Dear Family and Friends, Monday, March 24, 2014
Well this week has been a crazy
one. I had the craziest exchange of my mission.
Also we spent a whole lot of
the week tracting. This week we had no lessons with investigators. All of our
lessons got cancelled. I think this is the first week in my mission where we
taught 0 lessons to investigators. That was a little discouraging. We are in a
real finding slump. We knocked on doors all week. We found the most success in
boxing out. This is where we contact a former investigator or a potential
investigator and then we knock on all the houses surrounding their house. We
spent about 30 minutes boxing out this week and we found 2 potential
investigators. One was a family that does stock car racing. The mother invited
us back when her husband is feeling better so that I can talk with him about
NASCAR and stock car racing. The other potential took a Family Proclamation, a
proclamation that states the church's view on the importance of families. We
asked if we could come back and see what she thought of it and she said yes.
Boxing out seemed a lot more successful considering that we probably spent
about 4 hours tracting this week vs. 30 minutes of boxing out, and we found
people by boxing out.
On Monday we had a regular
Preparation day. We stayed in the apartment
all day. It was really boring. We exchanged in the evening. We went to to a 5
Guys Burger restaurant in Brunswick to meet up for the exchange. I think that
is Grandpa Jensen's favorite Burger Joint if i remember right. It was pretty
good. It was a little pricy, but tasty and really it was worth the money cause
we got a lot of food. I went to Bath Maine with Elder Dean and Elder Hansen and
Elder Dahlberg stayed in Yarmouth. Monday evening me and Elder Dean walked
about 2 miles down a country road to contact a less active member. On the way
back we got attacked by German Shepherd. His name is Odin. He came running at us
out of the woods. He sniffed us for a bit and then came at me. I kicked him 3
times. The last one I clocked him a good one in the jaw and he gave up. I told
his owner, "Sorry I kicked your dog, Sir." He said to not worry about
it.
On Tuesday we went to a less
active member's house for lunch. On the way we passed Bath Iron Works. It is a
shipbuilding company. They are building a destroyer for the Navy right now. We
went tracting in Woolwich and we just happened to knock on a Jehovah's Witness
door. The lady was like, "Mormon missionaries havent stopped by here in
over 40 years." She said, "Your leaders must have me on their radar
and they told former missionaries to not stop here." The whole time we
were thinking, "Or you just live so far out in the toolies that
missionaries just havent happened to knock on your door in 40 years." A
lot of people seem to think that our mission leaders tell us where to go and
who to see and that some big cheese somewhere keeps tract of everything. A man
the other day told us to take him off our "list." We talked to the
lady for a little while and she gave us a ton of their literature. We offered
her some of ours and she very rudely told us no. It made for a really crazy
exchange.
On Wednesday we didnt do much,
we just had service at the Freeport Community Center.
On Thursday we spent all day
tracting in Durham. We picked a back road and knocked on all the doors. We left
some pamphlets if no one answered. We only had one person call us and that was
to tell us that if he ever saw us on his property again he would call the
Sheriff and have him escort us away. We also contacted a Less Active member from Roy Utah. He is 54. I was wondering if dad or
any of the other Jensens know him. We didnt get to talk to him. Only his
daughter was home so we didnt get to ask him if he knew dad.
On Friday we had our planning
and we tracted in Yarmouth. About midway through the day our Branch President
called to see if we could help him move a TV. So we ended up going there to help. They feed us dinner that night and we helped him move it. He is
swapping out his old big screen for a flatscreen. That old one was heavy and we
had to pull it off a cabinet that was about shoulder height. Once we got it
down it was pretty easy.
Saturday was a really fun day.
We went tracting in the morning and then we go to help out the Habitat for
Humanity. They had a Lego Day at the Masonic Lodge. There was a bunch of people
that came. We handed out legos to all the kids. We even got to build some lego
creations. It was really fun. I talked with this one guy for quite a while. He
seemed to enjoy talking to me. He sent mom a picture of my lego creations.
After that the Branch had their Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. We judged the finish
line. Some of the cars were pretty close. Elder Hansen got down and put his
knuckles on the track and see which knuckle got hit first. Well he ended up
breaking the fastest car. It was built to look like an Indy car. He broke the
front wheels off. So the kid only got second. It was really funny.
Sunday was a regular one. We
had church and then went and saw a less active member, We tracted for the
evening. Our dinner got cancelled that we had scheduled with some members.
Elder CWJensen