Blast from the Past

Hey y'all hey y'all. Today is transfer day! Hence the reason I just went on a pizza hunt with an Italian, Elder Battezzato from Sicily. (The pizza was too expensive, so we settled on a panini instead). It's been cool to see people I haven't seen in sooooo long, like a whole two weeks since the Christofferson Conference. Which brings me to my next item on the agenda...

I totally forgot to write about the conference. We had an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ visit our mission and I forgot to talk about it in my weekly letter home. Anyway, it was super awesome! First Président and Sœur Brown spoke to us, then President and Sis. Dyches (wasn't he Portland Mission President or something?) and then Elder and Sis. Christofferson. He's an incredible person and a scripture master! After he finished speaking to us he did a Q&A and after every question, whether simple or complicated, he knew the right scripture to turn to and then would expound on it and bear testimony. I need to get better at that in my own teaching, I don't use the scriptures nearly as much as I need to.

We had hot pot again last night! For transfers, 71 of the 90 équipes in the mission changed, so a bunch of people from our zone are leaving. We all saw it coming, so we'd already planned hot pot night. A bunch of missionaries and Chinese amis were there, and they didn't spare the poor Americans that had never tried the slightly more hardcore Chinese food. Along with tofu, bean sprouts, and beef, there was kelp, octopus, and cow stomach. All good :)

It was sad to hear about the terrorist attacks in Brussels. The MTC companion of one of the missionaries in our mission was injured, and our current district leader knows his companion. The world of Mormondom is a small one, for better or for worse! Hope and pray that the Lord will, once again, turn a bad situation into a blessing for as many people as possible.

That leads me into my spiritual thought! Ever wonder why the early Mormon pioneers went through such bad times? They hadn't done anything gravely awful, but they still got kicked out of anywhere they tried to settle and were pretty much hated by everyone they met. They needed to be tried and refined in order to become what the Lord wanted them to be! In order to make Zion "of one heart and one mind," they had to go through trials and become truly united. Sometimes that happens to us too. Trials have an incredible side effect, uniting anyone on the receiving end of the catastrophe. When life gives a ton of people lemons like in Brussels right now, don't worry. Learn from it, grow from it, and trust God. It'll all come out well in the end.

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."
-2 Timothy 1:7

Oh, and about the title... here's what happened for transfers.




We in a TRIO!

江长老

Elder Jensen