Still In Castelar....And Ready To See The Miracles!

Standard of Excellence Newsletter

Hermana Torres and Jensen top right - for having 4 Key Indicators

Family!

Oh how I love to write you and hear from you. When I think of you all I feel true joy.I miss you tons, but know that you are being protected and blessed and that you know how much I love you. I love reading about your day to day activities and projects and everything. I have a few mini moms here in the mission that I know I can turn to if I need something. One such member is Hermana Quiroga, she is the RS Pres. And she washes our clothes for us!
GO COUGARS! President Benton pulled me aside after the transfer meeting and told me that BYU is number 7 in the polls! How he knows that I´m such a fan, I´m not sure. Maybe I said it in one of my interviews, but he has 150 some odd missionaries and the fact that he remembered my team was really impressive!
The phone numbers here are super long and hard to remember. They are 8 digits if they are landlines and 10 digits if they are cellular. It´s amazing that one more digit (meaning 8 instead of 7) is practically impossible to remember! I learned in college that the average adult can only hold 7 things in their short term memory and that´s why our phone numbers are 7 digits. I guess South America never did that study-experiment so they don´t know better.
Ants are HUGE! I can look down and see them moving and carrying leaves and follow the trail and line of them for like 20 feet. They are literally gigantic! It´s fun to watch them move and I always wonder what they´re doing or what they´re going to build with the little leaves.
About the temple… we only get to go every 2 transfers (every 3 months) so I´ll get to go 4 or 5 times more.This past week we had a ward talent show and my comp and I did that skit where you have people behind you being your arms and you use your arms to be your feet… savvy? Hope so. Anyways, I was preparing the table before hand and another table fell on my heels and scraped one of them up pretty nice. It hurt so much I could only gasp and breathe through the pain for a full minute. It scared my comp to death who came running to lift the table off my feet. It was an adventure and now my heels are even more battered than normal, but it´s JUST A BONUS! The skit was way too unprepared, but the members laughed. I recorded it. We can watch it when I get back!
Fatigue is starting to set in. I wake up in the morning and roll to my knees and after our prayers I stumble to the bathroom and feel like I don´t have much energy to give. The soles of my feet are hard and I feel like I could probably cross the street barefoot without knowing that I´m barefoot. It´s amazing what so much walking can do.
It´s getting hot here. I got a sunburn one day and then caught in the rain the next without my boots or my rain coat or an umbrella. I was soaked and my shoes and nylons were all wet and it was cold. We stopped at a members house who gave me more knee highs and we dried my shoes for a few minutes then we worked some more and eventually went to another members house for an FHE and I spent the whole time shoeless as I waited for them to dry again. It was kind of funny. Sun burn one day, soaking wet and cold the next. Go Argentina!
We live in an apartment on the second floor. It´s a nice apartment. I sleep on the bottom bunk and couldn´t be much happier. However, the shower is a problem… you have to wait for the water to heat up and then ration it. But it comes out scalding hot and burns you and then you try to add a little cold water… and it comes out way cold...you get the drift. But soon it´ll be summer and I´ll want cold showers anyway. We´ll see.
TRANSFERS! The date of the transfer is today- Sept. 30, 2008
My new comp is Hermana Brittany Johns from Idaho! An American! I´m so happy! She is very sweet and has 8 months in the mission. We´ve been together almost 2 hours and I can already tell that she is a hard worker, diligent, faithful and obedient. We are going to get along great and have much success together--and even if all that weren´t true, I´d still be excited because after the transfer meeting, President Benton approached me and with tears in his eyes told me that there were many prayers offered and personal revelations received with respect to our new companionship. With tears in my eyes, I thanked him and knew that it was true. We are together because the Lord wants us together. This transfer is going to be awesome! But it was sad to say goodbye to Hermana Torres who is training again in a different area. How hard that is going to be…
Well, we all met up and had the transfer meeting and unfortunately it about broke my heart when they announced that the mission only had 66 baptisms the last transfer (remember the goal was 163). We had 2 of those 66. I don´t know what went wrong. But President Benton didn´t blame us or berate us, he just said that we can do better, we will do better, and that there is ALWAYS a trial before a miracle. We weren't even given a number of the goal for this transfer but he talked about the promise President Hinckley gave that we can "double" our convert baptisms. I guess we are going to try to double it.
The APs compiled statistics for the "Standards of Excellence" program and reported which companionships had the 5 best numbers in various categories. Those numbers correspond with a key indicator from our missionary work. There are 10 references per week, 10 people in sacrament meeting per week, 8 lessons taught to less actives and recent converts per week, 20 other lessons (lessons to investigators but without a member) per week, 10 lessons with a member present (those are the hardest to get), 10 new investigators every week, and 140 contacts per week… I think that´s all of them. Anyway, each one of those is a key indicator and if you get them perfect every week the entire transfer you get your picture in that newsletter you just received...so it shows Sister Torres and myself with 4 indicadores claves (4 key indicators) because that transfer we had 20 other lessons, 8 to recent converts and less actives, 10 new investigators, and 140 contacts… every week… all 6 weeks of the transfer. We also reached our baptismal goal of 2. Savvy? You have to be perfect in them all 6 weeks to get them. And it starts over every transfer. This past transfer we won the same 4 key indicators as the last transfer, but didn´t reach our baptismal goal, so we'll be a little lower on the page. So back to the things the APs reported. They reported the 5 most successful companionships in some of the key indicators and we scored 3rd out of all the missionaries in the mission for the entire transfer in the key indicator of 'street contacts.' There are like 75 companionships, and oh by the way there are 16 sister missionaries now.
President Benton changed the policy and we can now watch all the Saturday sessions of Conference, and the morning session on Sunday, but if we want to watch the second session on Sunday, we have to bring an investigator, recent convert, or less active. I think we can manage though. I´m so excited for General Conference! And on the 13th Elder Russell M. Nelson is coming to speak to our mission and the Buenos Aires North mission! We´re so excited!
Raul is doing great and is excited for conference and his baptism which is the following Saturday the 11th of October.We also have an awesome investigator with a baptismal date of the 25th of October. He was a reference from the Argentina MTC missionaries who came to practice a couple of Saturdays in our area. We have 5 other people with baptismal dates, but they will probably need more time. There are too many complications for them right now, but Raul and Fernando are set and will be baptized this transfer! I´m sure of it!
I think that is about all for this week. Gotta go, this transfer is going to be great! Pray for us to find families in Castelar that are already married… because we don´t need a 5th couple that is waiting for their divorce to come through....don't get me going on Argentina and their slow divorces!
Gotta go, love you tons!The gospel is amazing and perfect!
Hermana Jensen – still in Castelar and ready to see the miracles!