ELDER GABRIEL JENSEN: First Month Down!

August 21, 2013

Gabe has been gone for 1 whole month, and he is doing GREAT!! We look forward to his P-Days and emails so much! Here is some bits and pieces from this week's email:

"Meine Familie.

Hello Family and happy P-day. Yesterday was quite the P-day Eve, P-day Eve is a big deal here. It's comparable to Christmas Eve, so the night before P-Day after snack time we listen to some christmas music in our room and tell stories. How cool is that, having the feeling of Christmas Eve once a week! Anyways, at the beginning of this letter I will sum up some info about the MTC and just random stuff, then I will get to the main thing. Random info about the MTC, we got rid of our second batch of Elders and Sisters this morning. I said goodbye to Elder Jentzsch, Bruder Jentzsch little brother. So it's not too crowded in the MTC today which is fun, when I say not crowded I mean there is only about 36 of us here instead of 90 haha. Elder Dewey, Elder Durrant and I gave a blessing today to a Sister. She was crying and feeling really homesick so we gave her a blessing of comfort. I gave her that poem from Riley too, well I let her read it but she kept it, but that's okay because she needs it. Sorry to say I have yet to cry or even become homesick, it's not because I don't love you guys, I do! I just know this is where I am supposed to be and I'm trying to make the most of all of it. You know about my district, but I am in the Abanadi district which consists of us 6 Elders and 2 Sisters. Sister Peacock from London who worked at the theater place - which is similar to broadway, so that's cool. She is 24, we call her Grandma. She looks to me as her little brother so she is the "most" protective over me. Then there is Sister Baker who is 21 from the Netherlands. We are all going to the Alpine Mission. Then there is a district going to our mission learning English, which consists of 6 Elders and 3 Sisters. We get a long really well. Then we have I believe 6 missionaries from Germany going to our mission coming in just for 2 weeks because they already know German. Then there is the other district, Jakob District, who are learning german and they are really fun as well. Just a fun incident, this past week us non-europeans got to go down-town and take some pictures, then when we got back Elder Oviatt and I went straight to snack time cause it was night time. We got this new hot chocolate machine, so we both made some homemade hot chocolate. He played us some Christmas songs on the piano and we sipped it while looking out the huge windows overlooking the pond, and talked about looking forward to our first Christmas in the snow covered Alps. Deutsch is going well. I'll just leave it at that. Haha, it's improving, still really hard and I'm trying my best, but even my teacher Bruder Jentzsch says you really learn it in the field. He says it's like you practically pass through a veil from the MTC to the field, so I know I will learn it best out there. I can bare my testimony, pray and teach basic church lessons in Deutsch, but it's the everyday conversations I still struggle with. So this Tuesday the German-speaking and English-speaking missionaries went out "finding" in down-town Manchester. They gave us the information on what finding is, gave us some BoMs, pamphlets and cards to give out, and gave us train tickets to Manchester. They drove us down to the train station in Charley and we began. It began with a 35 minute train ride to down-town Manchester called Picadele Circus or something, it's the main square for Manchester where the train station meets and all the buses, local restaurants and shops too. It is PACKED. My companions were Elder Moreno, who speaks no English really as you know, and Elder Mast, a missionary learning english. He is 22, from Switzerland/France and played Rugby. Not enough time to tell about everyone we came across but here are a few...

1st guy: On the train I sat next to these two people, one guy who was 25ish going to Uni, he was finishing eating and reading the comic book called the swamp man. Then a lady in her mid 40s sat across and was busying looking over some documents. It would have been easy to not disturb them and I probably wouldn't have, but you have to remember it's not about YOU it's the Lord's work and you are serving this mission for HIM. So I jumped in and started talking to them. I made them laugh a little bit and made small talk. I started to tell them who we were and where I was from, the guy told me about himself but the lady dropped out of the conversation pretty quickly. So me and this guy started talking about families, he was just returning from visiting his in upper England. I said how I come from a family with 4 sisters so I practically grew up with 5 moms! I told him the rules of how we can't contact and talk to our family on the phone but 2 times a year. He was surprised and said how tough that would be...perfect opportunity to bring up how the gospel blesses families, but I didn't. It was my first time practically in the field by myself. I told him why I'm serving a mission and about our beliefs in Jesus Christ then I gave them both a mormon card.

Joseph: Joseph was my favorite guy we talked too. We had finished eating and were walking around when I saw this guy with a jersey lined New York Knicks shirt on, so I though ahh basketball. He had headphones on and was watching something on his phone. First we walked past him, he was kind of intimidating, but I just kept feeling that we NEEDED to talk to him. So we passed him again and I told my companions we need to talk to that guy, and they said okay. So we turned around and I said "basketball, your shirt, do you play?" He didn't, but he took out his headphones and noticed us, I told him how I love basketball and I am from the states and what not. We asked how he was doing and told him we were missionaries and asked if we could talk for a minute...he said yes. So we asked his thoughts on Jesus Christ, he said he believes he was the son of God. After talking for a bit he said, "can I be honest with you guys?" and we said yes of course. He said he was muslim but he still believes in Christ and it's hard...then after my companions shared some personal stories they gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he would read it and he wanted missionaries to come visit him. It was a neat experience and would have been easy to just assume he didn't want to be bothered, 20 minutes later I found him reading the pamphlet we gave him.

After trying to talk to Jehovah Witnesses, Atheists, and many others we were able to visit with some and got turned down by some. At the end of the day we don't know if these people will read or accept what we have to say, we like to imagine that they do. What matters is that you leave a positive image for the church and allow them to know about the church or at least hear about it, plant as many seeds as we can. Yes we got turned down and ignored a lot but those I will forget, I won't forget Joseph though in the blue New York shirt. I hope he does read, and I hope he continues to want missionaries at his door. This is the Lord's work and we must forget ourselves and teach everyone we see. We cannot be scared and we cannot take rejection personally. I love this work and I love my mission. I Love you guys, until next P-day...Spater!"