3 December 2012

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

19 November 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

Ok, transfer calls are next Sunday night. 50% chance of me staying but 100% chance of Sawyer going Zone Leader either here or in Mesa. Also, P-day is weird today only from 10-12. P-day is continued next week from 1pm-9pm since it's Thanksgiving. As such, I won't have time to write anyone today.

We had an awesome week this week! As I said last week, we've cut back on all the little obedience problems we've had and have seen results. The "big" thing we were doing wrong was a couple days a week doing the 6:30am nap. That is, roll out of bed, crawl to living room, take 30 minute nap on ground, get up and get ready. We have been going to the gym every morning which has woken us up quicker and been a good workout as well.

Why was this week awesome? We baptized one into the YSA branch which means in the last 3 weeks we have baptized one person into every unit we cover. But wait, there's more! We found 12 new investigators in the last 8 days, at least one a day, and 5 of them are on date. Three of those five are the family members of our recent convert into the spanish branch. His wife and kids hated us but at the baptism I felt inspired to promise him that whichever of his family members attended the baptism would also get baptized. And now every one of them that attended (wife and 2 of the 3 kids) are on date to get baptized next week. It will be unreal to see him baptize his family 2 weeks after his baptism. Unreal. It has also been inspiring to see their hearts change after his baptism. They are amazed at how he has quit smoking, drinking, and all his other bad habits and has become a family man. He even got his boss to give him Sundays off at work where he worked 7 days a week 12-16 hours a day. Ahhh successsssssssssss!

 It was good for other reasons as well. We taught 12 member- present lessons with 8 other lessons (no member present) which equals the standards of excellence for the mission. We have 7 progressing investigators and taught a total of 21 lessons last week, one to a recent convert. Sawyer said this has been the best week of his mission.

Last Monday night we were walking around a sketchy trailer park looking for people. Usually we don't have to go through trailer parks since Mexicans own houses down here but that night we did for whatever reason. We saw this guy in his 20s with a long hoodie and pants way too big for him walking out of a trailer. I walked over to him and said, "hi!" He looked really quickly at us and ran really quickly towards a wall. We were kind of laughing not knowing where he would go when he jumped the 10 foot wall. When he was on top he briefly looked back at me and I said, "We are sharing a message about Jesus Ch.." and then he jumped down the other side and took off running. Classic haha.

That same night we were coming back and ran into some new neighbors. We introduced ourselves and they asked some questions which we answered. He advised us to not walk down a certain street because of some gang activity that had happened. We told him we had just been on that street. He looked carefully at us and said, "Man, I know you guys wouldn't ever do anything to hurt someone, but if you ever have someone bugging you, just tell me." He then proceeded to pull out a giant pistol from his pants and said, "I'm in the Marines. I'm here for ya'll." Yup.

We also had a fun experience with a potential investigator we have, or rather, had. We went over to her house and saw her and her daughter making food in their kitchen. They both looked at us and the mother, our potential investigator, ran away. The daughter walked over and found her Dad and brought him to the door. He told us that Maria, our potential investigator, was out of town. I asked who the other woman was and he said, "oh, that was Maria...I mean Martha!" Busted. We probably won't try back there. He was a terrible liar. haha

I went on exchanges this week to do some English work with one of the zone leaders. English work is a lot different than spanish work. No wonder there is animosity between the two types of missionaries here. For the 8 hours I was with him that day, we spent all but 45 minutes hanging out at members' homes. Those 45 minutes were at a lesson that evening. I was going crazy sitting in the car all day driving from members house to members house. The lesson was a good one though. Their investigator is 15 and going through more than most 15 year olds have or ever should. But it was a good exchange in the end. Met some crazy members who think that a secession is needed since Obama was reelected and one even said we may need a second revolutionary war. I didn't say anything at those houses. We also had a pretty funny experience with two lessons cancelling. One of them called us to cancel and while we were on the phone with him the other lesson left a message cancelling. That was two lessons cancelled within 60 seconds. At least we got notice though. In most of the spanish areas they don't even have telephones and you won't know they've cancelled till after you've arrived.

The Stake Fiesta was a couple of nights ago. There were over 800 people in attendance with dancers and a mariachi band. The dancing group performed at the worldwide competition in South Korea last year and were pretty impressive. Sometimes I think that Latino dancing is just throwing your body in whichever way you can. It's controlled chaos. I would send a video home but they're probably too big (filesize). They gave us spanish missionaries some weird bowtie thing to wear but Sawyer and I just wore it over our shoulders. See pics.

The Marine Corp Air Station is getting F-35's! One landed last week on the 17th. I'll be keeping my eyes open for when they fly. Apparently no civilians knew they were coming in until the minute it landed. Our YSA branch has a lot of people involved in MCAS and it has been fun talking to them about it. Haha Dad just sent me an article about it.

 Our baptism this week was a miracle I think. The person we baptized, we'll call him John, we found at 8:45 while walking down a street. Usually OYMs, or street contacts, don't turn into anything. Although the opposite has been true for us. We're about to get 5 baptisms off OYMing. Anyway, we set up a return appointment and he wasn't there. We went back 2 weeks later and taught him the worst lesson in the world. Terrible. Awful. Words cannot express. The spirit just wasn't there. But 2 weeks later he was ready to get baptized. We ended up pushing the baptism back another week for other reasons and he was baptized on Saturday. He was pretty nervous the week before and was thinking about pulling out. The Yuma Zone did a fast that day and the next day for our lesson he said he got his answer and was excited to be baptized. Really cool. There was a big turnout from the YSA branch and this baptism was the first in the branch since the branch is only 2 months old. Hopefully it jump-starts some missionary work.

The Primary program for the Rio Colorado spanish branch was yesterday too. They used a recording on a CD to play the music for the kids to sing to haha. Remember the man we baptized into that branch a few weeks ago? The one whose family is now taking discussions and getting baptized next week? Yeah, them. Well, the 9 year old daughter decided she wanted to be involved in the primary program so she walked up when all the kids did and tried her best to sing the parts. She had never attended the practices. They even gave her a line to read from the podium. I wish you guys could have seen how happy her parents were.

 Last night we saw a giant meteor fly across the sky. It was visible for probably 5 seconds, bright white and very slow. We were teaching a guy on the street and we were all awestruck by it.

We actually saw it in a super sketchy neighborhood. As we were walking back to the car we saw this guy ~20 years old. He saw us and started circling around us so we walked towards him. We waved and said hi and he said, "**** you guys, I thought you were someone else! Mormons, right?" He was baptized 6 years ago, has been in jail, but wants to come to Church. What are the chances? He told us that if we hadn't been missionaries, he would have attacked us. I told him half jokingly that we could have taken him. He pulled some brass knuckles out of his pocket and said that we shouldn't be in this neighborhood after dark. Hm.

 Thanks Natalia, Grandpa, Mom, Eric, Will, Ian, and Annie for the letters this week! I'll be able to write back on Thursday unless we get signed up for 6 dinners...hopefully that doesn't happen. One is good for me.

Can someone send me the wiki entry on the holy bible?

Thank you all for all you guys do!

With love,

Elder Johnson