MTC Overtime: Week 14- He Loves Us

 Hola! I hope you had a fantastic Easter week and felt the spirit in your life. I absolutely did with studying the final week of Christ's life in more depth than I ever have before. Other than Easter not much happened, but there were still some fun moments here and there.


The teachers here have assigned us to teach fake lessons again, sometimes twice a day. Even though we aren't doing much it's still annoying to do these because all we want to do is teach real lessons and not worry about fake ones. Elder Tobler set up a real lesson over zoom with his friend Anni. We taught her about repentance and the Holy Ghost. It went really well, and I can say now that I've taught a real lesson!

The current group of latinos we have is great. They're really funny. One of them, Elder Salazar, has trouble remembering names so everyone covers up their tag to see if he can remember it. He introduced himself to me about 8 different times and asked me what my mission is. He's fun to talk to. One of the latinos is from Spain, and he and his companion are fun to joke around with. A surprising number of them already have decent English which is cool. Sometimes we'll have conversations where they'll speak in English and I'll speak in Spanish so we can both practice.

Easter was a very special day. Experiencing it here in the CCM was a unique experience. It's definitely the best Easter I've ever had. The topic for talks was the same as last week, which was Jesus Christ, the atonement, and resurrection. I just recycled my talk from last week, which was about the number 3 in the life of Christ, especially his final week. The number 3 in the Bible represents completeness, perfection, and the Godhead. 3 people gave talks and were followed by a special musical number of "I Know that my Redeemer Lives/I Feel my Savior's Love." Then President Simmons stepped up and said that President Jackson felt inspired to allow anyone who wanted to share their talk to come up and do so instead of calling for specific people. Beforehand for whatever reason I had thought about this scenario and decided that I would go up if it happened. I went up with Elders Zaitzeff and Whitehead, who are also part of my zone. I shared my talk in Spanish but closed with my testimony in English. I came up with the testimony I shared on the stand. I said, "Jesus Christ was born, taught, preached, testified, prophesied, healed, helped, led, guided, tasked, called, loved, suffered, was betrayed, smote, mocked, scourged, he died, was laid in a tomb, and rose from the dead. And all for what? To glorify his Father and because he loves us. And what is more perfect than that." I must have said something profound, because everyone commented on my talk, as well as the others' talks. Many of them said they teared up during mine. I also did, so I can't blame them.

Hermana Jackson prepared an awesome devotional on the life of Christ. I was asked last minute to play "How Great the Wisdom and the Love," which I only messed up a few times on with never having played it before. Sunday night we watched the studio recording of "The Lamb of God." I had heard of it and listened to a few songs before, but had never seen it all the way through. It was an exceptional representation of Christ's final week and resurrection and it really brought the spirit and a lovely close to probably my favorite day at the CCM so far. We had a live devotional last Tuesday from the 2nd counselor in the area seventy. It was all in Spanish, and I can only translate in my head for so long before I give up when I realize I'm 15 seconds behind. Despite that, he gave some great insights and some scriptures I need to read.

We had the opportunity to help out the workers here at the CCM by helping them clean up the exercise area one afternoon. I used a broom, dustpan, and bag to sweep leaves off the walkways and soccer fields. It was a small change-up that helped a little bit with our mental state.

I finished my transposing of the song "Like the Sea" and recorded myself playing and shared it on Facebook. Here's the link if you'd like to listen to it: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077367756332.

That was my week! I felt the spirit so strongly and I'm glad I had the opportunity to experience Easter here. I hope you were able to reflect on Christ's atonement and resurrection and what that means to you. Immigrations was closed this week because of Holy Week, but it's opening up today so hopefully next week I'll be sending my email from Trujillo!

Till next week,
Elder Jensen

1. A back shot on the CCM's FB account
2. The Jan 13 zone
3. My new comps and I at the live devotional
4. Graham decided to nap on me during an Easter devotional
5. Gandalf at the CCM at night







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