Unsolicited thoughts from Sestra Jensen August 29, 2022

 Welcome back to your weekly dose of a day in the life of Sister Jeni

My title may be misleading bc don't worry there are lots of pics so feel free to just zoom through those and yeet out. For those of you who are *actually* 😇 interested in my mission experience thus far, stay reading until the end. 

Pictures with Danica!! Dance has had an insanely hard week this week so we spent a lot of time with her, helping and support her. She is quite possible one of the funniest people i have ever met and while all these pictures probably require a lot of explanation, I will provide none:)

our cool elevator that literally makes my day everytime the color changes

Frederic Chopin park that we ran to this week and was just way too cute

our friend Blaga

sis jo and me

our pday activity to this beautiful handpainted mosque, which I promise I have more pictures of but it won't let me add anymore :( but it was literally such an amazing experience. If you want to see more pics of it look up Xhamia e Larme Tetovo, Macedonia

Okay thanks for looking at the pictures now onto my thought: I get questions literally every week of what missionary work is like in Macedonia so I figured from my meager 2 months here, I would attempt to sum up what it's like. 

So naturally, when making the choice to go on a mission we have preconceived notions of what we imagine a mission will be like. Maybe we expect knocking doors, facing rejection, learning a new language, or being somewhere foreign probably like South America. The funny thing is, we don't choose.

A year and a half ago I opened my call to the Adriatic South Mission, Bulgarian speaking (yay for getting it changed to Macedonian speaking !) and I had absolutely no idea what to expect. Basically all the stories I had heard about missions came from people serving in South America or the States and now I was going to a country in former Yugoslavia with a language that isn't even recognized by most of the world. A language that is not only difficult because it is a Slavic language, but additionally because the resources are so insanely limited: ie we have ONE grammar text book and the Book of Mormon (not even in hard copies) on gospel library, only roughly translated. The language became the least of my worries when I learned that there are ~10 active members with the country being open to missionary service for the last 12 years.

If I didn't think that was a big enough challenge, I grappled with all of this from half a world away, waiting for my visa for half my mission, preparing for a place I wasn't even sure I'd be permitted to serve in. And once I finally did arrive, I was absolutely shocked to realize how utterly different my mission would be from the one I had imagined. 

Now I could talk about missionaries and the relationship with baptism as a view some have for measuring success for a while (which I in fact did but erased the paragraphs bc that is not what I want to focus on right now🥰) but it will suffice me to say that it has been a challenge for me to understand what makes a successful missionary. I have been obedient and worked diligently and have consistently increased my faith in Jesus Christ, and done everything "a good missionary is supposed to do" but have yet to experience the same "success" that others have.  

In the perspective of Macedonia now: for the last ~2 years there has been 1 baptism in Macedonia and that member no longer even wants affiliation with the church. It is easy then for me to question what my efforts are worth when baptism is nearly always the "goal" of every missionary and the focus of the work. Now not only am I in a place where I don't understand the culture or language, but I don't understand the missionary work. 

I would love to focus everything, all time, energy, activities, and effort, on helping people enter the waters of baptism but that isn't, and honestly can't be, the reality here. Not in a pessimistic way, and not that I don't try and help all the people we teach and talk to come closer to Christ, but simply because this work is so much more than what most people recognize as missionary work. Not only do we find and teach people to prepare to make promises with God but we support our members (WHICH INCLUDES SO MUCH, I could literally write an essay on it but essentially it is DAILY spiritual and emotional support because these members are so isolated, members who have it so much more challenging than I could ever imagine. I think it's hard to be a missionary, but I can truly not imagine the lack of support they feel), literally run all of church (teach, translate, play piano, give talks, clean the church, act as relief society and elders quorom president, for the elders, and sometimes even clerk, since all of the leaders currently are embassy workers from America who don't speak Macedonian), pay our own bills, provide  service, help with translations of church material because there is none !! literally these members have to have everything in either english or serbian or croatian, so much legal work all the time so we can have a church, teach courses for English, or self reliance, or anything in-between, all while of course not having branch support but also being 1 of 5 countries in the mission meaning we also don't have support from mission leadership who lives a country away. One branch, between 3 cities, hours apart, with members who are barely surviving spiritually, and sometimes literally. Now once again I admit I have only been here 2 months so my reality is still so different than the missionaries who are currently serving, and have been for the last several months/years, and the missionaries who came before me. Not to mention that I have not had to do all of these different things, but these are just a few examples off the top of my head of things either I have done or other missionaries I have served with have had to do.

Now the reality of this is all daunting and seemingly impossible for 9, almost 7 now that 2/4 of the sisters return home in a month (leaving literally just Sister Chamberlain and I), 19 and 20 year old missionaries to handle. And I recognize that this sounds like a lot of complaining, which I absolutely do not intend for this to be, but I do not know how to adequately describe my mission without sharing every part (which even now I have left out many details and probably lots of big things too). In the spirit of transparency and taking away unrealistic expectations for missions, expectations that I have seen repeatedly crush missionaries under pressure from a lack of "success," here is what I have learned that could probably have been summed up in only a few sentences is this:

1) True success comes from the effort that one puts in and their reliance on God for support in all aspects of the work. It is not something that can be counted or compared, no matter how many missionaries, or members, or people in general try to make it. God looks on the heart and he sees the intents and efforts of each person. I am confident that He sees my effort and knows that I have given everything I have to him, even when it is so, so far from perfect.

2) Missions are an individual and unique experience for everyone and God calls missionaries to the exact place they need to be under circumstances he knows, and prepares, them to handle. My mission is different from someone in Brazil, or Africa, or the US, or even another missionary here. And I am okay with that.

So as you talk about missions, whether your own or others, remember that people tend to share what they think others want to hear. I know that every mission is hard and this is in no way meant to be "my mission is harder than yours," it is simply, my mission is different than expections I, and others have conceived and I think we do a disservice to everyone when we glorify and create missions out to be something they are not. Missions are not comparable because people aren't and the only expectations that matter are our individual expectations from God. 

Regardless of my expectations for how I expected a mission would be when I submitted my papers, I am beyond grateful for this unique opportunity. The reassurance I have felt that I am supposed to be in Macedonia is incomparable to anything I have felt in my entire life. In small and simple ways, I am reminded everyday that God is aware of me and knows of the challenges I would, and currently face. Even when the language feels impossible or the culture absolutely blows my mind, somehow my thought is always: of course I am here, of course this is the language I am hearing, of course these are the people I am here to serve. I love Macedonia. In a way I can't really describe, it feels like home. I am so grateful that my mission is not mine, it is the Lord's and I am simply his instrument to accomplish his work, wherever and whatever that may be. It is his help that qualifies me to: understand what people are saying to me, having words and thoughts given to me to know what to say in the very hour I need it, being prepared to handle the isolation of living here, inspiration to solve problems unimaginable to me, and every other possible thing I could face. His grace is sufficient to help me do the impossible, someone who has done nothing to deserve it and someone who is trying with everything that I can to help others understand it. I love being a missionary, even if it is not what I could have ever dreamed it to be.

So ljubov,

Sestra Jensen