Another week in the DR...

Hello Family!!

Life has pretty much fallen into a pattern here in the DR CCM.  I get up out of bed and get ready.  Next I have breakfast and then usually take a walk around the temple.  After that, we head to class for 3 hours.  Next, we have lunch.  It is still pretty good, but it's the same thing everyday.  Rice, chicken, beef, potatoes, and fruit.  Oh well.  Let's see, after lunch we have language study for 2 hours.  Then we get to go outside and have gym time!  After gym we have dinner.  Guess what's after dinner?  Yep, 3 more hours of classroom instruction.  Then at 9 pm we plan and have CCM Prayer with everyone.  I go to bed and get ready to repeat the process over the next day.  It is definitely a pretty crazy life here, ha ha.  However, occasionally we do get variety.  On Mondays, we get to do service.  Tuesdays, we have devotional.  Thursdays, we have P-Day so we go the the temple and then the President takes us to different sites throughout Santo Domingo.  Fridays, we get to leave and do some real contacting at the local university.  So that's always exciting!  So overall, my days are pretty much the same.  They kinda run into each other.  If I didn't have a calendar, I'm not sure I would know what day it is here.

This past week, I had some very exciting things happen!  Last Thursday afternoon, President Glazier took us the the Colonial Zone next the the coast.  It was where Christopher Columbus and his son settled after he discovered the new world.  There is really old buildings, artifacts, and stuff like that.  It was really fun learning about a colony that settled here 500 years ago.  I have a ton of pictures, but you'll have to wait to see all of them.  That was overall, very exciting!  We got ice cream and it tastes very different from the US ice cream.  But its super yummy!!

On Friday (May 4), we walked to the local university and did some contacting.  The gift of tongues is an amazing gift.  My companion and I could understand what they were saying, and they could understand our Spanish!  It was so much fun to do some really contacting.  We met a young sister who was willing to help us practice our Spanish.  We just had small talk conversation, and then it eventually turned over into religion.  We shared our belief about Jesucristo as our redeemer and explained a little bit about El Libro de Mormon.  It was very exciting!!  We offered her a Libro de Mormon, but she said she had one at her house.  So we asked her to read it and call the mission numbers when she has questions.  Next we found a young brother, who was just kinda chillin.  We did the same thing with him to.  He seemed very interested and had some questions for us.  We did our best to answer them and shared our testimonies.  We asked if he ever read El Libro de Mormon and he said he couldn't because he never had one to read.  So guess what we did?  That's right, we have him a copy!!  He said he would read it and call the mission numbers when he wanted missionaries to come back!  Last, we talked with another young brother who was waiting for his girlfriend.  He had a lot of questions about the gospel.  We gave him a pamphlet and he read a lot of it right then!  He then asked questions and wondered where he could go to learn more about El Libro de Mormon and the Gospel of Jesucristo.  We told him he should call the mission numbers and missionaries will come and give him more information and a copy of El Libro de Mormon.  Overall, contacting was really fun and I can't wait to get into the field and do it some more!

Love always,

Elder Jensen