Week 27

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. Later that night our zone and
the Caldwell zone met up out in the middle of this old rock
quarry and played capture the flag, it was a blast, there
were huge hay bails set up and it was sweet. So transfers
are tomorrow, I'm staying in Nampa for another 6 weeks. It
will be 6 months total because I will almost definitely
leave after this transfer. So it's cool that I'll be here with
all my investigators and recent converts for Christmas. We
picked up 3 new investigators this week, it was awesome! Two
of them are GOLDEN! So we'll see what happens with that. Elder
Denning and Elder Garcia are also staying so it will be the
three of us still. Elder Denning is keeping me sane.

Today we went to the temple in the morning. Then Brother
Washburn made us breakfast and Grandpa Washburn came over
so it's always a treat to be around him. Elder Garcia is
on exchanges in Boise today because he wanted to go to a
knife factory with some other Elders, So it's just Elder
Denning and I today and it's amazing! We're going to go
bowling.

Well I love you guys and I think I'll get to e-mail later
today when Elder Garcia gets back into town so maybe I'll
e-mail again. 

-Elder Johnson

I found a sweet scripture chain thing. In Ezekiel chapter 37
(I think it's 37, it might be 47 though) it talks about this
"water" and also in Nephi chapter 8 and chapter 11 (Lehi's
dream) it talks about this "water" and the water is the
temple. It's really cool if you read those chapters together :-)

Week 26: Happy Thanksgiving!

We didn't get to go to the temple today, we couldn't find a
ride. I got a letter from the Harman's the other day that was
pretty cool. We haven't gotten transfer calls yet so I don't
know what's going to happen yet.  I think I'm going to be
staying here in Nampa though.

The work is going great! We picked up a GOLDEN investigator last
Friday. I wrote about her in my letter I sent you a few days
ago so I'll torture you and have you wait to read that one. We
are teaching a lot and having success so it's great. The holiday
week is making it pretty hard to catch people. A lot of them are
going out of town so the end of this week will be hard. Elder
Denning is great, it's a lot of fun to have him around. He's
pretty close to my personality, so it's been easier.

My plans for the holiday are that we're going to head to Aunt
Kim's house for the day, so that will be fun! I'm looking
forward to having a big ole dinner!
Well I love you guys and hope all is well! Love Elder Johnson
1 Nephi 19:9 (awesome scripture on the Atonement)

Week 25

So here's some news, Elder Schmuck just left this morning.
President needed him as a Zone Leader so he left and we got
a new companion named Elder Denning. He's way cool, I knew
him from my first area. He's been out just over 10 months,
he's a real genuine guy and pretty awesome so the next 2
weeks will be great. Interviews with President went well.
He had told me that Elder Schmuck was going to leave and I
was going to be with Elder Garcia by myself for 2 weeks but
I luckily got Elder Denning to come. President said that he
really appreciated me working hard to deal with Elder Garcia
and he said my hard work and sacrifice are not going unnoticed
so that was good to hear. I think I am going to be leaving
Nampa soon though, we get transfer calls next week so I'll
find out for sure then.

The lesson with Keira went great, we're teaching her again
tonight. She is excited about baptism and she told us in the
past she tried to get baptized twice before but she said she
failed the interview and didn't know enough (not sure who was
interviewing her because the questions aren't hard...) so we
went over the interview questions and she answered all but 2
right, which was perfect because we hadn't taught her the word
of wisdom and tithing stuff yet so she was all excited that she
knew so much already. We don't have a date set for it yet but
we challenged her and I think it will be sometime in December.

We are getting our investigator pool back up to olympic size
which is great, we're having a lot of success with members
referrals which is just great so good things are happening.

I was reading in the Ensign conference issue and the beginning
of Tad R. Callister's talk is so awesome. He said,  "Suppose
for a moment someone told you these three facts about a New
Testament personality and nothing more: first, the Savior said
of this man, “O thou of little faith” (Matthew 14:31); second,
this man, in a moment of anger, cut off an ear of the high
priest’s servant; and third, this man denied knowing who the
Savior was on three occasions, even though he had walked with
Him daily. If that is all you knew or focused upon, you might
have thought this man a scoundrel or a no-good, but in the
process you would have failed to come to know one of the
greatest men who ever walked the earth: Peter the Apostle.

Similarly, attempts have been made by some to focus upon or
magnify some minor weaknesses of the Prophet Joseph Smith,
but in that process they too have missed the mark, the man,
and his mission. Joseph Smith was the Lord’s anointed to
restore Christ’s Church to the earth. When he emerged from
the grove of trees, he eventually learned four fundamental
truths not then taught by the majority of the contemporary
Christian world." I thought that was so awesome.

You've heard David O. Mackay's quote "every member a missionary"
well up here the saying is "every member a mission president."


We had a great week, we taught 24 lessons. I'm gonna be really
busy the next 2 weeks because I'm leading the area. I have to
teach Elder Denning it since he just got here.  Wish me luck!
lol love you guys!

-Elder Johnson

Alma 31:5

PS

I had a cool experience this week. I was on exchanges and I was
in the other area in our district and I was with Elder Cluff
and we were tracting and on the 3rd door we knocked on we got
let in and we talked with this guy for over an hour. He started
with just questions about our beliefs and stuff and I could tell
that he really wanted to bible bash but we held back and just
shared our testimony when we wanted to bash, but it was a neat
experience. I got to really see if my bible knowledge was any
good and he also gave me a lot of things to look up and study.
So it was a cool experience and it ended with him committing to
read the Book of Mormon so it was tight!

Week 24

This past week has been really good. Brian's baptism went great. It was a short and quick one but the spirit was definitely there. A lot of his family was there that were not members, so I hope they were able to feel the spirit! The wedding went well too, we got to go to that and part of the reception. They're a fun couple but right when they got married they moved out of our area so we won't get to see them very much anymore. Their house is just outside of our stake now.

I'm so glad that Grandpa's surgery went well, he's one tough guy! Tell Gregory I say Happy Birthday too!

This week we picked up a new investigator, we're teaching her tonight. Her name is Keira Anderson, she's 11 years old. All her family is way less active except her 16 year old sister named Makayla. Her sister is a rock, way solid and a great missionary for us. Through her example her little sister finally said I want to go back to church so we're going to teach her the lessons and we're going to hopefully set a baptism date tonight. I'm excited , its in the 5th ward and we haven't had anything in that ward forever! That was definitely lots of answered prayers. We are really trying to find more people to teach right now. We baptized all our investigators so we are trying to find new ones now.

We have interviews tomorrow with the President so I'll hopefully find out what's going to happen next transfer. Well I love you and hope all is well!

Alma 5:19- it's a scary scripture, but it keeps us in line and wanting to be better!

Week 23: Happy November!

This has been a good week. Super slow though missionary-wise. We only taught 11 lessons this week that's 10 less than our norm so that was lame but it was due to Halloween, our baptisms, and we had zone conference also on Friday. Ok, so the story behind the Joseph and Hyrum death masks is that when they died they made a mask of their faces with like mud and grass and stuff. I guess it was common practice back in those days. so the church had those forever and President Hinckley wanted some molds made of them so that if it breaks, there's a back up of it. They made 11 molds of the death masks & the guy who did it is a cousin to a member of the bishopric in the 5th ward. The church has a couple in the vault under the mountain and the rest were kind of the mold-er's to do whatever we wanted with. He gave his cousin one set. We were just visiting that family one night to get some referrals and he showed us them. They were way
awesome! He does firesides with them and stuff. It was way cool!

For Halloween it was a normal day for us until 6:30pm. We had a district meeting, went to lunch with our Zone Leaders and then we just visited some potential investigators and some recent converts. After that we had a ward party/trunk-o-treat. We were the judges for the chili contest, I was stuffed! There were 18 different kinds we had to try. We also had a pumpkin contest and mine won! It was also the only one that was entered, but I still got a prize! lol Then we did the trunk o treat. Our trunk was awesome! We put our pumpkins in there and a strobe light (it was actually just our bike lights but there's a mode where it flashes and looks like a strobe light) We passed out a bunch of candy and pass along cards lol. Then we had to be inside for the rest of the night, so we went over to the other Elder's house in our district. The people they live with weren't home so we jammed out on the drum set they had and we played this Book of Mormon card game which was pretty fun. It was a good day over all.

Our Zone Conference was Friday and it was great. After lunch we had the chance to either play basketball in a tournament or watch a movie. It was like Space Jam and Kung Fu Panda. I played basketball. We did pretty well, we won 3 straight games and that put us in the championship. I had Elder Miller on my team who's this black elder from Texas that is gonna play football somewhere down there when he gets home. I thought we were going to win the championship game but we lost! Elder Hartley, who's an Assistant to the President is a straight up baller! He's a thin white guy and he was owning Elder Miller, it was a sight to see but they ended up beating us like 11-15 or something. We also had an awesome treat at Zone Conference. We had the great great grand daughter of Joseph Smith and her son come and talk to us. Her name is like Kimberly Joe Smith or something like that.

She told us the history of what happened after the prophet's death. I never knew that the Smiths had thought that Brigham Young had arranged Joseph's murder. Fourteen break offs of the church formed. She told us all the details and how things are today. Of 1500 descendants of Joseph Smith, only 135 are members. She told us her conversion story and it was amazing! I wish I could tell you more but I don't have my notes with me. It was just awesome! She and her son go around and do firesides across the nation so we were very lucky to get to hear from them.

I do still get nervous when I have to speak in sacrament meetings. I've only had to do it twice so far, but I'm not as nervous as I have been before just because I have to talk and testify to people everyday now. We don't have the talks from the manual on the 2nd & 3rd Sunday. I don't know how much this will help but
something I find is some people have trouble with the Joseph Smith story. What I do is tell them everything so that they know it. Then how they gain a testimony of it is by praying about it and then by reading and praying about the Book of Mormon. If they gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon, the testimony of Joseph Smith comes with it. If the Book of Mormon is true, then the heavens are open, God does talk to people in our day, Joseph really was a called Prophet, he did see God the Father and Jesus Christ, the Priesthood is restored to the earth and all the keys and authority that we claim to have are REAL! If the Book of Mormon is true, so then is everything else we teach and testify of. Hopefully that helps some what :-)

Sara's baptism was great! Her dad got to do it and it was wonderful! He was so nervous. I was one of the witnesses and he messed up the first time and had to
do it twice, but he did a good job. We had her confirmation on Sunday, Elder Schmuck got to do it--it was great. Lisa is also doing very well which is great. We have another baptism this Friday for Brian and I'm excited for that, it's going to be the best weekend of his life! He's getting baptized on Friday, married on Saturday, and confirmed on Sunday!

We are still always in a car. We have three exchanges this transfer and I'll be on a bike for all of them so I'm looking forward to that....well kind of, it's pretty cold now. I am definitely learning a lot of new things being with Elder Garcia and Elder Schmuck together. I'm learning that I need to give more compliments to people and help build them up.

We got a referral from a member and we went to talk to them about it. Their last name is Christensen and they just got back from a mission a year ago down in Atlanta! They were the missionaries/directors of the Kennesaw State Institute so they know all about the Marietta East Stake and they have even attended the Canton Ward before. They asked if I knew a John Collins in our ward, I didn't but I bet you do. They were from California but when they got off their mission they moved here to Nampa, Idaho. Cool stuff. Well love you guys and hope all is well!

Mosiah 7:33 (I think that's the scripture, it's the last verse in that chapter that is the one I want)

Love you all

-Elder Johnson

Week 22: Happy Halloween!

I got the teaching aids, thank you so much, those are great and I will
totally use them soon! Two of our investigators died this morning, it's 
pretty shocking I'm still kind of shaken up about it. (I'm talking about
those two big brown fat cows--they got slaughtered this morning.)  It
was pretty gruesome. It was a mobile butcher and he came and did it
in the backyard. It was pretty intense and nasty. I'm glad that I don't
have to do that for a living. 

Elder Garcia has been out 10 months. He is a scripture genius
especially with Old and New Testament stuff. Elder Schmuck is
a good companion, but I don't know who my favorite has been yet.
They all have different good traits in them.

Lisa's baptism was great! Elder Schmuck and I did all the prayers,
talks and witnessed. President Yardley came...it's so nerve racking
having a old member of the Seventy sitting there listening to you. The
confirmation went great the next day as well. I was nervous but I
think I did a good job. Lisa is so strong, I love it! She loves the church
and it makes her so happy. 

The next baptism is tonight, for Sara, she's 13. It's at 8pm. Then the
next one is Nov. 6th, that's Brian, and we set another one last
Wednesday, on Nov. 21, it's for two more OAY's, Micah and Haley.
I'm excited for that one also.

Sorry this letter is so short, we have basketball right now and
everyone is waiting on me. I'll make sure to write you first next
week so I can answer all of your questions. Love ya

-Elder Johnson

p.s. Happy Halloween

Hey Mom I got some more time to email again. Let's see where
I left off. On Halloween we do have to be in early and it's a
non-proselytizing day so we don't go out and tract and teach
and stuff. It's kind of like a day off. We have to be inside by
like 4 pm I think. We also do day light savings and I'm looking
forward to that extra hour of sleep! lol

Week 21

I was talking with a guy a couple weeks ago and he shared with me
the coolest thing. We were talking about Elder D. Todd
Christopherson's talk in General Conference which kind of talked
about the economy and he told me that the lord always knows what
he is doing. He works in the temple and told me that a year ago
before the economy fell, there was just OK attendance at the temple,
especially during the morning and day times. Now it is packed! When
we go in the mornings, it is a full session. He told me the lord always
is in control, if we're lacking on temple work, he will chasten us to get
us to go there and that's exactly what is going on here. There's really
good faithful saints here that are attending the temple weekly.

We were over at Grandpa Washburn's house one night this week. I
think I told you about him, he's an Emeritus Seventy, East Phoenix
AZ Mission President, and also Las Vegas Temple President. We
were asking him about his two talks that he got to do in General
Conference and he lent us HIS book. It's a biography on his life. It
is so cool! I've been reading it and its really opened my eyes to just
how important and amazing the temple work is. I was also reading
about his time as a Seventy. He was in the Area Presidency in Africa
and spent years over there opening up the continent to the church.
Anyway, I just thought it was so cool to have him in my area and
get to spend time with him. He knows and talks with a lot of the
apostles still today.

I haven't gotten the line of authority yet. I could have gotten it when
we went to the temple this morning but the guy that takes us has to
work at 9 so we leave pretty quick after we get out and the mission
office opens at 9. So I haven't gotten that yet but I'm sure the zone
leaders will get it to me this week.


You wrote that I'll be getting Elder Bailey....did I put Elder Bailey when
I wrote you? I was getting Elder Kaylor but plans have changed.
President called us a couple nights ago and switched some things
around, so now we are getting Elder Garcia....this will be a interesting
transfer to say the least. Elder Garcia is different...very different but
like you said I'm just going to treat him like an all star and hope he
will be.

Only 2 months til Christmas, that will be crazy. I'm only 1 week away
from my 5 month mark, it's next Tuesday the 27th, we even have a
baptism that night so that will be awesome!

We do have two pumpkins in our apartment. We're gonna cut them up
today and make them into jack-o-lanterns, that will be fun. We don't
have any Halloween decorations. We could have them but we haven't
gotten any, and we don't really live with members. Members own it
but it really is like our apartment, they don't go back there ever so it's
really "ours" lol.

You said that Sister Detter has a niece in the mission...who is Sister
Detter? lol there's only a had full of sister missionaries so I probably
do know her already. Unless she's out on the east side of the mission
in Twin Falls, they're off in their own world over there, the mission is
kinda split down the middle; west vs. east.

This past week has been really good, we've taught a lot of lessons but
we have been having to battle with sickness here. Not us, but ALL of
our investigators are sick with the flu. 20% of the Boise School
District has been out the last few weeks because of the swine flu.
It's spreading around like crazy! Our zone leaders had it last week
also, I'm glad that I'm immune from it now haha.

Yesterday I had an awesome experience. We had dinner out in the
17th ward, which is the country ward and we had like 20 minutes
so we looked over a Part Member Family list and we went to go
visit a lady that was living out near dinner. We only had 10 minutes
before dinner when we got out there so we were gonna just say hi
and set up a time to meet with them. Well for some reason I
grabbed my backpack out of the car and brought it in with me.
The sister was super nice and she was telling us about herself and
her situation. Her husband isn't a member. Well I felt prompted to
share a scripture with her before we left and I read Alma 7:11-13.
That one talks about the atonement and how Christ suffered all of
our pains, afflictions, temptations, trials, and sorrows so that he
knows what we're going through and how to help/comfort/strengthen
us. After I read it she told us that she had just finished praying
when we got there and had asked for help and guidance because
her adult step son has addictions to substances and that has been
causing a lot of contention and  afflictions within their family and she
said that scripture was the exact thing she needed to hear. I was
almost speechless when we left her house. I definitely felt that I was
where I needed to be and doing  what I needed to be doing. It was
definitely a memorable little experience.

Well I hope you all are happy and doing good, I'll continue to pray
for you all. Love you!

-Elder Johnson

"There is no misfortune so bad that whining about it won't make
it worse."  -Elder Jeffrey R Holland