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

Week 20: Happy Columbus Day!

Hey Momma,

So we didn't have Lisa's baptism this past Saturday. We met with her
last Tuesday night and she had to work on Saturday so the baptism is
on October 24th now. Bishop Kellar is going to do the baptism. He is
her boss and he is also the high counselor over missionary work in our
stake, so he's a great guy. Lisa is a very spiritual lady. She's been
going to church her whole life. She is a single mom and has 5 kids, one
is married and the other 4 live at home still, the youngest is in 8th
grade. Lisa is awesome and I can't wait to see just how great a
member missionary she will be. Literally EVERYBODY knows Lisa
because she works at Albertsons and her kind of personality is just
amazing and so friendly, the entire ward really just grabbed on to her
when she started coming to church. So that is a great thing. 

I haven't really kept in contact with any other recent converts in Kuna
but another one of our converts is getting baptized out there on
October 29th so I'll get to go to that! I do keep in contact with all of
the RC's (recent converts) we have out here.

We did get a new investigator this past week, for the singles ward
too! I think I wrote about him last week, Armando? He is great and it's
great to get some more in the singles ward finally. Oh and big news!
We finally hit 20 lessons in a week! YAY! It was awesome, we're
leading our zone in lessons by a long shot right now which is great!
And I do know what a OAY is, I've had one, Tyler Gregory, and
Sara Hammer-Huber is also gonna be a OAY and she's getting
baptized on the 27th. 

Transfers are next week, usually on Tuesday/Wednesday. We got
transfer calls just last night! It was early! Elder Schmuck and I are
staying together again here in Nampa. We're actually going to be in
a three-some too. Elder Kayler is coming to join us. I don't know much
about him. We'll see how that goes. I am super excited that I get to
stay for all the baptisms we are having here!

I'm excited for the priesthood line of authority to come, and I have
heard about the gospel art book and I have one ;-), did you read
about it in the Ensign? 

The missionaries don't get taken off bikes in the winter, we have to
bear through the weather. Next transfer we're going back to a car
share since Schmuck's knee is getting better so we'll be out on bikes
soon. I'm excited for that. 

Well Mom I miss and love you guys lots, I hope you have a great
week. There's a great quote by Elder Holland, "no misfortune is so
bad that whining about it won't make it worse" so I've kept that
in my mind this past week. Hurray for Israel!

-Elder Johnson

"He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free"  -Battle
Hymn of the Republic

Week 19

Conference was amazing, I loved it! We got to watch it with some of
our investigators. Elder Holland's talk was my favorite, he was so
powerful. I've seen talks like that when he speaks about his mission
to missionaries and I love those talks, so seeing this one was
awesome. I also really liked Elder Richard G Scott's talk. It was the
first one after President Monson's opening remarks. Also Elder Tad
Callister from the Quorum of the Seventy, he really rebuked what
bad things people say about the church and as missionaries I wrote
some down so now I have the answers when anti people try to talk
with us lol.

So who did BYU play?  We went to the Temple this morning at 6:30
and it was a great session. I sat with my first District Leader, Elder Bly,
I love that guy! He goes home in December so I'm glad I got to see
him again. With my priesthood lineage, I would like it if you could
maybe print out a copy, shrink it and laminate it so I could it carry
around in my scriptures. If that's too hard, just a printed off copy you
send me would be great.

Lisa is getting baptized this Saturday, October 10th, Sara is getting
baptized the 27th and Brian is getting baptized the 6th of November
(he changed it because he's marrying a member and they're getting
married the 7th and wanted all the family to be there so it's going to
be the day before the marriage.) I am so excited for Lisa's baptism!
I think she might ask me to do the baptism because I've been with
her since the beginning and she doesn't know a lot of people at
church yet. I think it would be so cool to get to do that! I'll send
pictures next week after it.

The weather here is so cold now! It frosts every morning now and is
freezing. The weekend was all raining and windy so that was no
good. I'm good with clothes and everything now.

Well I love you guys and hope all is well.  In my Book of Mormon
reading, I loved King Benjamin's address to his people in Mosiah
chapters 3-6. He really says so many things that will help us in
our days. I know the Book of Mormon was written for our day
by faithful prophets that did see us and our challenges. I love
the Book of Mormon. I love you.


-Elder Johnson


p.s. yesterday we had some fun in the morning, Bishop Young
called us (we live with him) and told us to go help his wife put
the cows back in the backyard. The gate was left open and
they were running out in the street, so it was fun chasing them
down with sticks and trying to get them back there haha ...cows
are so much bigger when they're out in places where they don't
belong.

Week 18

The pictures from the flooding are crazy, I cant believe it was so
disastrous that they had to call in the "Mormon helping hands"  lol

Currently I am at the mission office writing e-mails because we spent
the day here today but normally we write them at the family history
center in Nampa and we spend as much time as we want to write
e-mails, usually its around 2 + hours.

I can't believe that Nate only gets a hour to write e-mails and that
he can only get letters on p-day and can only write letters on p-day,
that would really be tough...but it would definitely keep us focused
during the week.

With Brother Lorenzen, what you guys were saying is what we
were thinking too. There's nothing more we can do so now we're
just gonna visit him every month or every other month and to
check up and see if anything has changed with him.

I am out of Emergen-c right now.  I did just buy a big box of that
muscle milk light from Costco, one of the Elders out here has a
card there so we went there today. I don't really need anything
else. We went shopping today to the thrift stores and I picked up
2 suits, one is way ugly and I love it lol and the other was pretty
decent looking. We have to start wearing suits all the time in a
couple of weeks so I need to pick up a few more because that
gray pinstripe one I have is too small now, so I only had one other
suit. This lady while we were in line at D.I. bought the suit I was
gonna get so that was awesome, she saved me $20.

Elder Schmuck's knee is doing better, he doesn't use his cane
anymore and he goes without his brace most days, he still
is a wobbly guy and feels like its too weak to do any kind of
sports, but I am getting to go with the zone leaders in the
morning to play basketball, so my exercising is going just fine.

We have interviews with the President tomorrow, I'm excited for
that. He usually tells me a lot of what is going to happen with
transfers so that will be good. I am so excited for General
Conference this weekend, I've never been this excited before,
even when I was able to go to the conference center. We are
going to watch the sessions with our investigators so we're
currently trying to coordinate that.

We went to the Temple this morning. It is always great to go in
the early morning, it makes the rest of your day so much better.
Well I got to go. We've got to get back to Nampa, hope all is well.
I've been reading in 2 Nephi this past week and I really liked the
last few verses of the last chapter in 2 Nephi, I think it is chapter 32,
the faith that Nephi has is so powerful and his last words are so
strong... it's almost scary, but very powerful. I love the Book of
Mormon, it really is the most correct book EVER. Love you guys!

-Elder Johnson

Week 14

Today for p-day we went golfing! It was my first time going to an
actual golf course. Brother Ramero took us and it was so much fun,
I want to do it a lot more. We did 9 holes and I was getting better by
the last one lol. 

The mission tour with Elder Johnson was awesome!! He had some
serious power when he spoke, his English accent was awesome too.
I learned so much from him, he spoke a lot about studying and how
powerful teachers teach less than what they know so we need to
study and learn a lot. He also told us that information doesn't
convert people, revelation converts people. Then he talked to us
a lot about desire, he shared a quote from Michael Jordan, "desire
makes the difference". Maybe ask Barron if he knows the story
behind the quote, he said it after the last game of the NBA finals
when they were playing the Utah Jazz in the 90's.

This past week has been great! The baptism/confirmation this
last weekend went the best it could go. We got to stand in the
circle for the confirmation, it was way spiritual. We have Danny's
baptismal coming up this Saturday. We taught him all of the
lessons this week, which was great because we love teaching
instead of finding people to teach. We hit a personal record for
lessons taught in a week, 18! It was awesome. We had to go on
splits 3 times this week. All that is left is doing his baptismal
program and doing his baptismal interview and we'll do that 
Wednesday and Thursday this week. I hope all is well back home.
Thanks for all the love and support. Love you!

Random Mission Pictures

The combine I rode at the Thorntons in Kuna

Me and my cow Tri-tip(we feed him everyday on the farm where we live)

The aftermath of July 4th

Meridian "miracle" South Zone

Funny zone picture

My MTC District at the Provo Temple

Week 11

Hey Mom, wow I almost was thinking that I wasn't gonna get a letter
from you this week, I was almost done writing my e-mails before it
said I finally got one from you. lol

So good luck on the tri! I want to do that for sure when I get back
home. For exercise we use our total gym, I think I told you we bought
one. We got it at a garage sale for 20 bucks and it's awesome. We
play basketball on Monday and Friday at 6 am and then on Wednesday
and Thursday starting this week, we are going to start running to one
of our church buildings that's a mile away. It's really hard to find time
and energy to work out and it's impossible to not eat a lot here when
every night people feed us a feast!

Brent's baptism was awesome, he asked me to give a talk on the Holy
Ghost too so that was cool. It went really well. I'm getting pretty
good at talking now. I went up and talked for 5 minutes with out
anything really written out or anything.

Brent's Baptism 08/08/09

Brent's baptism (Tammy, Jared, Elder Johnson, Brent)

Elder Mintoghe is from D.C.  He lived in the inner city so probably
areas the Bakers would never even dream of walking down. He
does know a friend of mine from BYU so that was cool to make
that connection.

The weather here has been ok. This week it rained two days straight.
It was horrible because we were on bikes. We had to tract in it too
so we were soaking wet for those two days, but I guess rain is rare
here so I won't have too many of those days here which is good.
Speaking of bikes, whoever assembled my bike didn't do it right. They
didn't put the cranks in right and I found out the bent crank was due
to that. We have a guy here that used to work at a bike shop and he
basically has one in is garage now. I went over there for him to check
it out and he took of my crank and it was almost completely stripped
inside. That would have cost me a couple hundred bucks for new
cranks, but he had an extra old pair so he put that on for me. It was a
big blessing, but I wasn't happy to find out my bike that is only two
months old had stripped cranks.

The kids out here start school in two weeks, so we're trying to use up
a lot of time with our Priests now before school starts. We would get
to go to the Boise Temple every week here in Nampa because we
have a lady that usually takes us but the Temple is closed for
cleaning for another ten days, so in two weeks we'll go. 

Out here we eat at Sonic, Panda, Qdoba, Subway and Mcdonalds, so
any of those places would be awesome. I haven't gotten Tammy's
package or letter yet, I got Grandma and Grandpa's last week, it was
nice. I haven't received a piece of mail for 5 days and I'm dying right
now to be honest, lol, getting mail is amazing here and I hate when I
don't get any lol. 

Ok, I'll end on a good note, we have two baptisms this month,
Saundra is getting baptized on the 22nd and Tyler is getting baptized
on the 29th. So that's exciting and we're also challenging another
investigator tonight to be baptized so good stuff is happening.

Well I love you guys and thanks a lot for the post card
it was awesome, those pictures look sweet. Love you guys!!

Week 10: Hello From Nampa

I am officially in Nampa now and its been really good.

So here in Nampa, we live in a big red barn. It's actually a garage and
we live on top but it looks like a barn. We have our own bathroom,
kitchen, kitchen table and a couch plus our beds, so it's much better
than our last place. We cover half a stake here. We cover the Nampa
South Stake, the 5th, 10th, 17th, 22nd and 28th ward. The 28th ward
is a singles ward so that's cool to go there, but that ward is dead. We
have had no work there in months, mostly because the ward mission
leader has been engaged and isn't really going anymore and they
haven't called a new one yet. We do have some investigators in the
other wards. I got put here because one set of elders used to cover
the whole stake, 9 wards, but they just split it up so that 2 sets of
Elders cover the stake now. Elder Mintoghe was here before and he
said that most of the work and investigators went to the other Elders
area so we spent a lot of time this week tracting and going through
former investigators and other potentials. We had success! We found 
3 investigators! That is proof that if missionaries can find people to
teach through tracting, no excuses for members to not give them
people to teach. My request is for you to find people for the
missionaries to teach. If we get referrals we won't have to spend the
30 hours of tracting we did this week. 

We teach a boy named Tyler Gregory here, his mom is LA (less active)
and he's 13 and decided to take the lessons. Last night we taught him
and I challenged him to be baptized and he accepted and is gonna be
baptized on August 29th! It was awesome, it was the first time I
challenged someone and it was scary to be honest! But it was so
rewarding. So out here we have 2 others that we are gonna 
challenge to baptism this week. One is Saundra, and she is a 20 year
old single mom, her friend is Mormon and she has been taking the
lessons. We've only taught her twice but she has been coming to
church every week and loving it and she said she has felt such a great
peace ever since. She is so GOLDEN! The other is a little girl named
Sara, she's 12 and all her family is LA and she is the only non-member.
We call her an OAY (over age youth). She is so smart and I think next
week we'll challenge her. We actually have one more you wants to be 
baptized but she lives with her boyfriend and we told her that she has
to move out, break up, or get married to be baptized and she doesn't
like any of those choices so it will be a while before she gets baptized
I think.

Elder Mintoghe is so awesome. He's been out 18 months. His story is
that he was born in Gabon, a country on the western coast of Africa.
He moved to Washington DC when he was 6 and lived here ever since.
He's a convert, he ran into the missionaries when he was 17. He's
such a power house and has taught me so much!!! I'm going to learn
so much from him this transfer, it's going to be great. We are in a car 
share here. We share with 2 other sets of missionaries. How we do it
is we get it four days, then they get it 4 days, then the other set gets
it 4 days then we get it again. It's kinda different but our area is
smaller so its ok to be on bikes. We have a lot of restaurants here too,
we have Panda Express and Qdoba! It's awesome but its expensive
so we get stuff to cook at home. The members here are great and
feed us every night and feed us a lot! We take the Priests out on
splits with us a lot which is really cool. We are the Nampa Zone, and
our Zone Leaders are cool and there are like 3 other Elders I know
that are cool. So my last zone was amazing I guess. We played
beach volleyball this morning which was fun, about 10 of them
showed up, which I guess is really unusual. Then Elder Mintoghe and
I went with a member to IOU Sushi, it's this all you can eat sushi
place, it's so good!

One more cool note about Brent, (one of our investigators from Kuna),
Elder Stepherson called me the other night and told me that Brent
told him that he had a dream that he needed to get baptized, he said
that he loved Elder Stepherson and me so much he wants to do it
before we go too far away and wont get to come to his baptism. He
is trying to figure out a date that works before September 9th
(that's the next transfers) BRENT'S GETTING BAPTIZED!!!!!!!
Man I was so happy to hear that!

The pictures from Top Sail look like some fun!

My e-mail and p-day will never change...ever. Neither will my mailing
address @ the mission home. Don't worry about that...you will always
have contact with me lol.

Well I have got to go, we have an appointment in a little while.
It looks like we do emails in the afternoons here, not the mornings.
Well I hope everything is going good! 

I love you guys!

Week 9: Last week in Kuna

Hey so this is my last e-mail from Kuna, Idaho! Yesterday
Brother Miller took us out for a farewell lunch and we went
to my favorite place, B-dub's (buffalo wild wings). That was
awesome. This past week has been pretty good. We had a challenge
in our zone for the companionship that could get the most member
present lessons in a week and we won!!! We got 7 this week and
blew everyone out of the water! Lol so we got to keep the trophy
this week. We were out in Melba on our bikes and were about 2
miles from our car when I got a goat head in my tire and it went
flat! Big surprise! That was the 4th flat this transfer! I
decided to replace the tire and inner tube because that tire was
super thin. Now I'm rolling on some street/dirt tires and am
flying around town and haven't got a flat yet! So that's been
awesome! Here's one last report on my Kuna investigators:

Brent- had us over for dinner and the next night a lesson, he has had
all the lessons and he is praying for a baptismal date. He will be
baptized soon and I'll be coming back for that for sure!

Brad- we had to read with them to get them to do their assignment
but he's progressing...slowly

Rick- had Lesson 4 and is talking with Bishop and will be baptized
next month, I'm coming back for that one too

Sean- met with him and gave him the Bishop's number so he can
figure out what to do to be baptized.

Tommy-taught lesson on the gospel

Norma Jean- talked about the Holy Ghost and challenged to be
baptized

Jesse- haven't heard from for 3 weeks :-(

Fabian and Crystal- taught stop-smoking program and they're
in the middle of that right now ;-)

J.C.- came to church!

Joan Shannon- is a new investigator, she had the lessons
2 years ago but parents wouldn't let her be baptized. She
turns 18 in August and we're teaching her so she can be
baptized then!! And she came to church!

So it's been a really good transfer, we planted a lot of seeds
and there are seriously about to be 5+ baptisms in the next
1 or 2 months so I will be coming back here to see those!
I'm getting transferred to Nampa tomorrow morning. I'll be
in the Nampa South Zone and Elder Mintoghe is my new
companion! So next week I'll tell all the good and exciting
news of a new place!



-Elder Johnson

Week 8

Hello family and friends!!!


This past week has been a hot one! It's been 95 + everyday and on
Saturday it was 106 and that was the day we decided to ride bikes
all day...yeah, that was a mistake lol. I was sweating bricks! This
past week we have had a lot of success with getting our ward
mission leaders to actually do their jobs. We have it set up now
where we go out with a ward mission leader on Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, and Sunday night. That will give us a lot of work to
do and get to know more families. We also finally got a large list of
less active and inactive families for some of our wards so we will be
busy the few next weeks meeting them and teaching them.

On Thursday night we had a lesson with Brent, we taught lesson 4
which is the commandments, it went really well. He was willing to
accept them and start living them. We challenged him to pray for a
date that he will be baptized. We're meeting with him Wednesday
night so that's gonna be awesome! Hopefully I can come back to
Kuna to see his baptism.

Sunday a missionary came home and gave his farewell in the 4th ward,
that was a packed house. He went to the Mcallen Texas mission. We
had two investigators there so that was a awesome powerhouse talk
for them to hear. We got all but one of our investigators to church so
that was awesome! After church we went out to Melba and met with
Norma Jean. She's an 85 year old lady who we've been teaching for
awhile. She is so close to baptism. She knows it's true. Her only hold
up is that she doesn't have any dresses and she would feel
uncomfortable at church wearing pants. I think we can help her with
that lol. She's been saying she'll get baptized at some point in her life
since she was 12! We were really bold with her and promised her, as
representatives of Jesus Christ, that if she read the Book of Mormon
and prayed to know of a date to be baptized, she will have the Holy
Ghost tell her an answer. I know our next meeting will be awesome
with her.

We struck out this week with getting baptismal dates set, I've found
out that people don't just WANT to be baptized. It's hard work to get
them to be baptized, so we're working hard to get some. This up-
coming week, our zone is having a competition with getting the most
lessons with a member present. Our goal is 8 this week. I think we
can win if we get that, hopefully we can get some more. I want to
ask you to go out with the missionaries when they teach investigators.
Be there when they teach. A huge obstacle for investigators is coming
to church because they don't know anyone. If you're there when they
get taught, they will have a familiar face at church. That will help
them and make the missionaries love you! Please introduce yourself
to any investigators you see at church. That will either make or break
a investigators experience at church.

I learned something really cool this week. We were teaching Rick,
who's an excommunicated member. We told him that because of
Jesus Christ, two things were accomplished, and he told us no there
was three. So we said well, he was resurrected so that we can
conquer physical death, and he also atoned for the sins of the world
so we can conquer spiritual death. We asked him what the 3rd gift
was and he told us that it's the gift of the Holy Ghost. In
John 14:26-27 it says that Jesus will leave the earth, and will leave
us the comforter (Holy Ghost) to take his place and that will give us
the peace, not what the world thinks of peace where it's temporary,
but an eternal peace that never ends. I thought that was awesome.

Today was p-day and we went and worked out at a member's
house this morning with one of our priests in one of our wards. I felt
so weak, I could only get 185 up like 5 times. :-(  Then we went to
a zone BBQ! We played some b-ball, then football, then some
ultimate Frisbee. After that we went back to one of the companions'
house and had a Hawaiian BBQ. Elder Dumaguin is from Hawaii and
he cooked us some rice and Hawaiian steaks. It was so good!!!! Ok,
well that's all for today. Hope everyone is doing great! Thanks for
all the letters and packages!

-Elder Johnson



"You need to occasionally be uncomfortable, that's the only time that
you grow. Think of the uncomfortable experiences you've had, you've
probably learned something from each one. Learn to live outside of
your comfort zone."

Week 7

Hey Momma Ice,

We had interviews yesterday, it was our zone's interviews with the
Mission President, and he kinda gives us hints about what's going to
happen with transfers, so it sounds like I am leaving Kuna :-( 
He wants Stepherson to train again because he's amazing and
another big group of missionaries is coming this transfer. He said that
he will most likely splitting up but he said he'll put me in a good spot.
Nothing is definite yet but we will find out a week from Wednesday.
You should stop sending my mail to my address, just go through the
Mission Office. I found out that's what they want you to do anyways,
they don't want us using the address of the people we're staying at.
It stinks but it's only a day later that I will get it so it won't be too bad.

This is my genealogy: my trainer Elder Stepherson (Dad), his trainer Elder
Bergquist (Grandfather) and his trainer Elder Ely (Great Grandpa)

My talk went really well, I spoke on prayer and we had two of our 
investigators there! It was awesome. We were seven for seven for
our goal of investigators coming to church, so yay! I got another
flat yesterday on my bike. It's so lame I'm having really bad luck with
my bike! I've had to buy two inner tubes, a new tire, new pedals
(because I left mine in a parking lot) and my cranks are bent now. I
don't know if Phil can do anything, I can still ride with them bent but
they rub and I don't know if its the sprocket or crank that is bent. 
Hopefully I can get all of the bad luck out of the way early on the
mission lol. We had a lot of good progress with our investigators this
week. We met two more people we're going to start teaching so it
was awesome. Sorry this is short this week. It's hard to read and
reply to everyone in only a hour. I don't know if I can write in my
emails all the stuff that happens in my week, lol.

We didn't get any of the three baptisms we were hoping for. Two of
them were out of town and the other is starting to avoid us it seems
like so that was a drag. We have others that are also getting close to
baptism, so we should have some by the end of the month. I do have
a camel pack so I'm definitely hydrated enough. 

The open house fireside sounds awesome, and we are doing that
here. We're starting to do that this summer and we're gonna have
one like every other month. Ours will most likely be for investigators,
less actives, recent converts and inactives.

I got your guys' packages, thank you so much! The protein/powder
was awesome and the letters and pictures were so sweet to get! I
love pictures so maybe I could use a little photo album to put them
in and I don't have any pictures of us as a family so I would love
some of those. So the only thing I would like to have is some cool
envelopes to mail my letters in and a would really like some stickers 
to put on those envelopes, just some like Disney or anything cool like
that would be awesome. Also stamps, I know I have a lot but I have
a lot of people writing me and I go through them quick! The gift card
idea would be great, we don't have a lot of choices here in Kuna but
Meridian isn't a far drive and we find our selves out there often and
they have everything.

JT is going to Guatemala City South Mission. He's way cool. He
reports with like 10 other guys in my ward to the MTC.

Well I love you and hope you guys are doing awesome! I will
write you more hand written letters from now on. Do you get
to go to topsail this year? I hope so!

-Elder Johnson

Here of some clips of me on the BMX track and I added
pictures from the MTC to the first MTC Post (back in June).

Elder Johnson on the BMX Track clip #1


Elder Johnson on the BMX Track clip #2


Elder Johnson on the BMX Track clip #3

Week 6: Part 3

Hey Mom,

I just sent you a letter and then saw that you just sent me another
one lol. So I think I answered most of those questions, I'm glad you
guys had a good 4th, transfers are the end of July like the 26 or 27.
Money is ok, I do have to budget but it's all good. Well I got to go,
we're playing football in Boise today and we gotta get there quick.
You guys are awesome and amazing and I love the support thank
you so much. Love you!

Week 6: Part 2

Hey Momma!

Thank you so much for the package!! It came last night and it was so
awesome! Those cd's were great, the drink mixes were exactly what
I needed. I totally forgot to bring Mitch's address this week so I will
definitely remember to do that next week, lo siento! We got to
borrow Brother Miller's steam vacuum last night so we have steam
cleaned our basement and it smells normal now and is so clean we
love it! We found out it was the couch that smelt so bad, that cat
pee'd so much in it you can't ever fix it so we put it in the far corner
and put tons of blankets on it to cover the smell. Today we're
headed to play football zone vs. zone in Boise so that will be fun.

Well I love and miss you guys a lot. Good luck running! I miss
being able to work out a lot, maybe in your next package you
could send some protein por favor?
Love and miss you!


-Elder Johnson

Week 6

Dear Family & Friends!



Hola from Kuna Idaho! HAPPY BE-LATED 4TH OF JULY!! This past week
has flown by! So we have been teaching a guy named Fabian, really
good guy. He's turned his life around 180 degrees. He was in prison
for a few years and now is on probation. He has a real nice house,
and 4 kids and a nice wife and is suppose to be on probation for 6
more years but he is doing so great that he will probably be let off
in November. That is great because he wants to be baptized but
has to get off probation first. Any ways, we've been helping him
clear all of the cheat grass (its like grass and hay mixed, but definitely
a weed) in his backyard so that he can put some hydro seed down to
get some grass. So our district (4 elders) have been doing that every
morning this past week and nearly have it done, we've put in probably
12 hours so far. he's gonna make us some stuffed mushrooms and
steaks tonight for dinner so that's gonna be awesome.

We have been extremely busy teaching our investigators and we had
a lot of progress with them this week. The best one is Brent. So
we've been teaching him for 3 months and he hasn't come to church,
but he came on Sunday! It was so awesome! That was a big miracle!

We met with Brad on Sunday and he's been the guy that just tries
and grill us on questions and has so many concerns with just the
basic doctrines of God and Jesus Christ and the Bible and Book of
Mormon, but this week, he told us that he doesn't mean to be so
stubborn and arguable, he said that he loves having us over and
that we've helped him so much, he said 5 months ago he wasn't
even believing in God and now he does and we finally got him to
pray out loud with us. So we gave him scriptures to read on
prayer and told him to pray every night with his fiance, so we
were so excited!!

On the 4th of July, its a partial proselyting day, so we were told if you
have appointments go to them but do not contact or try and make
1st contact with people. So we had a morning appointment with Sean
and we taught the 2nd lesson (plan of Salvation) and that went great.
Then we went over to Meridian and played some b-ball with our zone,
it was a blast. Then we grabbed lunch and then went to the BMX
track for a few hours. We had a nice BBQ at the McBrides house.
After that,  we went back to Sean's house and watched the fireworks,
he had the good stuff. So I had a great fourth. We finally made it out
to church in Melba, the people there are so nice and friendly I loved it.
We got called up to bare our testimonies by one of the bishops,
which I'm getting used to now. Then that night we got a call and we're
speaking in the 2nd ward this Sunday on anything we want, so that is
kind of the worst topic but the best too because we get to speak on
what the spirit feels the people need to hear.

So this week we are challenging 3 people to baptism so we've been
praying for a date and we got an answer so now we just gotta get
them to commit!

Thank you all for your letters and your support.

-Elder Johnson

Week 5

Hey momma! Well I was glad to get to read your letter. I'm so glad
Cody had a good time at EFY and went to the temple. I'm so happy
he's dedicated to serve and wants to go to BYU, he just has to go
through the struggle of high school! Haha that's so crazy he is
already driving by himself! But I know he's smart and can do it, he
is after all better than me on a dirt bike now (don't tell him I said
that) lol. The vans breaking down doesn't sound very good at all
but that's awesome Barron can do it himself and save lots of money.
Tell that Nate Harman he needs to flippin write me! Ha it would be
cool to talk to him so if you get a chance to do that it would be great.
Okay, so I got Aunt Mary's package yesterday and also my bag from
Missionary Mall. It was zone conference yesterday and it was at the
mission office in Boise. Mary out did herself, Sister Young (the lady in
charge of mail) came and told me I had a package and it was the
biggest one she had ever seen, then when I came back out I had one
from missionary mall and one from Cara on top of it. So I left zone
conference yesterday with 3 packages.

So this past week has been a lot slower than the week prior. The first
few days of the week are a lot slower and harder to do work because
we meet with most of our investigators the same day of the week and
those are usually Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So
Wednesday both of our appointments canceled on us and then we
went to go contact some of our less actives and recent converts
but every single person we tried wasn't home. So that was hard. We
got 1 new investigator this week. Well kinda, he's been ex'd and now
wants to get back into the church and the bishop wants us to teach
him the lessons, which he wasn't happy about because he told us he
knows them already. So on Sunday we went over and taught him the
first lesson and he pretty much taught us it which was great that he
actually knew the stuff because most the time people say they know
all the stuff and when we start teaching, they realize that they really
don't lol. But teaching him was awesome, the spirit was so strong
and there were some tears and he loved it. He is such a good guy,
so humble and so faithful, he's gonna be a great member again. Oh
and I needed to ask you if you knew Brother Miller. He was a GM for
Applebee's the same time you worked there. He opened up 7 stores
in Las Vegas, some in Boise, and in Nampa. His name is Troy Miller
and he said he knows your name and doesn't remember if he ever
met you though.

So Thursday our closest investigator, Melissa, canceled her appoint-
ment with us, we were so bummed because we planned so hard for
this lesson because she's had all the lessons, she knows it's true,
she bears her testimony on things every time we teach her and then
she still doesn't think she's ready for baptism. So we planned on
going over the baptismal interview questions with her so she could
realize that she is ready but we have to wait for next week now.
They also weren't at church which wasn't great because she said
they would be so we gotta work on her husband Brian, who's
less/inactive.

Then we met with Brent. Brent is in his 40's. His wife and kids are
members and just less active. He decided awhile ago to take the
lessons, so we've taught the first 2 lessons. He is so amazing, he
is so analytical and puts 110% in everything he does. So last
week we gave him a reading assignment to read the Book of
Mormon, and this week we asked him if he read and he said he
didn't read much just got to 1 Nephi 16, we were like wait, what!
We were so happy because usually we're excited if a investigator
reads one chapter. So he is a guy that will read and study so deep
and  it may take him awhile to join the church but he will join and
he will be a strong member for life so we're excited about him.

We also taught the Shiner family. We're helping them kick a
smoking habit. The mom is a member but has really been
inactive her whole life, so we're teaching them and it's going
really well, they came to church this week which was awesome.

Sean is a guy we love teaching. He's in his 30's, has been ex'd,
but wanting to get back in the church, so we're teaching him
the lessons. He is so great, I love hanging out with him. He
wants his family to join the church and his kids to grow up in
the church so it's gonna be great teaching him. He came with
his 4 year old son to church this week which was awesome!

So we had 6 of our 7 planned investigators come to church this week
so we were really happy about that. We have been trying really hard
to meet with the ward mission leaders for the wards and the bishops.
I guess Kuna had some really lazy and bad missionaries in the past
and lots of the bishops and members didn't trust missionaries, so
Stepherson has been working hard to do that and now we're trying
to get the last of them to meet with us and start giving us referrals
because we have tracted out all of the sub-divisions here. So we've
been working hard and seeing some good results.

We have 3 investigators that are close to baptism this week so we're
hoping to set 3 dates this week for the middle/end of July. The
weather has been absolutely insane, its been 90-100 everyday for 5
days and is only gonna get hotter. So biking is gonna be a big work
out this week.

We had zone conference yesterday (Monday) and it was awesome.
We had 4 or 5 zones there so there was probably 50-60 missionaries
there. It was an all day thing 9-4, but it was great. The topic was on
sacrifice and faith and how they go hand in hand. I heard a great
quote by Bruce R. McConkie- "the tests and trials of mortality are
designed to determine whether men will use their time and talents
in worldly or spiritual pursuits. The crowning task in this field is the
task of sacrifice". It was a great experience.

I got so much candy and food in Aunt Mary's package it will last me
my whole mission lol. I don't really need anything in particular, I am
always buying stamps so I guess I need those and other than that
I don't think I need anything, thanks for everything I love you and
miss you, I don't have Barron's e-mail so could you give it to me or
maybe tell him to write so I can get it? Love you.

-Elder Johnson