Whatonearthhappened.
From 10 months to 16.8 months, I honestly thought
that the mission would be the rest of my life. That was all that I
thought about. Nothing else even mattered to me. Well, nothing else DOES
matter to me, but something weird happened yesterday and that's why I'm
talking like this.
Yesterday was our mission's Christmas Party. It was
awesome. More on that later. During the testimony meeting, all I could
think about was college. No matter what I did, all the thoughts that
came to mind were about college.
This was not timely. We had just finished the most
ridiculous week of my mission with over 60 lessons taught and 30 of them
with members present. Ridiculous. So many. We worked so hard. Everyday
we were doing everything we could to make everything possible happen.
And we saw it. We have four people with a baptismal date and four
progressing towards baptism and nine at church and seven new
investigators and 15 referrals received. Obscenely good week! I was so
in the zone!
And then that testimony meeting hit. Gah. Afterwards
I went up to President Toone and asked him what I should do. He looked
at me, grabbed my shoulders, smiling, and said, "Elder Johnson...the
spirit is telling you that it is time to start planning for the future."
NO. NO NONONONONONONONO.
I'm not "trunky" at all, not distracted, but the idea of planning for myself rather than other people is shocking me.
And then Elder Oscarson told me today that he and I are the ninth oldest missionaries in the mission.
And
that the sisters that came out with me are going home in three weeks.
Today we went to the temple as mission and got the following pictures of
the original District 38D from the MTC.
Anyway, other things happened than me going into shock.
The
Gilbert Temple open house is approaching. The pass along cards have
arrived. They're nice. They don't want us handing them out on the
street; rather, praying over those that we are teaching and sharing a
few. They're not giving us the 700 per companionship that I requested
(surprise!) but rather more like 100 </3
We aren't allowed to go to the open house. We are
expected to send our investigators to the temple with members. Not all
that said considering that the very first sessions after dedication are
reserved for missionaries. Hopefully I won't be too far from it for
that.
It is a unique experience to meet on a monthly basis
with the Stake Presidents in our zone. I don't know why they trust us
as much as they do, but they do. I'm twenty and they're 50+ and very
experienced. But these meetings are so inspiring. I learn about
humility, patience, love, boldness, honesty with oneself and others, and
effectiveness. I look forward to those meetings. They meet with us to
discuss the state of the work and how the wards are doing, any concerns
or miracles we're seeing, and offer us some guidance. It's awesome. They
reach out to us warmly.
It was especially cool to be in the temple this
morning doing some initiatory work and find the high councilor over
missionary work in one of the quadrants. That was also a special moment.
Really, they're such powerful people and great examples.
Today has brought the first three trainings that
I've been assigned to do on effective use of Facebook. Mom, I bragged
about you again. I talked with President Toone last week about how I
felt the mission has lost focus on Facebook as it has appropriately
shifted focuses to help the younger missionaries. But I felt it was an
important topic and as I sat talking with him he told me that he wanted
me to meet one on one with every zone leader companionship and train
them on how to train their stewardship. It has been highly effective so
far and I've already figured out a ton about the state of the mission in
regards to Facebook. Doubling every zones total teaching opportunities
per week is my vision.
Speaking of vision, I want to comment on how
inspired this has all been. The APs put together the zone conference and
made "Vision" the focus. At the same time and without knowing, I put
together the Facebook training and had vision as my focus! INSPIRED!
It is reasonable to say that between 60-80% of our
mission is yet to teach their first lesson on Facebook. A missionary who
isn't busy is a homesick missionary. And that's the big struggle of the
mission right now. So we're expecting miracles out of this.
Ok, now I can talk about the christmas conference.
It all started on Sunday night with a Mission President's Devotional.
All the missionaries and as many investigators as possible were invited.
Elder Gaspar, Anderson, and I played a special musical number on,
respectively, Viola, Violin, Violin. We played, "Silent Night/Still,
Still, Still" arranged by Sally DeFord and had someone on Piano. That
was a lot of fun - wish I had recorded it.
The christmas conference continued all day on Monday, starting at 7:00am
with a breakfast. Yum. That day consisted of some AMAZING talks by
President Laney (one of the amazing Stake Presidents I previously
mentioned in this letter) on how Jesus Christ is a healer and the
difference between being cured and healed. He's a doctor and spent the
time noting how doctors cure but don't heal. He used the parable of the
10 lepers and how it uses cured/healed interchangeably to refer to the
nine and to the one. Amazing. If you want my notes just let me know.
The Mesa Arizona Temple President and wife also
spoke to us. That was phenomenal and they gave us some great pointers
for how to get a lot out of a temple visit.
The
rest of the day was full of some fun activities, lots of musical
numbers, a visit from Santa (nice and naughty list for missionaries and
the funny stories that landed them on each list). It was a fun
experience.
The conference culminated in a temple trip this
morning. We went extra early to do some initiatories -that was fun.
Elder Gaspar missed the temple session so went through alone afterwards
haha. And then he missed the mission picture because he went through a
later session...
We went to the temple twice in two weeks since we
were sneaky and planned the temple trip the first week of the transfer
and got to go again. Genius! Normally we just go once a transfer.
Inspired!
The trip last week was super insane. We forgot about it. No, really, we did. We go to the 7:30 session and at 6:52,
while exercising, we realized that we had a temple session in 40
minutes. So we RACED home, changed SUPER fast, met our ride 10 minutes
late, and got into the session as they shut the door. That. was.
Intense. I hate being rushed through the temple haha.
Anyway, MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone! I hope everyone has a GREAT week!
With love,
Elder Johnson
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