"I will not deny the Christ!"

January 6, 2014

Happy New Year!!!

LOS TRES NEFITAS!! (THE THREE NEPHITES!!)

Elder Jenson, Elder Jorge and Elder Paiva

It's 2014 and I can't believe it!! 2013 was my whole year as a missionary and it was really cool to look back and remember all of the experiences I had as a missionary serving the Lord. I looked back in my journals and read lots of really cool experiences that were awesome reminders that this is the true church of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Miracles upon miracles upon miracles have happened right before my eyes and I can say, just as Moroni said, "I will not deny the Christ!" (Moroni 1:3) That is one of my most favorite scriptures in the Book of Mormon. Moroni had soooo much faith and was willing to be put to death just as other amazing prophets before denying our Redeemer.

1 "...I make not myself known to the Lamanites lest they should destroy me.
2 For behold, their wars are exceedingly fierce among themelves; and because of their hatred they put to death every Nephite that will not deny the Christ.
3 And I, Moroni, will not deny the Christ..."

Our Zone Activity on Christmas Day 2013 in Lo Pado 2. Our gift to Christ "tree"!

 



Javiera was confirmed a member of the church this week and was given the gift of the Holy Ghost!! That is so awesome. There's never words to describe how much happiness I feel after working your tail off with our investigators and then see them baptized and confirmed members of the church. The church is true!!!

 

"I love our investigators!" Christmas Eve dinner with our investigators Beti, (Beti's mom who came up from Southern Chile to be with them), Silvana, Elder Jenson and his companions Elder Paiva and Elder Jorge

 

Our focus right now in our sector is FINDING! We have had tons of success here in the past few months, but our investigator pool is a little bit lower...well, that was until we took out the trash this week and found some! We found 18 new investigators this week! That was literally sooo awesome and if you can believe this, we only had 4 new investigators going into Saturday! My companions and I started to fast on Saturday begging the Lord for His help and that day we found 11....yes 11 new investigators in one day!!! That's so incredible. 4 of the 11 are a family of 6 and are of baptismal age (Louis (dad), Pabla (mom), Diego (12), Salome (9) and two little ones). Another 6 of our new investigators came from a huge family of 15 (mixed with cousins, aunts,uncles etc.) who were available for us to share them a message! The other investigator we found was someone named Ana and we shared a message with her too. It was literally incredible to be able to fast and right off the bat on the first day find TONS of new people to teach. On Sunday, my companions and I also found 3 more investigators. One of them was such a miracle!! Her name is Katherine and she's 20 yrs old. Katherine told us that she saw a movie with the missionaries in it and she started to explain to us the movie and it's "The Other Side of Heaven"!! A great and funny missionary movie! Don't have a clue how she saw this movie but it let us in her home! :) We shared the Restoration with her and left her the Book of Mormon. Katherine's gonna read and pray about it! Katherine also told us that she wants to come to church on Sunday with us to see what it's like!! GOLD! We had about 5 solid investigators coming up to this point ( a lot of times people let you just pass by their house and share a message but they're not solid investigators who really want to progress and have intentions to be baptized). We hope to help all of these investigators that the Lord put in our path this week progress towards baptism!

Thoughts/Highlights of the week:

Presidente Lopez is in our ward and he's Bishop Cortes' father in law. He's the second counselor in the Stake Presidency.

We were able to see the fireworks off the cerro Renca for New Years! President let us stay up to see the fireworks which was kind of him :)

We haven't really practiced a lot of sign language this week because Matias is working now and he works on Saturdays. We just practice in the house but it's really not enough. We'll see how it goes.

Transfers are next week, the 13th of January. I told President that I wanted to stay here in Lo Prado 2 for one more change

Ya, I'm all in for being with Brennan at USU

Looks like you had a great time in Cali. Thanks for the pictures

You're all lookin good up at UNC supportin Tay!

I did get the letter that Bishop sent me! Thanks for all of your thoughts Bishop!!! I also got letters this week from family. Thanks for your support.

We had Zone Conference this week and had a fun activity we did to increase our unity that consisted of building a tower as high as we could with 20 pieces of paper and tape. It was pretty fun! President was there cheerin us on...haha :)

 

Elder Jenson and his "unified" Zone with President Essig January 2, 2014

Thanks for all of your support mom and dad. Love you both so much and am happy to say you're my parents!!

Well, that's all I have time for!! Love you all so much!! Hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Jenson