A MTC Christmas Story

T'was the night before Christmas and all through the dorms 

Not a missionary was stirring, not even the Russian-speaking ones

¡Feliz Navidad amigos y familia!

For all you non-Spanish speakers out there, Merry Christmas! This week was filled to the brim with holiday spirit as Spanish Zone 21 celebrated the monthly Christmas-versary on September 25th. Once upon a time, a long long time ago in a dorm room not so far away, an Elder in Spanish Zone 21 was saddened at the prospect of missing Christmas in the MTC because that usually means that a General Authority comes to speak, so he decided to fill his pit of despair with the tradition of a monthly Christmas celebration on the 25th of each month, and today we now know this tradition as Christmas-versary. It lives on 8 months later and this week my district and I had the opportunity to spread the Christmas spirit to everyone on campus. Activities included: chalkboard drawing competitions, randomly bursting into the Christmas-hymn-singing version of Elder Jensen during class, dressing in our best Christmas ties, caroling to the Asia-bound missionaries on the first floor, and buying every caramel apple sucker the MTC store had in stock (around 50) and handing them out to everyone we saw during the day as long as the said missionary promised to spread Christmas joy to all others around them. Many of the new missionaries were scared at our over-enthusiasm for a fake holiday, but they came around by the end of the 25th. 

Feliz Navidad from District 21-F!

The funny story for the week: Spanish. Because all funny things that happen to Elder Jensen seem to only happen in the Spanish language. We've continued teaching our TRC investigator Maribel and we love her so much. She's very patient with us and never gets angry because we're so slow at talking at this point in time. But this week we had an interesting experience with her, there are some Spanish words that sound VERY similar...for instance:

pesado=heavy

pasado=past 

pescado=fish

pecado=sin

So when Elder Jensen is trying to say "Jesus Christ paid for your sins" it often comes out as "Jesus Christ paid for your fishes" which tends to confuse investigators. So there's those problems, and then Elder Jensen's problem of sometimes just saying words completely wrong. This week we were teaching Maribel and I attempted to say that Jesus Christ had "sheep in other fields" and those people he was talking about were the people in the Americas. Well the Spanish word for sheep is "ovejas" (oh-vey-has) but when I attemped to say the word it it came out like "oh-ve-nas" which is a non-existent word in the Spanish language. So when Maribel looks at me with a worried/questioning gaze my immediate fight-or-flight instinct is to say "You know...like BAHHHHH" at an unhealthy decibel level. So Maribel starts laughing as hard as I've ever seen someone laugh and my companions on the floor laughing and I'm sitting in my chair trying to understand what just happened. As in turns out, the walls in the TRC rooms are paper thin, so everyone in my entire district and zone heard my sheep impressions and it's something that almost a week later, I have yet to live down.

Anyway, moving away from Elder Jensen's hopeless Spanish mistakes, our spiritual moment this week came from ANOTHER investigator we're now teaching. His name is Julio and he has a pretty rough past of illness in his life and after two lessons Elder Babble and I were ready to give up. He was angry at God, and we tried everything to help him understand how much love God has for him, but he refused to believe any of it. So Elder Babble and I prayed together one night and next day during the lesson we had the distinct impression to show him "Mountains to Climb" (if you haven't seen that video watch it, it is SO good!). After watching the Mormon message, word can not express how strong the spirit was in that room. Elder Babble and I remained silent for almost 3 minutes, and Julio just sat there and cried. It was such a testament that no matter where we are with God, the love from God and Jesus Christ is always accessible. He only asks that we exercise a particle of faith and in return blesses us with help and comfort and peace. No matter where we are in our lives, no matter how alone we feel, no matter what we're going through we will NEVER walk alone because Jesus has walked that path before and knows EXACTLY how it feels. No matter how bad times get we just have to keep moving forward :) 

Muchos amor, 

Elder Jensen

Fotos y otros stories

I also got a leadership position this week! Self-appointed of course, but one nonetheless. I like to refer to myself as Emperoric Over-lord of Making-Our-Class-Be-Friends and the Spanish language but everyone else just calls me Unity Coordinator (and by everyone I mean no one because it's not TECHNICALLY recognized as an actual position). My duties include making sure (forcing) our unit plays volleyball together during gym time, making sure that we have mandatory 3 minute laughing break every hour by saying something completely ridiculous, or instituting what I like to call "Espanol Jueves" or Spanish Thursday for all you non-Spanish speakers out there. Basically the idea of Espanol Jueves is that we speak Spanish all day and for every word said in English you have to do 5 push ups to make up for it. As it turns out, Espanol Jueves was actually my bane. I ended up with around 120 push-ups last Thursday, because Elder Jensen often forgets that he's a Spanish-speaking missionary. Here's a picture for your entertainment.

( we interrupt this regularly scheduled blog post to bring you some unfortunate news: Elder Jensen's pictures didn't load!!! As soon as possible we will see if he can send them again...carry on...)

Other locations of my push-ups include: the classroom, gym, walkways, cafeteria, bathroom, and a couple other strange places. Overall it was a successful week, I created a new word in the Spanish language

(see above)

Got kicked out of personal study time because I "distracted" the class by making a joke about utter destruction. (Just kidding mom don't worry I just really wanted to take this picture). 

(see above)

And overall just had a great week. 

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (for Elder Jensen's Spanish-speaking skills)

Buenos dias amigos!

As you can see reflected in my e-mail subject line, a large majority of my day-dreaming time here in the MTC is spent wondering how great that new Star Wars movie will be. But nevertheless the overwhelmingly great thing that happened this week is I learned how to speak Spanish goodly! Trying to learn the first week in Spanish can only be equated to attempting to drink water from a fire hose (which in fact, is something I tried once and was exceedingly difficult). Now that I'm a hardened 2-week veteran of missionary training I feel so much more comfortable with Spanish and life in general. Though it is in some part true that days are the same (wake up, eat, class, eat, class, gym, eat, class, sleep) I will attempt to talk about unique experiences each week.

This week, as I said was a huge step for my Spanish skills! But not because I all of a sudden I got good, but closer to a prueba de fuego (trial by fire). Elder Babble and I are teaching a real investigator now....IN SPANISH! So we're kinda forced to get good at Spanish because English is tabooed in our meeting room. Yet, it wasn't actually that hard because our investigator is AMAZING. Her name is Maribel and she's a grandmotherly lady that Elder B and I love teaching, because she's always so sweet to us (and also because she bakes us treats every time we meet and Elder Babble and Elder Jensen LOOOVE treats). It's a part of a really cool opportunity we have in the MTC called Teaching Resource Committee or TRC, where local investigators come and listen to brand-spanking new missionaries like struggle to give lessons in some hybrid form of Portu-Spanglish where only like every 3rd word makes any sense. But I love it, she's really receptive to the gospel and already wants to get baptized so Elder Babble and I are very happy :) 

On a serious note, we had the General Primary President give a devotional this Sunday and it was AMAZING. She gave a talk about how when we're down or worried we can't turn inward and complain about how miserable we are, but instead we ​have to turn outward like Christ did and show love and serve others. She talked of how after having 3 of his apostles fall asleep on him he told them not to worry, after being betrayed by one of his own he was concerned about one of the Romans, and how that after he hung on the cross he told his Father to forgive them. It was such a powerful lesson because sometimes days in the MTC are super duper hard, but we get through them by stopping feelings of worry, sadness, and fear, and in the immortal words of a great Disney classic, we have to keep moving forward :)   

I love you all muchos!! 

Elder Jensen

Elder Jensen's MTC Adventure Episode I: "Como se dice (insert some obvious Spanish word that all the other native speakers in my class know but I don't)?"

For all you non-Spanish speakers like me, the title above translates to: "How do you say (Spanish word)?" and poll says that is the most commonly used sentence this week. 

For those who don't know what the MTC is, it stands for Missionary Training Center and it's a sweet hybrid between a Shaolin Monastery, Camp Rock, and the hardest school day of all time. Each day starts with breakfast, then 3 hours of Spanish class, followed by lunch, then 3 more hours of class, then dinner, then 4 MORE hours of Spanish class. So you could say I'm getting pretty decent at Spanish. It's so great here though! It was intimidating at first, because we were escorted to our room, then immediately to our first class where a teacher only spoke Spanish and we had to help each other understand. My class (or district as we call ourselves) is so great. It's composed of Elder Babble and I, two more sets of Elders, and a set of Hermanas (sister missionaries). They're all so awesome and so much fun, but they all speak fluent Spanish and as many of you know, Elder Jensen does NOT :) But, it's coming back! After speaking 10 hours a day, you have no choice but to learn some Spanish here and there.

 Other than class-time, we use the rest of our 5 hours for personal study, practicing Spanish, and having nerf wars in our dormitories. After classes we have 45 minutes in our dorms before quiet-time and the activities range from spike-ball to yes, enormous Spanish-speaking Spaniards versus Russian-speaking Russian nerf wars that take the full 45 minutes before bedtime. You could say that the MTC is the greatest place on the entire planet!

Attached I've included a picture of my companero, Elder Babble!!

Also, thank you to everybody who's sent letters and gifts you guys are the best :) 

My current address is: 

(Please email Amy Jensen at amyjaneway@cox.net if you would like his address!)

Last but not least, my branch president has a motto that I really love that I though I'd share

Querer es Poder (To want to do be able to)

Buenas dias!

Elder Jensen