30 December 2013

Well, Christmas has come and gone and with it it has brought many miracles! 

It was nice to be able to Skype home. I'm still waiting for you to put the pictures on Facebook! It was a fun conversation! Thanks family, you're the best!!

Speaking of family, I was able to do something unique this past week: Skype Mom and Mark into two separate lessons that I had! We were teaching two separate lessons at the church building that night and had wifi and thought, 'hey, Mom speaks spanish...lets get her into this lesson!" and then, "Hey, Mark barely speaks English, lets get him into this lesson so he can learn a little more english!" They both went great.

And they were both baptized two days ago :)

We've recently decided that we aren't going to visit people anymore. This last week was our first time doing that for an entire week.

To clarify: our investigators come to us. We have their fellowships pick them up and take them to the church where we meet and talk. For new investigators, it is a great opportunity to give a tour of the chapel. For current investigators, it is a great opportunity to get away from the many distractions we so often run into: TV, music, cars, angry family members, birds, chihuahuas, and drugs. It works.

Mom, remember the awesome woman that you met over Skype? She and her entire family went to her son's baptism and to church the next day. They loved it. More on that later.

Christmas week is always a hard week to find people to teach. On Christmas Eve we worked until 1:00pm and then had P-Day until 6. At 6, we went caroling as a district. Those are always great memories. We got in our "drug rugs", santa hats, and went and visited some great people. We never said we were great singers but it was an awesome experience.

After the caroling, we met together as a zone and had a testimony meeting. It was a highlight of the week.

Christmas day was fun. We got up and did our morning studies and then the rest of the day was a P-day. That's when I skype'd home, had a nice lunch at a member's home, and then got together as a zone to play floor hockey. Fun times.

Like I said, we had two baptisms this last weekend. They're both amazing people who have developed strong testimonies. One was found, taught, and baptized in a grand total of 18 days. The other has been about three months. One of them was baptized amidst intense family opposition. Preachers got involved, anti literature was shared, and negative things were said. Regardless, this person stayed strong to the testimony she had received and was baptized. She said, "God has told me this is for me. I must do it." She's an awesome example for us all. 

It always makes me sigh when family members say, "HEY, BEFORE YOU GET BAPTIZED COME LEARN ABOUT MORMONS FROM MY PREACHER!" What? How is that even logical? I would never go to a Buddhist to learn about Catholicism. I would never go to a Mormon to learn about Wickens. To. The. Source.

We have changed how we do baptismal services. Historically they go, 

1. Opening hymn

2. Opening prayer

3. Talk on baptism

4. Ordinance of baptism

5. Talk on holy ghost

6. Welcome to ward

7. Closing hymn

8. Closing prayer

I've never liked that. When I was with Elder Harder we threw away the welcome to the ward's because they drag on and chase the awesome spirit that follows a baptismal ordinance away. But we tried something new this past weekend and it was AMAZING. The new baptismal program went like this:

1. Opening hymn

2. Opening prayer

3. Talk on whatever

4. Talk on whatever (don't need two)

~~hymn~~

5. Ordinance of baptism

6. Recent convert shares testimony

7. Closing hymn

8. Closing prayer

BAM! No refreshments. End on super high note, leave. The service only takes about 30 minutes then and it is so much more powerful.

I have another exciting announcement! Elder Holland is coming to our mission in a little under two weeks! And President Toone asked if Elder Myler and I would be involved in a violin/vocal/cello/piano musical number for him and two mission's worth of missionaries! We'll be performing, "Because He Lives," and it's super hard. I spent three hours getting five measures down...and I'm still not confident about it. It'll come together though, it always does somehow. It is so much fun to practice together. Mom said on the Skype call, "You're playing more violin on your mission than you did in your last year home!" 

That's sadly true....At least more in Mesa than I did back home.

Mesa Zone ended the month with nine baptisms. Seven of the nine came from member referrals and the other two came from mormon.org self referrals. Interesting how that works. Elder Diaz and I sat down yesterday and prayerfully put some new ideas together for the month of January; things we can and need to improve on to do better. We know we can! All those nine people have such strong testimonies and are so grateful. They have the desire to share the gospel too because they've seen and felt the change that it has made in their lives.

Anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Thanks family for the letters!

Con amor!

Elder Johnson

17 December 2013

Time. They say time flies. That isn't true. Time doesn't fly. Time doesn't even exist. I was sitting in my chair this week and realized that I hit 18 months really soon.

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

25 November 2013

That was the fastest 6 weeks of my life. Daaaang.

The highlight of this past week is this picture. She was finally baptized! President Toone came to teach her with us a few weeks ago and they hit it right off. It was only natural that she ask him to do it. That in and of itself was pretty special.

The service was powerful. President Toone's voice is as deep as he is tall and it made the baptismal prayer super intense. Our baptismal talk cancelled since her husband had to go to the ER so Sister Toone filled in and did a wonderful job. One of the local members gave the talk on the gift of the Holy Ghost and did the best talk I've ever heard.

He had served in the military for some time and was a paratrooper. He spoke about how sitting in that plane waiting to jump is a nerve racking experience and it is very loud. He said that as soon as you jump, you are surrounded by comparative silence. Everything just fades away and "for a brief moment you have the view of the angels." Ah, it was so great.

There was a great turnout at the baptism, including several missionaries who had originally taught her. 

That was a powerful powerful baptismal service and one I'll never forget. Her conversion is so deep, I wish everyone could have seen and felt her smile. I've never seen anyone so happy.

I confirmed her yesterday in church and, to our surprise, President and Sister Toone showed up for that as well! Pretty cool.

The church is trying to decide whether or not to equip these "hastening devices" with mobile phones that have hotspots. In our area we have an iPhone and an iPad, but the rest of the mission outside of Mesa zone uses just the wifi iPads. For my 4 months here we have been making the case for getting hotspot enabled phones in every area. 

We had a miracle happen that hopefully helps the Brethren make the decision. On Tuesday morning, I think, during our breakfast, we were able to teach four different lessons to people in four different countries. These were people we had been struggling to make contact with due to time zones. Well, we decided to forward that experience on to our contact in SLC. He texted us back an hour later,

"Your experience has been well received. Will you text me your mission, area, and names so I can  copy and paste the info in an email message that will get forwarded to department leaders and the Brethren. Thanks!"

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?! They're sending OUR experience to the Apostles?! With OUR names?! That shocked me, I thought someone would just summarize the story for them! How cool is that?!?!?!?

We went to the temple this past week. Always a very uplifting experience. There were lots of missionaries there and it was nice to see everyone again.

I got super stressed this past week while thinking about the future. A lot of wards in the area are way too unorganized. I was sitting there thinking about who was going to take care of the people we were baptizing into the area... We aren't going to be here in Mesa forever...

So the next day I took Elder Gaspar out to a Chinese buffet for lunch to relax. I stumbled upon some money I had hidden from myself from last Christmas. Miracle! That meal was just perfect and it did the trick. 

I have the best brothers in the world. 

We went to the visitors center this past weekend with the woman who got baptized. A year ago, she walked in there and was taught by the sister missionaries. She frequently tells us of her first experience seeing the picture of the First Vision (the one with Joseph Smith facing away from us and Jesus Christ and God the Father facing towards us) for the first time. She said she couldn't sleep that night because she felt the spirit so strongly. She didn't want to sleep.

It is "the picture that started it all" for her so we managed to find a copy of it from a member and gave it to her in a frame at her baptism. It is hanging in her home.

But we went back to the visitors center with her and she had another amazing experience. We went the day before her baptism and, again, she couldn't and wouldn't sleep at all that night! She is so excited to go inside the temple. This is a deep deep conversion that will bless the lives of her family forever. She has already referred her friends and family to missionaries. I wish all members had that kind of enthusiasm...

Apparently Elder Gaspar and I are famous in the Mesa Alma stake. News that we both play violin has gotten everywhere and people keep commenting about it. We played in church yesterday with the choir and the high counselors that were there mentioned before hand that they had already heard about us haha. Hopefully we don't get split up at transfers - playing together is way fun.

Yesterday after church Bishop told President Toone that he should leave us in the area. "As of now there aren't any plans of moving," he said. Five or so minutes later as we were talking to Bishop, President Toone walked by and said, laughing, "He told me to transfer you too!" hahaha

SLC sent a researcher to our mission last week to interview missionaries on how they're using the "hastening devices" and whether or not it is working. We had a nice two hour interview with him right before he left. He summarized some of the feelings that some missionaries had and asked for our views, as well as advice, on certain issues. It was a neat experience. It is a really unique place to be in here. This program is rolling out to 6,000 missionaries now and they're asking us how to do it since this has never ever been done before.

Cool.

This was a good week. Every week is a good week. I've never felt so optimistic before. Life is good. Bad things happen but life is good.

(I'm not going to be able to write anyone today - P-day ends at 1PM since we'll be staying in most of Thanksgiving day.)

Thanks for the letters family! 

Love you all!

Elder Johnson

7 October 2013

If you all remember, a couple of months ago I went to a leadership meeting where Tracy Watson, the Global Director of Proselyting for the Missionary Department spoke. It was to this date one of the best 8 hour meetings I've ever been to.

Anyway, imagine my surprise when I opened my Facebook inbox today and saw this message in it.

"Elder Johnson,
I am training a group of young men and women this wednesday evening on using social media to share the gospel. Is there any chance you could set up a lesson at that time that we could join? I am looking at around 6:20 p.m. your time (7:20 Utah time)? What do you think? I don't want to do anything to distract from your work, but this would be really powerful for them to assist in some real live teaching.
Brother Watson"

 

 Okokokok! I was surprised, then excited, then nervous, the humbled! Of all the missionaries in the world he asked me to help him out with that! 

I said yes. Hopefully the people I'm teaching in England, Pakistan, New Zealand, and the Philippines will be awake that early (for them)! To say I'm excited is an understatement. The work is soaring on Facebook right now and to say I have a testimony of sharing the gospel online is probably the understatement of the century. Amazing things are happening and I can't even begin to explain them well enough.

But I'll try. I am teaching an amazing man in England. He reached out to me, if I remember right, through a hashtag he found that I used. It was that or a christian page, I can't remember. Anyway, I taught him the basics and focused on the articles of faith. I shared with him a link to mormon.org and some talks from the apostles and he went to town there. He referred himself. However, it has been a week and still no missionary contact. He is "anxiously awaiting the book!" I contacted the London mission office and they'll be visiting him today.

Another update on the Pakistani man I'm teaching. The mission president told me that he is actually going to be the one making initial contact with him! How cool is that! The mission president is going to visit and teach him! 

It has been fun to be in contact with mission presidents all over the world and watch them get excited as I hand people off to them. What a cool world we live in.

This week started off to a great start. We found an amazing woman outside her home sitting alone and smoking. We were with a member and decided to talk with her. She was smoking and looked exhausted. After a couple of minutes talking about her move to Arizona, her work, and her family, we connected it to the gospel and we are going over this week to visit her and her husband and two young kids.

I can't emphasize enough how much of a difference it makes when we approach people as "people" and not just the "HEY, COME TO CHURCH?" They see and feel our concern and care and open up more. Miracles.

One of the things that we've been working on is connecting with the people we meet in the street over Facebook. We are always making posts on Facebook and people comment on how they have helped them in whatever way get through a hard day. So our goals is to give them a mormon.org pass along card with our Facebook URLs and get their accounts and bam, be friends. We did that this past week with a very faithful man in his own church and he said, "we ran into each other for a reason!" Maybe baptism isn't on his radar (yet) but he will be touched, no doubt, by the restored gospel.

That was one of my realizations this week. We're invited to talk to everyone. But not everyone is going to be receptive and open and excited about God. So we talk to them about them! Sometimes the best OYMs (or street contacts) never even mention the church or God. We teach and speak to their needs.

We are moving. Probably just send letters to the mission office for now (1871 E. Del Rio Dr, Tempe Arizona 85282) until we know when and where we're moving. It could be as soon as tomorrow or next week. We were supposed to move today but it wasn't ready. 

The brief and willing invitation. What is that? President Toone went to a training with Elder Neil Anderson and came back excited to share it. It is a way for members to invite and is not intimidating and is very simple.

The idea? Have a normal conversation! That's not hard, is it? That's it! Talk normally! But the key is that when someone (this is them prompting the invitation, not you) mentions something like, "why are you so happy?" or "why do mormons have such big families" or "what are those big temples?" or "what is that blue book?" you respond with, simply, "would you be willing to hear a brief message happiness/families/temples/the book of mormon? We have two great ____ that would be more than willing to talk about that for ten minutes!" 

When I heard him train on that I smiled. This is exactly what we are doing in our OYMs! Connect their interests and comments to the gospel! That way, they have already expressed an interest and all you're doing is allowing the means for it to be addressed! If the person says no, just continue with the conversation. As easy as that!

The Dallas Mission President and his wife tried it for a week. In everyday life, in everyday conversation, and in everyday actions, they were able to use it FOURTEEN times! And only ONE person said no!

They said that since introducing it in one stake over there, new investigators have increased over 150%, referrals received more than 250% and lessons taught over 100%. 

It is easy, simple, brief, and effective! Will you try it this week? 

This last week was zone conference. We played violin, a duet, of Nearer, my God to Thee. It was a lot of fun and wasn't as smooth as it would have been three years ago but it was a good time. The members here were nice enough to lend us two!

OHMYGOODNESSWASNTCONFERENCEAMAZING? I got so many answers to questions it isn't even funny!

Can I remind you all one thing? Elder Ballard committed all of you to invite one person to come unto Christ before Christmas. Are you willing to live up to the promises of an Apostle! DO ITTTTT!!! HE PROMISED BLESSINGS!

And guess what else? This week was a good week for nice cars driving through Mesa! We saw a Fisker Karma, an LP640 Lamborghini Murcielago, AND two of the BRANDNEW Corvette Stingrays! Sweeeeeeeeet! 

We met an amazing man this week. He said he was a devout atheist and while he cooked his hotdogs we taught him a lesson. The next day we returned, and, long story short, committed him to baptism! Aren't miracles awesome? More on this to come :)

Last night I almost died. We went to the church at 8pm to grab something and as I walked around a corner the building security guy walked around it and we almost died together. That would have been an awesome story on the other side of the veil. 

Attached is Mesa District 1! Represent! 

Thanks for the letters this week Eric, Will, and Mom! You're all awesome!

Love you all,

EJ

26 July 2012

Hola familia!

Week four is underway. Crazy to think I'm almost halfway done here. About time though...

Random note: I think I want to minor in Geography and English and maintain my Political Science major. I think that will help me a lot. Definitely not minoring in espanol. Also, I found the world's best pen but since it's felt tip I always accidentally break them by not putting the cap straight on. 2mm felt tip black pen. Glides like an ice skate.

This has been such a hectic week. We now speak only spanish in class, compared to the 75% or so we spake before. I've gotten good at charades. I can still make up words and be right 50% of the time. For that reason alone I'm glad I'm not learning a language like Russian or Mandarin; makes things a bit easier.

To anyone I have sent letters to up until a few days ago: In my lack of skill as a letter-sender (snail mail), I used 1 cent stamps. I don't know if those will make it to you guys but they havent been returned to me so I can hope. Woops. Also, mail takes a long time to get here. In one instance, it took someones letter 11 days to arrive. You'd think in the year that we can open someones chest and give them a new heart we could deliver a piece of paper a little bit quicker than 11 days. And it came from CA too, so not far away.

To Eric and Will: I overheard a newbie missionary yesterday. They all come in on Wednesday and are given orange stickers on their name tags. One of them said, while swinging his arms in a picking motion, "I'm picking at the walls, I need minecraft!" Jokes aside, some people really do struggle to stay off video games here. It's actually surprising.

I've been rowing 5Ks everyday for a week now. I made a graph to compare my 5K times. It went from an average 500 meter split of 2:11 to 2:05.6 yesterday. I felt like I was going to die but it's a great workout. I got Elder Myler on. He didn't enjoy it so much.

We lost Elder Peterson and Elder Adams to the Lima Peru MTC this week. They left the MTC at 3 am and everyone in our district got up to bid them farewell. It is also customary in our district, maybe others too, to sing "Till we Meet" in spanish to them the night before. There's something powerful about hearing 30+ elders and 2 sisters singing that song as loud yet reverantly as possible.

I learned a little bit more about a couple of them. Elder Peterson's original report date was a month from today. One Thursday night he got a phone call from the MTC and said, "Can you come in tomorrow?" In what is surely to be remembered by everyone in our zone of an act of complete selflessness, he said yes. In 24 hours, he did all of his missionary shopping, endowment, plane tickets, packing, farewells, and whatnot. He was here 23 hours later. Another person in our district actually had her dream job as a teacher yet felt inspired that she should serve a mission. She quit and reported. It's always amazing what some people do when they're truly dedicated.

This was a stressful week for a number of reasons, one of which is mentioned above. I felt exhausted and a bit discouraged as my spanish improvement has started to plateau. I did what so many people tell stories of and opened the scriptures, after praying, to a random chapter. It fell to DC 24. I read through it and immediately felt better. It was almost as if that scripture had been written for me specifically. I encourage everyone to read it if they get a chance.

Our zone got the chance to go the Temple today. It has been closed for repairs since I got here. We all walked over at 9 this morning and got into the 9:20 session. It is quite a bit different than the DC Temple but the spirit is the same. Apparently, but not surprisingly, that is one of the most productive temples. You get all the mormons from BYU and 3200 missionaries from the MTC going there. No wonder they're making another Provo temple. I still think that the people in southern Chile, or Mozambique or whatnot deserve one more. I can be inconvenienced a little bit if that means someone doesnt have to save for 2 years just to travel to the temple, let alone a 10 day via bus trip. It takes 10 minutes to walk to the Provo Temple. But in the end it is nice. Supposedly you can't read or even take your patriarichal blessing into the temple. I learned that the hard way today. I wonder why...If it's considered personal scripture, and there are bibles and copies of the book of mormon inside, why cant we read pat blessings?

Mom, did my last two API paychecks come through?

Elder Thorsen and I are contemplating with the idea of doing a Violin duet here. You can borrow violins for free, it's pretty easy, and he has played for a number of years as well. It will likely happen, I'll keep you all tuned on the progress.

I thought I would take a little bit of this letter and explain how MTC language classes work. Before I came I thought it was way different. I expected to be in a class with 20+ people and one person ranting about how to conjugate "Arrepentirse" in the past imperfect or something. I was surprised to get into my classroom of 12 people (at the time) and one teacher. The classroom is tiny. Tiny. Tiny. It's also really hot since for some reason the MTC can't maintain their airconditioners but that's a story for later. Anyway, the class is all participation. You don't cram vocab or conjugations in class, rather you focus on phrases that are important. Through learning phrases, the rest comes. It is increadibly efficient as they focus on what matters, not things like colors. Which surprised me; I was expecting to learn how to count, I can count to 10 though so I guess I'm good to go! Class time is split between teaching "investigators" (roleplaying with your teacher usually who pretends to be someone who was an investigator in their mission. Oh, all teachers are returned missionaries. One of ours served in Ecuador, the other in Washington). Anyway, it's not as easy as you would expect beacuse each "investigator" (hereto referred to without the quoatations) has very different needs. "Carolina" committed to baptism, "Gabriel" took five lessons. We were running out of things to teach him. You teach every day usually. You also often have one to two hours a week, maybe three, of English doctrine study. We also read the book of mormon in english once a week as a class and share insights we have. It's very educational and a very spiritual setting. I hope that answers some of your questions about what I'm doing here.

AC. It is so hot in these buildings. Our residence building hasn't had AC for, apparently, 1-2 months. I thought I'd do something about it and went to the maintainence building and reported it. They had had no idea it didnt work. I saved the day. Our residence is starting to cool down but I havent had a good night sleep since I got here because I always wake up sweating. I guess it's good practice for Arizona.

I realized that every hallway has microphones embedded into them. Kind of creepy. I hope they only tune in when they need to. They can use the PA and talk to a certain floor only and everyone can theoretically answer. For instance, they were looking for and Elder last week, called over the PA, and someone popped out of his room and said, "he's in 2M at the gym." It's useful but weird...

I finally ran into my cousin, Rachel. Took three weeks since she has been back but found her working in the cafeteria.

I received one of the most amazing letters this week. Hm, all of your letters are great, but this one was a surprise since it was from someone I'd never met before. Douglas Campbell, someone I had never met before, sent me an increadibly nice letter. Inside, he had written a very heart warming note on paper he made himself out of corn husk. He told me a little about his life, how he knows me (Thanks Brother Harbuck!), and how grateful he was for missionaries like me putting our lives on hold to serve the Lord. It was touching and something I plan on keeping forever.

Thank you, family, Tori, Jamie, Natalia, and Brother Campbell for the letters this week. They mean a lot. Hopefully I didnt forget anyone, so much happens that I tend to lose track of which week is which.

I'm running out of things to say. If anyone has any questions they want answered in the weekly email or a personal one, let me know via mail.

Also, Mom, could you change my address on the blog site to include "MTC Mailbox #311"? Not having that slows mail down by a day since they have to find where I am.

Is the Johnson family related to Ezekial Johnson? One of the counselors in our Branch presidency, a Call by last name, has an Ezekial Johnson in his family and that name sounds so familiar. My pedigree chart doesnt go far enough back to check, meaning the one I have with me here. It would be funny if we were related.

I don't know if I mentioned the black market of the MTC in a previous letter, but if not, here it is again. The MTC has a black market. I was sitting in my room reading from Jesus the Christ and someone I didnt know popped in, opened a bag and said, "See anything you like?" I was expecting caffeinated drinks since those arent sold here, but to my laughter and surprise it was ties. Only at the MTC do people sneak around to trade ties. Anyway, I didn't trade anything because my ties are sweet.

Two random completely non-spiritual questions I had this week that I would love answered since I don't have Wikipedia anymore: How is skin attached to the bone if at all and how does swallowing work? Wave motion?

Thanks again for all the letters, love you all

Elder Johnson