Elder Jay Jensen

For the first year or so that my parents were serving as mission president and wife in Paraguay, Elder Jay Jensen, now in the Presidency of the Seventy, was the president of our South America South Area. On several occasions, Elder Jensen and his wife would come from Buenos Aires for a "mission tour" and stay with my family for a week. The Paraguay Asuncion temple was being constructed at the time and was later dedicated, which also brought Elder Jensen to Paraguay. Elder and Sister Jensen and my parents became really close friends. I always looked forward to seeing them again, and really looked up to Elder Jensen a lot. Since Paraguay, he's kept in touch as much as possible. He'd see my dad at the MTC from time to time, and he even came to our wedding reception.

This last Sunday, apparently Elder Jensen didn't have an assignment to be anywhere, which is pretty unusual. So he called up my stake president, President Owen, and asked if there were two wards in our stake that met during the middle of the day that Elder Jensen could come visit. My ward was one of the lucky two! It was Fast and Testimony meeting, which was actually a VERY good meeting, but Elder Jensen still took 10 minutes at the end to speak to us.

After Sacrament, I was trying to get a chance to talk with Elder Jensen, but he whisked out of the chapel rather quickly. Lacee and I followed the throngs into our gym for our combined Sunday School lesson Elder Jensen was going to give us. By the time we got in there, the room was full, so we sat on the front row. Elder Jensen came over and sat down up front with our stake president. When he looked up and saw me, he got a big smile on his face and came and gave me a great big hug. We talked for a few minutes and then gave me another hug. It was a lot of fun to see him again! During his Sunday School lesson, he asked if I'd stand up with my Doctrine and Covenants ready. I stood, and he explained how he knew me and my parents, that he had stayed with us and eaten my food and slept in my bed (and that it was a good bed... he'd recommend it!). He then asked me to read some scriptures as he talked about them. He talked about us doing the preaching and letting the Spirit do the teaching. It was an incredible lesson!