7 April 2014

WE'RE STAYING TOGETHER!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

Somehow we are going to be together for another transfer! I'm pretty sure we will be able to "kill each other," or, finish our mission as companions! Aweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesomeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!

 

The transfer rocked the mission. The transfer isn't actually until Wednesday but on our weekly conference call some things slipped. (No complaints here.) Lots of zone leaders are "stepping aside" because everyone is "dying" (finishing the mission) soon. Somehow Elder Myler and I survived unscathed.

 

Our zone didn't though. Three companionships whitewashed and every single companionship got a change. Except us.

 

So, we're ready to make some changes this next transfer and move forward even more enthusiastically into our last two transfers in the mission. #workingharderthanever

 

This past weekend I finished my reading of te Book of Mormon. I set a goal to read it in 6 weeks and was able to accomplish that. It was awesome. Amazing. Inspiring. Lifechanging. Comforting. Directing. Exciting. There's just something so special about that Book. If you are reading this and have not read the Book of Mormon...read it. It brings me such peace and joy and I want everyone to be able to experience that in their life. Here it is online (https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng). Start with the introduction. And to get your own paper copy, which I would recommend, go here (http://www.mormon.org/free-book-of-mormon.) The Church of Jesus Christ also has an awesome free app. Check that out here (https://www.lds.org/pages/mobileapps).

 

Read it. It's true.

 

This past week was a soccer match between Mexico and the USA. It just so happened to happen here in Phoenix! We had lots of investigators cancel on us for it. There was absolutely no one in the street. That was a frustrating hour. We visited one family that we were planning to stop visiting because they're not doing anything and as we walked in we saw out of the corner of our eye the USA score the first goal. Naturally we said, "WE'LL WIN!" The family told us never to come back.

 

Haha no they laughed about it. We told them we couldn't watch it and left. As we walked down the street, reveling at how empty and quiet it was, we heard a man say, "goal" with absolutely no emotion but loud enough for us to hear it in the street. We had no idea what house it came from but it was the funniest thing I've ever heard in my life.

 

There is a store in South Phoenix  called, "Ranch Market." Imagine all of Mexico packed into a smelly grocery store. That is it. It has THE BEST carniceria (meat shop) ever and you can buy the most amazing burritos of Carne Asada (grilled steak) and the best horchata in the world. Horchata is heaven in a cup. It's like a cinnamony rice milk drink. Ohhh my goodness it is HEAVEN. You need to learn how to make it.

 

As many of you are aware, this weekend was General Conference. It was awesome! We took a lot of questions and concerns into it. I've never experienced what I experienced there to the degree that I experienced it. It seemed like the afternoon session on Saturday was exactly for me. It was perfect. It increased my conviction that those men really are Apostles and Prophets. What a cool experience.

 

For the Saturday morning session we were able to help an investigator family get there with  us. By family I mean wife and kids. The husband is, almost non surprisingly, out of the picture and unsupportive. Men are the worst. He won't talk to us, won't talk to his wife about what she loves about the church, and isn't being a supportive husband. It is sad to hear her troubled talk about her possible options.

 

The conference was perfect for her. Her children are insane though - they can't sit still. We had her go sit in the front and tried to distract the kids with iPad cameras in the back. It worked for a bit. She's so patient with them. It's inspiring.

 

You learn a lot on a mission by watching how people interact and act when out of their comfort zone and when they're inside it.

 

Anyway, conference in Spanish isn't half as good as it is in English. Maybe it's because I have an emotional attachment to the voices of the speakers in English but the Spanish translators seemed to be so monotonous. It's a hard thing to do though, especially for millions and millions of listeners.

 

I want to re-emphasize what I have said a few times: some of the greatest moments of joys and greatest moments of sorrows in missionary work come as you see missionaries succeed or fail.

 

We had the weirdest experience of my life this week. There was a day that seemed to just be filled with problems. We were driving to a lesson, reflecting on how unexpected everything was, when an SUV with two 40 yr old women pulled up next to us. I glanced to the side as I saw their window going down. They asked what we were up to and we told them that we were helping people get closer to Christ. They weren't too interested in that and asked if we were married. Luckily the light changed to green a couple of seconds later and we were able to shoot off into the sunset with looks of terror on our faces and laughter filling the car. South Phoenix, man...

 

We are teaching another amazing family. This last week we were very bold with one family member who is slowing the family's progress down by his lack of effort. As we testified to him, the wife turned to this person, and in a mixture of passion and impatience, told this person, "these missionaries have been so patient with you! This isn't a game! You need to commit yourself!"

 

She is converted. And she's being an amazing person and trying all she can to help this other family member. We love them both but that was another moment where it hurt to watch how much families can impact each other, either for the better or for the worse. In a lesson yesterday, as their five year old daughter prayed, we looked up afterwards to see the mother in tears.

 

The gospel does great things for families. But Jesus Christ's gospel is not a gospel of inaction. Every moment you sit there doing nothing is a moment where you have hurt someone by missing out on growth opportunities. We're being given opportunities in every instant to bless someone in the future. We can either accept, act, grow, and serve, or sit and waste life away in unproductivity.

 

Raise your vision.

 

Another family we are teaching has another husband who isn't as involved as he should be. Actually, he isn't at all. Last night we taught about families and had the Primary president with us. She shared a powerful testimony about how her lack of action negatively impacted her family and how she is doing all she can now to save other families the pain that she experienced. Elder Myler and I both showed pictures of our families. I showed the one where everyone went to Peru without me (not bitter, not bitter, not bitter, not bitter :) ). It touched her. I told her no family is perfect but the gospel fixes the imperfections, step by step. She sat there and told us, quite frankly, how hard it is because she wants what we share but her husband's extended family is anti-ing her. She pulled out the, "By their fruits shall ye know them"  that Jesus talks about, and says that she sees the good fruits of the gospel and wants it.

 

But her family is holding her back.

 

Are you doing all you can to help your family members reach their potential? I'm grateful for great parents who did all they could to help me reach mine. I'm still trying to get there but I wouldn't be where I was without them. Thanks!

 

Anyway, a new transfer, some new plans, a new vision. We're putting everything on the line for our last two transfers. We've got a vision, goals, and plans. And we'll hit them.

 

Thanks for the letters this past week John and family!

Happy April 7th!

Love,

Elder Johnson

8 April 2013

Lovely animals in Arizona

 
Dear Family and Friends,

Everything until Friday was awesome this past week.

Remember the new person we are teaching I wrote about last week? The one who works at the temple? So we went by and taught him on Monday and he gave us both a 4"x4" slab of the tile going inside the Gilbert temple. It's awesome! We taught a great lesson and at the end we extended a baptismal invitation and he said, "I think so...I want to...I need to!"

The week could not have started off any better. But it only got better. The next day we got a phone call from his fellowship saying that he was looking for tickets for general conference because he was going to take the guy we are teaching all the way to Salt Lake City. 'You can put your money on the prophet!' Wooo! We were super excited and looked all over. We found them two tickets to the Sunday afternoon session but they said they would have to take work off on Monday to do it. They kept looking and found two for the saturday afternoon session. On Thursday we got a phone call from his fellowship again saying that the supervisor at the Gilbert temple said that he wanted to get a copy of the conversion story of the guy we are teaching (we'll call him John for the sake of anonymimity) so that he could put it in the temple cornerstone. WOWOWOWOW. Yeah, we were pretty excited at this point. He loved church, he wanted to get baptized, he was going to the conference center for conference and his conversion story was going in the temple cornerstone! Finally after 6 really hard weeks we had a ray of light.

And then we got a phone call from his fellowship on Friday saying that his boss had fired him for going to conference and that he no longer worked with 'John.' (The fellowship lives in Mesa). Also turns out that 'John' wasn't able to make it to conference. We hadn't met with him all that week because he was so busy prepping to go and with work.

Dang. So we settled with inviting him to watch conference on Saturday or Sunday. He was in New Mexico for both and wasn't able to see it.

Now we haven't met with him for 7 days and we're starting to get a little stressed.

sigh.

We didn't have any investigators watch conference. It's a pretty bad thing if you can't get a single person to watch one of the five sessions.

It's hard to stay optimistic when everything falls apart. Why can't anything be easy?

Last night we went driving to visit a former investigator again hoping for luck this time. Just before I had put a bunch of names into the GPS from the YSA ward that we didn't know. On the way to the former we just happened to drive past a place marker for someone in the YSA ward. We decided to get out and meet them but they weren't home. His brother, returned for 2 weeks from his mission, was there and we talked with him. I asked him if he knew anyone interested in the gospel and he said that he had a friend who had been reading the Book of Mormon on and off for four years. We got her information and are planning to stop by today. We're hoping something comes from this. I need something to...

On a less depressing note I've been sleep talking alot apparently. I woke myself up the other day by saying, "IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FLAVOR!" I dreamed about a giant mountain berry blast powerade. Those things are so good.

How fast are roadrunners?

Why does ice break when water touches it?

Yesterday we heard some planes flying over en route to landing at the airport. They were 737 size. Three different ones flew over in about five minutes and every time they reached a certain point in the sky the engine sound changed dramatically and made a very strange sound like that of the THX audio sound when the sound changes from high tone to low tone. The weird sound only lasted a second or two. Why? Does it have to do with flying over the mountains at relatively low altitude?

Two days ago we were walking around at 8:30 at night seemingly alone on the street. Just then a chihuahua (spelling?) darted out from a house and ran at us. I was really bored so half chased it and when I looked up the owner was starting at me blank faced. Haha it was super embarrassing so we walked away. Turns out that was the house we were supposed to visit. We'll probably wait a while till we go back again...

General Conference was pretty sweet, eh? Lots of really great talks and too many pages of notes to write down. I did see Westin Levitt and Susie Sowa singing though! I also noticed someone from my political science class at BYU who was always making really...interesting... comments. Small world.

I think the best talk of the weekend was Elder Scott's. I don't remember why or what exactly he spoke on haha but it was my favorite. And then there was the one quote about how 'it doesn't matter where we raise our kids but how.' I got a good laugh at that one.

We went to the priesthood session 30 minutes early in order to get a decent seat. Thinking it would be crowded, we planned ahead. When we walked into the chapel at 4:30 it was completely empty haha. It was pretty empty until 4:50ish when everyone rushed in. Classic. We had good seats.

For those that went to the priesthood session, do you remember the story about the football quarterback and the girl that was getting bullied? The quarterback is from Queen Creek and was sitting three rows in front of me. He is in our roommates' ward. Turns out the girl isn't a member so we told them to pick it up haha. You can't be shown in general conference and not be a member! (that's not true, but she should be!)

I also got a good laugh out of the story about the guy given the stake clerk calling who was "struggling at getting to church every week." At BYU I slept through church two weeks in a row and the next week they gave me the calling to print off the programs before church. I never missed a sunday after that. I thought it was funny how similar his story and mine are.

How do they do security at general conference?

I think what I'm going to remember Queen Creek most for are the really weird animals we keep finding near the house. (See attachment)

Thanks for the letters Scott, Mom, and Natalia!

Love,

EJ

8 October 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

Since this is the last week of transfers, I will know next Monday if I am staying or not, but informing all of you via this letter will mean some letters will go to my old address, assuming I'm leaving.

I hope I stay. But it is starting to seem like our Zone Leaders will get white washed out. Their work has stalled, one is going home, and they are English missionaries in a predominately Spanish area. As I learned this week, 54% of Yuma is Latino but 75% speak Spanish. So we will see. And if that happens, it is very likely that Elder Sawyer, my companion, will be a new Zone Leader. That means I will likely either leave Yuma, or be white washed again into the new area they are rumored to be opening in Yuma down in Somerton, close to the border. I hope I stay with him, he's a beast.

Quick request: we have a Christian Belief Comparison Chart in our house but it is very outdated. Can anyone find a new one and send it to me? Ours has ~10 major religions and their beliefs on things like the God head, pre-earth life, post mortal etc etc. I'd love to be able to study an updated one.

I ate a Chil Pequin this week. I'm not sure how you spell it, either that or Chil de Pin. Either way, it was a big mistake. My mouth has never hurt so bad. We were eating at the Branch President's house and he took a video of it. Elder Sawyer and the Hermanas all ate one with me. Sawyer was stoic and emotionless as he destroyed it. Hermana Drake said it was hot. Hermana Thompson said it hurt and drank 2 glasses of water. My nose started running, I couldn't breath, I drank 6 cups of agua and basically died. Next step: Habanero. Presidente Dominguez and his family were dying with laughter. I will try to get the video and send it home today. I need to see it first and say if I approve it or not haha. Miserable, it was!

We have three investigators on date now! For one of our lessons, we were planning on teaching the Plan of Salvation (why we are here, where from, where going) but we found that somehow our investigator already knew it. He had never spoken to missionaries before. He has read to Alma 60 in three weeks. What a beast. He taught it to us. El agua esta listo.

Grandpa Johnson, I remember you talking a lot about hummingbirds. How does one make a homemade feeder? We have a few in our backyard area and it would be cool to hang one from our balcony.

How have the Presidential polls been going? I have heard a lot from members. More on that in a bit. Either way, I have officially voted as of yesterday via absentee ballot. Got my "I voted" sticker and everything! I've been pushing missionaries to register and to vote for whomever they wish.

This week I realized how flawed my trick to understand Spanish was. What I try to do when someone is speaking at a rapid-fire pace is to look at their eyes and read their emotions. As a result, I can laugh when they laugh and be sorry when they are. This week I tried that. And it failed. One woman was telling me about something I couldnt understand and I saw her eyes curl a bit so I laughed, assuming she was telling a joke. Little did I know she was talking about a family member being sent to the hospital. Yeah, probably won't do that one again.

We were teaching one of our investigators this week who has been through a lot. Crazy lot. Her good member friends were there too and one piped in, "You have been through a lot of changes recently. And you're sick of them! But don't forget to leave room for the good changes!" It was insightful and reassuring to her as she struggled with overcoming an addiction to smoking. She is on date to be baptized, lets hope that she can resist the urge to smoke. She gave us all her cigarettes and lighters. Once in the car, I jokingly held one in my hand and got a very curious look from a different member. In retrospect, that was probably a bad idea but it was a good laugh. We crushed them and threw them away.

I passed my one-month-in-the-field-versary the other day on the 5th. That marks 3 months in the mission. Elder Heathcote likes to say, "you're never going home!" I am very happy here but sometimes that seems like truth. I'm taking two years out of my life and everyone else is flying on with theirs. I'm missing great vacations, the return of Mark, Roland, Ian, and other good friends, and it feels like getting left behind sometimes. But that's ok because I'm happy, it's just a weird feeling.

I don't know if I have mentioned it before, but we are situated right near the Yuma Proving Grounds area and the Marine Air base down here. We see a lot of cool planes flying around. I'll throw some pictures in in a bit.

I have mentioned before that it rains when I come and leave places. The last two days have been cloudy, I hope it doesn't rain, because that will foreshadow my departure from Yuma. I'm staying whether President likes it or not!

A brand new chapel opened up recently in Foothills. Last week we gave tours through it. As you will remember a couple weeks ago, when on exchanges in Foothills, we ate dinner with a crazy lady who is not LDS. Well, she was there that night. But this time, instead of talking about the crazy things she has done to her disobedient daughter, she spoke about politics. Twenty minutes she went on about it. Twenty. Pure torture. She spoke about the debate and how, well, to spare details, Romney destroyed Obama etc etc. Ward members started gathering nearby. I didn't say anything. She told of one instance where Al Gore was defending Obama's poor performance by saying that, 'the elevation affected his mind.' One of the ward members chipped in, "It's probably all that global warming getting to his head!" All the ward members laughed, I cried. Not really, but inside I did. After that I decided it was time for no more so I spoke on how the church is politically neutral and how impressive that is etc. It ended the conversation.

You know, I have no tolerance for ignorance. There is no excuse when we live in a time when we can pull out our cell phones and learn the equations that support the existence of a black hole or learn how to estimate the mass of a star millions of light-years away. I can understand if you're from terribly impoverished conditions, but there is so much information out there to be had. Use it! I also understand and respect opinions, as I have many, but that is exactly that: an opinion. Respect those who differ, challenge those who disagree. We as a people (humanity) are terribly close minded. We don't like to be wrong. We don't like to admit fault or yield. But it is that very attitude that makes us imperfect and flawed.

Anyway.

When I was watching conference yesterday and Saturday, I thought that you all would be watching it at the same time as I and see the same things. Then I remembered that it was probably ten minutes behind from having to pause so much for...various things haha [This made me (Rene) laugh and laugh. . . so true.  We were about 10 minutes behind the actual broadcast because of. . . various things. . . pausing for boys to get settled.]

Mark, do you remember an old TV/Movie we used to watch way back when with two frogs as the main characters? One blue, one green/brown? Or maybe the other way around? Either way, I can't remember what it was called. I think they wore top hats? 

Faith dining is hard in Yuma. Apparently in the valley you can go to a restaurant and since there are so many members, they often volunteer to buy your food. Super nice. I've never tried it nor plan on it, but one Elder was telling me that he went to Olive Garden, ordered his food, and when he remembered that there were not as many members here in Yuma, he realized he had to buy his own meal. The idea is hilarious but it's a tad...I don't know, just weird.

Last night I celebrated my first P-Day Eve. We went over to a members house that wasn't in our ward with 6 of the missionaries in Yuma and had "Twice cream." Actually, we never had twice cream, but we did have ice cream! Bluebell, too! They had a walk in fridge. Yeah, that's right, a walk in fridge. And probably 6 cartons of Bluebell ice cream. It was a good time. What twice cream is, is, if I remember, bluebell with extra milk frozen into it? Apparently it's heavenly. We ate too much last night to have space for it. Next week, though!

I took General Conference notes on a post-it card. Here they are, unorganized:

• 18 and 19 year old missionaries now, sweet! I'm the last of this generation of 19 yr old Elders
• Tuscon and Arequipa temples! How ironic that those are where/near Mark and I serve(d)
• "Ask the missionaries!"
• "Life isn't meant to be just appreciated in retrospect."
• "There is something in every day to appreciate."
• "Perhaps we should be looking more with our hearts than our eyes."
• Many of the deepest sorrows of tomorrow can be avoided by Faith in Christ
• Do better. Be better. Become better.
• "I pray that we do not wait until we are about to die to learn to live."
• Allowance! Prophet endorsed!
• Service is the definition of pure religion
• A man never stands taller than when on his knees
• Blue Angels flight for Uchtdorf?! Ahhhh
• "We must be able to see men, not as they are, but as what they can become."
• God is never hidden, but sometimes, we are.
• As we serve, we become like Him
• "Feed my sheep" = why are you back here where you used to be?!
• The crowning characteristic of love is always loyalty
• Take an inventory of your blessings!
• The more we act upon spiritual impressions, the more we get
• The lord is in the details of our lives
• A testimony is a personal knowledge of truck received through revelation.

Conference was pretty good.

Who invented freeze dried food? 

What causes contrails?

Why do mountains in Arizona pop out of nowhere? Plains then suddenly a huge chimney.

Than you Doug, Cassie, Tori, Natalia, Mom, Eric, Will (I got two weeks of letters from you, one from Sep 8), Sister Hines, and Katie. I hope hope hope I'll have time to write everyone today but we are going out and giving blessings at the hospital this morning then a goodbye for Elder Proskine. His last P Day today.

Love you all so much, thanks for the continued support!

What causes ink to flow out of pens? A vacuum?

How do you make rice on a stove?!