Hey Everyone!
Well one week til Christmas! Pretty crazy! It came kind of fast.
We had a Christmas Zone conference last Tuesday in Philly. The church we went to had a tall brick wall around the entire building, and then a tall metal gate in front of the entrances. You have to have a special card to scan to open the gates to get into the parking lot. And they have bars on all the windows so that people can't break them. It was kind of crazy. But we had a good Conf. It was good to see some of my MTC buddies there. We had President Speak to us and some other people. And then later we watched 17 Miracles, which was really good. Then we picked up all of our Christmas packages. We went on an exchange with our district leader that night. So we switched companions after conf. And I went to Moorestown, NJ with Elder Phelps. We were on an exchange til Thursday morning. Elder Phelps was really cool, and we had a good time. So Wednesday night me and Elder Phelps, parked in front of a house for an appointment. We opened up the trunk to get some pamphlets, i guess he set the keys down in the trunk while hey was getting some stuff and then he closed the trunk. And the car locked it's self when we closed the trunk... so we were locked out. We didn't know what to do, so we called the guy in charge of the mission cars. He told us we would have to call a Locksmith & that it would cost about $75. We didn't have a number for a locksmith and we had an appointment soon, so we were able to get a metal hanger from a lady and we tried to open the door, we were close but we didn't get it. So we called the Service Elders to see what they could do. They said they could be down in about 50 mins. So we taught our lesson. And they were there when we came out. We were trying to get it open til about 10:00 ( we got locked out around 7:30) with a hanger. And we got soooo close so many times. but it wouldn't open. So we had to get a ride home from the Service Elders. President was supposed to bring down our spare keys the next morning cause he would be in the area, but he ended up not being able to. So we had to get a locksmith and it was expensive... and he basically did it with a metal wire, just like we were.. but he was better :)
We have kind of had a slow week, but its been a crazy week also. With it being close to Christmas its really hard to meet with people. We've had a lot of appointments get canceled or people not show up. But we got 5 new investigators last week! 3 of those are a Family! We have about 8 progressing investigators right now. So that means that they are keeping commitments and we are meeting with them regularly.
This week we are lucky, we have a dinner appointment everyday except Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. We don't really know what were going to do on Christmas yet. We finally got a member to invite us over on Christmas, but i think its going to be a little awkward.. But no one is really inviting us. They announced in Church that we didn't have anywhere to go for Christmas yet. And so everyone when they talk to us says, I heard you guys don't have anywhere to go for Christmas yet, And we say yeah.. hopefully someone invites us.  and then they don't invite us over... We'll see i guess.
OK one cool story and then i have to go, i don't have a lot of time today.
Well yesterday instead of going to an LDS church I went to a Baptist Church! ...And I went to the Baptist church with President Vai Sikahema and his family! He is good friends with Rev. Irving Fryar, They played football together. And his friend invited Vai Sikahema to come talk to his congregation about a cool story. President Sikahema wanted some missionaries there to represent our church, so he invited us. So we met him at his house and got a ride to the Baptist church. I got to meet his family, they are all very nice. He told a story about a 12 yr old boy that he gave shoes to when he was a football player. And about 10 years later he came in contact with this kid again (except now older) Turns out this kid had turned into a good Football player and was being drafted to play for the NFL. His name was Barrot.. Something i can't remember his last name. But he was won a Super Bowl since. So I got to meet 3 NFL football players. And that guy was wearing his Super Bowl ring. The Baptist church was INTERESTING. Very loud and lots of singing. But the people were very nice and friendly. Anyways that was kind of a bad explanation of the story but it was really cool to meet them and to go to another church.
Well i gotta go, but i hope everyone has a Great Christmas!
-Love Elder Jeremy Jensen