11 November 2013

Dear everyone!

This is the first full week that the mission has had iPads. I've felt it from all the phone calls and Facebook messages...

The big problem this past week was making sure that stats are accurately added up (lessons with members present, others, etc). It's too complicated to explain right now but we spent a lot of time typing tutorials to go on the mission Facebook page on "How to do ____" and had to make sure everything worked before hand. That occupied way more time than I wish it had.

Having the Facebook page has proven to be super useful for getting news across the mission quickly.

This past week we set really intense goals to help us be more effective than ever on Facebook. One of our plans is to involve local members more with teaching appointments and helping encourage them to make statuses (stati?) about the gospel. It really isn't hard. We've been sharing the statistic that we were given by SLC (how only 2% of wards worldwide do missionary work) and it seems to be motivating people. Guilt is the best motivator :) haha

We've set daily goals for referrals received on Facebook, lessons taught, and more. This should be a good week.

Which would be nice since last week was kind of heart-wrenching. We're teaching a part member family. The husband was supposed to get baptized on the 9th. The day of he cancelled and then dropped us and asked us never to come over again. That was a surprise.

What had happened is that they were in a tough financial setting. They asked for help so we gave them the Bishop's executive secretary's phone number. They got offended since their last missionaries set everything up for them and we weren't caring enough about the situation. He never even called the guy.

Garbage. This is what happens when missionaries or members overstep their boundaries.

Nevertheless we're maintaining contact over Facebook and maybe he'll give the number a call and call us back.

But not all was sad! We had some really really cool OYM experiences this past week with inviting people to get baptized on the street. We picked up some great people that we are now teaching and got an amazing referral from the Mesa mission who's now on date for November 30th.

We fasted together as a zone yesterday and as a result we had someone who had disappeared on us show up to church, and other missionaries found amazingly prepared people. I totally have a testimony of fasting.

For two months I've been thinking about how I could fit Formula 1 into a status and tie it into missionary work. I did it this past week hahaha. Success! 

I also saw a B24 flying over Mesa. That was a surprise. It did a couple of giant circles and then flew off into the sunset.

And the new 2014 Corvette Stingray. Thhaaattttt's a car. That was a fun OYM to do. 460 horsepower, his was $76,000. So I creepily snapped this picture. #Never4get

I was in an interesting scenario this past week. I'm teaching people in the Philippines and it was way unique to be able to communicate with them as the storm passed and share the gospel with them in such a hard time. Luckily everyone I'm teaching is safe.

Mesa zone had three bikes stolen in two days and all in one district. One missionary locked the bike tire to the frame and walked inside and two hid theirs behind a car. Both of those thefts in two days! Unbelievable.

Last night we got a funny phone call from President Toone. He called me and asked me what the rules were for using YouTube haha. That was a weird phone call haha. 

We are so excited to be teaching one of the new people we found this week. She was investigating the church in the Mesa mission for four months and then moved here. She LOVED church yesterday and ran into a bunch of her coworkers. She has a young son and they are super super prepared. We're working hard to make a support group of people to reach out to here - that's really what makes the difference in a lasting conversion.

Thanks to those that have been sharing missionary stories with me on Facebook! Keep that up!

Thanks Mom, Mark, and Will for the letters! You're the best!

Con amor,

Elder Johnson

4 November 2013

This is going to be a quickly typed letter. President Toone has asked me to do another write up on the mission's facebook page about some things...

A few weeks ago I sat down with President Toone and he asked me to be the technology specialist. "I'm asking you to do something but I don't know what I'm asking you to do," is what he said. I said ok, left the room, and nothing happened. Facebook had just gone mission-wide and I was getting so many ideas I didn't know what to do with them. He told me that all these ideas I presented to him were answers to his prayers. That was humbling. This past Monday night at MLC he made the assignment official. 

And with that assignment the week became un poco loco. 

This was a crazy week. No, this was a hectic week. No, this was an insane week!

Why?

Because iPads went mission-wide. 205 iPad minis arrived in the mission on Sunday night. The church got a killer discount from Apple. 

2%.

On Monday from 5pm-9pm we had a mission leadership council meeting (MLC) where we talked about the needs of the mission. On Tuesday from 8am-12am we had a special training for the MLC about how to use the iPads. Lee Donaldson, Director of Proselyting, came as well as the other leaders to introduce the technology and how to use it. From 1pm-4pm, three zones gathered, including ours, to receive the iPads and the training. 

 

 

 

President Toone and Lee Donaldson asked me to be present at all the meetings. After the first day, Lee Donaldson came over to me, pulled me aside, and said, "Do you think you could do all of this?" At first it sounded like a job offer hahaha. He continued and said, "Can you replace all of us and do these trainings? We don't feel we need to be here since you can do this for us."

And so they all left. 

They left me in charge of the training on how to enroll the devices in the program, how to train on the AreaBook app, and so forth. They downloaded the presentations onto a flash drive for me and said adios. 

All day on Tuesday we were doing trainings.

All day on Wednesday we were doing trainings,

All day on Thursday we were doing trainings.

I've never spoken so much in my life. The phone has never rung so much in my entire life. Missionaries from every zone and area have been calling us with questions. 

On Thursday morning we woke up at 5am to prepare to go to Casa Grande and Yuma. We were at the mission office at 6am preparing the car with 80+ iPads, four routers, a 100 foot long ethernet cable, a projector, laptop, and dozens of other materials. 

At 6:15 we realized we had lost the 70$ cable that connected the iPad to the projector. The cable was one that the SLC reps had given to me and said, "send this and the routers back to use in a month." The presentation would be very difficult without it.

President Toone gave us his credit card and sent us to Walmart to buy a new one. Yesterday we found the old one and sent it back to SLC today.

At 8:00am we arrived in Casa Grande. There wasn't enough bandwidth and the internet was super slooow.

At 1:00pm we left to Yuma. At 4:00pm we arrived. 

President Toone surprised us and the APs by putting us up in a hotel for the night. It. Was. Awesome. It was also the first time in 16 months I had been on an elevator! That was the best night sleep I've had in my entire mission.

The training in Yuma went smoothly. 

I was fortunate enough to run into someone I had taught months ago in Yuma. When I had left something big had happened in his life and it didn't look like baptism would happen soon. Well in Yuma last week he told me that he had married a member and had been baptized. It was heartwarming and made the trip 5x better.

The drive there and back was a nostalgic experience. 

We spent the night in the hotel, woke up at 4:50 the next morning, took pictures by the California state line, and started our journey back to Mesa. We arrived 1 minute before our Friday morning planning meeting started.

So yeah. Hectic week. Less than 12 hours of sleep in two days and each of those days was over 17 hours long. 

I was reflecting on how cool this experience was the other day. It was one of the highlights of my mission. I got to train alongside the director of proselyting, someone who I have deep respect for. He was the Mission President in the District 2 videos and apparently a close friend of Grandpa and Grandma Johnson! He made a nice comment about them to me.

We also had the opportunity to go to dinner with President and Sister Toone and the assistants. That was a very special experience.

The vision of the AreaBook app is amazing. The ward mission leader and bishop will have access to the app and the missionary's planner. He will be able to make plans for them. All information will be streamlined and clearly visible. A progress report will be generated automatically and submitted to ward leaders. 

We are already seeing miracles from the AreaBook. The sisters were putting in a former investigator from long ago and felt inspired to call him. He wanted to meet immediately. He is now on date for baptism. We found two new investigators in the home where one of our former investigators used to live but recently moved from. We never would have found them without looking at that sheet and digitizing the data.

Miracles. Miracles everywhere.

At church we only had one person we are teaching there. A decline from eight or so the week before. Not surprising since we barely worked our area this week. But he loved church. He got up and bore his testimony. He's from Kenya and everyone loves his accent. He offered one of the most powerful prayers I've heard in my entire life and we walked out of the lesson shell-shocked. BAM.

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

29 July 2013

President Toone called last night. He talked to both Elder Diaz and I. Elder Diaz is training. The second he said he wanted to talk to me my heart dropped since I knew it would mean I would leave. He asked me to 'step up' and then later to pack my bags. 

I have loved this area. I've loved this district. District meetings were always so much fun and I loved preparing the training and whatnot. I was hoping to stay there for a long time since it is a more personal calling. I'm still working on making myself be excited because mostly I'm just sad to leave.

Right now we have six people getting baptized, easily, in August. Six! Ahhh! This is what happened to Elder Sawyer, he got transferred right before six people he taught got baptized. I'll be sad to miss the baptisms.

So in short: I'm getting transferred. Three months of happiness here in Chandler serving in one of the best wards. I'm going to miss the members, the recent converts, and our roommates and Elder Diaz.

Yesterday at church we finally saw the fruits of all our labors with the members. Members had brought friends to church! There were 5 there that members had brought all on their own! After our talks last week and all our visits it's finally paying off. When we got to this area the members didn't trust the missionaries and there was nothing going on. I'm so happy I got to see it turn around and am devastated not to see the amazing results that are just around the corner. 

Speaking of results. We had two baptisms this past Saturday!! They were awesome. We started fifteen minutes late since one of the soon-to-be-recent-converts roommates started fighting him and threatening to call the cops. Baptisms are never easy....

And then during the service the person who said the prayer only prayed for one of the two and then the first speaker forgot one of their names....Ahhhhhh I was dying! But fortunately a comic relief saved the day. When one of them came out of the water (baptized by the bishop) he did the catholic cross thing with his hands and everyone started laughing. I got to baptize one of them and it was an amazing experience. Ahhh, I love baptisms. One we had to do after since he was super late ha. 

At church when he got the gift of the holy ghost he just sat in his chair afterwards and looked up slowly and said quietly, "what peace....what happiness..." and then gave us all hugs.

That was the most amazing sacrament meeting I've ever been to. There was a missionary returning, leaving, and the two confirmations. In between the talks the mother and her friend got up to sing to her departing daughter (Chicago, Illinois) and choked up and had to stop while her friend kept singing. For the last few lines the mother turned around and just looked at her daughter while she sang. The lyrics were all about handing her daughter over to the Lord and watching her grow etc etc. The spirit in that room was tangible. 

Someone asked us this week if we had horns.

We had a pretty cool experience with an investigator. She is going to ask her mom if she can be baptized. We had her pretend that Elder Diaz was her mom and she practiced what to say. In that little role play she bore her testimony and it was super super powerful. Dangit I'l miss that baptism too! 

One of the Sister Training Leaders (STLs) from the Mesa zone was over at our dinner appointment doing exchanges. She did the dinner message but used her iPad Mini to show a video clip from President Eyring. It was waaaaay cool. Jealous! 

Chandler is being taken over by Tesla Model S's! They're way sleek.

This week Elder Janis is working me out hard this week haha. Last monday I told him to make me an exercise plan that I can do everyday for the next months. He took it to heart. He was a fitness trainer back home and is watching everything I eat and making us get up at 6 to do 30 mins of cardio and 30 mins of weights. I'm eating about 1700 calories a day and lots of Chia seeds. They taste terrible haha. I gave up chocolate. I know, crazy, right?

A little bit of background real quick. Mexicans love Novelas. Soap operas. This week we were teaching someone who said, "You know, I think the scriptures are a lot like Novelas." He stopped talking because I was laughing too hard. He never explained it hahahahahahahahhahaa.

We had an amazing meeting this past week. The Chandler East stake called all the ward council members, bishops, and missionaries in the stake together for a training. President and Sister Toone came and they trained on how to focus ward councils and meetings on missionary work. It was an amazing meeting. 

But I think my favorite part was when P. Toone spoke. He shared some awesome stories in response to some questions about the iPads. He said that while he was in the MTC being trained they had a training on the iPads and Tracy Watson, director of global proselyting, took out his iPad and said, "Hey, want to see where the missionaries in the Texas ____ mission are?" He then opened it and had real time tracking on them. But he quickly clarified and said, "Tracking them isn't the point." He said the Brethren and the Mission Presidents have complete access to lively monitor iPad usage. They can see when the last time the electronic area book was updated, the plans for the day, etc. Then he said again, "But tracking them isn't the point." He went on to tell some stories of the power behind the technology. The first story goes like this:

A woman calls the 1-800 referral number requesting a Book of Mormon. The missionary at HQ on the other line notices she lives in an area that is piloting iPads. The missionary sends a text to the mission president who sends one to the zone asking if any missionaries are nearby. One missionary, using the iPad, gets all the information, coordinates with the missionary at HQ, and replies, "I'm two doors away. I'm on my way over now." Before the woman calling HQ hangs up the phone, the missionary is at the door with the item she requested. Her response, "How did you do that?!" 

True story.

Another one. A husband is married to a member. He isn't a member. He decides to take missionary discussions but is a truck driver so never has time. The missionaries commit him to pull out Skype at rest stops. Over his 10 day trip they taught him everything over Skype as he traveled from Utah to New York. They coordinated church building locations and then skyped with him and his family after church. The man was amazed that the lessons in New York were the same in Utah and they shared thoughts on the lesson  10 days later the man returned, ready for baptism. 

True story.

The concern came up about missionaries abusing it. President Toone said, "We know. But the Brethren have said the Lord has created this for the spreading of the Gospel. The Brethren said it is too powerful not to use and if there are problems, they will deal with them as they come and they will learn better ways to control them, but "this tool needs to be used now."' 

In the next 6 months we should have them mission wide. 

This Wednesday the mission is receiving 41 new missionaries. 1/3rd the mission will be training. 

I set a goal for myself to read the Book of Mormon in 6 weeks. That's about 115 pages a week. I'm 60 pages into it and it's going really really well. 

One of our recent converts told us the funniest story this week. His friend was baptized a Jehovah's Witness and they said that when he comes out of the water he should, "see Jehovah standing." So the first time he got baptized he said he saw nothing. They baptized him again. Again he said he saw nothing. Four to five times they baptized him and then finally he came out of the water gasping saying, "Yes, I saw them!" The newly-baptized JW  told our recent convert that he felt like he was drowning and so he just told them. Our recent convert was dying of laughter while telling us the story aahha

This week our recent convert told us, "Science has a limit. God doesn't." It was super insightful. He was telling us about the opposition he received in deciding to be baptized. His other pastor started anti-ing him. Just like last time, our recent convert anti'd him back and won haha. The story was super intense and our recent convert said words were coming to him and he didn't know where they were coming from.

We have been having a big problem recently at church. We have too many investigators to sit with and we don't have time to talk with them all? I love that problem. It's my favorite problem to have. Last week we had 8 at church and this week we had 6. We have really good relationships with our members. When we walked into ward council meeting they all got up and gave us hugs. Ah I'll miss this ward.

Last night someone freaked out at us and started screaming at us. We were talking with a woman in an apartment complex and a very heavily tatooed man ran at us screaming TONS of obscenities, calling us names, and telling us we can't solicit. We don't solicit, we invite. By Arizona law that is recognized but no one knows that. So he screamed and screamed and threatened to call the cops on us. I wanted to tell him to do it because they'd be on our side but we just walked away. I was worried for our member, an 85 year old. Later his neighbor apologized and explained that we can't be there for soliciting. We explained to her that we're allowed to be there and then left.

Anyway, this has been an awesome three months. I've learned a ton and have grown a ton. I'm excited for what's ahead!

Thanks for all your support everyone! Thanks for writing Eric, Will, Mom, and Natalia! 

With love

EJ

Random question: Why do the monsoon clouds only come in in the afternoon?

Random question: Can someone tell me more about Madasa?

Random question: is there a way to produce darkness like we produce light?