What a Wonderful Life!

Feliz Navidad friends and family!

Despite the severe heat warning, the people of Houston have made it through the summer without any major loss in life. Oh wait ,it's Christmas you tell me? Elder Jensen was confused because this week was 85 degrees with 100% humidity and it felt like summer to him. But all has been righted! It rained last night and it was 35 degrees waking up this morning. I really don't think anyone truly understands the weather in Texas. 

Besides that, Christmas was awesome! We caroled so hard we were sweating (had nothing to do with the 85 degree weather, only our singing abilities), we ate tons and tons of food, got to Skype our families on Friday, and got to watch Inside Out at our Christmas Mission conference. So really? Best week ever. The worst kept secret of missionary work is that it's super hard sometimes. Especially when you have to spend it away from family. Yet there were so many times when I just wanted to give up and then something awesome would happen. We have one member who hasn't been active for 10 years and we'd been trying to visit him and he was never home and we were super frustrated. But, we decided to bring some presents and carol with the rest of the district and he randomly happened to be home! He was smiling ear to ear and had a few tears in his eyes because I guess his Christmas was hard because all of his family lives in Guatemala. When we have tough times in our lives, I've learned that sometimes it's because we're looking for the big miracles and we miss all the small ones. When we look for the small miracles and keep moving forward they come! I love and miss you all! 

Con amor,

Elder Jensen

This is my little friend that stole my Christmas hat and told me she wouldn't give it back till I took a picture. (She said I can't share with anyone so try to keep this on the down low.)

Extreme Home Makeover: The Christmas Elder Edition

Que onda familia y amigos?

"Onda" is your Spanish vocabulary word for the day. For those of you that try and translate that  it won't work because apparently only punks from Guatemala use that phrase. It's pretty sweet, it directly translates to "what's slinging?". Seeing as Elder Jensen is a punk sometimes and definitely from Guatemala he uses it a lot :) 

Anyway, reporting live from the land of eternal rain and the only state in the United States where the state flag can be higher than the American flag, I'm Elder Jensen and this is a chronology of my adventures in the happiest place on Earth...Houston, Texas! I hope you all are having a very merry Holiday season because I can assure you that the Christmas Spirit has descended on Texas...the tow truck drivers all wear Santa Hats and smile as they latch your car on the back of their "big boy trucks". It makes for a pretty oddly comically sad experience when you walk out of lesson and notice your nice Chevy Cruz latched onto that said "big boy truck". Alas, Elder Jensen did indeed get towed this week, the final count of this car rounding to an even 5 times in the last 6 months. 

To tell the truth, missions have ups and downs and the last week was sort of a down and I didn't really have any funny or cool stories because it was a stinky week. All of our investigators decided to play that fun game where they pretend they aren't home when we stop by to visit and our ward went from it's high of 200 members back down to a low of 50. We were all kinda struggling to figure out what went wrong, and were all pretty bummed out. 

Then service came around and my whole week changed. We did our normal service at the food bank, but also had the opportunity to help the English ward Elders with a service project. There's a member of the ward who's a hoarder and their house is full of boxes, trash, roaches, and it wasn't really livable anymore. So we undertook the project- 10 Elders and Sisters and 5 Relief Society members took the challenge to clean it inside and out. It was hard and at times, kind of gross, but we knew what we were working for and we managed to get it done before they got home. It completely changed around my week. Seeing others give so selflessly motivated me to look for more opportunities to serve every single day! Whether pushing a car to the side of the road, helping people load their groceries, I noticed that as I served more and more my attitude improved more and more. By the end of the week I was so very happy and I know that came because of those opportunities to serve. There's this poem I like, I have no idea who it's by but it goes a little something like this "Christmas is not a day or a season, but a condition of heart and mind. If we love our neighbors as ourselves; If in our riches we are poor in spirit and in our poverty we are rich in grace. If when our brother asks for a loaf we give ourselves instead; if each day dawns in opportunity and sets in achievement however small- then every day is Christ's day and Christmas is always near". I invite all of you to get out there and serve. You guys rock and I hope you have the best Navidad in the history of Navidads! Don't give up and keep moving forward :) 

Love you all lots!

Elder Jensen

Catch us on the next episode of EHM!!

The Fast and Furious 8: This Time It Won't Be Either...

Feliz navidad familia y amigos!

After a very short one-week-long fall, the Christmas season has finally come...and I couldn't be happier! This week has indeed been eventful...and freezing cold, as demonstrated by my newest companion and I attempting to capture our journey across the frozen wonderland that is Houston Texas...

Yes I have a new companion! This is Elder Palacios he's from Peru and he is absolutely awesome. He loves to sing, and laugh, and tell jokes...in 15 different languages...yes 15 languages! He speaks Spanish, Russian, French, and Chinese fluently and can speak in 11 others. But something's missing...yeah, the one language he hasn't learned yet is English...but we're working on it! Needless to say, Elder Jensen's Spanish skills have definitely improved this week!

The other thing that's improved? Driving abilities. Since Elder Palacios only has a Peruvian license that means Elder Jensen gets to be designated driver. Ever since receiving his license Elder Jensen has always thought he was a pretty decent driver...others may attempt to convince you  differently.  Elder Jensen scraped by with only 1 speeding ticket- but 5 hours of online class and 1 headache for mom and dad later it was taken care of! Enter Texas, the land where drivers prefer to use the highway signs like: I-59, FM 107.9, and I-77 Katy Freeway as their speed gauges (as opposed to posted speed limits). It's been an exciting week to say the least...I've even witnessed the famous "Texas-dive" turning-from-3-lanes-over phenomenon 3 times already. BUT, not to worry mother...I am being super safe and thus far we've only had a handful of close calls. We've had our fair share of adventures though...ask Tiwi (our automated assistant that reminds us to slow down) about our little accidental adventure into the Houston East Mission, or the one time I learned about the anatomy of one way streets and how they do indeed only go one-way. 

In other news I SCORED A GOAL IN SOCCER THIS WEEK! WITH MY HEAD!!! Not sure if it was luck or a little bit of divine intervention but those that know Elder Jensen's less-than-adequate "hand-eye" coordination skills know it was probably a little bit of both. 

Overall, it was an awesome week. Elder Palacios and I are working hard to make this area strong! We visit close to 50 people a week and we're slowly whittling our ward list down to who is actually still living in Houston. We've had so many special experiences this week but my favorite was with a family in our ward. They've been struggling with their marriage and the mother and father hadn't been talking and while counseling really isn't in our purview, Opisbo asked us to go with him to teach a Family Home Evening Lesson. We taught about the power that Jesus Christ has to heal our wounds and fix our problems and showed them this video:

https://www.mormon.org/christmas/purpose-of-a-savior

It was such a neat experience to see the change that has come over their family this week. The spirit in the home completely changed. They have more joy, they've been more kind to each other and while they're not perfect, they're changing everyday to become more loving and to have more joy in their home. It's so neat to see the power the gospel has to change the lives of those it touches. It's such a blessing to watch how the Savior can fix families, take the torn, bitter, feelings of sadness...and change them into feelings of happiness, joy, and peace. Sometimes we don't know what lies ahead but if we trust that our Savior is there for us and keep moving forward, everything is going to be okay :) love you all!

Con mucho amor,

Elder Jensen

Atlantis 3: Elder Jensen's Journey

Hello dearest friends and family!

So I have an announcement: Elder Jensen has discovered Atlantis...or at least re-discovered it. This week was marked with more cold and more rain (which you would think would make snow right? But no, Texas is very confused when it comes to it's weather) which has turned the city into something only comparable to the lost city of Atlantis. From the state where there's more firearms than people, and when the rain falls about as often as we are passed by a truck three times the size of our Chevy Cruz- merry holidays from the greatest city in the world!

This week was so great! It was filled with Thanksgiving dinners, awesome lessons and lots and lots of fun! We had our annual Ward Thanksgiving party, and our ward Houston Temple trip as well. (Pictured below is me featuring my coat that has earned me a new name in our ward...Elder Bombon or Elder Marshmallow...because evidently this coat makes me appear like a marshmallow)

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We've knocked on a lot of doors this week. And I don't mean a lot like "the amount of times Elder Jensen talks about himself in the 3rd person while telling stories"- I mean I lost count after 100 in one day. We went hunting for people we'd talked to on the street, old contacts in the area, and less-active families in an attempt to clean up our now 600 strong ward list and find new investigators. See Houston has a problem (Get it?)... we have a ton of investigators, but none of them are ever home, or live in apartment #101 (which is impossible seeing as the apartment only houses up to #100) so we've been focusing on finding families we had never talked to. The amount of investigators we had after 100+ doors? 0. Then came the little miracle of the week. We were tired, frustrated, and a little bit sad...it was 8:30 and we just really all wanted to go home. But we decided to try one more house- it was of a guy who was excommunicated out of the church. We hadn't made much progress with him, he couldn't stop drinking and that was affecting every aspect of his life. But as we walked in this time, he was sitting on the floor, playing piano music from his speaker system, and eating a bowl of ramen on the empty floor of his tiny apartment. He looked at us, smiled, and said that he feels better then he's ever felt before.

The contrast between his old self and the guy we talked to that evening was stark. He was changed; more happy, more peaceful, and full of love. He told us about how his daughter (who he never sees) passed away a couple months ago. He told us how he came to a realization: she's living with God right now...she's made it to the finish, done her work. Now his new goal is to live with her again. That means he has to put in the work to make himself someone that's worthy to live with her again. It was a sweet moment and left Elder Jensen sweating from his eyes real bad.

 Sometimes we have days that stink, ones that we just want to give up, flop ourselves into bed, and quit. Those are the days when we learn the most about ourselves and most about Christ. There's a new website called "christmas.mormon.org" with a set of really neat videos called "A Savior is Born" and "Why We Need A Savior" and I would invite anyone and everyone that's having one of those bad days to go watch it. I know that sometimes life is difficult but when we confide and trust in Christ, everything will be okay! You just have to keep moving forward :)

Love, 

Elder Jensen