Week 8-July 30, 2018

Final countdown!!!

Nihao fam!!!

Soooooo, I still don't know where I am going.... my missionary portal still says Taiwan and none of the other Taiwan missionaries have heard anything yet either, so the waiting game continues... We haven't gotten any flight plans to Taiwan, so that must mean that our visas aren't through yet. I guess we're just waiting to get our reassignments! Still exciting though! haha it's like waiting for Christmas for two weeks! Every day I check my portal like 70 times- can't wait to find out!

Some highlights from this week were Sister Morgan's birthday!!!!!, our district's musical number in Sacrament Meeting, Christmas (for my companions and zone), and our growing quote wall!

Sister Morgan's birthday was AWESOME! Her mom is so on top of it and emailed me like two weeks ago to get our district leader's email to send him decorations and party stuff. The Canto sisters helped out a lot too and used my key while we were at studies to decorate our room! It was super cute and we ate a ton of brownies and cinnamon roles from the Provo bakery that week!

We convinced Sis. Morgan to play violin in sacrament meeting as well while our district sang in 3-part harmony (all the elders sang bass, i sang alto, and Sis. Liu sang soprano) for "Lead Kindly Light". I have to say, it turned out really well and it sounded beautiful all together. Music just makes me so happy ;)

Christmas was super fun because we found out when everyone is leaving! The Canto sisters going to Hong Kong leave at 3:30am on Monday (a week from today) and Sis. Morgan leaves at 4:45am for Canada Monday as well. Sis. Liu leaves for california at 11:30am Tuesday next week, etc. 

We have a quote wall that is awesome and growing every day. I'll send a pic next week before we have to take it down. So many good memories!

Also! Some super important government people from China came this week! All the supervisors and teachers were buzzing about it! We were told very little, and I don't know how much the story got embellished as it bounced around from missionary to missionary, but we heard that they were taking a tour of the MTC and they visited one of the other Chinese classes and that this visit was super important for our relationship with China... The other class had to have like an hour long discussion about how to introduce themselves differently and the missionaries learning Mandarin (spoken in mainland) but going to Hong Kong (where they speak Cantonese) said they were learning mandarin to speak with the business people there and such (people from mainland go to hong kong for a week to learn the gospel and be baptized). We were told to stay in our class for 30 min after we had technically finished just so that in case they walked by that hallway, there wouldn't be any obnoxious missionaries wandering around. Very exciting!!!

Scripture of the week is Alma 37:37 "Counsel with the Lord in all thy doings and He will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie unto the Lord, that He may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day." Just take life one day at a time and always be grateful for the life we have been given :)

Sending love and prayers!

Sis. Jensen

Thurs, Aug  2:

Flight plans!!!

The much anticipated flight plans have finally arrived! I’ve been

reassigned to Fort Collins, Colorado and will leave Tuesday at 9:15am!

I’ll be flying with two other elders from the other Mandarin zone to

Denver!

Christmas! 😄

Thank you so much for your words of encouragement! I love you all so

much! I’m 90% sure I’ll be speaking English but I’ll have language
study time every day! I’m excited and nervous to really learn the ins
and outs of how to teach, contact, and do the work well (in English)
before I jump into the unknown world of Chinese! Fort Collins is
actually mostly Wyoming farmland so I’m also assuming we’ll have a
car... more info to come Monday! ️️️