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