Getting to see the Pope, Getting to Know Members, and Getting Transfered - 09/28/2015

Hello Everyone,

I apologize for the late email. Thank you to all of those who have emailed me, it is well appreciated. This week has been a very exciting one. We have been spending quite a bit of time getting to know the members of the ward. It has been very intriguing talking to these people about their past and how they have ended up in the place they are now. We have had a wide range of people to talk to. We talked to a a single mom who had a very rough upbringing in New York City. At age 12, because of the living conditions, she ran away from home and since that day she has never seen her mother again. Her life story is quite incredible. We also were able to meet a less active member who was cut from the Miami Heat due to an accident that would require a knee replacement. This man also has a very close connection to Theral Bailey. His sister was married to him and they had a kid together.

Unfortunately they did split up and this man baptized their kid.

   

Another exciting thing that has happened this week was that the missionary's serving in the Gaithersburg 1st Ward were able to go see the Pope address congress, and lucky for me, I serve in that Ward. It was very cool. We woke up at 3:30 am to get ready. We were at the Metro at 5 we got to the lawn of the Capital at 6 and the Pope did not speak till 10. His speech to Congress was about 20 minutes and after we concluded he walked out of the chamber to the back of the Capital Building to address the thousands of people on the lawn. It was an amazing experience and it was only possible because a member in our Ward knew some people who had tickets because those tickets had been sold out.

Another awesome experience we had was we were able to go to Dr. Prince's home for dinner tonight. He and his wife are the ones who are running Madison field's. It was a great experience. They each gave us great advice for life and it was something that was worth while.

     

On Friday we had a chance of helping out with a food drive at a grocery store. It was awesome to see everyone being so generous. We were able to fill up 4 boxes of food.  It was so fun and it felt so good. That project was part of an event called Day To Serve. It is something that the Area 70 created with the state of Maryland. And so there are a lot of service projects that missionaries and members are all helping out with.

      

Saturday I found out that Elder Rowley and I are both leaving Gaithersburg so we will be transferred out on Wednesday.

  

Thanks you so much for all that you guys do. 

Have a great week!

Elder Johnson

    

Busy Investigators, Lemonade and Book of Mormon Stand, & Competitor Missionary's - 09/21/2015

Hello Everyone,

     

This past week was a slower week. We did not have many lessons and we have not found anybody that is interested. We did have a couple of lessons with our investigators that went really well. One of our investigators told us that he wants to be baptized, but now is not a good time because he is very very busy. This week we were also able to get a hold of Rutendo, who is probably our most solid investigator. The only problem with her is that she is insanely busy. She literally hops on a plane to go to another part of the country every week, so that makes it very difficult to meet with her. 

       

A fun thing that we did this week was a lemonade and a Book of Mormon stand. We did that as a district. The location we did this at was at a very busy bus stop. We handed out quite a few Copy's of the Book of Mormon, but we did not find anybody that was willing to learn more. Probably the most exciting thing that happened was when missionary's from another faith started talking to people. They started off being nice and then they just tried to shove there religion down everybody's throats, including ours haha. It was really weird. 

     

Anyway thanks for everything! 

Have a wonderful week byeee! 

Elder Johnson  

More Finding, Terrifying Missionaries, and a Bible Memorizing Investigator - 09/14/2015

Hello Everyone,

This week has been a good one. We have been focusing on building our teaching pool so once again we have been doing a ton of finding and this week went much better then the previous couple of weeks. We were able to add a few people that showed a little interest. We will be focusing on continuing adding people to our teaching pool along with trying to get a hold of these people and start teaching them the lessons.

    

There were a few funny things that had happened the past week. One of the events took place while we were knocking doors towards the end of the night. It was probably around 8:30 so it was the last house of the night. We knocked on the door and we waited. We saw a lady peak out of curtains from the upstairs windows. We keep on waiting and eventually we heard her walking towards to door. When she opened the door at first she could only see one of us, but when she opened the door all the way and saw both of us she just flipped out and started yelling out of pure terror as she saw two white kids in white shirts and ties at her door. She shut the door pretty fast on us haha.

   

Another funny thing that happened occurred while I was on an exchange with the Zone leaders. We were knocking doors and this man opens the door. He looked at us with a very confused face. We proceeded to tell him that we are missionaries from the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He then begins to start asking us all kinds of questions about what bible we use. He told us that he also reads from the King James version. He then asks us to take our bibles and turn to John chapter 3. He tells us that I doubt that anybody in your church can do this. Then he starts quoting the chapter word for word. I thought he would stop after a few verses but, no he goes through the entire chapter only mixing up a couple of words. then he asks us a few more questions about doctrine and what we believe. He asked about the trinity, we talked about prophets, and other scriptures. The only thing we had a different view on was the Sabbath day. He believes it to be Saturday which makes sense. After having about an hour long discussion he seemed to like us a lot. He was giving us advice how to bible bash with Jehovah Witnesses. It was pretty funny. He was certainly a character. We will be studying up on our bibles and hopefully we will see him this week.

Thank you everyone! Have a great week.

Elder Johnson       

Ward Youth Party, Madison Fields, and Finding Efforts - 09/08/2015

Hello everyone! 

I hope you are all had fantastic Labor Day weekend. Everything is pretty normal here. The only thing different about today is that all the places we can use the computers are closed, the place where we going shopping is closed, and all the roads that we take to get to our apartment are closed because of a Labor Day Festival haha.

This week has went pretty well. We have had solid lessons with our investigators. They are starting to progress which is awesome! We were able to go a ward youth party which was also great! We got to talk to them and get to know them better. We also were able to work on the farm this week! It was great! The name of the farm is Madison Fields. It's this really cool place that helps with special needs adults. They have a really cool video about it on YouTube I encourage all of you to take a look at it.

Other than that, we have been doing lots and lots of finding. We have been knocking on people's doors, talking to them in the streets, just trying to find someone that will listen, and are having very little success. Tonight was actually one of our better days we found two people that are interested in learning more and with one of them, we set up an appointment for later this week.

      

That was pretty much our week. Sorry for the boring email. I'll be sure to take notes of the exciting and funny things that happen this week. Thanks for everything guys, have a great week! 

Love you all,

Elder Johnson

Tracting and Stree Contacting, Jesus the Christ, and General Conference Preparation - 08/31/2015

Hello Everyone!

I hope everyone is having a great day today. Thank all of you for your support, I appreciate every single bit of it. This past week has been a good one. Elder Rowley and I have been working hard trying to find new people to teach. We are going about this by tracting and street contacting. So far we have not had too much success, but I know if we continue to do our part, we will be blessed with the opportunity to bless someone's life. Other than that, nothing too exciting has happened as of late.

Even when we are not having much success, I am still learning lessons that I will be able to apply to the rest of my life. I have been enjoying the time that is set apart for us to study the scriptures and other texts. Lately I have been reading Jesus the Christ which is an incredible book. As I have been going through it I can feel my relationship with my Savior increase. I would recommend that book to anyone. I have also had to opportunity to go through the Book of Mormon for the second time on my mission. The more I read it, the more I can feel my testimony increase. Everytime we have General Conference, there are always a few talks on the subject of the basic things we can do to stay on the strait and narrow path, like taking time out of each day to read the scriptures and pray and each Sunday going to church and keeping the Sabbath day holy. I know that these simple things give us strength to overcome temptation on a regular basis. I know these things help keep an eternal perspective which is so vital in our busy lives. 

Thank you everyone once again for the support. I hope everyone has a wonderful week. Keep up the hard work! 

Love Elder Johnson              

New Investigators and Zone Conference with Elder Perkins - 08/24/2015

Hello Everyone,

Sorry for not sending an email yesterday. The mission switched our Pday for the week, I will get to that later. This week has been pretty great. We had transfers on Wednesday, which is really weird because it seems like it just happened. It was great to see everyone again.

        

We also have been able to teach a few investigators this week. They are some very interesting people. One of our investigators, her name is Michelle Commock. We tried teaching her the fist lesson but it did not go so well. She kept asking all of these different, questions so it was really hard to stay on track with the lesson. Overall it went all right. I do not know if we will be able to continue teaching her. She said she does not want to meet with us on a consistent basis because she feels satisfied with the church that she is going to. We will need to have a powerful lesson with her so that she can feel the Spirit more strongly.

      

Another man we taught this week is strait from India. His name is Moses. He has lived in the United States for about a year now so he has a very thick accent. He has been in contact with missionaries for a while, but we have recently received him as a referral so we decided to give him another shot. We went over there and we had in mind that we were going to teach the first lesson to him. As we did it was going pretty well, but it almost went strait to the Book of Mormon, which is great. We played  Elder Holland's testimony of the Book of Mormon. It was very powerful and the Spirit was so strong. After that we bore our testimony's on the Book of Mormon and the Spirit came even more. I am not sure how much he understood, but he told us that he felt good, so we know that he was feeling the Spirit as well. We committed him to read the Book of Mormon and he said he would.

         

The reason why the mission postponed our Pday was because Elder Perkins of the Seventy was coming to give us training and the only day he could come was on Monday. So yesterday we had a Zone Conference and it was great! Elder Perkins talked about Preach My Gospel and how we can use it better. He also talked about the importance of the first lesson we teach with investigators. It was a really awesome experience. A couple weeks before this meeting the leadership in our mission told us that we needed to prepare a 3-5 minute talk on our purpose as a missionary and also prepare a 10 minute lesson on the first lesson in Preach My Gospel which is the Restoration. So during the meeting they had random Elders and Sisters coming up and giving the talks that they prepared. At the end of the meeting, Elder Perkins called up random companionships to teach the restoration to a senior couple, acting as investigators, in front of everyone. I am so glad we did not get called on haha. But we all did learn a lot from those role plays.

     

That is a little about my week. It was pretty good. Thank you so much for all of your emails and I hope that you all have a great rest of the week.

Muslim Investigators, Porch Lessons, Capital Tour, Union Station and Flash Bang Sauce - 08/17/2015

Hello Everyone!

I apologize for the late email. It has been a pretty crazy day, but I will get to that later. This week has been quite nice. We have seen some awesome things happen. Probably a highlight from early on in the week was teaching a Muslim couple. It was quite interesting. They were very friendly and very open to listing to us. We tracted into them, we started having a conversation and about 45 minutes later we had a point in every lesson. We went through most of the plan of salvation. We went all the way through the gospel of Jesus Christ. At the end of the lesson, we gave them a Book of Mormon and they said they would read it. The cool part of this experience was that during the whole discussion we were all able to share what we believed in a very non confrontational way. We all agreed that we are children of God. Because of that foundational doctrine everyone should treat each other with respect.

Another cool thing that happened was that we were able to go with the assistants on an exchange. It was pretty awesome! We spent pretty much the whole afternoon tracting. At the end of the day we had taught 4 lessons to people on their porches! It was great!

     

On Sunday we had the Why I Believe fire side. It was great to feel the spirit so strong as we listened to bear their testimony's on why they believe. The guest speaker was Jason Hinds. He ran track for BYU. He has trained with some of the fastest people on earth including Usain Bolt. He also has a Mormon message about him and his mission in NYC. His story was very interesting.

      

Today has been crazy!! We decided to go down to the city. We started off going to the Capital Building and went on the general tour. That was pretty cool but we wanted to see more of it so we got in line for a specialty tour. We got our tickets then we decided to go to Union Station for lunch because we had an hour and a half before our tour was going to start. While at Union Station we were looking through the shops and we see this hot sauce shop and since I like spicy food I was drawn to it. They had hundreds of different sauces.  At the very front of the store was a sign that allowed you to try a sample of the hottest sauce they had. This stuff was called Flash Bang. It was made out of scotch bonnet peppers (third hottest pepper in the world) and scorpion pepper (second hottest pepper in the world). So of course being the silly missionary's we are, we all had a sample. It was the worst decision of the day by far haha. As soon as we tried it, it was instant pain. It burned everything form your throat to your tongue. My eyes began to sweat, my face was dripping, and so we tried running through the train station trying to find a place to drink water. We finally found a drinking fountain but of course, it's the only drinking fountain in all the place that does not work. So we ran to the bathroom and started drinking the water from the sink. It helped a little bit but by this time I had realized that I had not had any breakfast and so by stomach started burn super bad. It got to the point where I thought I was going to throw up. Luckily We were sitting right next to the shop where they have the huge cupcakes and luckily they had milk so one of the elders we were with bought me some and that made me feel like almost instantly better.  Another Elder had the same problem as me so I got him some milk and he felt much better after that. After all that happened we got to the capital building just in time for our tour of Statuary Hall. It was really cool. We got a picture with Brigham Young.

Later on we had our zone activity. We went to the home of Brother Dr. Prince for a dinner. It was so cool. This man is probably a billionaire. He created a vaccination that every single child needs to have so he has lots of money. I have never seen so much money in one place. Anyway enough with that. We went had dinner and it was really really good. After dinner we had a little fire side in his basement. He did a very good job. He talked about how we need to own our religion and it was very well said. After that we went to his personal library. He says it is probably the largest Church library out side the state of Utah and I would have to agree with him on that one, it was incredible.

 I am so sorry for this late email. I hope all of you have a great week! 

Byeee