Week 9-Aug 7, 2018

Fort Collins, Here I come!!!

Ni hao fam!!!

As you heard, I got my reassignment this week and I'll be flying out to Fort Collins, Colorado tomorrow morning!!! I am super duper excited!!! There is another sister I have never met that will be flying with me and two other elders from the mandarin Zone 2! 

A little about the Fort Collins mission, it includes most of Wyoming and just a little of the top of Colorado (part of me wishes I could have gone to denver and seen Jared, but it's all good). It has a beautiful temple that I will get to visit tomorrow! We will most likely be driving everywhere, so the biking (and losing MTC weight ;) ) will have to wait til Taiwan. 

This last week at the MTC was so great! Last night, Jenny Oaks Baker and her ADORABLE family came and performed at our Sunday Night Devotional! It was so sweet to hear her stories and testimony intermixed with beautiful arrangements of church songs. She played violin, her daughters played violin, cello, and piano, and her youngest son played the guitar. It was absolutely gorgeous! Go look up some of their videos on youtube if you've never listened to them before! So good!!!

Our last class was very bittersweet. We spent a long time reflecting and evaluating our time here at the MTC, our teachers, the activities we did, our goals and language study plans, and set a lot of goals for when we get out into the field to apply the things we have learned. We finished off by reading in the Book of Mormon together and sharing testimonies and thoughts. Sister Morgan left this morning at 4:45 am. Sister Liu and I walked with her to the travel office (i felt a little strange--i didn't realize so many people would be there so early in the morning and i was walking around with my retainer in, flip flops on, pjs, and no tag...it was pretty funny) but today has just not been the same since one of my dear companions has left. I love them so much and my district has truly become like my family. It's so sad but so exciting to part ways because I know there are so many more life-changing, growing experiences to come. 

One of the highlights of this week was getting to do international hosting on wednesday! I hosted the sweetest Samoan sister and we got to talk a lot between going to the health office, the BYU health center, then the missionary assistance office, travel office, etc. She was so nice and spoke really good english, but was a little shy so it was hilarious to watch some of the sweet ladies helping her talk to her like she didn't know english and doing a fantastic job of using charades and then we would walk out the door and she would start chatting away with me again! She also gave me the best chocolate ever after we were all done which was just so nice because i really didn't do anything but walk with her! It was awesome too though to see how the Church and the MTC really takes care of all the missionaries. They so generously supply all the international missionaries that come from places with so little and make sure they have everything they need to be comfortable and successful. 

Scripture of the week: Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." 

I know that God cares about each and every one of His children. I know that He knows our trials, our weaknesses, our joys and our strengths. I know that He answers our sincere prayers and only wants what is best for us. He knows so much more than we do and sometimes we have to go through hard times to become the person He knows and wants us to become. The more I rely on the Lord when I am struggling with something, the more miracles I see and the more my faith grows and grows. I love this gospel and I love our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Have a fantastic week!

Sending prayers and hugs!

Sis. Jensen

Tuesday, Aug 7th:  ARRIVED! I'm in Colorado! 😉

Today was quite the adventure. We left the MTC  at 9:15 and then rode a bus to the front runner, then took Trax to the airport. It was all a little crazy but we made it! So yeah, turns out there were a lot of English missionaries with us too so there was a total of 21 missionaries: four visa waiters (three mandarin, one Dutch sister) and 16 English and a hermana. The Dutch sister and I are kinda comps rn because we both are staying with a random companionship tonight because we've been assigned to the Nebraska area(her) and the Indian reservation area in Wyoming, riverton (me-Im pumped, prepare for some sweet stories ) so we have like a 6 hour car ride tomorrow. We are both gonna be in trios! I'm pretty excited! I'll meet my trainer tomorrow and her comp is on her second transfer of training. The president and his wife took us to the beautiful fort collins temple after the airport and then we went to the mission home and had like a little orientation thing and then got our assignments and trainers, etc. Our Pdays here are Tuesdays so I'll talk to you again then!!!

with Pres. and Sis McMurray

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! ️️️

Week 7-July 23, 2018

Merry Christmas!!!

Nimen hao!!!

This week has been awesome! The days just fly by!!! Some highlights include:

- Last Monday, as we were walking back from our first Skype TRC (which was awesome!!! We talked to a lady from Australia about charity), this MTC worker came up to me from behind and said in broken english, "What language?" and pointed to my tag. I was like, "Oh, Mandarin!" And then he said something else but I couldn't really understand, but then he showed me his phone and he had FB messenger pulled up and the little circle had a picture of Ashley!!! I was like What?! You know my sister?!?! And he explained something about being from Chile, but then he moved here and he lives behind the MTC and he's learning English! He said that Ashley had just visited him the day before and that's why he knew to look for me! I just thought that was sooo cool!!! He took a picture and sent it her! It was so awesome to see someone Ashley had taught on her mission in Chile and see how the gospel can really bless people's lives in incredible ways! It was an awesome way to start the week and it gave me more motivation to learn Chinese and develop love for the people of Taiwan! 

- We started having mini culture lessons in class! This mostly just consists of us distracting our teacher, who served in Taiwan, Taichung, enough to pause the lesson and show us pictures of food and street parades and mountains and such instead of learning grammar. I have to say, I much prefer culture lessons to anything else! ;) The pirks of being here for 7 weeks :P your teachers are sometimes as done with grammar as we are haha

- I saw a couple friends that came to the MTC wednesday that I never expected/had forgotten I might overlap with!!! So fun! I saw Francis Aguilar and Leah Forsyth's cousin!

- I accidentally said "death" when trying to say "thoughts" in our lesson this week about the Law of Chastity lol... solid...

- We had an awesome devotional yesterday by Pres. and Sis. Ralph about the apostasy and restoration and it was so good! Also, a sister and elder from our branch sang a duet at the end of it in front of the whole MTC and they did a BEAUTIFUL job! The Spirit was so strong!

This week we're getting our flight plans (just an email) on thursday I think, hence the Merry Christmas! ;) We started singing Christmas hymns to begin class. It's not as exciting as next week though, because this week we just get our flight plans to Taiwan in case our visas come in time (chances are slim). But NEXT week, I hopefully will find out where I will be reassigned if my visa isn't here yet! That is what I am actually pumped for! Every reassignment goes through the prophet again and an inspired Apostle reassigns you, so no matter what, it'll be where the Lord wants me to go!

John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not you heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

Have a fantastic week!

Sending hugs and prayers!

Can't wait to hear all about Canada and Spain!!!

Sis. Jensen

Mission shirts at exercise time! Practicing our Asian squats! And wǒ
de tóngbàn 😉 sis morgan

Week 6-July 16, 2018

Chuanjiao mao!!!

Nihao fam!!!

So there's this random cat that just wanders around the MTC and it's super cute and looks super healthy and is not at all afraid of all the adoring attention it gets! No one has any idea where it came from or how it got here or what it eats or anything, but its adorable and it makes all the missionaries literally so overjoyed just to pet it!!! We named it chuanjiao mao ;) our little missionary cat--ill attach a pic!

Also, we got to watch part of Meet the Mormons 2 last night and it was so funny how sensitive we were to any sort of PDA (public displays of affection)! The movie talks about an Italian couple and how they like saved their marriage through service and the gospel and then the next story was about brand new parents and it was just funny how all us missionaries squirm even when they just like hold hands or anything. The last part we watched though was about a Japanese pop group called bless4 (look 'em up) and WOW!!! They were sooooo good!!! (yes, we heard a little bit of worldly music for a change... Jpop) but the youngest brother is serving in Los Angeles right now! And he got special permission to record "I am a child of God" with his siblings and a choir from Japan!!! Oh my goodness i died like seventy times! Their voices are so nice!!! If there's any way you can send that cover to me, that would be awesome ;) 

Other highlight of this week, my companions and I got randomly chosen to answer questions to a group taking a tour of the MTC! It was fun to see a little bit of the "real world" ;) And we got to skip a little bit of class too!

Saturday we had our last in person TRC! We didn't have much time to prepare, so we were pretty nervous going in, but both the people we talked to were soooo nice! One was a sister from Taiwan who served in Oregon (mandarin speaking) and she was super sweet! and the other was a Y-serve coordinator at BYU and served in Taiwan, Taipei! He was super cool and gave us a lot of compliments on our Chinese and the lesson and was just super happy the whole time! (We are pretty proud of the fact that in our evaluations we always get comments like "Thank you for smiling!" and "You sisters are so happy, it's contagious!" whereas the Elders who always teach after us sometimes get comments like "You could try smiling more" haha we always laugh about that--its a sister thing i guess! ;) 

Tonight we start our first Skype TRC! This is just when we have a discussion about the gospel of Jesus Christ for 25 minutes with a native Chinese speaker from one of our missions! We are guessing we will most likely Skype someone from Taiwan because that's where most of the volunteers come from, but it could be canada or california! This is a little more difficult because sometimes they don't know english at all and they speak faster and use different words than we are used to, but we are super excited! It's going to be awesome!

I feel so blessed this week because the Lord is truly with us and even though we aren't even out in our mission fields yet, I have felt so much help, support, and love from God. Every day I see things in myself that I need to change and improve and sometimes the feelings of inadequacy and all my flaws are overwhelming, but then I feel the Spirit testifying to me of God's love for His children and of the enabling power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for my Savior, His love, and for His endless mercy and grace. 

Ether 12:27 "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

I have seen so many little miracles over the past week that have strengthened my faith and let me know that God is watching over us! I had zero time to prepare my talks for sunday (everyone prepares talks on the topic and they choose randomly) but i was fairly convinced i wouldn't get called because i've already spoken and there's a ton of missionaries who havent spoken yet and the branch president knows that we were super busy with interviews, service, and planning zone conference the night before and I was trying to be obedient so I went to bed without preparing my talk, and then we had branch presidency meeting in the morning so i couldn't do it then, but lo and behold, my name was called and I stood (my heart was racing at like fifty hundred mph) but through the grace of God I was able to give a talk about the Atonement and justice almost completely in Chinese. I would definitely say it was a miracle. Many others things like that have happened and its truly been amazing to see all the tender mercies and blessings from trying your best to do the Lord's will.

Have a fantastic week!

Sending love and hugs and prayers!

Sis. Jensen

1. The first pic is the zone coming back from cleaning the temple
(hence the shoes) trying to stand in the little shade of the pole cuz
it’s so hot
2. Sis Cruz and I have the same skirt! 😉
3. The district (HAPPY BDAY BEN!)
4. The cat❤️

Week 5- July 9, 2018

Week 5! MTC Half-way Day!

Nihao fam and friends!!!

This last week went by so fast!!! We got to watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks from the 4th floor of the MTC classroom building! It was super cool because we actually saw like five different firework shows happening all across the valley! Stadium of Fire was the best though because they had people jumping from helicopters with parachutes and somehow fireworks with them! it was pretty insane! We also watched a little video presentation thing about religious freedom and the importance of it and had a good discussion!

One of the other memorable things about this week is we reached our MTC halfway point! Waaa-oohhh we're halfway theeerreeee! Waa-ohhh livin' on a prayer! (honestly, so true though, so true...) ;) haha it's been great! 

Saturday was probably the busiest day this week! We had "TRC"s which is when we get to have a gospel discussion with a member that speaks Chinese (often return missionaries that volunteer, but sometimes just random members) and our teacher sits in a different room and listens through the camera and writes an evaluation and then the people we teach write an evaluation for us too! it went really well and our teacher wrote some really encouraging things! I always enjoy TRC's more than practice lessons because you just have to think of some good questions and then the members do most of the Chinese speaking as they share spiritual experiences and all you have to do is focus on understanding them! They were all so nice! Saturday we also went to the field to play sand volleyball, and although it was hot, we had a ton of fun! We played with the other mandarin zone here and it's always so much fun getting to know them and talking to them! Sometimes my team has to remind me to pay attention to the game because I'm talking to the other team too much! Interviews saturday evening went really well too and all the new sisters are adjusting much better! Then we practiced our musical number for church sunday: Come Thou Fount transitioned into Nearer My God to Thee and it went super well! (A mini-miracle honestly) and then we planned zone conference with the Zone Leaders which was a blast! Finally, we had service (setting up chairs for devotional) and our group prayer outside because the fire alarm went off in our dorm building. 

This week I thought a lot about 2 Nephi 31:20 "Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life." I love this scripture because it fits so perfectly with our mission purpose! We are hear to invite others to come unto Christ because of our love for Him and for everyone! I also love "having a perfect brightness of hope" because hope and faith are so connected! When we have faith in Jesus Christ, we have hope that through His Atonement, all things will be made right! I love this gospel and I am so grateful to be a missionary of Christ!

Have a fantastic week!

Sis. Jensen

Week 4-July 2, 2018

New missionaries!!!!

Nihao family and friends!!!

The highlight of this week was getting 19 new missionaries into our zone! 5 sisters, 14 elders! Many of the elders already knew some Chinese so it was a little intimidating talking to them because their Chinese is already much better than mine, but it has been super fun showing them all around the MTC and helping them adjust to missionary life! I love all the sisters so much already, i feel like we've known each other for years! It was super fun having interviews with them and just getting to talk to them one-on-one about how their doing, their families, what they like to do, etc. They are all so sweet and so full of faith! It has also been fun having more people to play volleyball with at exercise time! 

This week the language has been a little harder for my district, and we had to take an assessment exam and such, but we all are determined to work harder, pray harder, and use every minute here wisely! I know the Lord will help us do His work as we are obedient and diligent! I love my companions and district so much and I love our Lord, Jesus Christ. I am so grateful and happy to be here despite all the surface level ups and downs, there is always an underlying joy and peace that comes from the gospel and from serving with all your heart. 

2 Nephi 31:20 "Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the words of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: ye shall have eternal life."

Attached are a couple fun pictures from this week including a selfie with the new sisters at zone prayer and a homemade meme pc my companion sis morgan ;) 

Have a fantastic week!

Love you all!

Sister Jensen

Week 3-June 25, 2018

WE MET UCHTDORF and saw the ENTIRE Quorum of the 12!!!

THIS WEEK HAS BEEN OUT OF THIS WORLD!!!
First of all, ELDER UCHTDORF came to OUR class!!! Turns out one of the
elders in my district is his GRANDSON! we had no idea until some
security guard marches into our class, asks us what mission we were
and we said all over, and then he was like what language and we said
mandarin and then he was like when does class start (it was just us
sisters and two elders there early) and we were like 1:30 and he was
like okay, be on your best behavior. We were all like haha ok? And
then some elders from another class peeked in after the guard left and
were like, I heard a rumor that that’s elder Uchtdorf’s body guard and
we were like yeah sure. But then about an hour later we took a break
and the elders left to the bathroom and then us sisters got up and
started walking down the hall and all of a sudden Elder Uchtdorf was
walking towards us! We like kinda panicked and just like turned around
and went and sat down again really fast and pretended to be studying
😂 but then we like stood up all awkward when he actually came into
our class and shook our hands and we gave his wife hugs. Then the
elders came back from the bathroom and we were all just a little like
dumbfounded while he kinda made small talk and thanked us for serving
and chatted with his grandson. Then he suggested we take a pic and we
were all like YES SIR! and I’ll attach that below for proof 😉 he was
only there for about 10 min but I was literally in shock for about 3
hours after!
The crazy thing about this weekend though is that all the new mission
presidents are here so the food has been next level! That’s also why
all the general authorities visited too! Oh yeah! Second story: So
Sunday we new someone big was coming to the devo that night because
the Chinese missionaries’ weekly service is to set up all the chairs
in the gym for the devo and we were all like what is going on? Cuz we
had to extend the stage for a couple extra rows on the stand and then
we PACKED the chairs in like nobodies business in a diff arrangement
then usual but we kinda assumed it was just cuz the 250 new mission
presidents were gonna be here, but we kept hearing rumors and
speculating... we thought maybe Elder Uchtdorf because he visited us
yesterday but then word got around that someone saw Elder Ballard
walking around! Then the people who were in a special choir that sang
for them in the morning said they saw at least 5 or 6 of the Apostles
and we were all like NO WAY! We figured none of them would stay that
long, but boy, the MTC was BUZZING with so much excitement because we
all could tell something was coming! We had 85% of all the
missionaries at the MTC in choir that afternoon! And because we set up
chairs we got some of the best seats! They had to keep reminding us in
choir that we need to be reverent and respectful that evening and
stand up if a general authority walked into the room. That evening at
the devo, we started prelude singing, but everyone was really just
watching the doors! Finally when everyone was seated and singing, they
opened the doors and ALL THE 12 APOSTLES walked in with their wives!
It was unreal. We all stood and the choir directed later made a joke
that the singing suddenly got better! We were all so amazed! It was
such an honor to sing Jesus, Once of Humble Birth for them and all the
other missionaries and mission presidents. Elder Cook spoke and they
broadcasted it to all the MTCs worldwide! It was awesome to say the
least. One of my favorite parts though was when all the Apostles had
left and the congregation spontaneously broke out into Called to Serve
and all the mission presidents in the front turned around and started
videoing as us missionaries sang and waved. Cool moment.
So I also got to meet the new Taiwan Taipei mission president Saturday
night with all the other missionaries going there for a brief like
meeting thingy. He seems pretty cool (unfortunately meeting him was
dimmed by all the general authorities 😉) but I’m super excited to see
him again in a few months!

There’s a bunch of my friends from my BYU ward here and we finally got
a pic together before a bunch leave tomorrow.

One of the elders in our district went home this week due to anxiety,
so now we just have a trio of elders (who are the new zone leaders)
and another companionship of elders in our district. So my district is
5 elders, 3 sisters. Our zone is just us and the 5 canto sisters rn
(because the older district left today), but on Wednesday it’s gonna
grow A TON! We are getting 14 new mandarin elders and 5 new mandarin
sisters headed to all over! Two of the elders are going to Arcadia!
I’ll attach their pics so you can look for them in 9 weeks! We (ZL and
STLs) get what we fondly call an “ultrasound” 😂 of the incoming
missionaries with their pics and info the Sunday before they come in!
We are also hosting on Wednesday which means we greet random new
missionaries, take pics for them, and help them carry their stuff to
their dorms and take them to class, etc. as Ashley and Taylor will
probably remember. I’m super excited for the new districts to come in
but a little scared too cuz when we came in, our zone leaders and STLs
were at 6 weeks, but we are the oldest now and we are only at 3, so I
feel like my Chinese isn’t good enough to be an STL yet 😂 All the
Taiwan missionaries coming in though are going to Taichung because it
switches every three weeks.

Wow. Sorry for the SUPER long email, this week has been anything but normal!

Last funny story, we started what are called TRCs this Saturday where
we basically teach members or like have a gospel discussion with them
in Chinese and sis Morgan tried to tell a story about when she was 17
and accidentally said “when I was 70...” 😂

Have a great week!
Love you all so much!
Jīn Jěmeì

Sis. Oh from Arcadia mission in the MTC!