Sunday, June 19, 2011

Tamaki: The land of milk and honey

Hey everyone,
 
Happy Father's Day! I actually had no idea it was Father's day yesterday. I don't think they celebrate it here. But Dad, I love you! You are the CFO -- Chief Father of Oysters.
 
I don't know if I'll have time to reply to anyone's emails individually, but I just want to say thank you so much. Really, you don't know how much all those meant to me. The past couple of days I have had a really hard time. I've been getting sick (you don't have to send anything Mom!), but I don't think that's it. I still don't really know why it's been so hard, but your emails gave me a lot of strength. Meg, you made me cry again. Miracles do occur. You're right. Don't ever forget that. On Thursday, on a tradeoff, we saw one of our sets (set for the 16th of July) on the street -- John -- and set up a time to meet with him the next day. He was with a friend who was walking ahead of him -- apparently not interested in talking with us -- so we asked John if his friend would like to join us on Friday. He said, "I dunno," so we asked his friend, Moe (pronounced Moy -- Cook Island), and he said sure. So we came over on Friday, read 1 Nephi 2 with them, discussing how Lehi was willing to leave behind everything for God and how Nephi had to pray to know his father was a prophet, then asked them how much they would give up for God. They said, "Everything." We asked them to read and pray to know this is true, then set Moe for baptism, same day as John. It was a miracle! At the beginning of the lesson, Moe was hardly paying attention. By the end, he was engrossed. We came back Saturday and he had read and prayed and said he felt so good after he prayed. He told us it's true. John said he had read and prayed, too -- a couple of times actually -- but he hasn't really felt that it's true. Then we talked about the Plan of Salvation using Alma 22 (I think... just in case you look that up and think, "what were they thinking -- that hardly talks about the Plan," just know that we weren't planning on teaching the Plan -- we followed the Spirit, which is amazing), and at the end John said that while we were talking about it, he came to know it's all true. He just felt it. The power of the doctrine. Then yesterday, they both came to church -- miraculously, since we had to wake John up at 8:10, and Moe's wife told us he said he was sick, but I guess John went and persuaded him to come. Then they came to a fireside in the evening, where our member fellowship told them about the Word of Wisdom... good thing they already had the spiritual witness. Someone mentioned drinking later and Moe said, "Nah, we don't do that anymore." Awesome!
 
I love this work, so much! It's really challenging, but worth it! I love you family! And I love all you great friends. Thanks so much for the package Mom! Loved everything!
 
The church is true!
 
Love, Elder Jensen

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