25 July 2012

Hello!

So this week has been relatively normal other than the fact that today i got soaked with wine. .. Our recent convert family hadn´t yet thrown out all of their wine there, so today we decided to get rid of it. And of course i ended up opening three of the four bottles that exploded. Unfortunately I still smell like alcohol, even after a shower and several hand washes. Hopefully the smell isn´t too strong though, because otherwise the investigators that we are visiting are going to be a little bit curious as to why a representative of God smells like a drunk...

.... So we also had a drunk buy us some drinks the other day, it was a little funny and at the same time a little disappointing because he is a member. We got his number though, so hopefully we can help him later, when he isn´t quite as incapable of feeling the Spirit.

So our investigators are doing pretty well. Martha is getting ready for her baptism in a week and a half, though she knew that this message is true about two weeks ago. Also, we have another date with someone named Blanca, who is the upstairs neighbor of the family that we baptized. She has a baptismal date for about 2 and a half weeks. Well, unfortunately we seem to be losing a lot of good investigators. The family of six that we found now doesn´t want much. The kids do, but the mom has gone really cold. And without the support of their mom, we are sure that the kids are going to go inactive. So we will see what we can do to help them... Also, lost one really good investigator to vacations, and two more are leaving this week. Later we are going to have about 3 more leave, so hopefully we can help them when they come back, but unfortunately they don´t come back with the same desire to know about the gospel as they did before.

Well, after this transfer i will have spent 5 months with Elder Wilson. It is a rather long time to be with a companion, at least from my point of view. But it is fine, he really helps me to change and grow. Hopefully my companion after him will be just as good.

Soo, is still have yet to receive your package, so now i am sure that it is sitting in the mission office, i hope that nothing needed to be refrigerated...

I have met our president, we had interviews with him last week and we got to know each other a little better. He seems pretty good, and he also is changing things quite a bit. Our old president was a man of numbers, and now our president is interested in the dedication of our hearts more than the numbers that we get. So as long as we are working as hard as we can he is happy. Also, he and his wife like to be in the field, so they are set apart as proselyting missionaries as well as the mission president.

I haven´t grown a foot or two, but i definitely have grown some, because some of the shorts that i brought are too small to wear into public now, and also the jeans that i brought are now rather tight on the buttock. I found some other jeans that another missionary left behind though, so I should be good for now.

Since Breanna asked, i got her letter last Friday. Unfortunately I couldn´t find it to bring it with me so i don´t remember any more of her questions...Sorry.

I will look for dad´s letter. It will probably come next week, so anything he writes will be about a week late, but it will be exciting to have something more in the mailbox than a letter a week.

Well, I am really tired right now, I think that one of these p-days that i am going to sleep all day, because i am rather exhausted. This morning while i was praying i definitely didn´t quite feel completely awake..... Maybe when i get home (Massachusetts) i will sleep for a week straight. I feel like i want to.

Well i hope the kids enjoy the new room changes, the house is going to be really different when i get back in a little over a year and a half.

Well, i need to write to papa now, so until next week.

love,

Elder Johnson

18 July 2012

Hola,

so this week we have had quite a few English lessons. we are teaching a filipina who knows English better than Spanish and also we are teaching two Ecuadorians, and the father prefers to have us talk in English to them. its pretty different to have English lessons and i think that i sound a little bit like a Spanish person speaking English now. I think that i have lost a little bit of my accent.

also the space bar is broken, but i am.also.in.a.little.bit.of.a.hurry.so.sorry.if.you.cant. read it all really well.

So i don´t know if i said it last time, but the family that we baptized is doing awesome. We are teaching 2 investigators at their house every week and we are going to try to bring in a family too. At times I think that i it is a little overwhelming, but also, its really great that they can help us here soo much.

So also we are in the time of vacations, so there are a lot of people that we are finding that are leaving for vacations, so we can´t exactly help them very much. Unfortunately iam starting to despise vacations (this space bar is drivingmecrazy, sorry, but what i say isn´t going to be quite as flowery). thepèople leaveonvacations andthenwhenthey come back we can´t get in contact with them, so then we can´t help them and we lose them. It also makes me worried fortheinvestigators that we havebecause ifthey go on vacations, we mightnot be able to findthem again, sothen they getlost andthen it´s rather depressing.

So we aredefinately not staying very cool here,the heat hasonly gone up,so now whenicome home my shirt feels like a wet towel, it´s rather disgusting. iam notevengetting avery good tan with the sun either, i am getting a special missionary tan, but hardly anything. I am not very tan at all, unlike south American people who get tan in about 5minutes of sun...

Well, hopefully all those letters that are written will get sent to me here. the only reason that i think that they might now, is ifthey don´t have my information there still.  It should be, so hopefully i can be expecting those sometimein the near future.

So something that is cool is that we are teaching some Hondurans. almost all of them are on vacations right now,but there are eight of them in one piso.(i really don't want to add any more spaces anymore, and imight do it, but i think that you will have a real difficulty with reading what i am saying). Hopefully we can getincontactwiththem after their vacations though. They are evangelist too, so it will probably be a little difficult for them to come to our church and change faiths.

so i think that i have pretty much given up on the hope of sendinga package,at least for now. Idont have a whole lotoftime to get everything ready to do it.maybe one week though i can get something off to you guys.

so, idont really know what else to say,and i really don't want to type at all, this keyboard is driving me crazy too so i really don't want totype anything else. ormaybeiwilljust type without trying to add anymore spaces,but good luck reading it.

so one lastthingis that i have seen is that when people do all of the things that they need to do,read the scriptures, pray, go to church,there is a big difference, and it is verynoticable. when we do what the lord tells us to do, we are blessed, and we change, for every thing that we do. also, something else thatihave realized is that thebestway to work is to have the members prepare the people and thenthemissionaries teach them. Because in this way the people are already prepared and have a desire to listen, and we don't have to make them realize that listening is what they really want. so be a good example like ammon, and maybe someday lamoni will get interested and then maybe you can be the example that baptized a nation.

Also, Feliz Cupleaños Breanna, Ellie, and Bremen!!

Ihaven´t yet got my package, unfortunately i think that with the new president and his wife that they may not yet know that they need to brink it to me. I am not getting skinny, in fact we finally passed around a calendar to eat with the missionaries that worked, so now we are actually getting a little too much food nowadays.

our transfers are every six weeks, so the next ones will be halfway through august. and i do not know if the mission has a blog, they send us a"billboard" every week, but that´s it.

here are some more pictures too, unfortunately my camera is starting to get full, so i am going to need to start deleting the pictures that i send you. did i bring and extra memory card?

well, now i need to write to papa, so hasta luego.

ciou,

Elder Johnson.

11 July 2012

dear family,

So it turns out that Elder Wilson and I will be staying together for another transfer! It was actually a surprise because we were rather sure that one of us was going to leave. But the only people that left were an Elder in the ward adjacent to ours and one of the hermanas in our ward that had been here for 13 months. It is a little different now that they are gone, and the new Elder is one from Argentina with about 20 months on his mission.

I haven´t yet met the new president, I have only heard some things about him, but he appears pretty good so far.

I don´t know if my package is here yet, I haven´t received it yet, but it could be sitting in the office.

The heat luckily hasn´t been overbearing, Luckily the people all sleep for about two hours in the afternoon, so our meal hours are combined into two hours in the afternoon in order to eat and do things in the apartment. So we avoid the hottest part of the day with that. However, it hasn´t yet hit august, and July has just started, so I expect the worse is still to come. Luckily we do have ac, for 2 of the rooms at least. Unfortunately our study room doesn´t have one, so its a little like an oven in there at times.

So this past week we set two baptismal dates. One with Martha, who I mentioned earlier and one with someone named Liz. Who rather like the church, but she doesn´t quite know that it is baptism that she wants. Also, we are teaching and Iranian man, whose family are members ( his wife and kids). He basically knows that the church is good and that it is true, he just is a little scared of making decisions, especially since he won´t ever be able to visit his family in Iran if he gets baptized. But he is a really god person, and he really wants to know if it is true, he just is going to have some trouble to make a final decision I think.

So also, that family we have baptized has helped us out a ton. It is rally awesome, though I almost feel bad because we teach people at their house about 4 times a week. They lives almost in the Valle de Oro, so all the investigators that we have there we have started to bring to their house. It is really awesome and I hope that they can continue to be a good example for the rest of our ward, even after we are gone.

So something slightly comical that happened this week is that one of our members has taken an interest in our investigator Martha. He walked her home after church and he also invited himself to our lesson with her. So it appears that she might get a good support for coming to church, hopefully. We got kind of scared for a little bit because she was going to go out of town for a few weeks, and vacations are the way that we lose a lot of good investigators. Bu tin the end, she isn´t going to go, so we are grateful for that blessing.

If there is anything that I can do to help, just let me know and i´ll try to get it done. Though it will probably have to be in letter form.

So also, in a city called Toledo they sell swords, and my companion said that there is a person there that is Mormon or is familiar with Mormons and sells a sword of Laban with the Spain mission logo. So one of these weeks I am going to see if I could get that and send it home. So in the future you could probably expect that arriving there. just FYI

Well, that´s all the time I have for today,

I´ll talk to you guys next week,

love,

Elder Johnson

4 July 2012

Hola,

So today I have six months in the mision. It´s a little strange to think that now a quarter of my mission is already over. It passes by soo quickly! I almost can´t believe it. Yesterday was the 3rd the month, but I still feel like I have only been out in the field for a month or two, but really it´s about 3 months.

Well, I still don´t know if I am going to get transferred next week, I´ll find out this Friday if I am staying or going. I kind of think that I will be staying here, but we´ll see what really happens.

So this past Sunday Spain somehow won the euro cup 4 to nothing. And Spain was really really excited about it. We heard the honking and gunshots and horns and yelling in the street until we fell asleep. They also set off some fireworks to celebrate. Spain is really crazy about soccer here. It´s just too bad that they aren´t quite that excited about religion. Unfortunately Spain, although it is catholic, is a whole lot more religious in soccer than they are in church. So people have actually joked that it is a religion here. Which could be part way true.

So this past Friday we had a visit with a reference from our neighbor ward, barrio 9. And it turns out that she is golden! She really felt the spirit in our first lesson and loved church. She also lives really close to our family that we just baptized. It´s kind of funny, because we have a lot of good investigators in that street, and the street´s name : Valle de Oro. Valley of Gold for those that can´t understand. It´s kind of funny, and cool. So we set a baptismal date with her, unfortunately not until August though, because she has to go north to help he sister with some things in 2 weeks and she isnt´t going to return until about August. But, it is really exciting because she is an amazing investigator. Unfortunately not everyone recognizes the spirit like she does, and not everyone can recognize that it is the spirit that is testifying to them. I rally hope that her trip to the north doesn´t do anything bad, because unfortunately a lot of people go on vacations or they leave for a week, and then they get lost and we can´t contact them or they don´t want to get baptized anymore. Unfortunately it´s rather disappointing.

So this morning we went to the temple, and were rather surprised when we realized that the session was in Portuguese. It was also pretty cool, because we could understand almost every word. But it was a little bit of a surprise for us that it wasn´t a Spanish session and nor did we receive headphones. It turned out well, but it was a little funny/ confusing at first.

So I haven´t met President Jackson yet I think he is visiting the district meetings one at a time, and has yet to come to us. I´ve only heard good things about him though. So I expect that he will be pretty good.

That´s really exciting to hear about Willy and Jeff. I actually didn´t think Willy was that old, but I guess he really is... Also, it´s pretty cool that he gets to speak another language, it´s a little difficult at some times because I know that I can help the people so much more if I was talking in English, but in the end I think that it will pay off really well.

So I´ll look for the package, though I probably won´t receive it until the secretaries or the president comes to my area. But it will be exciting to see the pictures and have another gag gift on my desk.

Well, I need to write to Papa now, so until next week.

Ciao

Elder Johnson