24 June 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was awesome. The best week since February. Why?

We taught her for the first time on Monday and she was on date for July 6th. On Thursday we invited her to move it to June 29th. She said no since they would be out of town and suggested....that Saturday! So in two days we organized the entire baptism and invited everyone. She had been to church before for quite some time. It was a great turnout and the first in the ward for 10 months. The work is picking up with the Hermanas having one next week (who lives in our area...), and us in two weeks again with someone else. 

So that was definitely the highlite. But there were other things that made the week great as well! 

A dog bit me this week. We were walking over to someone and this dog got loose and ran straight at me. It was a 1 year old chihuahua that couldn't get its mouth around my shoelace if it had wanted to so no damage was done. Regardless it made talking to the person a little difficult since I was busy kicking it off me with my foot... In that same conversation her 13 year old daughter came out and said, "I LOVE your eyes Elder....Johnson!" It was a really weird OYM.

We moved this week. The night before transfers at 10pm they called us and said, "Pack your bags, you're moving down near Queen Creek!" I sat there for a second in silence thinking to the Queen Creek zone and Gilbert mission but he clarified and said Queen Creek Road. So we stayed up till 12am packing our bags and moved everything that next morning. They said we'd stay in the Chandler zone.

But that didn't happen either. At transfers they split all the zones and opened 4 or 5 new zones as well as made all the new zones for the Gilbert mission. We are now in the "Gilbert West" zone despite the fact that we live in a different part of Chandler still. They're going to rename the zone on July 1st when the mission split takes affect to either the Gilbert zone or the Ray Zone. I'm hoping for the latter. We still cover the same ward and same area (thank goodness) so we cover two zones now. 

Transfers was CRAAAAZZZYYYYYY. 240 missionaries in that room all singing Called to Serve was pretty sweet. It was the last chance I had to see some of the great people I've met as the Tempe mission gets split into the Scottsdale, Gilbert, and Mesa missions. Bittersweet. Luckily my whole MTC district is staying together in the Tempe Mission. We thought we'd take a picture to commemorate. 

Happy as always.

The mission actually got Jeep Compasses, not Grand Cherokees, for the missionaries in the mountains. They're pretty cool.

Speaking of cool, I got to see some of the old members from Yuma at transfers! It was awesome! Brother Borgerson and Brother Allen were both there giving rides and it was great to see and talk to them again. I told them I'd be back there next February. Apparently the work has slowed quite a bit down there.

Does anyone in the DC South mission know Elder Payne? He's best friends with Elder Janis, our roommate.

I ripped my first shirt this week. We walked up some steps to visit someone and my shirt caught on the window. It ripped about a 7" hole along the left sleeve. I was pretty bummed at first then I went back to look at the corner and realized that if my arm had been 1/2" closer it would have cut my arm open pretty deep. That window was super sharp. Blessings in disguise...

The apartment we live in right now has one room. There are four of us there. There was some miss communication somewhere and now we're sleeping on the worst beds in the world. We're moving next week on July 1st... So, after June 26th you can send letters to this address:1889 W Queen Creek Rd #1115, Chandler AZ 85248. We have a private lake we can't use. 

Anyway, because our apartment is so small (we have two chairs) we put our desks outside on the patio and study there. It's miserable since it's so hot. I'm not unpacking. We've moved 3 times now since May and once more next week. 4 times in 7 weeks... Ridiculous. We joke about how they just move us to clean up the apartments.

We got some time to spend with the missionaries in the Mesa zone at transfers to talk about iPads and iPhones in missionary work. As we saw in that stellar broadcast last night they're upping the amount of technology in missionary work. In Mesa zone, every missionary has a personal iPad Mini and each companionship has an iPhone 5. It's super sleek. They're also given permission on Faceboook to "proselyte on Facebook." They are even allowed to be friends with family. 

This week someone asked us what we were doing there. I felt the situation was right so I quoted Paul (more or less) and said, "we're here to help you repent and be baptized!" I was a little nervous about what they would say but they just said, "hm, ok" and walked away. 

I was reflecting on the last year I've had here with President Howes. I was also thinking about my first interview with him that I wrote about in my first few weeks. I remember not liking what he told me. But I realized that that first interview changed my entire mission for the better. Looking back on it that was the single most trans formative event in my entire mission and all I had to do to realize it was humble myself. I'm so grateful for the time I've had to learn from President and Sister Howes and will miss them both dearly. They have less than a week left.

I found an Ensign from the June 1976 issue and read an awesome section in the "I Have a Question" section about rebellions. Informative.

I'm approaching 3rd Nephi in the Book of Mormon. We have a week left to finish it. From the last 300 or so pages what has struck out to me is the major difference between the Lamanites and the Nephites. I think it's obviously connected to their faith in God but it's a bit deeper than that answer. I've come to see that the principle difference between the two is the capacity to forgive. The lamanites hold grudges for centuries and it consumes them whereas, for the most part, the Nephites learn to forgive and forget and as a result they're, for the most part, blessed. Good life lesson there.

I've filled my first journal!

And now for the elephant in the room...the broadcast last night! I hope everyone watched it. And for those who didn't, go to lds.org right now and watch it. I was hoping for some huge announcement which never came but nonetheless it was awesome! They re-stated what has always been said but also showed how to do it. I think my favorite part was Elder Anderson's. Unfortunately not many in the spanish ward went and we're pretty sad about that but we'll take what we learned and teach the members. If any ward can implement it, the Ray 5th ward can!

We love that ward. Last night we had dinner with the Bishop and his family. Ahhhh, they're the best. They made a chocolate cake for me and a Key Lime pie for Elder Diaz. They have such great love for the gospel and last night it felt like we were home again. Such a great family and such great leadership for the ward. We're so blessed to serve with them.

Last night someone threatened to call the cops on me. Some people just ignore us when we speak to them and pretend we're not there. I don't like that so I usually stand there in silence with them waiting for them to tell me something. This person said nothing and then when I stood there in silence for a bit she said, "I'm going to call the cops on you if you don't leave!" 

We also talked with someone last night who told us right away that she wasn't interested. I said, "do you know what we share with people?" She said no and I asked her, "How can you not be interested if we don't know what we do?" She laughed and we invited her to visit mormon.org then headed off when she said she had to go.

We set our baptismal goal for 3 in the month of July. Bring it on.

Thanks Susie, Tanan, Eric, Will, Mom, and Sister Hines for the great letters!

Thank you all so much for being so supportive! 

Con mucho amor,

Elder Johnson

11 February 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

To begin, I'm 90% sure I'm getting transferred this week. The APs came down and dropped a hint that I'm going to the valley. So if you plan on sending me a letter while i'm in Yuma, send it by Tuesday (tomorrow). If not by then, then send it to the mission home. The mission home's address is: 1871 East Del Rio Drive, Tempe AZ 85282. I'll know my new address on Tuesday of next week (20th or 21st) and will be able to let you know sometime after that.

 

Transfer calls are next Sunday night and transfers themselves are on that Tuesday or Wednesday, not entirely sure which one. This transfer will only be 5 weeks long. For all the missionaries in our mission (the world?) who are serving right now, they will go home a week early. This transfer is what makes that possible. So looks like I'll be home July 1, 2014 instead of the 8th and miss my birthday by 3 days.

 

There was a gun threat at two schools this week. They evacuated everyone to the Stake Center parking lot and we saw border patrol cars and cop cars swarming the place. Should have gone in, there were so many people to talk to!

 

These last two weeks have been full of lots of tracting. For some reason for 1.5 of those weeks I didn't carry any copies of the Book of Mormon to hand out. In all that time in all our finding techniques - not just tracting - we found 2 investigators. It was getting pretty frusterating. Then durnig personal study this week I felt prompted to throw a few copies in my backpack (something I should have had the whole time) and as we went out that day we found 2, then 4 the next day, then 5 the next day. We found 11 people since Wednesday of this week, a massive increase compared to the 2 of last week. On Wednesday, we had taught 9 lessons, all with a member present. By Sunday night, we had taught 37 lessons with the majority being with members. Whew, I learned my lesson! As soon as I made that change we found tons of success. We had 8 people with a baptismal date and everything was looking great!

 

And then none of them came to church and they all fell off date. That was a pretty frusterating morning, waiting for people and havnig the rides we found them tell us they wouldn't come. So after church we ran over, dropped a few of them (stopped teaching) and went out to find people. By the end of the night we had found 4 people who had accepted a baptismal date - nothing short of a miracle. It's a little sad to 'know' that you're leaving and see all this success. We're working hard for it and I want to leave it better than I found it. We have a lot of really solid people we're teaching right now and we have at least one person with a baptismal date for every Saturday in March. That's the goal: to be baptizing weekly. The trick is to stay motivated and energetic because this week was pretty exhausting.

 

This week my personal goal was to be more bold with people. Last night was a pretty cool experience with that. We were teaching someone - very high, very drunk - who was complaining about all his problems in life and how he wanted to change. I told him that change starts now and "invited"/strongly encouraged him to pour out his 40 oz right then and there. He said, "you know what...." and turned around and poured it all over the ground. Pretty cool to see how as we raise to our callings and qualify ourselves we can fufill our callings and teach with power. Unfortuantely he isn't in our area but I'm excited to see what he can do.

 

We're teaching/were teaching someone who just wasn't doing anything. Last night we had a really bold lesson with him and told him that if he doesn't put in work, we can't help him. We asked him if he was willing to put in the work to qualify himself to return to live with God again and he said, "no." We were sad for him but happy that we could have put it in words that were clear and exact. We left him the copy we gave him some weeks ago and let him know that he can call us at any time.

 

Our miles in our car were cut from 1,000 to 900 for the month. Subsequently, we've been biking a lot more; everyday for about 10 miles. We ran into someone walking down the street the other day and he just started throwing down on organized religion and how it judges people. He compared me to Hitler haha. He got pretty upset and we were pretty frank with him about life and what we need to be doing. He told us that he had recently given up all electronics so that he can avoid worldly things. I pointed to the iPod he was listening to and asked what he quailfied that as. Maybe that was the wrong move, maybe not, but he flipped out. Went on for 5 minutes about how judgemental I was for pointing out his flaws and how Jesus would never do that. We told him that was exactly what Jesus did to the Pharisees and Sadducees (spelling?) and biked away to him yelling at us. Probably not the best street contacting experience we've had haha but definitely memorable.

 

En route to one of our lessons this week we stopped to talk to two women. An intended five minute mini lesson turned into an hour lesson. For 30 minutes we tried everything we could to leave but they wouldn't let us. They went on and on about how Jesus didn't get resurrected into a body because the body was what made the atoning sacrifice work and how he's a great spirit.Everytime we would show a scripture they would say, "now show me in my bible...".  Turns out they were Jehovah's Witnesses and were trying on purpose to make us miss our lesson. They succeeded. We went and knocked on her door and turns out it was the wrong door. The guy there invited us right in and accepted a baptismal date by the end of the lesson. We stopped by our intended lesson later that night and met with her as well and she also accepted a baptismal date. Tender mercies...

 

Haha we tracted into this guy named Adolfo Castro this week. I don't think his parents thought those names through very well.

 

Highlite of the week was a baptism! I mentioned last week that I would tell a little more of the story this week. I'll just talk aboutt he baptismal service itself. She was very nervous when she got there and didn't want to take the "pre-baptism picture" in the jumpsuit so we took one with her in her sunday dress instead. The baptismal service was awesome. Great talks, great spirit, great baptism. She said afterwards, "I feel...so at peace." That defines the spirit that was there pretty well. Just...peaceful. Picture attached.

 

We had the opportunity to teach a family this week. They were very passionate about how deathbed repentance is ok. They quoted what Christ said to the thief on the cross. We taught a little about the spirit world and what that scripture meant in relation to post-mortal life. They started to understand it a bit more at the end. This was also the first family we taught that said that prophets weren't needed anymore since we had the Bible and since prophets only prepared the way for Christ. We had a nice conversation about how Christ is perfect and so is his church and how it is unchanging, just as he is. Showed her Amos 3:7 and some other scriptures. They didn't believe us about the spirit world so Elder Valdez pulled out 1 Peter 3:18-19 and she was awe struck at that scripture. I'm excited to teach them again, it's really pushing me to learn a lot more as well as finding more scriptural refernces for what we teach.

 

It's easy to get caught up in a lesson and forget all about the scriptures. President Howes says that in every lesson the scriptures need to be out, in hand, and open because the spirit can flow from the pages and that we need to be using them more than we do.

 

On a completely different note, in Arizona it's legal to sit in a truck bed while it's driving. We went out with someone this week who didn't have enough space haha. Picture attached. It was freezing.

 

Last sunday (Feb 3rd), Elder Valdez and I shared out testimonies. Right after sacrament meeting we were asked to speak in Church the following week and someone else asked us to teach mission prep the following week. So yesterday, we did both of those things. Elder Valdez spoke on Christlike attributes and I spoke on the spirit with stories of following promptings and miracles I've seen. It was a lot of fun and turned out better than I expected. 

 

Which was good since we didn't prepare at all to teach mission prep and it wasn't so good haha. Right afterwards the bishop asked us to do a fireside next week for all the youth in the ward. We'll prepare more for this one, I think.

 

So in the last two weeks I've had a bit of trouble with one gear on my bike, gear configuration 1-8. When I bike, the chain slips every other pedal/pump/whatever the word is but only on  that gear. What can I do to fix it? I end up biking on 1-7 or 2-4 instead of 1-8 which I'd prefer to use.

 

Thanks for the letters Mom, Eric, Will, and Lyle!

 

Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Johnson

 

if you plan on sending me a letter while i'm in Yuma, send it by Tuesday (tomorrow). If not by then, then send it to the mission home. The mission home's address is: 1871 East Del Rio Drive, Tempe AZ 85282