4.12.2015

These are all the missionaries leaving the area. (Except for the Elder taking the picture)

And cherry blossoms from P-day adventures.

Transfers, Solid Investigators, and "You Should Teach Us Not To Cuss" - 04/13/2015

Hey everyone! How has all of your week been? As for us missionaries in the Anacostia Ward, it has been very crazy and hectic. This week is transfers and last Saturday we found out if we are leaving our not. Well, we have 3 leaving out of the 7 that are here, so we knew that there were going to be big changes in the Ward, but we had no idea it was going to be this big. When we got the call out we found out that every single missionary in the Anacostia Ward is getting transferred out. I have no idea why this is happening, things are going very well for the Ward. We have a total of two baptismal dates and increasing amount of new and potential investigators, but I guess President wants to change something up. He has been pretty frustrating lately, I'll just leave it at that. 

Anyway this week has been pretty sweet for Elder Paul and I. Towards the beginning of the week we taught our investigator, Nica. She has been progressing a lot! We taught her the plan of salvation and after the lesion she was talking about how she wants to be sealed with her new husband forever in the temple. We were very excited to hear this from her. 

   

We were also able to pick up a new investigator this week. She was an investigator before and then she was dropped so we are hoping that she will be ready this time. Later in the week Elder Paul and I were able to go and check on tons of less actives and former investigators. We found out that most of them don't even live there anymore. During checking on these people we had a police car pull up to us and told us  " you know this is a very dangerous area right?" We replied "yep, we sure do" and then he told us "okay well stay safe." Haha it was funny. Another funny quote, I think this was from the same day, was this kid who was about 5 that was outside an apartment complex where a former investigator lived.  He asked us if we were the police and we told him no, we are church people. Then he told us "oh you, should teach us how to not cuss" I asked him, "oh do you cuss a lot?"  The little kid said "we cuss a lot!" Haha really funny.

On Sunday during announcements, our Ward Mission Leader told the body of the priesthood that all the missionaries were leaving and they all were like what the? Haha it's going to be a crazy transfer. 

Thanks for the emails! Love you guys.

- Elder Johnson 

Easter, General Conference, Jesus the Christ, and a Temple Trip with Althea - 04/06/2015

Hey everyone! Happy General Conference and Easter weekend! I hope all of you were able to listen with a payer in your heart and a question in your mind that you may have received revelation that you needed for your life. My personal experience was great. I felt uplifted and guided. I had questions and all of those were answered in multiple talks. The power of personal revelation is real and I have a strong testimony of that. 

   

On another note, these past couple of weeks, I have been able to study the life of Jesus Christ through the book Jesus the Christ. I have never felt closer to my Savior while reading and pondering this book. It is truly scripture written by an apostle of the Lord. I recommend this book to everyone. I am not even half way through, but I have already learned so much, about His Atonement, His love for his family, and the desire to do his father's will. I have been pondering these things almost constantly the entire week leading up to Easter.

This week has been very memorable because we were able to the temple with a member of our ward, watch general conference, and celebrate and remember the resurrection of our Savior with the Anacostia ward. Althea has been trying to get to the temple for several months now, but this week Elder Paul and I were able to join her as she went through for her first time. I will remember this trip forever. The spirit was so strong and the temple was so peaceful because of the lack of missionaries there. Although it is great to see all the missionaries in the celestial room, it can be quite distracting and disrupt your efforts on trying to listen to that still small voice. Althea was well aware of the spirit all throughout the temple . She told us several times "this is what heaven must feel like" It was a great experience.

General Conference was a much needed break for me. We watched all sessions, excluding one, at the Anacostia chapel. I found this conference to be very powerful, and spiritually up lifting. I really enjoyed Elder Hollands talk. (just like the other 15 million members) He is a very powerful teacher. I also really enjoyed President Uchtdorf talk in priesthood session. It answered a lot of the questions I had going into conference.

     

Sunday we were able to celebrate the resurrection of Christ with the ward members. Before the 1st session we went to our ward mission leaders house and had an awesome breakfast with them. Then we watched conference as we were curled around our bellies. Once that session concluded we made our way to the chapel where our ward was hosting a pot luck. There was lots of food from all of the ward leaders, We once again stuffed our selves and watched the concluding session of General Conference . It was a great Easter.

   

I enjoyed this week very much. I hope that all of you had the chance to remember and reflect our Saviors sacrifice and love for all of us. As we ponder the Saviors atonement we can all see how loving our Heavenly Father is to set up a plan that we may return to him. He gave up his only begotten son for us. And Jesus Christ loved his father so much that he was willing to do what ever was asked of him. Let us all strive for that same love Christ had for his father and do the will of our Heavenly Father. I know if we try our best to do this we will be blessed. 

Thanks for everything. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ amen.

Baptismal Invitation Accepted, Temple Date, Hopped up Easter Bunnies, and Zone Conference - 03-30-2015

Hey everyone! It's that time of the week again. Thanks for everyone and all you do. This week has been great! Probably one the of the better weeks of my mission because Elder Paul and I had a full schedule with many appointments that were with non members. Most of those appointments did fall through, but it is still was an improvement.

We started out the week on p-day playing soccer on the mall. It was a lot of fun, Elder Paul brought his GoPro so we got some cool footage of that. The National Mall is a really cool place to do that kind of stuff and I think that we are planning on doing something similar today.

Towards the beginning of the week we also were blessed to teach our investigator that we were able to pick up last week. We taught her the first lesson which is the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was a very spiritual lesson. At the end we gave her the baptismal invitation and she accepted. If everything goes according we will help prepare her and she will be baptized on April 26th.

     

We had a lesson with a resent convert and we talked all about the temple because she is going to the temple on Tuesday and she is very excited. She is the member that is going through some health problems. She has been battling cancer for quite some time now. I feel that going to the temple will help her immensely because the temple gives us power. She is going to the temple to receive her endowment and Elder Paul and I are able to go to support her this coming Tuesday.

     

The ward this week had an Easter party for the primary and the missionary's were there to help them out. I have never seen kids with so much energy, and that was before the sugar. After the sugar it was nightmare. They were bouncing off the walls like little Easter bunnies, it was pretty funny.

This week was also our zone conference were we learned all about how to use our iPads better and also how to use our key indicators which was really helpful. The conference was done really well and it was very beneficial for everyone there.

      

Something less important but pretty awesome, I bought a GoPro so I will be able to send footage of our p-day activities and videos of us biking around our area. I'm really excited about it. It should be great.

     

Some other updates I got my permanent crown on so I do not have to go back to the dentist until September for a check up that they want to do. The weather is heating up here, it reached 80 degrees this week. And also the transfer is half way over.

Thanks for the emails from everyone I really do enjoy reading them and hearing how everything is going. Tell next week this is Elder Johnson singing out.

Planning, Brother Mason's Dishes, Following the Spirit - 03/23/2015

Hello everyone! I hope your past week was productive and enjoyable.

The week was by busy for us it was really fun but very tiring.

Tuesday: 

We spent pretty much the whole day day calling people and setting up appointments. We were able to set up pretty much our whole schedule for the week in that one day.

Wednesday:

We had three lessons on Wednesday. One was with an active member. Another was a recent convert that that was in elder Paul's last ward. He wanted to take us out for lunch so we went to Capitol Hill. It was really fun. Then we had and another lesson with with a less active in our ward. We are trying to get him back to church but so far we have had very little success, but I'm am sure that he will come around.

Thursday: 

We started out the day with our interviews the the mission President. I always love those interviews because you actually get to talk one on one with the mission president and that does not happen very often. After interviews our whole district went out for lunch and then we went home. When we got home, Elder Paul had to grab some paperwork for stake coordination. And because he the district leader we had to go the the church and fill it out for our ward. After he finished we went out and just talked to people. We met some really cool people. Nobody was to interested, but it was still an enjoyable time. After about an hour of that, we had an appointment with the Harrison family.

The Harrison family is an active/less active family. We have been focusing on getting the daughter to come to church and she has been coming for a while now. It's been really great to see her change over the past 6 months I have been here. When we got there we found out that Bro. Harrison's son and his non member fiance moved into his house. So we were able to teach all of them. Elder Paul and I didn't really have anything planned so we just went off of the spirit and it turned out to be a very good lesson. The spirit was very strong. For the lesson we just went around the table and shared how the gospel has blessed each of our lives and even Ronika, the non member, shared something. We will be teaching her more often.

Friday: 

We started by going to a new member who is getting ready for the temple, but she wasn't there. So we biked to the church so Elder Paul could finish the paperwork for the stake. We biked back home so we could get on the metro to go down town for a meal with one of our members. Friday was extremely rainy and pretty cold so it was kind of a crazy bike ride especially when it started to hail. Anyway we went to this burger joint call Bobby's Burger Palace. After that we went home but it took forever. We took the bus and the main road we had to get on was all blocked of because of an incident that occurred on another bus. So the bus had to take back streets get to our bus stop.

We finally got home just in time for another member meal with all the missionary's. We had spaghetti and it was a lot less sweet then the one we had last week. When we were finished there we headed to one of the missionary's favorite lessons with Brother Mason. He is an active member and he has a very special spirit about him. This week I was able to wash dishes with him which was totally random Hahaha.

Saturday: 

We did tons of walking because Elder Paul's bike has no brakes. So we walked up the the church because we had a lesson up there, but it canceled. Then we walked back and we met this awesome guy. His name is Alee. We talked to him for a few minutes he and he said that we could come back. He seemed very interested about what we do as missionaries and why we are always out in the black neighborhoods. He was very nice. We had an appointment with a potential investigator. We got to his house and he was there. We tried to teach the 1st lesson but we found out the he is legit crazy. We were there for probably an hour and we were only able to hit the first two points because he would not stop talking about random stuff that had nothing to do with what we were talking about. I'm pretty sure we are not going to go back there any time soon. Our next appointment was with our investigator, John. We were able to drop off the large print Book of Mormon so he can read it. While we were there he asked us to drive all the way up to North West, which is the opposite side of do where we are, to go and pick up a TV for him because he doesn't have a car. We said we couldn't but he still wants us to try and find a way to do that and I'm not sure how that's going to go. After we were finished with him we didn't have anything planed other then finding so I felt like we should go visit this lady in the ward that is having a hard time. We get there right as she pulled up and we helped her carry groceries in for her. We sat down and talked for a good our. Turns out she really needed a boost and she said it was perfect timing for us to stop by. It's amazing how the spirit works.

Sunday: 

We started out by going to church. We get there and we see that Emanuel, a guy who we have been trying to work with, showed up with his whole family. It was great to see them. We were able to talk to them and it sounds like we will be able to meet this week. After church Elder Paul had to play the piano for the ward choir for an our so we didn't leave church till dinner time. After dinner we walked around and checked on some potentials. One of them we caught him right when he was leaving and said we can come by next week. The other Potential was not home. And that was our Sunday and that was our week.

Thanks for the emails everyone. Sorry this email wasn't to good. I had to rush through it. Have a great week!

Moving Service Project, Capital Hill Exchange, Family History Temple Trip, Sweet Spaghetti, and Senator Orin Hatch - 03/16/2015

Hey everyone! This is Elder Johnson with my weekly update with life on the mission. This week has been great for lots of reason. I'll just start out by saying how grateful I am for being apart of this gospel and how much joy it brings to people all around the world.

     

Tuesday was a very rainy day. We had lots of appointments cancel on us. We also helped people get out of the mud. We had a member meal. After that Elder Paul and I had a lesson with a person at the church because she lives in a shelter. So we waited at the church for an hour and a half for this lady and she never came so we went inside and found family names to take to the temple on Friday.

Wednesday we had a packed day. We had to go help out a member with moving a bunch of things from one storage container to another and it was packed full. Elder Paul and I had to leave early for our other appointments. We went with the senior couple in our ward to a new convert and his family. We had a very good lesson about going to the temple and getting sealed so they are very excited about that. That appointment was very long because they like to talk a lot and they also made us lunch which was very nice of them. After that we had another appointment that we went to. She is an active member who we visit every week. After that we headed home and got ready for our meeting with our investigator John. We stopped in just for a couple of minutes because he was really sleepy. So we just followed up on his reading that we had committed him to, but he still hasn't read anything. So we will have to check with him this week and see how he is doing. After we met with him we had dinner and then it was time for our weekly ward meetings.

       

Thursday we started the day with our district meeting. It was a good meeting and it is always fun to see the other missionaries. After district meeting we went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch as we always do, then I went on exchange to Capital Hill. I was able to exchange with my MTC companion. It was a lot of fun! It helped give me lots of motivation to go and talk to people.

Friday we went to the temple for our family history and I was able to bring 5 family names and I got to do the baptisms, confirmations, and the initiatory's for them. Only problem I had was getting the initiatory's done because there were lots of missionaries and not to many workers there so I wasn't able to get all of them done. We were in the temple from 9 to about 1 and I sat in one of the rooms for 2 hours. haha it was a great visit, I liked it a lot. I was actually able to do the baptizing and the confirmations for some people, it was great. After the temple we headed home and I had to pack up all my clothes and stuff at the Capital Hill apartment. Then we had to go to a bike shop for some missionary that was having bike problems.  Once we got home it was time for dinner. Elder Paul and I went to Melvin's. It was really fun, he fed us sweet spaghetti. We asked him how he made it and he told us all he did was just add a touch of sugar, not very much at all. Only about a half of a cup. Elder Paul and I about busted out laughing it was so funny. After dinner we went with the south elder's to a member. His name is brother Mason. He is really funny. I was able to play checkers with him and he never plays with any of the missionaries so I was pretty lucky. 

    

Saturday we spent the whole day checking on less actives/ former investigators and we really didn't get anywhere, but we did find an actual nice part of Anacostia. there is a sweet park by the river. So just for future reference, Anacostia is in South East Washington DC. The only thing that separates Anacostia form Capital Hill is a river. So the park we found is right on the edge of our area. All day Saturday we were talking to almost everyone we saw and we actually came out of that day with 3 new people that we are going to try to teach, so it was a pretty great day.

    

Sunday we went to church and that is always good. After church we had an event up at the visitor center. We were able to listen to Senator Orin Hatch speak. He was great. He threw it down in a nice way about the Book of Mormon being true and reality that God is real.

    

Today we went with some other Elders and played hockey and we were there for most of the day. Then we went to a member meal on base. It was a good day.

     

Thanks for all the emails everyone. Sorry that this one is soo late. I didn't have to much time to type this out. Thank for all the support and all you guys do for me. 

Have a great week! 

PDAYY