18 Oct 2010

Hey Mom and Family, etc!
Here are some pics! The second two are of my new companion, Sister Glenn, and me. The first and the last were taken during transfers. In the last photo, Sister Goodell, my first companion, is the one on the bottom row with the green shirt and gray sweater.

First I'll answer my mom's questions:

1.Did you feel the earthquake last Wednesday? I did not feel the earthquake, but my companion and many other people in the area did. I guess I was just distracted because transfers were that day and I was a little nervous to be getting a new companion and going to a new area.

2. So how is your new area? My new area is really big geographically, but really small population wise. Woodward is where our apartment is and there is a small branch with a very small building, probably 1/10 of the stake center. We also drive out to several other small towns, like Seiling and teach people there once a week. This area is a lot different and has other challenges. It's hard to have investigators that you can only see once a week, it's hard to resolve their concerns and keep in touch with them enough. We drive a lot here. We have district meetings every friday and it takes a 1.5 hour drive to get there. It is a 3hr drive down to Oklahoma City, which we will be going to this wednesday for a Mission Conference with Elder Zwick. I'm for sure not used to a small town, but I like it so far.

3. Who is your new companion?
My new companion is Sister Vanessa Glenn. She is from a small town in Wyoming and went to school at Sothern Utah University in Cedar City. She is a special education major as well, but at SUU to do that you have to double major in Special Ed and Elementary Ed, so she finished her El ED classes and then was prompted to come out on a mission.

4. How did you make the transfer? Plane? Train? Submarine? LOL! Bus???
Actually it was by tractor...lol. If either sister is being transfered in a companion ship we drive down to the Moore Stake Center, south about 30min from OKC. Everyone that is changing companions in the mission meets there and we get to talk to people for about 30min-1hr and then we all head off our seperate ways. Then Sister Glenn and I had a 3hr trip home. She is really fun to talk to and we discovered we have a lot of things in common.

5. What does a sister missionary in Oklahoma want for Christmas? Music! (Handel's messiah, classical music, Josh Groban's Christmas CD) it could just be a copy of the music you guys already have at home, Gum/Mints/Dark Chocolate,Christmas and any other fun stickers. Pictures of you guys! Stamps, Labels with my Oklahoma address (so I don't have to write it all the time) Pictures of Christ or other religious things to put up in my apartment/decorate stuff. A lot of missionaries decorate their planners with cut our pictures. Pictures are fun to paste into journals and letters, etc.

So our mission president asked us to more deeply study the Atonement and find a deeper connection with it in our personal lives. As I have learned and been taught, the more fully one understands the Atonement the more of a desire one has to bring others to Christ. So I started this and I have about 50bizillion thoughts about it rolling around my head. Basically what my studies yesterday boiled down to was that to understand and rely on the the Atonement I need to have faith. Faith that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have the power to work with my imperfections and frailties, and have the ability, through my humilty to eventually shape me into a complete and perfect person.

In companion study we were talking about how as missionaries we have a lot of responsibility and sometimes that can seem intimidating and can make it clear how weak we really are. But we know that the Lord uses the weak to confound the wise and that our weakness can be made into strengths through the Lord. Sister Glenn shared her testimony with me that she knows that Heavenly Father called her to this work, and that he knew her and the mistakes and weaknesses she had, and he still called her to be a missionary. I took a lot of strenght from that. I too know that the Lord has called me to be a missionary. I have full confidence that the Lord knows me, my strengths and my weaknesses and that with knowing that he called me to be his representitive.

Last night as I was praying I was thinking about my calling as a missionary and my own doubts about being sufficient for the task and a thought came to me. If the enemies of the Lord, people working against his purposes and Satan himself can't frustrate or impeed the Lord's work then surely I as a witness of him and working for him wouldn't be able to impeed his work. That may sound odd, but it gave me a lot of comfort.

I know that the Lord loves all of us. I know that the atonement is what will allow us to give up our unrightous desires and be comfortable in the Lord's presence. I know that I am changing for the better as I am more dedicated to his work and as trying to be a better tool in his hands. I know that all of the commandents aren't to restrict us but they are to form us so that it becomes a natural progression for us to be able to use the powers of God. I especially like D&C 121:45-46, "Then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distill upon they soul as the dews of heaven. And the Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter and unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever."

I also really enjoyed Romans 8:31-39. It has given me a lot to ponder. I know that nothing except our own choices seperates us from God and that his love is always there.

Thanks to everyone for the Facebook Birthday wishes! (Surprise, My mom emailed them to me :) )

You can all email me at lila.jenson@myldsmail.net but I can only email my family, so I'll write anyone else snailmail letters!

Love,

Sister Lila Jenson

12 October 2010

Hi Folks,
I’ll begin with addressing my mom’s question: I have no idea how many baptisms this mission gets every month, but I can ask. We have three people that we have been teaching since I was here and it looks like they are going to get baptized in the next month. We have nine people with baptismal dates currently, but since we ask people to be baptized in the first lesson, many of those are new.

I had a good birthday. I opened everything in the package when I got it, except for the card, about a week before my birthday. And I loved everything :) Thank you so much for the clothes and earrings and the beautiful necklace (it's a lot of fun). I've also had several people send me CD's which has been awesome.

Oh, I"M GETTING TRANSFERRED!!!!! I'm going to Woodward, OK on Wednesday. We found out Sunday night and for the last week Sister Goodell was convinced that she was leaving and going to Woodward, because she has been in this area for 7.5 months. But it turns out I'm going there instead. I have loved serving with Sister Goodell and it's crazy to be leaving all these people that we have been teaching. But Sister Goodell promises to keep me updated about how they do.

OK to get back to my birthday... it went like this:
• study,
• clean park,
• lunch with some of the Elders near us,
• stopping by less active members who weren't home,
• tracting a trailer home, and teaching a few people on the doorstep,
• going to an appointment and teaching,
• more tracting, (We accidently let someone's dogs out into the street and they had to be chased down, oops)
• Yummy Papa Murphy's pizza and chocolate cake at our ward mission leaders house,
• more tracting.

BTW, there are some creepy amazing Halloween looking spiders around here. We have almost run into several.

I did bake the Cherry pie (mom sent), yesterday after I found out I was going to be leaving.

Mom, I'm glad you're putting the Elders to work, lol. I'm sure they love the excuse to change out of proselyting clothes and have something to fill up their morning.
We have gotten cards for those “…and I’m a Mormon” ads, several different ones. I have some papers I have to send you so I'll send you a few of the new pass along cards if you want.

Hey Sarah--getting a job during school can be really good. I would not to do an early morning job though--it kills your social life.

Sounds like you guys are getting a LOT done to get ready to move etc, that’s a lot of work. Good Job!!

We have a GA coming to talk with our mission later this month. He is going to meet with half of the mission at a time. Apparently it is a policy that the entire mission doesn't meet together all at once except for unusual circumstances.

So I think that every leader in the church should read chapter 13 of Preach My Gospel. It's about how we are supposed to work with ward and stake leaders. I think everybody is still working out how missionaries and church leaders are supposed to work together to fellowship investigators and get them integrated into the ward. It is so helpful when we have people who are willing to go and teach lessons with us, because investigators can have an example of what a member of the church looks and acts like and often feel more comfortable making the leap to coming to church when they know they will know someone. Also the members are able to share their testimony and that is very important. We are told that every member is a missionary and other then finding people for the missionaries to teach, one really important way members can do that is be willing to go out teaching with the missionaries.

In my personal study I have been color coding and marking my scriptures in relation to the five lessons in PMG (Preach My Gospel). It is really helpful in finding scriptures that I want because they have a little labeled tab sticking out at the bottom colored with the corresponding color of the lesson. I got the idea from Sister Goodell who has the same thing. It makes me smile to look at my scriptures now. :D

It has been amazing to see how much I am learning when I have a purpose for that knowledge. In the last week I have studied the Priesthood a lot because we have a couple we are teaching who see the Priesthood as something existing in the Old Testament and being part of the old law and covenant and they don't see it pertaining to the New Testament or see the necessity of it today. There is a lot in Hebrews and Alma 13 that is really cool that I had no idea about before. It is interesting to see that people have such a different perception of the Old Testament and New Testament then I do. They have more connections and relations as I view them in a timeline spanning from pre-existence to Christ's time, to eternity.

I have begun to see how much this mission is not "my mission" but the Lord's mission. I am starting to see how much this is not about me at all. I realize that being more focused on the needs of those I am teaching and worrying less about myself and my imperfections will help me to grow more than focusing on myself. It's an interesting paradox but I know that as I lose myself and go to work that I will be able to gain my life by losing it.

LOVE YOU ALL!!!!
Sister Lila Jenson

4 Oct 2010 Letter from Lila

Funny Times in Hokey Oke
Hi Everyone!
So this week I've had several fun and new experiences, and a few hilarious ones too.This week I threw a football for the first time!

So I have a wimpy arm, but it was fun, and I think I could get better at it. My opinion is that footballs are very oddly shaped. I don't get how people can throw them so smoothly through the air.

I extended my first baptismal commitment. I am so glad that we practiced saying those words so many times at the MTC, because otherwise I would have totally messed up. I was so scared to ask, but he said yes, and guess what? He's practically the only person in Oklahoma who hasn't gotten baptized before! He's studied the Bible and knows he has to get baptized, but hasn't yet. So this will be his first and only baptism that he'll need :)

Ok, so we went to check on this investigator. (We're supposed to have daily contact with all investigators and her phone isn't working) So we knock on her door and her family says that she is around back, so we go over and there is a medium size bonfire and she has a can of gasoline in her hand. Guess what she was burning....Her boyfriends PORN!!! LOL. She was rather annoyed about it because apparently the girls were just barely 18 and she has a daughter who is 12 and when she saw it all she could think about was her daughter and how soon she'll be 18. So she called him a pervert, and he told her just to throw it in the trash, (which he had already pulled it out of the trash before) but she said no, she was going to burn it! So she was, she is a hard core opinionated lady. Sister Goodell and I were laughing about it and how that was a pretty awesome thing to witness to.

I'm getting better at talking on the phone :) We have to make a lot of calls, to follow up with investigators, coordinate with the ward and get rides for our investigators for church, and Sister Goodell is the one assigned to drive, so I have to make a lot of them. Anyway, it's still hard to talk to people I don't know very well on the phone, but I'm getting better. This week in talking to one of the members of the ward here I realized that I don't want my fear (of any one thing) to prevent me from doing the Lord's work. There is no way that I would allow my nervousness to talk on the phone to stop me from doing missionary work, or when I get home, visiting teaching, or anything else. I resolved that even if I am afraid to do something, if the Lord wills it, then I will do it.

I hope I am growing in humilty, I catch myself being prideful, but then I just bop that gopher of pride on the head and try and be humble.

One thing that really struck me from General Conference was the talk on gratitude. For a while I have been wondering how to live more in the moment. I am constantly planning ahead and I find myself thinking, oh I can't wait till this day, or P-day, or whatever, and I don't want any day to pass me by while my head is stuck in the future. So listening to this talk I realized that if I am grateful and learn to constantly recognize the things I am grateful for I will live more in the moment. I don't want this mission to pass me by, I want to enjoy every day of it!

I continue to be grateful for the commandments. Today as I was reading in Preach My Gospel in The Plan of Salvation, about The Fall of Adam and Eve I realized something new about Agency. PMG said that God gave Adam and Eve agency in the garden of Eden. But I was confused because I know that we all had agency in premortal life and that is how we choose God's Plan. 2 Nephi 2:16 ( I think) talks about how man can't choose unless he is enticed by either side. The next line in PMG is about the Lord giving them commandments and I realized that God giving us commandments allows us to have agency. We have to be able to have choices in order to chose and giving us commandments allows us to choose to keep or break those commandments. Satan wanted to not give us agency and he could have done that by just not setting any expectations or commandments. Anyway, agency is amazing and I'm learning a lot.

I know that this gospel is true and that it helps us so much in our lives. I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and that it is only through His enabling power and grace that we can have hope and peace in our lives. I know that his gospel has been restored through a living prophet and that God is leading us today through him.

Sister Lila Jenson