MTC Overtime: Week 10 - "El Espiritu de Dios"

 Hola mi familia y amigos! Espero que lo estás haciendo bien! As is normal now, my weeks are pretty slow and boring. However, there was still some fun and interesting things that happened this week!


This week my trio was paired with a trio of elders and two sets of hermanas from the new group to go to the temple. We spent quite a bit of time talking and taking photos outside the temple we spent a little too much time in the distribution center that we actually missed our bus. But then again, the bus driver was probably there for 5 minutes before he decided to leave. We had to catch a ride with the next group, so the bus was a little crowded on the way back.

With not much to do during the day, my trio has resorted to doing simple games to pass the time. One of them this week was having one person randomly draw for a few seconds that then we flipped a coin to see who would have to finish the drawing. Most of them ended up involving stick figures being destroyed by giant's feet, spiders, or made up creatures. One Elder Sorensen did was of baby Harry Potter shooting a dementor with a gun. Some of them were actually pretty good, but most were bad and showed how desperate we are for something to do. We did it in a room that very few people go to at the back of the CCM, so we've claimed that room as our own. I think that this room distorts time though, because I swear I eat breakfast, go up to the room, and the next second I'm eating lunch. The room has wifi, a computer, and a whiteboard, which makes it very desirable. Some people caught wind of it so we'll have visitors every now and then, but most of the time we have it to ourselves.

The group below us became compos too, so now it's almost impossible to use a computer in the computer lab or really do anything in the main part of the complex because it's all so packed. The latino administrative people are the ones who make the schedules, and they don't seem to realize that having 50 people have the same pday isn't a good thing because it makes it impossible to do laundry. There's only about 20 washers and dryers, so you can imagine the chaos that unfolds when people try to wake up early on pdays so they can get their clothes in first. The hermanas don't have the same problem because there's significantly less of them.

This week I planned a game for my district. It was the Newly-wed Companionship Game! I followed the rules of that old game show to see how well the companionships in my district really know each other. I asked a lot of funny questions, like, "Who's your MTC NCC?" which means who's your non-committal crush. The game wasn't meant to be too competitive, and we all got a pretty good laugh out of it.

This Sunday I spoke in church about the faith of the brother of Jared. Many probably know that he is my favorite prophet and I've studied his story excessively since I've started my mission. In studying closer, I discovered many things about the story that I hadn't noticed before. The Book of Mormon Student Manual provided some excellent ideas from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland that explained how the faith of the brother of Jared is even stronger than we could have possibly imagined. I recommend reading it. I gave the whole talk in Spanish, thanks to my trusty friend google translate. Me and 7 other elders also performed "The Spirit of God" in sacrament meeting, with Hermana Lunt playing the piano for us. It was all in Spanish. I was the only one to sing the tenor line. It sounded really good and I think everyone felt the spirit. I think we need to try having the Spirit of God more in our lives, especially since Easter is coming up and we should be shouting hosanna, just like in the song. I'm going to try to feel the spirit more in my life, and I encourge you to do the same. The night before, however, when we were practicing, the rest of the group couldn't keep a straight face. I was fine and was singing my line perfectly while everyone else would burst out laughing during the middle of the song. We came up with so many random hilarious ideas of how we could sing the song, get the audience involved, and many other weird ideas. Some included turning it into a medley, going into the crowd and creating a Baptist church sing-a-long, or popcorn singing it. It was really fun but I'm glad we were still able to pull it together and perform well. I'll probably post one of the recordings of our practice session on Facebook.

There is some good news concerning visas! (not for me, though). The older group of compos have been promised that they would be out in the field within the next three weeks. Five of them already got their visas and will be out by the end of the week. Elder Allen, who currently holds the record for the longest time spent in an MTC by any missionary ever, finally got his after being here for 21 weeks. My zone is going to immigrations on the 31st of the month, so hopefully I'll be out of here sometime in April.

Ese fue mi semana! I'm really looking forward to conference in a few weeks! Apparently it's like the LDS Super Bowl. I hope you have an amazing week and look for the hand of the Lord in your life!

Elder Jensen

1. The CCM
2.-3. We sat on those couches for 2 hours without moving or doing anything
4. Before
5. There's always a bigger fish
6. A meme I made









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