Elder Jensen's Best Two Years: June 29, 2015

Hey so the baptism didn't happen but were hoping for next week.

So, you told me last week about that storm and I didn't know... well I found out quick that it did affect my area. But only by transportation. So it is normally like 2 hours to San Jose but we had to go a different way because a bridge fell which was the normal way we would have gone. And so instead it took 4 hours... Yea that was not fun. Also because we left Monday night slept at a missionaries house the night... Well more like a nap because we went to sleep around 11 and got up around 2 to be at the bus station at 3 for the bus. But we didn't know that the bus left at 5... Sooo not much sleep that night. Then we had the meeting which was cool, heard some stuff the president said that I told my comp the week before and yea, ... But anyways so some elders went to this one store called PriceSmart which is like Sams or any store like that and soo I got another umbrella... From there but this won't die any time soon and its huge. Its like dads. Also I did get the package, thank you!!! Then when we went home... Ugh it sucked because we left at 6 pm and yea on a bus going through a road worse than the Alpine road, like twisty and stuff. The guy in front of my threw up, and then the lady across the row threw up also. Oh yea great stuff. We also dealt with crazy bad traffic. So I don' think we got home until 11:30... Yea I was tired Wednesday. The other day we heard that now we are isolated from San Jose. So thats cool! haha.

Oh today the mission splits and I'm in the East! I very excited.

Love you

Elder Jensen

The following is an excerpt from an audio recording that Elder Vandermeyden was able to send home. He was with Tyler in traveling to the Mission Conference.

This week was a little crazy. Started out Monday of last week. We were planning on going to San Jose so we could get to the (mission) conference on time. The last bus from our area leaves at 5:30, so we had our day planned out just right. So about 10:30am we get a call from the zone leaders telling us to sleep in Guapiles and travel to San Jose in the morning because the mission home was a little full. (we were planning on sleeping in the mission home originally) All the missionaries from Guanacaste Zone, Puntarenes Zone, and Zona Sur were staying there because none of them can make it there in the morning, but from Guapiles, you can. So the day went okay, we had lunch, I taught some people how to play scrabble. We didn’t have the instructions, so I made some of it up, but it turned out well and made sense and we had fun. Then we went to do internet which was awesome. I want to say thank you all for the support you all give me for writing me so often. We were an hour into internet and got a phone call from the zone leaders saying we had to go to San Jose that day. At that point it was already 5:30 and we had to run to the bus stop where the bus left us, so there was no bus from Cariari to San Jose that night. Moreover, we had no bag to sleep over and no suit coat jackets, so we ran to the house to get that, because there was a bus leaving from Guapiles, but at that point it was 5:45 and the last bus leaves at 6pm supposedly, but it’s not possible to make it to Guapiles in 15 minutes. Even by going by taxi super fast it takes about 20 minutes. So we were stuck out here with no plan, and no way to make it to San Jose. We made lots of phone calls.. packed our stuff. and trusted in the Lord and had faith. The branch president had a great suggestion that we sleep in Siquirres and take the first bus from Siquirres to San Jose. The thing is we had to be in San Jose by 8am in the morning the next day so we could make the picture of the whole mission. The first bus from Guapiles was at 5:30am. The reason we had to leave that very same day, because the route goes through Zirque, but the pass is not as safe as it would seem because a bridge fell (due to flooding), wohoooo, so now we have to take a bus through Turrialba which adds another 2.5 hrs to the route, so if we took the bus at 5:30am on Tues. then we would show up around 11am, three hours after when we needed to be in San Jose. But the first bus in Siquirres leaves at 4:30am, so we decided to sleep in Siquirres that night. I got to see a few good friends, like Hermana Magale and her family. It wasn’t just us that did that (sleep in Siquirres), the elders from La Riza as well were stranded. So our entire district went to Siquirres to sleep, it was pretty cool. We were dead tired. We woke up at 2am to get to the bus stop at 3am. Just following our leaders suggestions. The zone leaders and the assistants told us that we should probably be there at 3 in the morning even though the bus didn’t open til 4 and the bus didn’t leave until 5. But we did it anyway. We were really tired that day. Moreover I couldn’t sleep in the bus, for some I reason, I don’t know what it was. Turns out we were trying to get there by 8am. There was lots of traffic for the last 15 minutes, and we made it there by 8:07. Good news is that the president hadn’t showed up for the picture yet, so we luckily made it for the picture.