1 Month !! 9/15/2021

 hey hey hey !

Today I have officially been set apart as a missionary for a whole month !! It's crazy to think about and honestly it doesn't feel like it's actually been that long. I think tomorrow marks my halfway point in the MTC which is also wild (except I'll end up being at home for an extra week since transfers in Nashville are a week off from my original assignment, so that should be interesting). And let me just tell y'all, this has been the best and most spiritual month of my life. I don't think I've ever spent more time sitting in one spot (gotta love zoom:) ) and had so many different and important experiences. 

In more exciting news, Сестра Chamberlain and I got to teach our first lesson in Macedonian!! I was so scared and it was so hard, but SO GOOD. We had 20 minutes to teach, and we were both super nervous about speaking the language so we had pretty much written up a whole script in Macedonian so we could say what we wanted to. So we started the lesson off and let me tell y'all, it was not going swell. It clearly seemed pretty rehearsed and both Сестра Chamberlain and I were struggling with the language. That's when I realized it had only been 10 minutes and we were about to finish up everything we had prepared... rip. So I said a little prayer in my head and then asked her if she had any questions about what we had just taught. We had asked her a couple of questions before but it was mostly just what she thought of a scripture or something so we didn't really have to expect something we didn't understand or know how to respond to. But I decided to ask anyway. Up until this point, I had understood like 65% of what she was just guessing the rest from context, but it was crazy when she asked her question because I understood it perfectly. THEN an answer and scripture immediately came to my head and I was able to explain and teach her for the rest of the 10 minutes. It was amazing because I was able to discuss with her and teach her sincerely and bear my testimony to her. It is so, so hard to speak in Macedonian, and I'm sure my grammar was awful, on top of the fact that it takes me forever to get a sentence out while I'm trying to translate from English to Macedonian in my head, but the Lord helped me in that moment know what and how to say what I needed to to help her. I may never be able to speak even close to perfect, but the Lord doesn't need me to be perfect, he just wants me to have faith to open my mouth and say what the spirit is guiding me to say. 

Also fun fact, the lady we taught is actually a return missionary from Macedonia who is currently the head of the translation of the Doctrine and Covenants into Macedonian for the Church. Technically we aren't supposed to know that they're members because that kind of defeats the point of teaching them, but there's literally no one that speaks Macedonian so it's not like they could just find someone for us to teach ahah. So we just pretend like we don't know she's a member:))) Anyways her Macedonian is amazing and it's crazy to see what mine could get to if I keep working at it. 

I love you all and am so grateful to be a missionary, even if it's just from this computer for another 5/6 weeks haha. I love the Lord and love this gospel and know that through Him I can do all things, even learn a language that I didn't even know existed 6 months ago.

Со љубов,

Сестра Џенсен

Слики!!

- a pretty sunrise we saw on a walk one morning this week

-the gilbert temple !! I got to go this morning and I am SO grateful since I won't be able to go to the temple for a year and half now (unless by some miracle my mission president lets us go over to the rome temple ahah)