Dear Family and Friends,
I turn 5 months in two days. Time flies.
That poorly exposed picture is of my Yuma district before
transfers. 3 of those 8 are gone. From left to right, they are: Elder
Sawyer, Elder Boyd, Elder Berriman, Elder Johnson (Me), Elder Lanier,
Elder Mackay, Sister Drake, Sister Thompson. Elder Boyd got called to
Show Low and I heard that in transfer meeting, when he heard it, he got
up and started singing, "I'm dreaming of a white christmas" until
President Howes told him to stop. Sad I missed it!
Transfers were this past week. Because every companionship in Yuma
went through a change, 6 of the 8 missionaries had to go to transfer
meetings in Tempe. As a result, Elder Mackay and I were the only ones
who stayed in Yuma. We covered the entire stake for the day. The only
missionaries in all of Yuma (Yuma to Heider). But that
was just for like 8 hours. Because we had no lessons set up that day and
the entire district was gone, the Zone Leaders challenged us to get 80
OYMs, or 80 street contacts. We accepted that challenge. And did it. It
was ridiculous haha. Every. single. person we saw we talked to. We only
got like 3 lessons out of it too. And since that was the end of the
month of November, we had only 20 miles left in the car so we walked all
day. By all day I mean from 8am to 6pm. By the end we easily had walked
over 10 miles. Anyway, the zone leaders now owe each of us a tub of
bluebell ice cream. I'm going to cash in for some Dutch Chocolate. That
stuff is heavenly.
All the new missionaries and the returning one from training
meetings got back at 6pm that night. My new companion is Elder Valdez.
He's from Quintana Roo, Mexico, just below Cancun. He has only been
speaking English for as long as he has been on his mission which is 8
months. We're a pretty young companionship. There are only 3 native
speaking missionaries in the mission so I got lucky. My Spanish is going
to get really good this transfer and his English is going to get better
too. We're trying to only speak our mission language so he speaking
English, me speaking only Spanish. The language barrier has presented
some interesting problems so we're working through that. Our month
baptism goal is 3.
And that goal got off to an unfortunate start. We had one baptism
on date for the 1st of December but due to Word of Wisdom problems got
pushed back. Hopefully we can get him excited again and get him on date
for next week or the following.
And we had one investigator who wasn't progressing but now will
absolutely not be progressing for at least 8 years. Let's just say a gun
and 12 bullets were involved. No one died (I think). He got bailed out
and came to church though!.....People were coming up to us and telling
us about it at church. Since we get no access to the news, we had no
idea.
Elder Valdez and my first night out turned a little intense. We
went to talk to this guy who came over and just starting calling us out
for every single thing you can imagine. He was a super scriptorian and
before we decided to leave he said, "and next time you guys come back,
memorize more scriptures!" I wanted to say that it's not about having
memorized scriptures, it's about how you feel and act. He went on about
how we need to celebrate passover and how the 2nd coming was in 1948. I
read to him the one part of (book of) Revelation that I actually
understand about the two prophets being killed and he couldn't respond.
Bible bashing doesn't get you anywhere though so we just bore testimony
and left. Nothing else you can do to in that scenario.
As I said last week, I got transferred a couple blocks away and out
of my sweet old apartment. The one we're living in now is worse. Way
worse. Half the size, really dirty, and missing lots of things. Even our
door is broken. The apartment office said it would be $125 to fix it
and the mission OK'd it so all we need to do is let the apartment
complex know it's ok'd.
This has been a pretty stressful week. Since there are now 6 Spanish missionaries in the Spanish branch (compared to the previous 4),
we had to split the areas. The zone leaders got all my old
investigators and I got a new ward. So this transfer I'm 1/2 white
washing. A new Spanish area, a new English ward, and the same other English ward. I don't cover the YSA branch anymore. But it has been hard
to start from scratch (again) and try to build it up. Hopefully we can
have as much success as I did last transfer with Sawyer.
Speaking of the YSA branch...drama! At Church yesterday, we were
studying in the foyer and saw the branch president's wife run out of the
chapel and grab the branch president and rush him inside. They looked
pretty scared. So naturally I followed them. One of the members was
non-responsive and looked like he was passed out. A couple of seconds
later, he just collapsed. Chaos. His fiance's nose started bleeding and
she fainted from fear. The member who was non-responsive was out for 1-3
minutes. I think the only way he could have been safer would to have
been in a hospital. Eight marines, 2 EMTs, and a nurse are in the YSA
branch. Not to mention a doctor was in the hallway. The
firetruck/ambulance showed up and got him conscious again after a bit.
It had happened to him 3 times before. He didn't want to go to the
hospital for certain reasons but they eventually convinced him. As the
EMTs walked out, one of the members said, "and you guys thought you
weren't going to church today!" That relieved a lot of the built up
stress haha.
Saw another meteor this week! Not half the size or the coolness of
the last one but it was pretty cool. They're pretty easy to see when
there are no clouds or trees.
We met a man this week who started anti-ing us the second we said
hi. Before we left, he said, "you guys are just a little cooler than
Jehovah's Witnesses." I guess the people here don't really like them. Or
us.
Polyester ties were banned this week. President Howes said
missionaries were getting out of control with the styling. So sad. Now I
have 60 ties that I can't wear. If I can find a box I'll probably be
sending 1-2 boxes of ties home. There are some sweet ones and some
hideous ones. Get excited. It mostly just affected the Spanish
missionaries since for some reason Spanish missionaries tend to wear
more polys than English missionaries.
I got a tiwi card! AKA I have permission to drive. Since Elder
Valdez is from Mexico, his home license isn't recognized. We drive a
2011 Corolla. I have to stoop waaaayyy down to get into it. Not a huge
fan but it gets sweet gas mileage. It's no swaggerwagon though. The
first day in it I accidentally sat on my sunglasses and broke them. Bien
triste [very sad].
We had a pretty cool experience yesterday with an OYM. We were
walking down a street and I felt like we should knock on a door. No one
answered. We turned around and saw a family sitting on their "yard" (it
was all dirt.) so we went and talked to them. Turns out they're all
really really interested in family history. They're going to the family
history center at the church building this week. Hopefully they'll start
listening to us and learn about the church
So the week after I get transferred out of my old area, that family
we were teaching decide to get baptized. Ahhjhhhhh. At least I'll still
be in Yuma to see it. Apparently they kept asking Elder Sawyer why we
got split up and if it happened because we did something wrong. [If you're not aware, missionaries regularly receive transfers to work in different areas or with different missionaries. Just part of the mission culture]. Good
times.
I was reading a bit about resurrection this morning. Christ was the
very first one to get resurrected, right? He, obviously, had lots of
faith! It's kind of like someone telling you to jump off a cliff and
saying you won't get hurt. You do it because you trust the person, but
the fall down would be terrifying. I had never really thought about it
like that before.
What causes languages to change over time?
Thanks Camie, Sister Hines, Alex, Sister Christensen, Cassie, and
family for the letters this week! Awesome to hear from all of you!
Love you all so much, merry almost Christmas,
Elder Johnson
No comments:
Post a Comment