MTC Week 6: The Fencer

Hola! I hope you had a great week! My week was very fun and I had a lot of great experiences, both spiritual and totally ridiculous, not all of which I think I'll be able to write about because somethings that happen in the dorm room, stay in the dorm room.

I was able to go to the temple again this week. It was just as great as the first, although the temple workers speak really fast and quietly that it sounds like they're barely mumbling. I'm going to try to listen to the audio of the session in Spanish next time to see how much I can pick up on, because at least that isn't speaking at lightning speed. I heard the people in Trujillo speak really fast, so we'll see how that goes.

This Sunday was really busy for me. I agreed to sing "Gethsemane" during sacrament meeting with Elder Sorensen, three hermanas from the new districts, and Elder Haymond on piano. It went really well and I liked coming up with my own line to sing since Haymond was playing the primary version. I also (finally!!!) was called on to speak during sacrament meeting too. We're urged to write a talk each week just in case we get called on, and to have it in Spanish so we can have a few talks ready if we're called on in the field. I've written pretty good talks every week so I got annoyed when I wasn't selected. This week's topic was chapter 5 of Preach my Gospel, Laws and Ordinances. I focused on family history and performing ordinances for them. I also translated this one all into Spanish all by myself! (With all of it being done by google translate). I think I did really well and got a lot of compliments afterward. I shared how I recently became very interested in family history and have been spending a lot of my free time on FamilySearch. I shared a brief story about my Great-Grandfather Theodore Frederick Glauser, (the same one I shared on Facebook), and the story of my great great great great great great great grandfather David Pulsipher, who fought and was killed in the Battle of Bunker Hill. I shared how proud I was of my ancestry on both sides of my family and they all contributed to building a loving family that loves Christ so I can serve a mission.

This week Hermana Aranda was sick until yesterday, so we had Hermano Basilio teach our afternoon class for most of the week. I love all my teachers, but we had so much fun and learned a lot with Basilio this week. Hermana Wardell accidentally made Elder Sorenesen run into the door when we were learning about directions because she couldn't stop laughing. That only made everyone laugh harder. Then, the next day she tried to go on a laughing fast but started crying because she couldn't hold in her laughs. We had many nights like this last week where the laughter was too much to bear. When talking about self defense I gave a quick fencing tutorial since I took a semester of it at ISU. It was caught on camera and no one could stop laughing because of how ridiculous it looked with my fake short lunges before I went in with my deceive and long lunge. It was a shock anz quite funny whdn my district learned that I knew how to fence. Elder Tobler tries to save every bee that flies into the classroom which leads to a lot of awkward maneuvering and yelling. On Sunday the Hermanas were cold so Hermana Cox started wearing Elder Frasure's suit coat. Hermana Wardell just took mine and the two had a photoshoot in the classroom. Elder Tobler then proceeded to put my coat on when we went on a walk around the compound. I had to yell "NOT THE SUIT COAT!!!" when he tried to do parkour and when Sorensen jumped on his back. I can't lose that coat. It's my only one. I´ve also become the recorder of the group, since I always seem to pull my phone out at the right time to start recording some of my district´s shenanigans. I wish I could send some of the funny videos I took but they´re all too big to send in an email. Sometimes I even pretend to be the paparazzi so I can always record the funny moments. My companions and I got haircuts last p day and the Hermanas loved them so much they took pictures of them. It was kind of weird.

My companionship´s new favorite pastime is to play Geoguessr. It´s a website that uses some google earth type thing to make you guess where in the world you are. It´s pretty fun and I´ve gotten pretty close on lots of them, since I´m pretty good at guessing locations in the world. We do it while our teachers are out pretending to be an investigator with our other district members, so we have someone stand guard just in case. Sometimes we´ve been way off where we guess in Arizona and it´s actually southern Argentina. That makes us feel pretty dumb. I´ve also done some world map quizzes, and I can say that I´m able to name about 165 of the 195 countries in the world and place 90% of them on the map. (Africa and Oceania is where I get lost). That´s a little off topic but I´ve also been spending time studying Spanish and am feeling a little more confident in my speaking skills. I still can´t understand when the Latinos speak fast, but I can pick up on most of what they say if they speak at a normal pace.

The food is the same, but I have been getting a lot more food from the vending machine. Bon-bons are the most popular candy here and always sell out the day they get restocked. It´s a candy bar filled with some peanut butter and some crispy stuff. It´s pretty good, so when it restocked I got two when there were seven left and Elder Sorensen got the rest with the intent of selling them for a slightly higher price than what we bought them for. They´re one sole, which makes them one of the cheaper items. But, as I suspected, he just ate them all without even trying to sell them. On Sunday it was President Jackson´s birthday. He gave us all a small piece of cake in addition to the desert we already had at dinner. President Jackson is such a cool person. He´s done so many amazing things. He´s saved a skier who had been hit by an avalanche, he´s been the mission president of one of the Spain missions, and is an orthopedic surgeon. The elders in my district we´re talking and we all said that President Jackson is the type of man we want to be. He also played his accordion again this week, which is so fun to watch.

My district filmed a short video with each of us throwing the Book of Mormon and it being caught be the next person in a different take. We each shared a short point about it in either English or Spanish. I had the smoothest catch of them all. In one of my trio´s last visits with Hermana Catalan´s investigator character, Elder Haymond said something that made her die from laughter. She covered her face with a pillow and we couldn´t stop laughing. After she calmed down I said, "Los siento por nuestros mistake," (I pronounced it mis-tak-a because I didn´t know what the Spanish word for mistake or error was). That only made her die from laughter even more and she had to take a break outside the casita to calm down. We still came full circle with a good lesson but I will always remember Hermana Catalan's laugh. Before each of those practice teachings we'd say a prayer around one of the poles. We called it the "prayer pole" and it definitely looked like we were a pole worshipping cult.

I´m officially a compo now. That means I´ve finished all my classes but am still at the MTC waiting for my visa. I´ll probably be here for another 3-4 weeks at the minimum, since all the older compos are starting to hit 12-13 weeks here. We´ll have to plan out our entire day and stay focused on continuing to learn Spanish without teachers. The last day of class was awesome, especially because of the testimony meeting we had with Hermana Catalan. The spirit was strong and we all gave great and emotional testimonies. I bore my testimony on the importance of missionary work. I spoke of the sons of Mosiah, Alma, Paul, Peter, and how other great missionaries devoted their entire life to serving the Lord and putting their life on the line to bring others unto Christ. I said that if they can do that, we can do it for two years in Peru. But even then, our missionary journey doesn´t end when we´re released. It´s a life long responsibility. We were born into the church to bring others unto Christ, whether they be in Peru or back in Idaho or Utah. We are having this experience in Peru so we can continue to be a missionary throughout our lives. As I said in my farewell talk, "I'm not giving up two years of my life. This is my life."

So this was a pretty fun week! I´m hoping my motivation will stay high even as my days go deeper into blandness and repetitiveness as a compo. Hopefully I´ll get my visa soon because I´m really itching to get out in the field! I hope you have an absolutely fantastic day!

Elder Jensen

1. Fencing demonstration
2. Final selfie with our teachers
3. More Peruvian candy
4. Suit jacket photoshoot
5. The trio
6. Purple flowers
7. Amogus
8. Geoguessr
9. The Prayer Pole










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