouble that my Dad will be there to help me. That kind of knowledge just makes every big decision I make in my life so much easier and I'm so grateful for that.

   Have a great Father's day and I love all of you. I hope you have a great week and I hope all of you know that I will have a great week. And don't worry I still haven't gotten my transfer call yet.

Elder Jensen

Seventy-First Week Email

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   Well I felt like I was sitting in this seat e-mailing all of you yesterday. I don't think I like how fast that went but we did see so many great things this past week. Next monday we get our transfer calls and it felt like a blink of an eye so I'm not too happy about that. I had my last split of the transfer with Elder Lyons who lives in my house. I have still not had just a normal day on a split for my entire mission. But we just walked out the door and said that we were going to find somebody and the second person I talked to took us to his work and we talked for an hour and it was so much fun. He's a university student and he wants to go to america to become a cop so he needs to study and practice english a lot. I have taught so much english on my mission and it really makes me understand that I do not know anything about english haha. I just speak english and throw out every grammer rule when I speak. I'm sure all of you could notice in my weekly letters. The nice thing is that most Korean people just want to practice talking because they never have the oppurtunity in school. In the Korean Culture when kids go to school they are expected to sit there and listen to everything the teacher says and they aren't encouraged to asked questions very much so that has always made it interesting while we have taught people. But after a few lessons we are able to build a pretty good relationship and when we give them the oppurtunities to ask questions it just makes the lesson so much better. And this week for the new missionary training program Elder Hughes has the lead on all lessons and planning sessions so he's been having a pretty good time learning how to lead lessons.

   We weren't able to meet Sister Go this last week between schedules and her trips out into the country side to visit her mom. And I realized a little more how much I love this ward. I had talked to Sister Go on Saturday night and she was just so sad. I had no idea what was going on and we aren't allowed to council anybody about problems like that and she was really sad that we couldn't meet as well. And we had planned on talking about that problem in our missionary coordination meeting and filled out one of our records about having one of the member's that she had built a relationship call her and see if she could help with anything or invite them over to dinner. But once sacrament meeting closed our old bishops wife came up and asked me where Sister Go was and I explained a little bit about how her mom needs a lot of help and our member Sister Kim said that she had the thought that she needed to call her yesterday but she wasn't exactly sure why but I was just blown away. After I gave her Sister Go's number I got a call back from Sister Go that night and she was just so happy and told me that she had talked with Sister Kim and we were all going to go over there on thursday night for dinner. I am so amazed at what my member's do on a week to week basis. I'm not going to lie Korea is a very straightforward place and there are very few members here and they are just so different. They are so different from what the culture tells them to do and they are told that constantly. But they are so strong. I'm so grateful that I can see their example and they help me so much. I feel so selfish because I feel like I gain so much out of every conversation with them and I just want to help them more in every way possible but they just send me off and to add insult to injury they send me off with food. So I just love these members and everything they do for us.

Well I have to get going but I love all of you. I hope you all have a great week.

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Seventieth Week Email

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   Well what another fun filled week in Korea. Life is good and it's warming up really fast. It finally made it up into the 90's with a fair amount of humidity so now it feels like summer again. But the nice thing about summer is it just seems like everybody's moods are so happy. Elder Hughes was talking to me when he came here and everything was dead outside and it was gray for the first week and he was really surprised, but now it's bright and Korea is just amazing with all types of flowers and vegetation.

 

   Well now that you have the weather report it was a great week. We spent the last week as a district with a very big focus on finding new people to meet with. And one of the best things about being a district leader s hearing about everybody's day at night. And this week was just full of amazing stories. it has been nice because we have this Present for President Furniss before he goes home and that's to write all of our miracles and make a little paper crane and send them all to him before he finishes his mission. So for the past week in our districts we have been using the word crane instead of miracles and this past week has just been filled with cranes. Our mission was hit with a pretty bad cold that has put a few people in bed in our district, including Elder Hughes so those are always interesting days. I opened up one of our 4 inch ring binders full of records and spent the entire day on the phone and it was really interesting to be able to contact all of these people who have meet with missionaries before. I'm always happy because most of these people even though they stopped meeting the missionaries just love us. So I always find myself in some interesting conversations with the people that I call and sometimes I hang up and Elder Hughes ask me if I was talking about North Korea or water purification haha. So I always enjoy making phone calls.

 

   Other than a few sick days all of us missionaries were able to meet with the Bishop in our ward and he is just amazing. We were able to make some really amazing plans for the ward and it was probably one of the greatest meetings I have ever been in as a missionary. And Bishop Kim was all over the place teaching us Korean to giving us a lot of direction for the ward so it was a great time. We are also in the process of working with the ward to plan a fireside and everything is turning out great. The ward pretty much makes it all possible and I cannot stop continually thinking about how amazing this ward is. I would be more than happy to spend some more time here and don't worry President Furniss is very aware of it haha. Well I have to get going but I love all of you and I hope you have an amazing week.

 

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