January 20, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,                        Monday, January 20, 2014 at 10:58 (EST)

Today we are headed up to Colebrook today for a District Preparation day with Elder Roberts and Elder Daniels. We are going to go to a member's house up there

We have been teaching quite a few investigators about the Atonement. As we have taught them I am finding new ways to use the Atonement in my life. I have discovered that through daily prayer God can strengthen me whenever I have a discouraging day and I have been using prayer a lot more this past week.

Monday

Was a regular Preparation day. Way too short.

Tuesday
We walked around in the rain all day today. We figured that we walked 8 miles today, and it rained all day. We were soaked by the end. We stopped by R. T. and had a lesson with her and her son. She just recently went into remission from her cancer.

 
Tuesday evening we stopped by one of our potential investigators. She almost got baptized in 2008 but somehow lost interest. She wants us to teach her children and help her stop smoking.

We went to L's house and taught her children. They are doing great. We taught them about the 8th Article of Faith this week and how we can use the Book of Mormon and the Bible hand in hand. They came to church on Sunday and they enjoyed it. Two are all set for baptism in the beginning of February and the mom will follow after she has the baby.

Wednesday
We did some service on the Dairy farm in Milan. It was a lot of fun. A semi truck with a box trailer came up from Manchester area to pick up some hay. We helped them load the truck. We loaded 590 bales of grass hay into the truck. All the hay around here is grass hay. Alfalfa doesnt grow too well here because of the length of the summer. After loading all that hay we helped them set some anchors for the extension they are going to put on their heifer barn. After that fun service we drove to Lancaster and visited the A's. The A's are doing great. Both came to church this week. We had a lesson with them about the Plan of Salvation and of Temples. It was a really good lesson and she understands temples a little better.

Thursday
We had Zone Meeting in Plymouth NH. It was a lot of fun. In the middle of the meeting we got a media referral from Mormon.org.

A requested a visit from us on Mormon.org. A. has a lot of issues. She wants to attend the Addiction Recovery Program (ARP) class that the Senior Missionaries teach. She wants to learn about the church because she knows that it will help her, but it is very hard to teach her because her former and current drug abuse gives her high anxiety. We will continue to stop by and see if we can help her at all.

We stopped by the L's and moved a dresser for them.

Friday

We stopped by D. H. and had a lesson with him. We read the first chapter of the Book of Mormon. We stopped by a few others.

Saturday

We stopped by A. again today. she is still having problems from her former and current drug abuse. She was really going crazy. She told us that she had snipers on her. She told us that people were hacking into her phone and trying to kill her. After that we taught a lesson to D. T. and her friend P.  It went alright. P. is a hard core Catholic. He enjoys learning about things from the Bible but he always argues with us when we pull out Book of Mormon scriptures.
The M's invited us over for dinner. We had dinner with them and taught a lesson to them and their 4 non-member grandchildren. It was pretty good.

We found out that we are going to be able to do some service in Lancaster for a snowmobile race. I guess Lancaster has a rich history of snowmobiling. Paul Crane of Lancaster was the first American to ride a Ski-doo snowmobile in 1959. (Too bad it was a Ski-doo. He could have waited 3 years and rode an Arctic Cat when they came out in 1962) They used to have circle track snowmobile races in Lancaster but in recent years they havent done it. This year one of our investigators, D's, step dad is putting together a race. They are going to have a vintage race as well as a modern snowmobile circle track race. We talked to D's step dad on the phone and he said that we could help out, possibly by filming the race. We are pretty excited about that.

Sunday
We met with N.J. for a lesson on Sunday. We taught the Restoration again. We talked about having the proper authority to baptize. We had a cool science trick to help her understand why we need the proper authority for a baptism to be valid. She brought her friend M. to church and M. is going to ask permission from her parents to see if we can teach her. After that lesson we stopped by to see B. & T.  They are doing really well. T. was sick so she couldnt come to church. T. really liked church last week and she really wants to learn more about the gospel. They said they are thinking about moving to Colorado. They asked which town I am from. I told them Montrose. They said that they are going to research the area and that they might think of moving to Montrose. That would be so odd to see someone from out here in my Hometown.

Also tonight A.texted us a bunch of URL's for websites. We couldnt follow the URL's because we only use church websites as missionaries. At about 3:00 in the morning she texted us again and told us that she found out that we were a part of the government conspiracy that was trying to kill her. She told us that she didnt really want us to come by anymore. So that was really weird and really solidifies the fact that I never want to get into drugs.

Elder CWJensen