Week 15: Seville, Skype calls, and Spanish Mistakes

What an amazing week! I have truly been blessed to be in the presence of some great people and learn so much more about being a missionary. A lot of things are going to be changing, especially with the coming of Ipads to the missionary work, but I'm excited to welcome these changes as I know they will help me be more effective over these next two years.

Last Tuesday, the ENTIRE mission went to Sevilla for a special conference with two leaders of the church. As far as I know, it was one of the first times that this has happened, at least in all the time that my companion, Elder Whetten, has been here. It was a powerful feeling to be around so many of the Lord's servants and then to hear two leaders of the church speak specifically to us, for us. The thing that impressed me the most about the conference was that it was less focused on how we can be better missionaries now, and more on how we can be better men, fathers, and members of the church after our missions.

I had some pretty landmark experiences with my spanish this past week as well. Firstly, I gave my first full talk in church all in spanish. It was pretty nerve racking, but once I got up there and started talking I almost forgot that I was speaking Spanish. Of course, every member wanted to tell me afterwards about all the Spanish mistakes I made, but every time they did I just asked them if they wanted to give their next talk in church in English....

Additionally, I got a chance to talk with my family on skype this past Sunday for mother´s day. I´m so thankful for the technology that we have which makes it possible to see my entire family and talk with them, even though we are all separated across the globe. I can still remember all sitting around the one phone as my brother called from portugal and having to pass the phone to a different family member like every 5 minutes. Being able to see everyone and talk to them all was such a blessing. It was also really cool to be able to speak spanish with my brother in law who served his mission in Honduras. I had been expecting my dad to want us to talk so he could hear my Spanish, and so I was a little scared of my ability to talk with him, but I felt almost more comfortable speaking Spanish than I did English!

Lastly, I finally got a funny spanish story. So, rewind about a month. We were passing by a couple houses and my companion told me a story about a girl who used to live in one of the houses we were passing. She was super awesome and was about to be baptized, but then she had to move back to columbia for a little while. I asked if she might be back and he said we could check maybe in a couple of days. Well when we got to the place we were driving to, the member just happened to mention that that girl had come back just that day! Fastfoward to this past week when we finally got in contact with her. We started teaching the lesson, and I was telling her the story of what happened. What I wanted to say was, ¨Elder Whetten told me that there was a girl who used to live here who is really great. What I ended up saying was, ¨Elder Whetten me dijo que habia una mujer que vivía aqui que estaba muy buena. Direct translation - Elder Whetten told me there was a girl who lived here who was really hot... I guess there is a big difference between está buena and es buena. Luckily those in the lesson had pity on me and didn´t laugh and then Elder Whetten just decided to tell me later what I had said.

We are expecting some amazing miracles this week. Things are really looking great with some of our investigators and I can´t wait to see what happens. I hope everything is going well with all of you and like always, I am thankful for all the prayers of love and support. 

Until Next Week,

Elder Jenkins

Things I learned this week

1. You don´t need to know evil to know good

2. Don´t be a police man, be a shepherd

3. A bird doesn´t worry about the branch its on because it trusts in it´s wings

4. Es buena vs. está buena

5. If you always do what you always did, you´ll always get what you always got

6. Studying and learning chapter 8 of preach my gospel will triple your annual salary