Year Mark!

Hello everyone,

So in case you didn't catch the title of the message, I did indeed hit my year mark this week. I am officially over the hump. Crazy right? Time sure does fly, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon. This week was good. We had 2 baptisms on saturday of people who have been waiting far too long. It was a really sweet moment when the were finally able to make such a great step. The work is going well. All is good.

So let me first off tell you about my friend Nary. We found him just a few weeks ago. Elder Lake and I were tracting and we walked in to this little yard with a little 2 story wood shack in it. We could here somebody moving around on the second floor so we yelled up at them. No answer. So we yelled again. Still no answer. We yelled one more time and waited a bit, still nothing. This kind of happens a lot. People feel like Jesus would be mad if they came and told us to go away so they just ignore us instead. Anyways we were just about to turn around and leave when this random guy came walking in off of the street. He was wearing really old beat up clothes and had dread locks and just looked like a really shady character but he asked us what we were doing so we told him that we just wanted to talk to whoever was in the house. He then went running up the stairs and into the house, and came back out with whoever had been up there. The mysterious man then left and disappeared. We had never seen him before nor have we seen him since. The man who he brought out of the house's name was Nary. Thing is that it wasn't even his house, he was cleaning it for his grandmother. It was pure chance that we even caught him there in the first place. We talked to him for a minute about his life and then just sat down right there on the front steps and taught him a first. He had originally been a part of a local protestant church, but had left when he finally got fed up with all of the money talk involved. I swear the fastest way to make money in Madagascar is to just start a new church. Anyways he hasn't been to any church for about a year now just because he couldn't find one that he thought was true. It was an awesome experience to be able to tell him of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and to tell him that God had sent us to him because he wanted him to come back. I have never met anyone as prepared for the gospel as Nary, he absorbs every lesson like a sponge and allways waits for us at the gate of his house. Isn't it amazing how things just seem to work out sometimes?

So now the reason I was late. We started off the day with a mission wide ping pong tournament at the office. It wasn't quite mission wide I guess, just all those here in tana, but it did cover about 2/3 of the mission. We divided it all in to 2 brackets, one for North Zone and one for South Zone, and then the winners played each other. I am proud to say that I have not lost my game yet, and after about five rounds I was crowned North Zone Champion. I guess I was a little bit too proud, because I definitely got myself humbled in the North Zone/ South Zone all mission championship game. Second place is good too right?

 

So this week I spent a couple of studying all about the Jaredites. One of my favorite people in all of scripture is the Brother of Jared. Poor guy, he couldn't even get his own name into the book. Anyways I especially love his interactions with the Lord as he is preparing the boat to cross the sea. There are a couple of things that I like about it. I like how the Brother of Jared isn't given the exact blueprints of the boats. He is given some basic guidelines and told to go to work. Every time there is a problem he goes to the mount and the Lord tells him to figure it out and bring him back a solution. It's kind of like that in life. We aren't all robots out here, God doesn't control everything we do. He gave us the basic guidelines and told us to go to work. If we have a problem, we can't allways just wait for him to fix it because he won't. We are here on earth to learn and to grow and we can't do that if he gives us all of the solutions. He will help us along the way, but we have to take some responsibility as well. In that way he is able to mold us in to what he needs us to be.

 Love you all so much,

Elder Jensen
Scripture of the week: Ether 12:4