Dear Family and Friends,
It would probably be a good idea to send letters to
the mission home. I'm probably going to
stay but we will see.
This was a pretty hard week.
80% of those we are/were teaching dropped us and so we have just about
no one to teach. We only taught 8 lessons last week. The spanish work
has just dissapeared in an area that it was already hard to find. Our
baptism fell through and things seem to be going against us right now.
So instead of teaching lessons this week we worked the
only statistic that we can really control. OYMs, or street contacts, are
things I've never really prioritized since we are usually teaching
lessons and don't have time to wander around and talk to people. But
since we didn't have anyone to teach, we spent a lot of time walking and
talking this week. A good week of OYMs is about 120 with the standards
of excellence being at 140 different people spoken with. A good OYM
constitutes the bearing of testimony and inviting the person to do
something. This week since we little else to do, we got tons of OYMs.
And by tons I mean 348. 140 of those were in one day. We walked 20 miles
that day haha. So hopefully that helps us in some way this week because
it's looking pretty bleak.
We talked to some pretty funny people. One of them said
no and threw an onion and two jalapenos at us. Another started to yell
anti stuff at us. We listened for a few seconds and I asked him if he
had ever read any of the things he was quoting. He said no and I asked
him how he could judge anything without ever reading it. He said, "Not
to be disrespectful or anything but you teach from the wrong source -
false scripture from a false prophet and it distorts all of you. You
only go after 'softies' and when anyone puts up a fight you leave!" I
asked him how he could say he was trying not to be disrespectful and say
that. After a few more seconds of him yelling we just told him to read
it and walked away to hear him arguing at our backs. Fun.
We also didn't get to go to the temple this week. We
carpooled with the two other Elders that live with us on the way to the
temple. Their member picked us up in their brand new VW Jetter TDI, 2
weeks old. I talked to him on the way over about his car and his line of
work (designs missles). Halfway to the temple, Elder Arndt says we need
to pull over quickly but we were in the middle of a work zone. The
member floored it and pulled over but it was too late. Elder Arndt threw
up all over his companion, all over Elder Allen, and all over the new
2013 Jetta. Everyone was in shock so I opened up the door and ran around
to open his door so the rest wouldn't get inside the car haha. The good
news? I escaped unscathed! The bad? No temple...
It's starting to get hot. I am so acclimatized to the
'winter' that I'm going to die. It was 95 the other day and has been
around 90 for most of the week. I heard it's supposed to cool off a bit.
The sad thing is that even if it's 90 degrees, it's still going to get
30 degrees warmer... It was funny though, I was biking on exchanges and
my shirt was a little wrinkly in the morning and by the time we stopped
it looked like the sun/wind had ironed it straight. That makes life
easier!
During our spanish study this week there were
helicopters hovering overhead for the entire hour. That night we learned
that someone had gotten into a gun fight with the cops and was shot
dead in the park nearby.
I finally saw a road runner!
Two
days ago we went by to visit someone in the evening and as we turned to
leave we saw a giant black widow in the corner of their walls outside.
We went home that night and checked the perimeter of our exterior walls
and found two or three black widows and six scorpions. So naturally we
caught them.
The scorpion won.
We
were walking around the only trailer park here last week and someone
yelled at us to give him a ride to the store because he was drunk. We
said no because we're not allowed to give rides in our mission car. We
ran into him this week again and he was drunk. Again. The conversation
began with, translated, "LIARSSSSSSS. You're not men of God! I needed to
get to the store to buy beer but you wouldn't give me a ride!" We told
him we can't drive people in our car and he said, "I wanted you to drive
me in my truck! LIARS! You don't help people!" And so on. Elder Allen
told him that if he wants to drive places he shouldn't drink haha.
We went to teach a lesson last night to a potential
spanish investigator that we have. We knocked on the door and she
invited us in saying they were praising God already. We walked in,
slightly suspicious, and went to the back door. When we got there we saw
probably 20 hispanics with someone preaching to them at 8:30pm. She
invited us to join them but it was super awkward so we politely declined
and left them with some cards haha.
Thanks for the letters: Sister Hines, Tanan, and John!
Do insects have blood?
We have lots of black widows in our neighborhood. How dangerous are they? Could they kill me?
Anyway, hopefully this next week yields more success than this week! Hope you're all well,
Love,
Elder Johnson
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