ELDER GABRIEL JENSEN: April 2014

April 7, 2014

"What up Fam,

Not a lot of time today. Augsburg is pretty dang big! We live in the Altstadt (Old City) which is supposedly the oldest city in all of Bayern. It's cool, a lot of the real city walls are still standing. It is weird to now have sisters serving in our area too. The ward seems really good, I haven't met all of them yet because it was General Konferenz. Since we have such an AWESOME church building, we got to watch conference here in Augsburg. All the other Elders came and übernachted it at our place, so we had 6 Elders staying with us in our apartment, it was fun. They are all so different - haha. Konferenz was AMAZING as always. The people I've met in the ward so far seem really awesome! It is quite funny how different it is here though, Bayern is known as the Texas of Germany - so it's practically its own little country. Lots of people here wear their lederhosans and derndls around casually.

We had this thing at the church towards the end of the week, in English its called something like 'day of open doors' and it's where lots of people just come and tour the church building and they have family research presentations. I challenge you ALL to seriously look into furthering your knowledge on our family history and the church family history program.

I fill like I will like it here in Augsburg. I haven't really seen a whole lot of the city because we have been at the church a lot these last couple of days. This week will hopefully be back to normal. I'll be able to email more info next week, all I know for sure is that Augsburg has SO much potential. There is a university here and a way nice church building. Time to start thinking outside the box and get things really going here! Love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love Elder Jensen"

Some pictures of Augsburg, it's beautiful!

March 31, 2014

"Familie,

So I've been here in Pforzheim for 7 months, and I would have never thought I could have made so many life long friends and had so many good experiences in a short 7 months. I honestly mean it when I say that Pforzheim is my second home (so far) and the little Branch here is my second family. Gosh I love them all so much! What an eventful week it was to say the least, really busy with a lot of excitement! I'll just go through the week beginning with Monday...

Monday: A normal P-day, we hung out with "G" and went shopping with him. Then we went and got our haircuts since we would be seeing President and Sister Miles tomorrow (Tues). We also cleaned our apartment really good just in case they came to our apartment while they were here (haha).

Tuesday: We had Distriktsmeeting here in Pforzheim and then a "finding" day afterwards here in Pforzheim also. We have finding days in our mission where we do nothing but talk to people on streets, buses and door. It was a good day. Then that night we had our joint teach with President and Sister Miles. They only joined us for one lesson and they met us at our Church building. So we met them there with "G" and the lesson went GREAT! President is such an inspired and spiritual man and it just went really well! We told our investigator "G" to come with some of his concerns so we could answer them together. So he told us all some of his concerns and President answered his questions PERFECT! He asked "G" why are you here tonight? Why do you normally meet with the missionaries - why do you read the Book of Mormon - why do you come to church?? Then "G" said "I feel good when I meet with them, I feel at peace - like I'm surrounded by good." There obviously was a lot more said and discussed and even some funny parts and joking around, but overall it was a really good lesson and something that "G" needed. President has such a powerful spirit he carries with him and Sister Miles is so loving and just has that loving "mom" charm. We all enjoyed it a lot. I taught tonight like I would any other lesson - thats one thing I have vowed on my mission is to always be myself despite the circumstances. We didn't get any time to talk to President or Sister Miles personally or anything like that. After the lesson was over they had to drive back to Munich, I'm sure going to miss President and Sister Miles when their time here is done.

Wednesday and Thursday: Normal days for the most part - lots of finding. We had to weekly plan on Thursday because we were going to be tausching (on splits) on Friday and Saturday.

Friday: We had splits. Elder Mickelson came here to Pforzheim. He is such a chill bro. and he is our distrikt leader. We had a good joint teach on Friday with "G" and Sister Setner and Sister Setner's house and we talked about how prayer is the key.
Saturday: The main day! So we began the day with transfer calls. We were on tausch still and I was here in Pforzheim, we got the text from the others in the Distrikt saying how they got there calls and were staying...but we still hadn't been called. Then we got the text from the Zone leaders saying how they've called everyone that was staying and were now letting people know if they were being transferred. So at this point I knew I was getting transferred and I was nervous. It's like opening up a mission call! Then I received the call from the AP's...but I'll get to that later! haha.. We had this huge 2 zone finding day in Stuttgart - two different zones met together and we had a finding day on main street in Stuttgart in front of the palace. It was packed! The fountains were on and there was literally so many people walking the streets and just everywhere. We sang some hymns in front of everyone and we handed out little balloons with sayings on them to the kids. We just talked to everyone we could! It was a good day but exhausting. At the end of the 2 hours we found 71 potential investigators (as in we got their information) and we gave out over 50 Book of Mormons.
Sunday: This Sunday was kind of sad since I knew it was going to be my last in this area. I was really sad because a lot of people were missing but towards the end everyone ended up making it! I got called up in the middle of sacrament meeting to bare my testimony and announce the news. After I told everyone I was leaving they all just went ahhhh, like they were sad. It was really sad all around. It was the first tear I have shed since I've been on my mission. Right after we took a branch picture together that they will hang for the upcoming year. We are like a little family! I took a lot of pictures with different members and people, received little trinkets and gifts, exchanged emails and addresses. I'll have a lot more goodbyes over the next few days too.
So I am being transferred to Augsburg, Germany. It's in Bayern, close to München. It's the 3rd oldest city in all of Germany, pretty spread out area so there will be a lot of ground to cover. They have a 3 month 'new' Church building that all the members LOVE I hear. I've heard mixed sayings on this place but I've learned to not pay attention to any of it! I mean everyone was telling me that Pforzheim was the armpit of the mission but I have LOVED it here so much!
Hope all goes well this next week for you back at home. Love you all!
Elder Jensen"