22 April 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

Remember that awesome 11 day baptism person? She dropped us this week and decided she wanted to die Catholic after passing her baptismal interview. We were pretty bold with her.

I'm tired. So tired.

This week we got to go to the temple in Mesa. Elder Arndt and Kirton managed to make it without throwing up this time which was nice! The session was great and it was fun to see all the missionaries there. Elder Myler was there that day and we had a nice talk. He is serving in Maricopa in Casa Grande zone/city.

We had a great lesson with one of our potentials this week. She has read the entire Book of Mormon and believes it is true. After the lesson when we tried to set up a return appointment she said no. Ahh. Her parents aren't very open to the church and as a result won't be able to talk with us unless a miracle happens.

This week was another week full of anti's. I don't think people in the zone believed how much we got anti'd until we went on exchanges with some of them. This past week was dominated by inactive returned missionaries who have served full missions and then come to the decision that the church isn't true. One such guy we found on accident went on to say that, "the information cybersphere proves everything is wrong! All the journals, the letters, they're all on line and prove that everything is a fraud." At one point he asked me what 2+2 was. I told him 4 (yay math class!). He said that that religion and science should never disagree. He told us he would destroy our faith.

At this point I was getting a little frustrated. I asked him what 2+2*2 was and he wouldn't answer it. Instead of answering it he started swearing at us. My intention was to explain that the answer is not 8 and that we get 6 by knowing how to do the background stuff etc etc but never had that chance since he completely lost it. Elder Kirton thought he was going to punch me. In retrospect, maybe not the best thing to say to someone who already hates us but it makes a decent story and I am so sick of getting anti'd all the time. Every day.

Yesterday someone called us children of the devil and God doesn't let him talk to us.

This week for exchanges we went to "little Mexico," 2 streets of 5 houses per with the only Spanish people in Queen Creek. Everyone said no.

This upcoming week our zone is going for the OYM (street contacts) record of the entire mission. We've spent the last week motivating people to get 140 OYMs in a week. A couple of us will be shooting for 400 which should bring us to around 1,720 in total. The magic 8 ball said it was possible.

Apparently the Beach Boys came to Queen Creek two days ago for a concert. There were thousands of cars, my goodness.

On Saturday was the open house for one of the new chapels here in Queen Creek. It is the chapel the Spanish ward meets in. They threw a big open house with lots of people to give tours and tons of carne asada. We ended up eating 6 tacos. There were probably only 5 non members that came during the entire 3 hours it was open - a giant flop. The carne asada was good though? Afterwards they gave us a ton of leftovers, two giant bags of Spanish rice and a large bag of uncooked carne asada and tacos. We need to find someone to grill the meat before it goes bad. I'm stoked, that was the first time I've had it since leaving Yuma.

We ate those 6 tacos around 3 pm and dinner was at 5:00pm. I was so stuffed after those tacos and then dinner was only two hours away. That was a mistake. For dinner we had sonoran hotdogs. Two giant hotdogs wrapped in bacon with onions, sour cream, salsa, tomatoes, and other things that I still don;t know what they were. I haven't felt so sick from eating so much in my entire life. Afterwards they gave us a cupcake which just about killed me. Not too bad of a hotdog though.

During the dinner someone came inside the house and the host's son ran over to the door and walked with the man who came in. Before we saw him he yelled, "This, ladies and gentlemen, is proof that there are Mexican red-heads!" He was straight up Mexican too.

This morning we got special permission to go on a sunrise hike. We woke up at the lovely hour of 4:00am and were all out the door at 4:30. We drove over to the San Tan mountains and walked 2.5 miles up and 2.5 miles down. That was one of the steepest hikes I've ever done.

The sign didn't lie.

Elder Kirton and I ran up ahead of everyone then realized that we wanted a better view of the sunrise so we climbed another part of the mountain that wasn't really part of the trail. At one point I stopped for a breather and stood vertical, put my hands forward, and they touched the side of the mountain, the side I wa s about to climb up. Nevertheless we made it to (almost) the top and realized that going down would be a bit tricky.

The picture doesn't really do it justice.

The view was superb though. See other pictures as well. We could see the Gilbert temple from the peak which was pretty cool. We had a view of the entire valley. No one else came with us up this part since the way to the base of that extra mountain was pretty killer as well. We kept an eye out for rattlesnakes on the way up. I grabbed a cactus on accident and cut my hand and then Elder Kirton tried to push a big rock down the trail that ended up landing on my leg. Somehow it didn't do considerable any damage. The rock was 2 feet across. All was well and the view of the cactus filled desert was cool.

While reading in Jesus the Christ this morning I found a cool line: "The capacity to be grateful is a blessing." I guess that's something I can seek after. In the Christlike Attribute section of Preach my Gospel it talks about how they're all gifts from God (Charity, love, patience, etc). I never thought that gratefulness was as well. It's a way we can qualify ourselves for more blessings by showing that we realize where all blessings come from and humble ourselves.

We picked up a potential investigator for the Spanish ward. She is a friend of a couple getting baptized next weekend in another area. She came to church yesterday but we didn't get to talk with her. The Spanish ward really reached out to help her feel welcome and that was great to see. We're going to call her today and set up a lesson. Hopefully something will come from this.

Thanks for writing Grandpa W, Susie, Mom, and Natalia! It was great to hear from all of you!

Happy Earth day!

Elder Johnson

15 April 2013

 Dear Family and Friends,

15 April 2013

Last week was a pretty tough week but it was nothing compared to this week. And just like last week it started off with a lot of potential. We called a fellowship to reach out to the investigator to ask them to set up a lesson for Thursday. Over the phone the fellowship told us that the investigator (temple tile worker one) wanted to get baptized in the next few days and that he was very excited about the church. Wooo! We were stoked! We finally had a potential!

 

That very same day we got a referral for a family of two that requested Spanish missionaries to teach the husband and wife, both in their sixties. Their daughter had just been sealed in the temple and joined the church the year before. Wooo! We were stoked! We finally had a potential!

 

The day we got the referral we went over and talked to them. We taught in English because the daughter didn't speak a ton of Spanish and that's how they greeted us. The family of 2 (we'll call them the Mrtnz') were interested but Mr. Mtnz didn't seem to grasp it too well. We found out that Mrs. Mrtnz had watched conference that past weekend and believed that Thomas S. Monson was a prophet. Awesome start! We taught them the first lesson and tried to commit them to baptism but they said they wanted to go slowly. Ok. We can work with that. We stopped by and talked with them for 4 minutes the next day and asked how her reading went. She said that all day she had felt really good and felt that God told her the Book of Mormon was true. Sweet! So we set up a lesson for Thursday planning on extending a hard baptismal date for 3 weeks ahead.

 

On Thursday we had lesson with temple tile worker investigator and the Spanish family. We excitedly prepared and planned and were ready for the best day in Queen Creek yet. The whole day seemed to be awesome. First up was the lesson with the 'Mtnz' family. We were planning on only speaking spanish with them to prepare them to go to church in Spanish. We walked in the door and the first thing she told us is that she wanted to get baptized. We hadn't even prayed yet! We said absolutely and began the lesson. As soon as we started, Mrs Mtnz asked us to speak in English instead of spanish so that she could understand. I thought, "nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.' So we did... The whole lesson we were thinking that they would ask to go to church in English instead of Spanish now. But we ignored that thought and kept teaching. Mrs Mtnz had a gained a strong testimony of everything we had taught and so we extended the baptismal date for the 20th of April, 12 days after we had first begun teaching her. She accepted. We then told her what time the Spanish ward started and she asked if she could go to it in English instead.

 

(We taught her all the commandments and she said she would leave behind coffee forever because she knew that the Word of Wisdom was from God)

 

Aaaahhhhhhhh. Obviously we said yes but told her that would mean different missionaries would teach her and go to church with her etc. She said she wanted us to finish teaching her but she needed to go to church in English. So. We referred them back to the English elders but are going to finish teaching her and the English elders will baptize her.

 

I was devastated but you know, she is still getting baptized which is the important thing and we are still doing all the work.

 

We invited her to view a baptism that weekend which she accepted. She told us that she would be busy on the 20th so we moved her baptism up to the 19th. We had her get interviewed for baptism right after the one she saw and she passed that.

 

She is the most prepared person I have ever taught. Her first missionary contact will be 11 days before her baptism and she is getting baptized on the 11th day of learning about the gospel. Just an amazing story.

 

So, rewinding back to that Thursday day. We had just put someone on date but had to pass them off to the English missionaries. We were excited for her but sad that we just lost an incredibly solid investigator.

 

But it was ok because we still had a lesson that night with the other solid investigator we had! They were 40 minutes late to the lesson but only because they were lost. We had invited a member from the ward and an investigator who was getting baptized the very next day to testify to him and relate to him. We were going to meet at the church near the baptismal font. The set up could not have been better. Anyway, as soon as we started teaching we could tell something was wrong. Long story short he had been given tons of anti-mormon material. The lesson shifted away from the gospel to resolving weird concerns about how much the plates weighed. The lesson was spiraling out of control. By the end of the lesson he had decided he didn't want to get baptized and didn't believe what we were sharing with him was true.

 

So on Thursday we lost everything we had. We lost every. single. investigator and had no one else to teach. It was the most depressing day of my mission, hence the picture at the top. We came in that night and just lay on the ground from 9:15-10:15. Discouraged doesn't really do it justice.

 

The next day only helped to put things into perspective (weekly planning session where we make plans for who we are going to teach that week and what etc etc). We had nothing or no one to plan for.

 

As depressing as all of that is, Mrs Mtnz is still going to get baptized on Saturday and we are very excited about that.

 

We also got a referral for someone who has read the entire Book of Mormon before. She read it as a book and not prayerfully the first time. I texted her yesterday because she won't let us come by because her parents don't like the church. In the text I asked if she had prayed in it and she said she is rereading it and has prayed and feels like God told her it is true. She is the only person in our area that we have found and her parents won't let us teach her. Our only communication is via text message. We're praying for their hearts to be softened so that she can come to church and the activities.

 

 

 

We drove past the Gilbert temple (for those on google maps if you want to see how big our area is, go from the 

Gilbert temple to Florence and then east and west some). It's pretty nice.

 

Moving away from depressing and somewhat exciting news haha...

 

Arizona uses dust control trucks. We had a dust storm last Monday and they had trucks driving around dumping water on and off the roads to limit the dust being picked up.

 

Last Monday we went to play ping pong(!) and basketball at the church for P-day. I went up for a lay up at one point but tripped over someones foot and landed square on my knee. I don't think I've ever hurt myself so bad. I got up and hobbled off to the side and sat there for a few minutes thinking it would get better quickly. I thought I had broken my kneecap or something. It got bad enough that I could barely walk. Just touching it softly was excruciating. That night I prayed that it would heal and I would wake up feeling better the next day so we could go out and work. When I woke up it was almost entirely better and I could walk normally. It was still bruised but the bone felt fine. Pretty cool.

 

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa J, Susie, Annie, Mom, Eric, Will, and Aunt Andra for the letters

 

 

 Anyway thank you all for your continued support!

 

Con amor,

EJ

 

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

1 April 2013

Dear Family and Friends, 

We set our baptismal goal for the month of April this past week. As a zone we're going to push for 22 and as a companionship we're going to be aiming for two. We had two names for those the day we set those goals. And then everything fell through. Everyone this week, literally everyone, dropped us. On Saturday evening we were looking over our area and how we had nothing at all. While walking and talking to people on the street on Saturday it hit us how destitute we are. 

We walked into a returned missionary and asked for someone to stop by and he said he had no one. He asked us if we had done some things to find people like: talking to bishops (done), going through former investigators (visited every one), asking for referrals from everyone (doing it everyday), praying for miracles (done), inviting people to the easter pageant (done), we have no over aged youth in our area, no part member families, and no unvisited referrals. We really have exhausted every resource we have available and had nothing going at all. This was evident during our weekly planning session since we had a lot less things to do.

We have been trying to get another ward given to us so we can be busy.

So yeah, these last 6 days have been really really hard. It has been hard to stay motivated since 1% of the population here "belongs" to us (YSA between 18-30 and no kids, and latinos). Regardless, we went out and worked and had lots of lessons and lots of OYMs. And at least 60% of those lessons were with people anti-ing us. Ah, it's so exhausting to hear the same things over and over from so many different people about how ignorant we are and how we're evil and aren't christian, how Joseph Smith deserved what he got, etc etc etc. I've never met so many people who just get up in arms so quickly and just throw down and yell. We talked to one guy this week who was a returned missionary who fell away from the church and just started grilling us on archeological evidence, or lack thereof, and more. After 15 minutes of him monologing on evils in the church I told him, "It sounds like you have done a lot of research trying to prove this all wrong. If you spend half of that effort trying to prove it right your life will improve and you'll be a happier person. Have a good day" and we walked away while he was still talking and yelling at us. So that has been exhausting as well. 

This week wasn't all hard though, just 6 of the 7 days. I finally got a picture back that I left in Tempe (says, "Go to work or go to hell - Brigham Young") that Elder Sawyer gave me in Yuma when I left.  Haha it gets better but that will come later in the letter!

We stumbled upon a copy of the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith this week and have been having a good time reading some of the things he has said in the past.

I also started reading Jesus the Christ again. Getting anti-d so much has encouraged me to learn a bit more about his life and more.

We keep finding couches in weird places so naturally we take a picture by them.

I have been working a lot harder on my personal spanish study hour each day. Back in Yuma I could slack off because just about every person we spoke with spoke spanish but so few here do. We have a giant grammar book that I have been working through doing all the practice things and whatnot and it has helped a lot. Wish I would have started that 8 months ago...

So now for the miracle of the week. Actually, before that, I found a horse. Nay, I tamed a wild horse! (no pun intended)

Ok, miracle time. Yesterday's YSA sacrament meeting was one of the best I've been to. Two awesome musical numbers and great talks. After the closing prayer I was sitting there thinking it couldn't get any better when I heard, "Elders, there's someone here you have to speak with, he's super interested." Music to my ears! To give a little bit of a background, we use about an hour a couple times a week to call down the YSA ward list (since the area is too big) and challenge people to invite friends to church then introduce them to us. So we thought this was someone that had actually done that! Turns out it that wasn't the case. A recent returned missionary (RM) brought his friend to our ward. The RM lives in Mesa but drove all the way here to accompany his friend who lives here to our ward. We talked a bit and learned a bit more about his friend. They work together doing construction. Where do they do construction? The Gilbert Temple! They do the stone work for the inside. Apparently they use stone imported from Israel for the flooring and it will be mostly uncarpeted inside. He's going to give us some of the tile! So they work together and they talk about the church all day every day. He told us he's looking for the truth and is open to what we teach, wants to meet with us, and loved church.

We taught him right after church and he loved it and is super interested.That was the ray of sunlight in a week of storms. We're really excited about what's to come.

This week was a good lesson learning week. When things fall short and you push through them you get blessed. I guess that's what "Endure to the end" means even though the end in this case was 7 days. In Church yesterday someone said, "any excuse for non action weakens the character." It was cool to see how right after the hardest week we get blessed with an awesome person to teach. 

Thanks Eric, Mom, Will, Ian, and Jeff R for the letters this week! 

Love,

Elder Johnson

18 March 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

It would probably be a good idea to send letters to the mission home. I'm probably going to stay but we will see.

 

This was a pretty hard week. 80% of those we are/were teaching dropped us and so we have just about no one to teach. We only taught 8 lessons last week. The spanish work has just dissapeared in an area that it was already hard to find. Our baptism fell through and things seem to be going against us right now.

 

So instead of teaching lessons this week we worked the only statistic that we can really control. OYMs, or street contacts, are things I've never really prioritized since we are usually teaching lessons and don't have time to wander around and talk to people. But since we didn't have anyone to teach, we spent a lot of time walking and talking this week. A good week of OYMs is about 120 with the standards of excellence being at 140 different people spoken with. A good OYM constitutes the bearing of testimony and inviting the person to do something. This week since we little else to do, we got tons of OYMs. And by tons I mean 348. 140 of those were in one day. We walked 20 miles that day haha. So hopefully that helps us in some way this week because it's looking pretty bleak.

 

We talked to some pretty funny people. One of them said no and threw an onion and two jalapenos at us. Another started to yell anti stuff at us. We listened for a few seconds and I asked him if he had ever read any of the things he was quoting. He said no and I asked him how he could judge anything without ever reading it. He said, "Not to be disrespectful or anything but you teach from the wrong source - false scripture from a false prophet and it distorts all of you. You only go after 'softies' and when anyone puts up a fight you leave!" I asked him how he could say he was trying not to be disrespectful and say that. After a few more seconds of him yelling we just told him to read it and walked away to hear him arguing at our backs. Fun.

 

We also didn't get to go to the temple this week. We carpooled with the two other Elders that live with us on the way to the temple. Their member picked us up in their brand new VW Jetter TDI, 2 weeks old. I talked to him on the way over about his car and his line of work (designs missles). Halfway to the temple, Elder Arndt says we need to pull over quickly but we were in the middle of a work zone. The member floored it and pulled over but it was too late. Elder Arndt threw up all over his companion, all over Elder Allen, and all over the new 2013 Jetta. Everyone was in shock so I opened up the door and ran around to open his door so the rest wouldn't get inside the car haha. The good news? I escaped unscathed! The bad? No temple...

 

It's starting to get hot. I am so acclimatized to the 'winter' that I'm going to die. It was 95 the other day and has been around 90 for most of the week. I heard it's supposed to cool off a bit. The sad thing is that even if it's 90 degrees, it's still going to get 30 degrees warmer... It was funny though, I was biking on exchanges and my shirt was a little wrinkly in the morning and by the time we stopped it looked like the sun/wind had ironed it straight. That makes life easier!

 

During our spanish study this week there were helicopters hovering overhead for the entire hour. That night we learned that someone had gotten into a gun fight with the cops and was shot dead in the park nearby.

 

I finally saw a road runner!

 

Two days ago we went by to visit someone in the evening and as we turned to leave we saw a giant black widow in the corner of their walls outside. We went home that night and checked the perimeter of our exterior walls and found two or three black widows and six scorpions. So naturally we caught them.

 

 The scorpion won.

 

We were walking around the only trailer park here last week and someone yelled at us to give him a ride to the store because he was drunk. We said no because we're not allowed to give rides in our mission car. We ran into him this week again and he was drunk. Again. The conversation began with, translated, "LIARSSSSSSS. You're not men of God! I needed to get to the store to buy beer but you wouldn't give me a ride!" We told him we can't drive people in our car and he said, "I wanted you to drive me in my truck! LIARS! You don't help people!" And so on. Elder Allen told him that if he wants to drive places he shouldn't drink haha.

 

We went to teach a lesson last night to a potential spanish investigator that we have. We knocked on the door and she invited us in saying they were praising God already. We walked in, slightly suspicious, and went to the back door. When we got there we saw probably 20 hispanics with someone preaching to them at 8:30pm. She invited us to join them but it was super awkward so we politely declined and left them with some cards haha.

  

Thanks for the letters: Sister Hines, Tanan, and John!

 

Do insects have blood?

We have lots of black widows in our neighborhood. How dangerous are they? Could they kill me?

 

Anyway, hopefully this next week yields more success than this week! Hope you're all well,

 

Love,

Elder Johnson

 

11 March 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

This was kind of an interesting week.

 

That's an understatement.

 

The week started out pretty well. On Monday night we were walking around trying to find people and stumbled into a super sketchy park. It was 8:30pm and there were no lights except in a pavillion. There were two girls there, probably 20 years old, that we went to talk to. They freaked out when we said hi since we surprised them. We started teaching them and they invited us to sit next to them on the picnic table. We awkwardly ignored it and taught them standing up haha. Anyway, they seemed pretty interested so we set up a return appointment for a few days later.

 

When we went by to visit them, we saw a car outside and someone yelled, "Hey Elders!" Bad sign since the girls weren't members. When we got closer we asked if ___ and ____ were home and she said, "...I got here this morning and the house was empty. They disappeared." They had been renting the house and either went all out to get away from us or gave us a time they knew they wouldn't be there for (which happens a lot.) They had just moved there too which was strange. Anyway, the land lord was a Mormon and we talked to him for a bit and he was very surprised they disappeared as well. He went to work cleaning it out to rent again haha. People are weird.

 

I'm going to explain more about our area than I did this week and about the house that we live in. Yeah, we live in a house which was surprising for me. We have a yard of rocks and a backyard of rocks. People don't even try to water grass so they just do desert landscapes or rocks. We had hundreds of weeds in the front and thousands in the week. We got a notice from HOA saying we had a few days to clean the front out or we would get a $50 fine from our personal accounts. So we cleaned the front but not the back. The other Elders have a recent convert who offered to give us goats for a while to eat all the weeds out haha. Anyway, so the house is alright. There are four of us living there which is good and bad for obvious reasons. Two bathrooms which is nice but we sleep on bunkbeds which isn't fun. Super uncomfortable. This house has carpet unlike my apartment in Yuma which was all tile and cold in the morning. We have a garage that the housing coordinators use to store dozens of desks so we park in our driveway. All the backyards are surrounded by stone walls which is pretty ugly. We live in the smallest house in the neighborhood.

 

Queen Creek itself is a unique place. There are some parts that are somewhat urban and others that are super rural. There are tons of horses here and we will often see people riding their horses down the side of the road. Rodeos are big. The town is stuck between urbanizing and, well, not. Most people have moved here recently since Queen Creek (QC) is so young.

 

The way that missions work is that it is a geographical area divided into zones. We cover probably 600-700 miles in a seatbelt across Arizona divided into 11 zones. Some big enough to bike across, others hours across like Show Low and Yuma. Anyway, you get assigned a zone and you can't leave it.

 

Unless you're a spanish elder in QC. We cover three zones and 90 square miles since we cover the spanish ward and singles ward. Needless to say, everyone we teach is super distanced which gives us a problem with our car. We got cut from 1150 miles a month to 1000 which isn't possible so I called the assistants yesterday, presented our case, and got 100 miles back.

 

This week was interviews with the mission president for our zone. He came down on Thursday, we got trained on planning (again) and went in and had 12 minutes each with him. Some went longer, some went shorter. My first interviews in Yuma we each had 30+ minutes which was way nice. It's kind of crazy to think that that's really the main time he gets to know us since we don;t see him often, about once a month. Anyway, I went in and talked about one of our investigators who is experiencing "demons" in their home. He said some pretty funny and interesting things haha. All in all it was a good time. The first thing he said to me, kind of to break the ice was, "So...do you miss Yuma yet?" At transfer meeting when he called my name he said, "...and Elder Johnson who has spent his entire mission in Yuma." When he mentioned that I was adjusting, he kind of sadly said, "Yes, spanish work right now is struggling in the valley." With the mission boundries changing, it will be interesting to see how spanish missionaries get moved. Right now, 2/3rds of the spanish missionaries are west of the valley. There's only 6 of us in the valley/show low. We should be getting new mission calls soon.

 

We had a pretty awesome miracle this week. Before yesterday we had two people on date for baptism this month. One of them fell off yesterday since he didn't come to church. The other is 100% a miracle and nothing less. When I came into the area all I heard was about how dead it was and how we would have a dry (baptism-less) transfer. Put that behind and went to work. We are teaching one guy in spanish (even though he will get baptized into YSA) and he cancelled every lesson this week since he was going to be in California all week on a surprise trip. When we heard that we were pretty concerned since he is on date for March 16th and we hadn't taught him any of the commandments. The rule is they have to be living all the commandments for at least 10 days before baptism. If not they have to get pushed back. On Saturday night we were supposed to meet with him but that fell through as well. At this point we were super nervous. All week I had been praying that he could be prepared enough to still get baptized on the schedule day even without us teaching him until 6 days before his baptism. On Sunday he was at church and we took him aside and taught him everything then and there. As we went through the commandments, every one, he spoke on how he had in the last few months or years stopped those things that were against the commandments and started to follow all of them. So, having never been taught these before, he had miraculously been keeping them all! So now we are moving on towards his baptismal date making this more or less a 10 day baptism. Nothing short of a miracle.

 

I wrote last week about a YSA investigator who was super solid who had been thinking about baptism. Well, we got a letter from someone in her life who is a less active member that, summarized, said: "We shouldn't push baptism the first visit, that we scared them away, and we can't push baptism if we only know their first names. It was disappointing since the investigator is very prepared and is being kept from progressing from a less active member who is a part of the investigators life.

 

We get to go to the temple on Wednesday!

 

We taught a lesson this week to a Jehovah's Witness. Some things I learned:

    After this life, we all come back to life for a millenium where we can try everything over again without temptation so that we can all become perfect. Then the devil is unleashed and those who didn't get good enough in that millenium will get defeated by the devil. So what's the point of this life if we can all try again after?

    Maybe that's all I remember...

Anyway, we tried to pray with her afterwards and she said, "I've been praying all day, I don't want to pray anymore!" JW's will never let you pray with them. Doing so makes us "like the pharises praying in the streets seeking praise."

 

We also found someone on the street this week who told us to go away since we "didn't understand." When I asked what that meant she said, "I died! It makes sense now!" I asked, "what makes sense?" And she said, "It's all clear!" hahaha

 

I found the name Alpheus Cutler on page 151 and 205 of the History of the Church pt. 2 book. Apostate relative!

 

I also found something a little more dangerous in our house this week. A scorpion! I was looking through Elder Allen's ties and noticed something on the bottom. When I looked closer it was a scorpion! We grabbed a cup and caught it. We've had it in our home trying to find something to feed it. Well, we also found a massive spider on our house today. We put them in the same cage and made them angry and they fought. The spider got stung 3 times and then we had to come email. Our backyard is infested with lizards so maybe we will add a lizard to the match this afternoon and see who wins.

 

We were tracting down a street this week and 1/3 of the doors said that the neighborhood was a no soliciting neighborhood. Good thing we don't sell anything! Everytime we heard that I would say that we aren't soliticing, we are inviting! ONe guy said, "You guys better go! They'll come for me and then for you!" And then slammed the door. Another guy threatened to call the cops on us and I told him that we would still be in the neighborhood when the cops came. They never came. It's illegal in Arizona to kick ministers off of public property. People try to use that excuse all the time to get us out of neighborhoods.

 

A dust/rain storm his this week and did some intense wind damage. The worst part was the mud... the area we do most of our spanish work is called LIttle Mexico and doesn't have paved roads. Our poor car changed from red to brown.

 

Last night we were talking to people in the street pretty late and one woman told us we looked like hitmen.

Thanks Grandpa Wolthuis, Eric, Mom, Will, Margareta, Ian, Grandpa Johnson for the letters! It was great to hear from all of you this week!

 

All in all a good week.

 

Thank you all for your continued support!

Love,

Elder Johnson

 

4 March 2013

Dear Family and Friends,

Since I didn't get a phone call telling me to pack up last night, it looks like I'll be in Queen Creek for at least another 3 weeks to the end of the transfer. I'm not going to fully unpack until transfer call night though. I learned my lesson last time!

Just a reminder that if you send letters to Yuma, I will have a chance of getting it once a month. The missionaries down there could lose it. Also, if you send it to the mission home I can also get it once a month.

Well, Queen Creek is very different than Yuma. There are so few hispanics and they are so hard to find. Every time we speak with someone we ask them if they know where we can find hispanics to teach and 85% of the time they say no. So the finding is tough. Went from finding 14 new investigators in one week in Yuma to 2 in one week here.

The drive here all I heard was about how the work is struggling, how they have no potentials for baptism, and how the work has just about stopped. Pretty depressing news to hear going into an area. But I reserved judgement on the area because once I accepted that I wouldn't really be able to work with faith in the area. And so this week we put behind all judgements and just did missionary work. By the end of the week we had hit the record for most lessons taught in this area for 6 months and we now have three people on date for baptism this month of March. Things are starting to turn around.

The missionary work here is different but so are the demographics. There are tons of members here. Tons. And yet our area is 90 square miles as we cover one of the YSA wards and the spanish ward. We went to Chic-fil-A for lunch this week and as we were waiting in line this guy comes up to us and says he'll buy us lunch. That has never happened to me before! We sat with them and talked with them for our lunch hour. We started talking about the roads in Queen Creek (how they don't make any sense) and he just grabbed his GPS and loaned it to us. Caught us both by surprise! I just tried to update its maps since Queen Creek has recently exploded but it costs $50! I'll pass.

We eat dinner with the spanish ward every night since we cover the YSA ward and they can't really feed us. Since leaving Yuma two weeks ago, I haven't had mexican food for dinner once. So sad. While walking down the one trailer park we have found some people yelled at us to come over. They were cooking Carne Asada! Just like that they offered us it and we shared a meal with them on the side of the road. Mexicans are awesome. They wanted to share their beer with us as well but we passed on that one.

On that same note of demographics, we were walking past an elementary school and dozens of kids ran over and yelled, "MISSIONARIESSSSS." hahaha.

Two days ago as we were helping someone with their yardwork, I heard this deep deep propeller sound and looked up. There was a B17 flying over head! Apparently there's someone here who owns that and a P51 and sells rides.

We do a lot of our work in a place called Little Mexico. You drive down one of the bigger roads for a while and then turn onto dirt roads and you're in Little Mexico. It's basically the ghetto of Queen Creek and there is a more dense population of hispanics there, still not many. We had 8 lessons fall through there. But that's ok because we found a couch in the middle of the road which we sat on. Pictures attached.

We went on exchanges this week and I got to go to an English dinner. Guess what we had for dessert? Georgetown Cupcakes! Apparently you can buy them online and have them shipped over. They were so good; that was the first time I had eaten one.

Next week is our temple trip! I'm pretty excited. We get to go on Wednesday morning for the 7:30 session. Maybe on the way back I'll get to see the Gilbert temple since I still haven't seen that yet.

I gave myself a goal to read the Book of Mormon in spanish in 11 weeks. That's an average of 3 chapters a day. I'm in 2nd Nephi now.

We had the cool opportunity to teach someone and put them on date this week. After we invited her to get baptized she said, "you know, I have actually been thinking a lot about baptism recently." The only trouble is getting a hold of them. Since our first lesson we haven't been able to get ahold of them to stop by again but that first lesson was awesome. Hopefully we can find them...

We tracted into an interesting family this week. We asked them if they had ever been to our church before and the guy said no, they went to ____ church to which his wife said, "no, it's called ____!" He said, "Oh yeah." Guess they don't go very often haha. When we invited them to the easter pagent in Mesa, all they said was, "We don't leave Queen Creek," and shut the door haha. Tracting is great.

Thanks fo the letter Sister Hines!

 Love you all,

Elder Johnson