"Livin my mission til the last moment!"

May 3, 2014

How's it going everyone?

This week has been CRAZY!! Elder Richardson and I have had tons to do. So usually this week when there's a change there's a "Zone Training Conference" where President Essig and the AP's teach the Zone Leaders only and then in turn they teach it to their Zone the coming week. Well, President felt like we needed to change that up a little bit and decided the following........President felt that he and Elder Richardson and I should be teaching the whole mission these important subjects instead of just the Zone Leaders and then having them teach their Zones these principles. So that's what we did! We had two huge half-mission conferences for four hours each where 5 Zones came to Independencia and the other 5 Zones came to a conference in Pudahuel. The first day there were about 125 missionaries present and the second day there were about 107 missionaries present. I had never taught so many missionaries at once. It was very interesting, but awesome! President taught on how to increase the "real growth" in sacrament meetings (meaning instead of baptizing and then having them fall away helping them stay firm so the attendance in sacrament meeting goes up over time instead of staying the same or going down). In Chile 10% of the members are active. That's something we are working on so we can help these people come back to church and stay active as powerful leaders in the church. President gave a great lesson on this. Also, we as AP's taught on how to ask members for referrals. We identified 4 necessary steps to take so that that process would come out successful. I have attached the paper we handed out to the mission as a reference for this. Well, you'll probably have to translate it since it's in Spanish. Hope you can understand it :) We received a lot of positive feedback and many good comments about how good our lesson was. That made Elder Richardson and I feel good hoping it helped out a lot of missionaries in that process. Oh! We also had a hilarious video about how not to ask for referrals from the members and that was a hit as well. Batman was the member haha. You'll get to see it in just a few weeks!

The other thing that Elder Richardson and I are doing each day of the week now is accompanying President to all of the quarterly interviews every day he is doing in the different zones. During the interviews with each missionary in the zone, President has asked us to revise their Area Books and also their Agendas to make sure that all is in order in that aspect. I have seen old Area Books where I have made forms and things like that. I have also attached two more forms that's basically our grading system with these Area Books and Agendas. It helps us see how well they are done.

Rudy our investigator is getting baptized tomorrow!!!! Rudy does have to have a special interview tomorrow morning and President Essig is going to do that. If and when Rudy passes that interview, he will be baptized at 130pm tomorrow!! I'm so excited for Rudy and his rapid progress in these last few weeks. It's truly a miracle that he's going to be baptized. Elder Richardson and I have so much to do here in the office with almost no time to work in the field. To have a baptism right before I finish my mission is really going to be something special. He's such a stud! Pray for him please so that everything goes well in his interview so his baptism can happen.


Highlights/Thoughts of the week

Wow, that's pretty crazy to see Elder Hansen! Looks like he's matured quite a bit.

Homecoming sounds like a great plan to me. Will be fun to see everyone again!

Girls look very good!

Haha I'm sick of walking!

Having an office pizza party!

Elder Richardson, Elder Jenson, Sister Condie, President Essig, Elder Gomez and Sister Essig enjoying some super sweet pizza to celebrate all of our hard work :)

I got a letter from mom...a hand written one. The one that said Called to Serve Chile Santiago North. Thanks for your kind words!

Thanks for figuring out housing mama. I think that about covers it :) Thanks for everything!

Do you think we can do our Mother's Day call at 5pm Chile time? That would be 3pm your time.

You better believe I'll be livin my mission til the last moment!! Speaking of finishing my mission....when will I be released as a missionary?

 

Thanks for all of your prayers! They are felt. Hope you all have an incredible week. I'll be engaged in lots of interviews and revisions. Elder Richardson and I get to go to the country part of our mission this week! I'm excited.

Love,
Elder Jenson