16 September 2013

This week was the most amazing week until Sunday. 

We found 11 new investigators, more than we found all of last transfer combined, and 7 of them had accepted a baptismal date for Sep 28. But 5 of them fell off date for various reasons last night which was way unfortunate...more on that in a bit.

Last week I said goodbye to Elder Harder. I was sad to see him go but I'm excited for what's ahead of him.

This past week started off perfectly. I got bit by a pitbull. I was on exchanges with Elder Mack (since his companion went home as well) and we saw this guy that we decided we'd talk to. I should have taken more notice of how the dog's leash was tied around the man's waist. Anyway, we talked to him and I asked if I could pet his dog. "Make sure you're sure of yourself!" Whatever that meant I walked toward the dog and all the sudden in a thrash of teeth, blood, gore, and pain the pitbull was dragging me behind it to what I thought was my sure death.

Ok, maybe it didn't happen like that but it did jump up and grab my knee and bite my knee! I stepped backwards in shock and the guy said, "well, you should have been more sure!" and then walked away. KSJDFLAKJSDFAKSJDFKALSDFA. I could have gotten his dog taken away if I wasn't so nice! Oh well. 

We had an awesome experience finding a family to teach this week. We OYM'd into a woman outside an apartment complex and we talked with her a bit and had a nice conversation. We asked her if we could return the next day at a certain time and she accepted! When we went over we were surprised to see 7 people inside the house! We sat down and had an awesome conversation with them and they all accepted a baptismal invitation. They're doing really well and a wedding and a baptism are in the mix for the future. A really faithful, open, and genuine family. 

That has been my goal in OYMs. I want to leave every OYM having gained a new friend. I talked about that last week but people need to see us as people not just, "HEY WE'RE THE MISSIONARIES FROM THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS, WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR MORE?" And then if the answer is no, "OK, DO YOU KNOW ANYONE..." etc. There's so much more to these street contacts than that!

On Wednesday I picked up my new companion! His name is Elder Gaspar and he was in the Phoenix mission before! He's great and guess where he's from? Stafford, VA! Small world! I've had two companions in a row from the East Coast! His family is from Peru so he's 100% Peruvian blood and fluent in both english and spanish. Obviously I'm supposed to learn spanish or something since I've had three native speaker companions which I've never heard of happening before. And he plays violin too! AND HE HAS SEEN KUNG POW ENTERS THE FIST AS WELL! He's super humble and a powerful missionary so we're going to have a lot of fun together. 

Another small world story. For the Dewey family in Washington...Renee Taylor, your babysitter, is in the Arizona Tempe mission! I met her this past Wednesday. The one who babysat your kids? Craaazzzyyyy.

One of our recent converts is really struggling right now. I don't want to go into too many details but the state has picked her up to keep her safe from herself and they won't tell us where she is. no one knows where she is and they won't let us contact her. She needs the ward now more than ever and we can't do anything. Super frustrating.

We're really excited for a different investigator who has accepted a baptismal date for two weeks from now! She is so prepared but her health problems are going to present a challenge. She has had some amazing experiences getting her to where she is now and she is more ready than ever! 

It's hard to see people struggle. Whether it be spiritual, financial, physical, whatever. And it is even worse when people say, "they brought that on themselves, I'm not going to help." This past week we got to spend some time with an amazing person who is struggling with one of those three things. This person commented to us about all the judgement he has received and how it is really making him question things. Just be aware that little acts of kindness make a world of a difference. Do something good for someone today. Help someone in need. You never know who's hurting and you never will unless you try. 

Oh my goodness this last week I saw a Fisker Karma! If you don't know what it is then google it. It drove right through Mesa (of course) and on probably to Scottsdale but it was sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. 

One of the stakes in our zone is tiny. Four square miles by four square miles. An entire stake! They're on the Gilbert side, quite a ways away, but we had an awesome meeting with the stake presidency the other day. It is always really humbling and inspiring to see these powerful men make time at 7am to meet with us and listen to the work we're doing. This particular stake president comes very prepared to these meetings, complete with an agenda and both his counselors. The missionaries in that stake are working very closely with their leadership and miracles are around the corner.

And that's something that we're working on - a smooth connection from the top down. Facebook is making that possible as more and more stake presidents, counselors, and bishops get on Facebook. It makes the connection and the correlation between all levels seamless and easy. 

We had our correlation meeting this week over Skype. Information was shared via email and text and video conferencing provided all other interaction needed. The wards and members are getting really reallly excited about this new technology as are we.

We just need to help the mission be effective. Our teaching opportunities almost trippled this past week because of an hour a day on Facebook. We just had a conference call with President Toone addressing some of his concerns and talking about some success we've had as a companionship over Facebook.

This past week I committed someone to baptism over Facebook. This person lives in Texas and I was able to teach her twice: once with my first companion Tanner Sawyer and the second time, yesterday, with Mark, my brother. She brought a lot of concerns up yesterday and kind of fell away from the commitment she had made to baptism but it was a special experience to be able to teach and testify with both of them, especially considering I haven't even seen Mark in three years and won't for one more. I'm in contact with the mission president where the person we're teaching over Facebook lives and he is super excited for this. Their mission isn't on Facebook until February. Apparently President Toone brought this experience up at the conference all the missionaries had in Texas this past weekend with Elder Neil L. Anderson! Wooo!

It was also really cool this morning to see Tracy Watson, the director of proselyting for the world (for the church) comment and testify on my status in response to a nonmembers comment. Everything is so connected! It's cool to have a connection to leadership of the church through Facebook since we're testing out this new stuff. Fun fun fun fun fun.

Thanks Eric, Will, Dallin (In France!), and Grandpa J for the letter this week!

Thank you all for your support, for liking and sharing posts on Facebook, for sharing your own testimonies on Facebook, for being great friends and for being great family!

Con amor,

EJ

5 August 2013

Dear family and friends,

 

Well, I'm a Facebook missionary now! Friend me @ https://www.facebook.com/elderpaul.johnson. As a disclaimer, I'm there to do missionary work, send inspiring messages, and things along that line, not to catch up on old times. We get one hour of designated "internet proselytizing time" and then throughout the day for a few minutes at a time)

Yeah that's still kind of weird to say. I'm serving in Mesa too with Elder Harder, the companion I had for five days in Tempe before I got emergency transferred. Obviously we were meant to be together. I was excited to be with him again. He's a great missionary and you'd never expect he will be home in 5 weeks.

We had a cool experience last week. They put three companionships in the Ray 5th Spanish ward where I was the last three months. So they had to re-draw the boundaries to make it fit. We sat down with the zone leaders over there and looked some lines over and nothing seemed to fit. I offered a prayer and immediately the boundaries came to my mind and it made everyone happy. It was cool to see an answer to a prayer so quickly and so precisely. 

To be more specific on my new area. This is my new address: 922 S. Longmore #109, Mesa, AZ 85202. Use it lots! 

We cover two wards: the legendary Liahona 5th ward that baptized over 200 people in three years and the Kleinman Park English ward. Both wards are excellent and we're really excited to work in them. We have great potentials in both wards.

The members are all used to the iPads and iPhone 5s that we use. They've been in use in our mission for three months. There are only 100 iPads in the world being used and we are two of them. They call us pioneers of the digital age of missionary work. 

So, to explain what that means...

Each companionship has two iPad minis and one iPhone 5. They are all synced together meaning that all notes are auto synced, etc. They each have an Area Book application. Inside that is a record of who has been taught and who is being taught as well as addresses. Planning is way easy because there is an option to "find people nearby" and it gives you everyone in a certain area. 

I missed Siri. We've been reunited!

We have access to ward lists, callings, and more information. Staying in contact with members has never been easier. Facebook only makes that easier. Coordinating events, contacting investigators, sharing little status updates... It really is totally different. For example a lesson was taught last week to someone in France over Skype. Basic principles were taught and she was then referred to the local missionaries.

The sky is the limit.

There are some faults with it, clunky area book app, not being able to schedule reoccurring events, no access to LDS Tools app (we have a special one that is worse). They are really good at implementing our recommendations though!

Since the program is so new, we are writing the rule book. A new "white bible," or "white handbook" is coming out in the new future with updated rules. Salt Lake is in constant contact with us seeking input on features, wanted features, etc. It's a really really cool experience.

Since there are no real written rules (except filter everything to our purpose), we got together as a zone last week to make some ground rules about usage, specifically with the internet. The device is pretty well locked down but we established some baselines. I left kind of amazed at how a bunch of 18-24 year olds set self limits on electronic devices. We are different, I guess. I took notes of everything (on the iPad :)) and read it afterwards. President Toone looked at me and said, "will you be my executive secretary?? Those notes were great!" hahahaha

Moving on.

Transfers were this past week. The Phoenix zones have officially been incorporated into the Tempe mission. Every single companionship except like 5 in the mission were changed. There was some contention between mission pride at the start but it has died down. Hopefully that dies down since there's no reason for that. Having met a bunch of missionaries from the Phoenix mission at MTC I left with one conclusion: they're awesome. One of them spent the night with us and it was hilarious. 

We drive a 2013 Chevy Cruze. It has a, ah, what's it called.... a semi-automatic gear box if I remember. It has a shifter but no pedal so I can drive around shifting how I please. It is a quick little car with really weird gear ratios but it's fun. I mean it gets us to and from appointments safely.

Mesa is pretty great. I love it. Last week we were driving past a Circle K and I suddenly saw someone on a BMX bike come FLYING around the corner. Then a woman went running out of the Circle K swearing and screaming, then an SUV went flying by, and then 6 or 7 guys sprinted out of the Circle K and chased the guy. He had just stolen her bike and we had seen it all! So naturally we put the car into chase mode and followed looking for the guy. He got into some apartment complex and disappeared unfortunately. Exciting moment! 

The Mesa zone is a super "green" zone. 7 or the 9 companionships (excluding us) are training someone in their first 6 weeks. And that's why we're so excited - so much energy!

We heard a crazy border crossing story this week. Someone in the area was coming across with a  group when border patrol showed up. This guy ran and ran and ran and found a pole that he climbed 10 feet up. Everyone in his group was caught except for him because border patrol never looked up.

For one of our dinners this week we ate tacos. Not just any kind of tacos, but cow head tacos and cow tongue tacos. The tongue tacos actually weren't too bad. The head tacos were slimy and greasy and soft. Those weren't my favorite. Grilled steak tacos (carne asada) takes the cake. You know you have a good Spanish area when two of your first three dinners are carne asada tacos!!

Last night we met an awesome guy on the street. The first thing he told us was that he was atheist and that he was a bad man. We assured him that he wasn't either of those things (haha) and had an inspiring lesson with him. By the end of it he had accepted a Book of Mormon, accepted a return appointment, and accepted a baptismal date for the 24th of August! We are really excited to work with him. He asked me to pray for his kids right there and he said he was at seven. I couldn't even remember three names so in the middle of the prayer he said their names and then I finished the sentence haah)

We are also teaching an angel of a woman. She's older and struggles with an addiction to smoking. She wants to get baptized so bad and loves church. We asked her what time she is most tempted to smoke and told her we'd be there to visit her. She said 6am so we set up a lesson for 6 am but she had to cancel last night unfortunately. It has been fun to see her see how much we love her and how much we want to help her. She says she is alone frequently and we told her we'll change that! She asked for a calling in the church because she wants to serve everyone. More on this in the coming weeks!

Last night I set the other Elders' alarm for 6:02 am without them knowing. Well, that prank backfired and I was the only one to hear it and when it went off I thought it was 6:30 so I got up and started getting ready to exercise then realized it was 6:09 and flopped back on bed. Not doing that one again...

I traded two ties this past week for a silver Skagen watch. Score!

Thanks Andra, Tanan, Eric, Will, Mom, and Dad for the letters this week! 

I got a phone call this morning from my old area saying the 6 people I left on date with Elder Diaz are still on date. Made my day. 

Anyway, I'm really excited to be where I am with whom I'm with. This is a great area and the technology pilot program just makes everything more exciting! 

Thank you all for your continued support!

Love,

EJ