Area: Ottawa, KSCompanion: Elder Timmreck

Email address:  kenneth.jensen@myldsmail.net  

Mailing Address:
Elder Kenneth Jensen
Missouri Independence Mission
517 W Walnut St
Independence, MO 64050

So this week was kinda interesting.

It started off by deciding to try this little town called Greely. We had never been there and so we wanted to explore it. Greely is a really small town and it has a big Catholic Church which we are pretty sure every one in that town goes to that church. Everyone was nice but very much not interested. 

We were walking around Wellsville and everyone that we waved to waved back! That was a good boost. Plus I got to talk to some guy about his dirt bike.

We went on exchanges this week and we did back to back exchanges. So I went up to Olathe 3 area with Elder Sandkamp. This was cool because Olathe 3 is a deaf ward and Elder Sandkamp is deaf in one ear and knows American Sign Language, so that was fun.

Then the next day Elder Martinez (also an ASL) was in Ottawa. We were walking down the road and this guy (his name is Darrin) was working on something in the back of the truck. So we start talking to him and asked him what he was working on. Then Darrin said "oh just fixing my scythes". So naturally we had to go and see and hold and use them on the front yard grass. So we were talking to him and long story short we handed him a Book of Mormon while he was showing us his rabbit farm and holding a massively obese female rabbit.

The next day Elder Timmreck and I go and see if Darrin had looked at the Book of Mormon, and he had! We were able to teach him the restoration lesson. It was amazing. I had the strongest impression that Joseph Smith is a Prophet and that the priesthood was restored. It was a very good experience for me.

This week was fun, I love being a missionary and it is the most rewarding thing I have ever done. And the focus is never on me! Yeah!

Thank you so much for everything that you guys have done for me. It is amazing to hear from you all. Thank you!

With appropriate affection,

Elder Jensen

Area: Ottawa, KSCompanion: Elder Timmreck
 
Email address:  kenneth.jensen@myldsmail.net  
 
Mailing Address:
Elder Kenneth Jensen
Missouri Independence Mission
517 W Walnut St
Independence, MO 64050

This week has been pretty slow as far as missionary work is concerned. 

A few cool things have happened. On Monday we were running late and a member was dropping off dinner at our apartment so we just told the lady to leave it on our front door step. As we walked up the stairs to our apartment, both of us kinda forgetting about the food, looked down to see two kinda sketchy looking Taco Bell bags. So that was a nice surprise and we haven't died yet so we are pretty sure they were safe.

There was supposed to be this huge ice storm coming through and leaving 2 inches of ice on everything. So literally every appointment canceled and all the locals just cleared the Walmart shelves and then shut their doors. I don't know if Kansans are just a little paranoid or if we just completely underestimated freezing rain. The rain came, but it did not freeze very much and it was really lame. So stores, schools, appointments, cars were grounded for pretty much nothing. So we mostly did a lot of walking this week. And everyone was like "you crazy boys need to go back inside". 

We did have a cool experience this week. We were trying a potential that missionaries had talked to about 6 months ago. We knocked on the door and a man answers and it's the potentials husband and he is apparently already a member. He joined about 5 years ago in Kansas City. Then we were trying a referral we received a few weeks ago. We had talked with her, but only briefly. So we knocked on the door and are talking to her again and it came up that she was raised in an LDS home and is already a member. So that was cool. We hopefully will start meeting with both of them and help them come back to church.

Thank you all for everything you do. It's amazing to hear from you.

With appropriate affection,

Elder Jensen

Area: Ottawa, KSCompanions: Elder Timmreck
 
Email address:  kenneth.jensen@myldsmail.net  
 
Mailing Address:
Elder Kenneth Jensen
Missouri Independence Mission
517 W Walnut St
Independence, MO 64050

Hello everyone, I hope it has been a good week for you. I guess I will just start from the beginning.

This week was really cold, but we had absolutely nobody in particular to try so we just walked around and tried to talk to anyone and knock on a few doors. Turns out people don't like to talk when it's cold. So a lot of people would answer the door and say "you boys shouldn't be out in the cold like this" and then shut the door. So that was fun. We walked around Garnett then around Ottawa.

Elder Timmreck got hit with a 24 hour bug, so we stayed home to let him rest and we both got some needed sleep on Thursday. 

This week was my Year Mark! It was pretty exciting, but we didn't really do anything for it. Except at 9:30pm while we were planning we got a knock on the door from a Pizza Hut delivery who said that they had a pizza for an Elder Jensen. So we took it and the lady had kinda mentioned that it was from my mom. So we ate it and it was good... we haven't died yet, so hopefully it was from my mom. Thank You! 

We met a guy this week named Corey. We knocked on his door trying to find a less active member. We knocked on the door and Corey comes out and said that the member had moved. So we were talking to this guy and turns out he was born in Pocatello, ID, does insurance work for people in Salt Lake City and while on a recent trip to Iowa was contacted by the missionaries and was given a Book Of Mormon. So that was a cool blessing. He will not be available to meet with us for another two weeks or so but hopefully we can start meeting with him.

As we were walking down the street there were two little girls about 9 years old playing in the snow. As we walked by they started yelling at us and asking us questions about who we were and how old we were and they asked Elder Timmreck if he was a lawyer. He said no, then they asked me if I was a spy and I said Yes. I am not gonna turn down that opportunity. But it was actually kinda cool they asked us all sorts of questions about Jesus and why he is important.

That was most of our week. We had a couple of cool lessons with some less active members. No one has come to church yet, but we will keep working!

Thank you all for what you do. It is amazing to hear from you and see how life is going for you guys.

Make it a good one,

Elder Jensen

Area: Ottawa, KSCompanions: Elder Cox & Elder Timmreck
 
Email address:  kenneth.jensen@myldsmail.net  
 
Mailing Address:
Elder Kenneth Jensen
Missouri Independence Mission
517 W Walnut St
Independence, MO 64050

This week has been pretty boring honestly. I thought that my mission was making me less sarcastic, but I am realizing I am still just a sarcastic as before.

We did a bunch of service for a family (the Machnikis) who is moving outside of town into town. So we moved 12 book cases, painted a room and loaded a whole bunch of boxes into a van. That was fun.

We had dinner with the Gardners (the Bishop's family) and apparently they had contacted our parents and asked them what our favorite foods were, so that's what we had for dinner. It mostly consisted of breakfast foods :)

We learned that Elder Cox was getting transferred so we had to spend the night with a companionship who was closer to Independence. We stayed with the Stanley Elders as well as the Gardner Elders. Six Elders in one apartment, that was a fun night.

Elder Cox was transferred to Gallatin, MO which is the ward with Adam-ondi-Ahman in its boundaries. Which also is exactly where he wanted to go, so that's cool. It was awesome to serve with him and I gained a lot of knowledge and a good friend out of it.

My new companion is Elder Timmreck. He is from Stansbury Park, UT. He has been out for 16 months. He seems pretty cool, very sarcastic and intellectual. It will be an interesting transfer or two.

So Jeff Hansen (my trainer) was in the mission for a sealing and one of our recent converts picked him up and stopped in Ottawa. So I was able to see Matt and Elder Hansen, so that was kinda weird but really cool.

We had a family invite us over for a New Year's Eve party. We had dinner at another members house then went over and apparently they were planning on feeding everyone a big dinner too, so we were really stuffed that night. But it was good food.

New Year's Day was good, we had a really good Fast and Testimony meeting. We had a super cool lesson with a few less active guys. They basically committed themselves to come to church on Sunday. In the closing prayer he even asked for extra strength to come to church.

Thank you all for everything that you guys have done for me, it has been a blast so far. I hit my year mark on the 6th of Jan. - so this Friday. Thank you for making 2016 amazing and I hope that 2017 will be great for all you as well.

Elder Jensen

Area: Ottawa, KSCompanion: Elder Cox
 
Email address:  kenneth.jensen@myldsmail.net  
 
Mailing Address:
Elder Kenneth Jensen
Missouri Independence Mission
517 W Walnut St
Independence, MO 64050

Well, this week was honestly pretty uneventful. Elder Cox has been sick most of the week and we have not been able to get out and do to much.

Tuesday we went on exchanges and Elder Smith and I helped this family move a super heavy air hockey table with a couple of guys who only spoke Portuguese so that was fun. Then as we were driving around Olathe in Johnson County I saw some of the biggest houses I have ever seen in my life. They were huge! You literally had to drive under part of their house to get to the courtyard where the garages were.

Then through a failure to communicate I ended up forgetting all of my stuff at the Heritage Parks apartment, so for two days I slept on just a plain mattress with a sweatshirt for a blanket. That was fun...

We went Christmas caroling with a family in our ward. It was actually pretty fun. The family we went with could actually sing, so I just stood in the back and tried to not ruin it.

We went to go get my bedding and stuff back and as we pulled into the parking lot we realized that our bumper had fallen partially off and was dragging on the ground. We had lots of appointments and we were pretty much busy for the next two days and then it was Christmas time and everywhere was closed. Our car guy just told us to duct tape it, so thats what we did.

Christmas Eve was pretty normal. We had dinner with a family with little kids and after dinner we helped the dad move a big trampoline up from the basement. He said once it was all set up that we could jump on it. :) 

Christmas day was awesome! Thank you so much for the stuff you guys sent me. I think I have more candy than I have ever had in my life.  We opened gifts, went to church, had lunch with a family who made home made pizzas, then went straight to dinner with another family. Then we got to Skype our families. That was really awesome. They said that I need to send more pictures of me in my emails so ... we'll see what happens.

Thank you all for your support, the mission is awesome! 

Make it a good one.

Elder Jensen