20 January 2014

Well, this was the best first week of a transfer that I have ever had that wasn't a quadpanionship. We taught 20 lessons with members present, have five people progressing towards baptism, and found a ton of new investigators. We're trying to figure out how to raise the vision of the zone because it isn't high enough right now.

I think expectations play a huge role. On a daily basis, Elder Diaz and I expect to have fun. We expect to see miracles. We expect to teach a ton of lessons. We expect to meet people. And we do. It all works because we do everything we can to make it work. Life lesson learned.

Here's our new address: 950 W Obispo, Mesa AZ 85210. We moved. Again. But we didn't move where we thought they were going to move us. We moved into a members home. It is 4,200 square feet and about 1,700 of those are ours in a private apartment. It is two floor with a massive kitchen and living space. We love it. It's the nicest house in the mission and it houses the nicest members in the mission. Our first day, upon arriving, the woman said, "Elders! You're our sons now! There are fresh brownies for you on the table!" Ummm, ok, if you insist! 

Later on, the next day, we returned. "Elders! On the table is fresh homemade bread! Take as much as you'd like!"

If you insist!

Later on, "I just finished baking brownies! Come eat 'em!"

If you insist!

I guess it's time to gain the 35 pounds back that I have lost so far. Bring it on.

This past weekend Elder Diaz returned to the DMV to try to get his drivers license. The first time didn't work so well and ended with him failing the written test. He returned the second time full of confidence. And left with it all gone! hahahahahh I died.

I had a cool experience while I was sitting there, waiting for him . They kicked me out of the room since he had to be alone so I sat in the lobby and read the scriptures. A woman sat next to me. I looked up and said, "She isn't happy to be here, I'll let her sit in peace." The second I thought that, I thought about Mosiah 28:3, a scripture that I read every morning at 8:30. It says, 

Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish ; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble . 

And I sat there and said, "I am not there yet if I am thinking this right now." I battled with myself for 1 minute trying to give myself a good excuse to not talk to her and I couldn't find one. Everyone there looked angry and I thought she would be too.

Well I turned to her and struck up a conversation about Elder Diaz failing the test and how I was pretty sure that he would fail it again. She laughed and said her son had failed it too. We talked about families. We talked about driving. We talked about how Elder Diaz was from Argentina and then tied it in to driving and then to missions. We talked about her Mormon friends and we talked about the Gilbert temple open house. 

In our five minutes together I was able to teach her a lesson about eternal families and temples. Elder Diaz walked out just then, having failed the test. Again.

The woman is going to take her whole family to the open house this week. Success.

Yesterday we went to eat with our recent convert and her husband who's getting baptized in three weeks.They're awesome. He's Colombian and invited us over for a Colombian dinner.

Oh. My. Goodness. It was amazing. I don't even know what I ate but whatever it was was delicious. We left very, very, very satisfied. And due to bad planning on our part, we left and drove to our second dinner. We are both very sure that God blessed us with more room in our stomachs because we were able to down two dinners and not die in the process. #miracles!

After that first dinner I asked if we could leave with a prayer. Right then the member that we brought with us who was baptized a few years ago chimed in and asked if he could share a scripture. He read in DC about shaking an angels hand. It had absolutely nothing to do with anything and Elder Diaz and I were dying. We're pretty sure he opened to a random page and read the first thing he saw. It was so absolutely random and unrelated that to this moment I think of it as one of the funniest moments of my life. And yet as he bore testimony it was very powerful. But still hilarious!

Two days ago a wonderful woman was baptized. We have been teaching her for almost two months and they've read the entire Gospel Principles book and are almost in 2nd Nephi. They are devouring it all. The baptismal service was the most stressful of my life.

And this is why:

Usually the ward is in charge of making the programs. Not in a spanish ward- we almost always do that. But this time we had to put it on the ward since we needed to go to the open house of the Gilbert temple. We decided to trust our ward and ask them to fill the font, set up the chairs, and make the programs. They readily accepted the challenge. We arrived at the building twenty minutes before the baptism to find that they had hand written the baptismal programs.

not ok. So we went to the computers to make a new one. It was 5:50, ten minutes before the scheduled start time. We had told all the members that the service would start at 5:45 so that no one would be late. It worked.

So 5:50, I finish the program and the computer crashes. NO! NO! So I remake it. It's 5:58 We run to the library to make copies. At 6:05 we finish. No worries, Spanish things always start late.

No, for some reason that decided to start the program without us and without programs. Ridiculous! That also meant that we never got pictures of the woman in the white baptismal clothing. We were FUMING. We both said a prayer to calm down and it worked.

The program runs smoothly up until the baptismal ordinance. When we had entered I had checked the water temp but not the level. They only had the cold water on so I fixed that but didn't look at the depth. The water was only a foot and a half deep. Not enough. But they tried anyway. It took five times to do it correctly. We were dying.

The program continues and ends with a hymn. Now, this is a Spanish ward, keep in mind. No one plays musical instruments so we didn't have a piano. Well for the closing hymn a 12 year old decided to be the accompanist. Bad idea. She played one hand and I still don't know the notes that she played since they were random. Everyone switched between singing the melody and watever the notes were that the pianist was playing.  I almost stood up after the first verse and stopped it. I should have. After the end of the second verse the pianist tried to do a cool ending. Nope, it sounded like the Mario theme song start. ASDLKFJAS:DKLFASK:DFJASKDFJAKSLDFJALKDJFAdf.

Life lesson learned.

But the spirit was definitely there at the baptism and we could feel it. It was relieving and peaceful despite the stress and anger that we felt.

The family of four that we are teaching are getting baptized this weekend! We love them so much. They are inviting EVERYONE to the serve. We're expecting every missionary in the zone to be there (26+), President and Sister Toone, the entire ward, and all of his and her colleagues and friends and their friends' neighbors. We're excited for the biggest turnout ever.

The Gilbert Temple open house was unreal. Check out the pictures: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151848833491906.1073741830.664426905&type=1&l=5be6cb3fbc

They started a tour every 60 seconds. The original plan was one every ten minutes. Nope, too busy. It turned into a silent tour since there were too many people. And the temple interior was loud! It was weird. 

That temple is AMAZING. It is HUGE inside. WOW. The celestial room has a chandelier that is 18 feet tall and 8 feet wide. The baptistry is unreal. There are deep deep brown woods. The tile is exactly the same as the tile piece that I have on my desk. Imported from Israel with hews of red, green, brown, silver, and gold. It is unreal.

There was a very special spirit inside. And the family that we took felt it as well. At various times in the tour, we heard them say, "This is where our daughters (5, 8) are going to get married." Later, "This is where we will get sealed."

Outside wasn't what I imagined. I was expecting a wile mob of people rushing in. it was very very organized and very well thought out.

We love that family. Tonight that invited us over to their home to have their first hosted FHE. We've had two with them in members' homes. We're stoked.

Yesterday we had the privilege of translating at the Mission President's Fireside. It was a fun experience and is getting way more fluid for me.

Last P-day I took the first nap I've taken in months. It was three hours long and was three hours of paradise. I felt so good when I woke up... Today for P-day we're playing bocci ball with the members that we live with. Victory, here I come!!

Thank you so much for the letters, Grandpa and Grandma and immediate family! It was great to hear from you!! 

I hope everyone has the best week ever!

Love,

eJ

21 October 2013

Waiting for transfer calls last night was really annoying.

It all started at the Mission President's Fireside (MPF). We were asked to translate but all the receivers were out of batteries so we drove to the mission office to get some more.

On the way there I found out I had been "red lighted," meaning my driving privileges have been permanently revoked. 

Which is ridiculous since I haven't driven since I was put on the temporary suspension. There's something wrong with the system and I'll get to the bottom of this! There was a bug when I got yellow lighted and there's no doubt a bug since I got red lighted really and truly and honestly for doing nothing since I haven't driven for two weeks.

Buuuut anyway.

Translating was fun. I always leave with a headache and confused about what the person spoke on since I'm not really listening, just listening, if you know what I mean.

So after the MPF ended we headed home. Transfer calls, for leadership, come usually between 9-10 and the Assistants call the Zone Leaders between 10-10:30 to say which zone members are going then the Zone Leaders call the District Leaders who call their stewardship and spread the news.

From 9-9:15 we planned, 9:30-10 we did zone stats. Still hadn't heard anything.

We sat and waited.

At 10:45 we still hadn't heard anything.

At 11:15 we still hadn't heard anything.

At 11:30 we still hadn't heard anything.

At 11:45 pm they finally called. I've never waited so long! 

So the news? I'm staying. This'll be the longest I've ever stayed in a single area. I was in Yuma for six months but covered different "areas" or wards or parts of a ward. In 6 weeks I'll have been in these wards for 4.5 months. I'm ok with that, they're both doing really well right now. 

One of the cool things we did this past week was meeting some Jehovah's Witnesses. We taught them a lesson (they probably think they taught us too now that I think about it) and set up a return appointment. We prepared for that return appointment carefully knowing that if their attitude and our attitude wasn't just right it would clash.

I started it off with, "We are different, we all know that, so lets focus on what we agree on for this time!" 

That lasted for ten minutes until we talked about priesthood authority and then the response you here every time it goes in the direction they don't want it to go, "So, do you know God's name?"

The lesson went downhill from there. We accepted a copy of the watchtower but he refused to take a Book of Mormon. He would not pray with us either. To this date I've only ever gotten one Jehovah's Witness to pray for/with me.

I think I shocked him with how much of their doctrine I knew. I learned a lot (about and from them) in Queen Creek. 

Revelation of the week: Apostate and apostrophe are very similar words.

Mesa is getting decorated for halloween. I guess I've never really thought about Halloween before. There are a couple of apartments nearby that went all out. We're talking decapitated heads, knives, corpses, body parts all over the place. It's disgusting. I realized that Halloween can get way out of hand really quickly. I like the candy side of it though.

We are still waiting for the mission policy for what to do on Halloween. Last Halloween we sat inside a church for 9 hours and read from the New Testament. It was pretty fun. 

We had THE funniest dinner this past week. 

Oh, to preface all of that, we moved this week. Our new address is 949 S Longmore St #177, Mesa AZ 85202. It is down the street from the last one.

Our new apartment isn't 10 years old and is a lot smaller. We sleep in bunk beds in the living room and use the two bedrooms between the four of us to study in.

The day after we moved (which took until 1pm...) Elder Gaspar got sick. At Sister Toone's request he stayed inside and slept. We worked until lunch time. I took spanish study on my own and then realized I couldn't do "internet proselyting hour" since he wasn't able to watch my screen. Then I realized our area book was in the car and that I couldn't leave to get it alone. So I went to work cleaning up from the move. 

Mom, I know what it was like to have to have dealt with me growing up. I'm always the one cleaning dishes and picking up trash.

So I unpacked everything into the kitchen. Set up the bathrooms and beds. Cleaned our room of the trash from moving, put things on the walls, and set up my desk. I had everything nicely organized. Eventually our roommates showed up and I sent them to the car to get the area book. For the next two or so hours I entered the teaching records into the iPad to "digitize" that information. 

Then I played spanish Jenga all by myself. That wasn't fun.

Then I wrote in my journal.

Then I cleaned some more. 

Then our roomamtes came back and offered to send me to the dinner appointment with one of them while the other prepared to pack and go home.

I jumped on that invitation and finally was able tog et out of that apartment. Dinner was in a retirement community. The average age must have been at least 80. Everyone wore name tags because everyone forgot each others names.

As we sat outside of the cafe we saw dozens and dozens of elderly people walk in and out. We sat in a tabled area and a bunch of women in their late 80s came over and started gossiping about George Clooney and other people. I felt very out of place. We sat and listened and I was dying of laughter inside. It was the most cliche thing in the world.

Finally we got inside for our dinner. The food was nice. As we sat down with the woman who invited us, someone else, a less active member of the church in her late 80s, joined us. Her daughter was serving a mission in Tennessee. The missionary I was on the exchange with was in his first six weeks. So naturally I offered for him to write her. She got so excited, got up, and ran to her apartment to bring back some pictures for him. Turns out she was Miss Utah at some point and she got so excited about the idea of him writing her. 

So basically I'm a matchmaker. 

It turned out to be one of the funnier dinners of my mission.

This week I learned one of my friends at BYU was in the same stake and is close friends with one of the sister missionaries in the Mesa zone. Small world!

The highlight of this past week was being able to go back to Gilbert zone for a baptism of someone I taught in the Ray 5th ward. 

This was one of the most special baptisms of my mission. Why? This is why:

When I got transferred out of Queen Creek I was told I was going to train. So I picked up my companion, Elder Diaz from Argentina, and we got straight to work. We saw many miracles and I think he taught me more than I taught him. 

We "whitewashed" in, meaning we were both new to the area. We spent many hours that first week reading in the area book about the names of people the missionaries before had taught. One name in particular stuck out to me. I felt very strongly that we needed to visit her. I pulled the record out and wrote myself a note to visit her.

Turns out this person had been taught by Elder Myler, my MTC companion and close friend, in his first weeks in the mission field. Cool!

Soon after we were told we were moving. In the move both the record and the note were misplaced. Four weeks later it showed up and we went to visit her.

She was awesome. The teaching experience with her was one that has helped me and one that I continually look back on for what we as missionaries can do to help find and solve concerns. 

When I was transferred out of Gilbert she was on date to get baptized. Due to some unforseen problems that didn't happen.

However last week I heard the news that she was back on date to get baptized. I made arrangements to get there and called and told Elder Myler. He went as well. 

This picture has all the missionaries that taught her in it. It was an awesome day. There were over 14 missionaries there to support her and like always the Ray 5th ward showed up in huge numbers. It was so awesome to see all those members again. I really connected with them and love them all.

There was a very special spirit at that baptismal service and it was one of the moments I hope I look back on forever. The seed of faith was planted and harvested. It may have taken over a year and an 8 month "break" but it happened!

This past week was the culmination of much coordination and effort for some people I'm teaching on Facebook! Someone I'm teaching in London AND Pakistan were able to go to church and make contact with the local missionaries! They LOVED church! 

Elder Gaspar and I are also on special assignment to literally teach an entire congregation in Mexico that wants to get baptized. Another set of missionaries here helped a woman there meet with missionaries and get baptized into the local congregation in Mexico. She has been helping many many people prepare for baptism. Last night President Toone extended to us the assignment to teach and help them prepare for baptism.

Pressure.

MIRACLES! 

We set personal records for number of people at church yesterday. We had 13 people  between our two wards and three at church overseas. So cool.

MIRACLES!

Another really cool experience I had this past week was during my personal studies. I was sitting there thinking about what we could do to help the wards missionary efforts be more focused as well as the stakes. The idea came to help the stake create a stake mission plan. Then I thought about the power that would exist if wards organized their ward mission plans along the keys of the stake president and the stake mission plan. And then if the families used the ward mission plans to make family mission plans! 

We are going to be delivering a copy of the ward mission plans to every dinner we attend.

The following day I was reading an Ensign from 2007 and stumbled upon an article addressing that very idea. It gave clarification to my idea and helped us to refine it so it could be presented. That was cool in and of itself. I had never heard of stake mission plans before and using it in wards and the ward plan  in families.

We met with the stake presidents in the two stakes that our zone covers and presented the ideas to them. They loved it. They got so excited. They have committed to using a "large majority of our stake council time" to forming and creating the plan.

The work is moving forward.

Anyway, thank you all for your support! Love you all! 

Elder Johnson

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