Ukraine Sausage

The world is full of many different people. We have people of all heights, weights, colors, races, etc. Germany is home to many different people who have migrated from other countries and who come with different traditions, backgrounds, and ideas. As missionaries we came into contact with a ton of these individuals. We had an entire bookcase that contained copies of the Book of Mormon in over 50 different languages.

Once particular women was from Ukraine. If you ever served in Freiburg you know exactly who I’m talking about. This women who will remain unnamed was absolutely crazy. I don’t mean to be rude, however you will understand as you read on. In the end I think we stopped visiting her but would drop off a pass-along card and a little note letting her know she was loved, any time we were in the area.

The very first time we met her. Elder Ault had informed us that we needed to visit this sister. He knew exactly what we were heading into however he made it sound like this golden investigator. We arrived and knocked prepared for a warm welcome. Instead we got a little old women who would barley open the door enough to see who we were. Once we informed her we were the missionaries she quickly pulled us in and shut the door. It was like a scene out of the Hansel and Gretel book where the children are taken in and then eaten.  It was a bit terrifying. She brought us in and told us that her she hated her neighbors and they had all killed their husbands and were witches. Oh…………

We listened to her story and she insisted on feeding us. We had cold potatoes and some chicken. This is how it was most times we would visit. She would always feed us and then we would share a lesson and leave. After a few times of doing this Sister Christopher and I decided either we had to drop her (stop teaching her because it was more a social call then actual teaching) or we needed to start the lessons from the beginning and really focus on teaching her. We never made it past Families and God being our Heavenly Father. (first part of the first lesson) She understood she just wasn’t willing to listen. It was really sad.

However I have one particular story I would like to share pertaining to her. Not one of my more shining moments on my mission but really funny and probably the second most embarrassing moment on my mission. There were times when we would be there and she would feed us some questionable food. We always prayed hard and ate the least we could. On this particular day she was being very pushing and was not satisfied with our small potions. So basically we were offending her for not eating so out came more food.

We were given the most horrible thing we’d ever eaten and looking back on it she may have been trying to poison us. She gave us old potato, onion salad awful and raw sausages. We tried to eat it but there was no way it was going down. The thought was to quickly while her back was turned to dump the food in our bags, however they were across the room and we had no way of getting to them. So we ate. We ate and ate until we couldn’t any more. I had taken the sausage while my companion tried the salad.

Finally there was no other option so while my companion asked for more water I picked that sausage up and dropped it down the front of my shirt.

We had a beautiful lesson about Peter on the Water and we left. As we came out of the gated area we were met by a member who stopped us and we had a lengthy chat. Where then we had to run to catch our leaving bus in order to get to our next appointment. All the while this sausage is still there and it stunk so bad. That bus ride was the longest ever. In the end everything turned out fine I finally dumped the sausage before our appointment and our investigator wasn’t offended because she believed we ate everything off our plates, which made her really happy. Oh the joys of being a missionary.

   

mit freundlichen Grüßen

Jenessa Jensen

Christmas

As a missionary you leave everything behind as you go out into the world to preach the gospel. We leave jobs, schooling, movies, sports teams, etc. We leave it all behind know that the Lord will take care of things. One of the bigger things we leave behind is our families. Not like being at school where you can call, skype, or visit the family whenever you please, on a mission you are limited to one (1) weekly email and two (2) phone calls per year – one on Christmas and the other for Mothers Day. I believe the reason for this is first to keep your family informed about what is going on but also to keep you focused. However when Christmas approaches we all get a little antsy and ready for our phone calls. Thankfully I was only in Germany for one Christmas because I’m not sure I could have made it through a second round of Christmas disaster.

Being a threesome had its issues including how to manage all the Christmas calls. We ended up setting a plan for me to talk with my family on Christmas Eve after our dinner appointment and for Sister Christopher and Robinson to call their families Christmas day. This worked great for me as Christmas Eve in our family is usually when all the fun and excitement happen anyways.

It was cold, wet, and snowing. We had worked hard in that morning knowing the next day would be Christmas. We were not going to interrupt families Christmas day so we did all our visits that morning. Our last appointment of the day was dinner with the Suss Family. They had prepared an authentic Christmas Eve dinner for us with Wieners (hotdogs), rolls, potatoes, and Sourcrout. It was delicious. We sat around the table and ate, and ate, and talked, and ate some more. By the time we were done I was full I could have popped. After the meal we gathered around in the living room and read the Christmas story from the bible. It’s a beautiful story in English but it’s absolutely amazing in German. I remember thinking that this is a tradition I want in my house. I want to eat a delisious German meal and read the Christmas story in German. Brother Suss then started telling stories upon stories of his childhood and how he met Sister Suss and so on. It was so sweet, but I will admit as the time continued to tick by my mind started to wander.

I had waited all day and now that it was finally after dark my family would be calling. We had said 9:00pm. As 8:30pm came and went my anxiety started to grow. What if I missed their call. I was going to miss the 1 call I was going to get this year. What if I gave them the wrong number. What if they thought it was 9 o’clock their time instead of German time. “Sister Jensen, Sister Jensen” I was brought back from my thoughts and found myself at a loss for words. I didn’t even know what we were talking about but I was being asked something. Thank goodness for great companions that jumped in and saved me. It was all I could do then to focus on giving our quick message before leaving.

9 o’clock had come and gone before the car pulled to a stop outside of our apartment. We thanked the Suss family and quickly stepped out into the snow. At this moment a sudden feeling of terror struck me. I couldn’t find the key to our apartment. I asked my companions if either of them had it. As we rushed up the stairs to the apartment praying each step that by some miracle we had forgotten to lock the door before leaving, or that they key would be there right outside the door. As we climbed the last steps the phone in the apartment began to ring. It rang and rang but we couldn’t get in.

My family was calling and there we were all three of us huddled outside that small apartment door trying to get in.  After the third call I stepped back, took a seat on the stairs, and began to cry. This couldn’t be happening. We had never forgotten the keys before – NEVER. And of all days and times to be happening it couldn’t end like this.

There is no way to explain with any justice what happened next. Sister Christopher started to laugh. She couldn’t stop, she was laughing so hard that she finally fell to the floor completely overtaken. Sister Robinson seeing both of us one crying and the other laughing – I’m not sure what she must have thought. Without a word to either of us she went down stair to our neighbors’ and started asking for a phone book, tools, anything that might help open the door.   With no luck there we were again all huddled around the door trying to figure out what to do. The whole time hearing the phone ring over and over again in the background.

A thought finally hit us. This used to be the Elders apartment so they would probably have a spare key, or know how to get in. I mean they are guys they’d probably been locked out lots before. An hour later in walk the elders, cold and wet. They had walked all the way to our place in the snow. A complete act of kindness and love. I don’t think I had ever been so happy to see the Elders in my life. They worked on the door for a few minutes but still couldn’t get it open. Finally with no other option the Elders smashed open the glass window on the door. Not the greatest option but it was the last option.

Once again the phone rang but this time we answered and their on the other line was my family wishing me a Merry Christmas.

I am so grateful for Elders who walked in the snow to help us break a window. I’m grateful for companions who loved me enough to act a bit crazy. I’m grateful for a family who didn’t give up in calling. My Christmas Eve was amazing – each moment made it the best Christmas Eve ever.

mit freundlichen Grüßen

Jenessa Jensen

George

George. Never before had I met anyone like him. He was prepared and ready for the gospel.

It was at one of our weekly street displays. It was cold but the sun was out. It must have been around Christmas time because everyone was out and shopping like crazy. Sister Christopher was on one side of the street and I was on the other. It was a walking street so there was about 5 feet between us. I was standing in front of one of the bigger stores stopping everyone like normal. We had been there for about an hour and hadn’t had much success. I had just finished being yelled and had quite an audience from it, when this young man stopped me.

In perfect English he asked “what is it that you are teaching, that is making everyone you talk to so angry”. I later learned that he had been there for a few minutes and had been watching me and my desperate plea to share the truth with everyone. He was so fascinated that after been yelled at I would take a deep breath and then stop the next person, never stopping to think that it might not be worth it.

He was from England where his Mom lived but was out for the holiday visiting his Dad. Thus explaining his perfect English. In answer to his question I said I was sharing the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. When he just stood there waiting for more I started from the beginning. Right there in the middle of the street we had the first lesson. We talked about God, Prophets, the Restoration, Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon, and Prayer.

George had so many questions, he just kept want to know more and more. He was so thirsty for it. We talked about prayer and at the end I asked if He would pray about it to know if it was true. He said yes he would. So I taught him how to pray and then asked him to prayer. YES right there on the street I asked him to pray. We both stood there arms folded and heads bowed. It was simple yet more sincere then anything. He pled with the Lord to know if what he’d been taught was true. The spirit was so strong and I was sure everyone around us could feel it.

George went back to England that week and we never did meet with him again. Sometimes I would wonder how he was dong and if he’d actually let the missionaries in that we sent to him. It wasn’t until I was in my last area that I received letter from him. It was very small but he said he’s met with the missionaries and had been baptized. His mom was now meeting with the missionaries and he wanted to thank me for sharing the gospel for him.

Sometimes as missionaries we are called to plant seeds. We may feel discouraged because we don’t see the fruits of our labors right away but I testify that the fruit does come. It comes and it is wonderful.

mit freundlichen Grüßen

Jenessa Jensen

30 Lessons in 1 Week

I thought this experience would be appropriate to share today as everyone is setting goals and really looking for how they can be better.

Sister Christopher and I never thought we were better than anyone or any other companionship. We did however believe that is they could do it, so could we. We had no doubt in our mind that if others were having 5 lessons a day that we couldn’t do that same thing. It wasn’t that we were cocky, it was that we could follow those who were leading the way.

On day Elder Ault called us and said, “Sister, we just learned that the highest amount of lessons taught within a week is 20. We are planning to beat that and get 25. Want to do it with us?” I’m pretty sure if my memory serves me right we kind of laughed and said no. Then as we sat looking at our calendar and thinking of the Elder getting 25 lesson we thought, ‘Well if they can do it we can do it’. So there we were planning on getting 25 lessons in one week – we must have been crazy.

I don’t know how it happened but somewhere along the way during our planning we decided that we were not going to be happy with just doing 25 but we wanted 30 lessons that week. So we planned for 30. We prayed earnestly asking the Lord how we could use our time wisely. We asked who He wanted us to visit and when. We committed to our 30 lessons and told the Lord that we wouldn’t stop until we had them. We had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into.

Planning – we had the best planning day ever. We prepared our map with dots of less actives, members, and investigators. We called everyone we were currently teaching and set up appointments. We contacted every less active around those areas to set up appointments. And we contacted the members in those areas. We quickly learned that we needed to use our time wisely so if we were in an area for a lesson we had to set up other appointments in that area so that we didn’t have to waist travel time. We had it all planned out and we were ready to go. We had 15 lessons on the books and we were going to go on faith knowing the Lord would fill the rest.

I should note here that we didn’t tell the Elders we were going for 30 and not 25. So we had a bit of a competitive edge in our companionship but we were not going to be shown up by the Elders.

I think the best way to explain what happened during that week is to tell you the things we learned;

-          We learned that our average door approach was 1 out of 10. For 10 people who opened their door to us and talked with us 1 would let us come in and teach them or make a follow-up appointment.

-          We learned that 3 of 5 appointments will usually fall out.

-          We learned that lunch was a commodity and we could go without – sometimes this applied to dinner as well.

-          We learned that that no matter how much tea you drink you will always be offered more.

-          We learned that our ward had a ton of less actives that didn’t want anything to do with the church.

-          We learned that those less actives who let us in had been waiting for us. Some had been praying hard for missionaries to come and teach them.

-          We learned that a lesson won’t always be taught in a formal setting sometimes the best lessons are taught on the street corner or on the train.

-          We learned that while on the errand of the Lord, all the elements will work against you just because they can.

-          We learned that with the help of the Lord all things are possible – even 30 lessons in a week.

At the end of the week we were so warn out but energized with heavenly power. It was probably the best week of my mission. We worked harder than ever before. After that each week we pushed a little harder knowing that we had done it before so it was easy. When challenged to add and extra hour of tracking in each day we knew we could. When told to visit all the less active in a month we knew we could. To find 5 new investigators in a day we knew we could. Pass out 50 Book of Mormons, we knew we could. We knew we could because we had done hard things before and the Lord had strengthened us.

mit freundlichen Grüßen

Jenessa Jensen