June 15th, Letter

 Hey!                                                                                                                 June 13, 2013

Man, it’s been a loooooong crazy week. We have been soo busy, and I’m soooo tired. haha. Hopefully I can remember everything we did. I’m not sure how much I told you about what we got to do on Sunday. But Elder Rasband came for a special Wilmington Stake Conference. And he asked to have a special meeting with all the missionaries after the conference. Almost the entire mission traveled down to Newark, Delaware for this meeting. We rented three 12 passenger vans to take some people down and everyone else carpooled down. We took our whole district in our van. It was the largest missionary gathering President Schaefermeyer has had while he has been President. It was really cool to have everyone all in one place. The meeting was from 12:30 to 2:00. Man, it was soo cool when we sang the opening hymn. It was so loud and sounded so good with the whole chapel packed with missionaries. Elder Rasband was really cool, we all lined up and shook his hand. He didn't really have a topic he just had us ask questions about missionary work and then he would just answer them and expound.  He told a pretty cool story about his visit to Oklahoma after the tornado. He told a story about a girl that hid in a bathroom stall with her friend at her school. And after the tornado was gone she pushed a stop sign off her head and the whole school building was gone. He gave her a blessing and said that angels had been standing around her protecting her while the tornado ripped apart her school. It was a pretty cool story. The ward there provided lunch for all the missionaries after. We got a group picture with all of my MTC group people that were there. Then we drove back to Broomall to do some work. Then we had to drive the Broomall Sisters back down to Newark for Sister B past investigators baptism. It was the longest baptism of my life! The people just kept talking ;) The Bishop got up and talked about how to know if your shaking an angels hand - the scripture in D&C. Anyways it was a good, long day. Monday - Elder Moyer came in the morning and we reviewed all the apartments. We do this once a month to make sure we are paying everyone the right amount and talk about new apartments and apartments we are closing. We are planning on opening 5 new apartments this next transfer. We will be getting them all ready next week, because transfers are the week after that. Jeez! Time flies! We also went to FHE that night for the YSA. Our new investigator Lu was there. She is from China. She is going to school here. She is a media referral; she went to Utah a couple weeks ago and heard about our church. We also got all ready for Zone Conference. I made my slideshow presentation and did all the final things for the gifts. That was a late night.                                                                                               

 So we had 4 Zone Conferences this week. And we went to all of them. And yes we traveled all over the mission. Tuesday was in Nazareth, Wednesday was in Philly, Thursday in Dover, and Friday was here in Broomall. And yes as you know the US Open is here in town literally down the street from me. It’s pretty much across the street from my house, like 3 minutes away. There has been so much traffic and signs everywhere. It’s been kind of a pain because we have traveled a lot because of the conferences and we have to go through the traffic each time. It has also rained a TON this week. So much rain! On Thursday morning it just dumped water outside. The water came down so fast it started to pool up and flood a little, but then it went away pretty fast. I got 18 new AT&T replacement phones this week. I and president have been working on getting these phones for a while. We use Sprint in our mission and the service is terrible in some places. So at the Zone Conferences I switched out peoples phones. We gave a presentation every day at each of the conferences. It went pretty well, and I made a really nice PowerPoint. We even got to sit up on the stand with President and the Assistants. ;) At the end of our slide show each day we invited the Senior Couples up and thanked them and gave them their gifts, and re-gifted them every day. Then yesterday at the last zone conference they got to actually open the gifts and see the books. They really, really like them. Everything turned out really nice, I spent a lot of time on the gifts. I will send pictures. On Monday we are getting a picture of all 3 of them together with the gifts. Yesterday we had a guest speaker, his name is Clarence Burgess Owens I guess he played for the Jets and won a super bowl with the Oakland Raiders. But he is a member and lives in the Valley Forge Stake. After he talked we took a break and we all got to get a picture with him and put on his super bowl ring. Pretty cool eh? Man it’s been a pretty good week, but soo busy. I can't believe it’s getting so close to the Senior Couples going home. The Schaefermeyers have officially had their last Zone Conference. Most of the missionaries won’t see him again before he leaves. From here things are only going to get busier and busier, with transfers coming up in a week and the Baileys, Houses and President all heading out and President Anderson coming in. It’s just going to be crazy and stressful. My to do list just keeps getting longer and longer. So Wednesday we met with our new investigator Lu. We taught her at the church with another member from the YSA. She is pretty cool! She is learning English over here and going to school. But she is pretty prepared. We taught her how to pray and she prayed by herself for the first time in her life. She doesn't even know who Adam and Eve are. Isn't that crazy that there are people out there like that?? The whole concept of God is completely new to her. But she is reading the Book of Mormon and praying on her own, and she is going to Institute! The lesson went so good that guess what... We set her with a baptism date for August 11th. She wasn't completely sure about it because she hardly even knows what baptism is but she said she would work towards it. Now that I’m in the YSA Facebook has become sooo much more useful! Because the whole ward and any one we teach is one Facebook. It makes things soo easy. Missionary work in general is so much easier in the YSA.

Ok time to answer some questions: Yes I remember Nathan Lundberg, his picture is on the sheet of incoming missionaries right now. It will be cool to see him again. I’m pretty sure I have a picture of my Philly apartment. It might be on one of the cards I still need to send home... I saw pictures of you guys on the PG Facebook page touring the city buildings. Hope all goes well with running for City Council. Send me pictures of the signs in people’s yards etc. When is Strawberry Days?

Hmm…Well I think that’s mostly everything. Hopefully I told you enough about Zone Conference. We learned about using Members in our lessons, talked about obedience, and President talked about the Book of Mormon and how there is no way it can possibly be made up. The end!

Chow,

         -Elder Jeremy Jensen