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

Tracting... Live

Interesting Investigators and an MLB Baseball Game - 08/10/2015

Hello Friends and Family,

This has been quite a fun week. We have been able to teach a few lessons with non members. The most interesting one was probably with a Catholic youth minister. We tracted into her a few weeks ago and we stopped by to give her a book of Mormon. We sat down and talked a little bit about what we believed in. She was not very interested. She kept getting held up on the trinity and she wouldn't even think of the possibility of being any other way.

We also taught this lady who is Hindu. It is very challenging because she does not have a Christian background and Hindus think that all religion is good and teaches the same thing. We taught her the plan of salvation because her husband passed away about 5 months ago so we thought that would be a good message for her to hear. It went pretty well. We will see if she starts to change her view on all of the teachings.

   

On Saturday we were able to go to a Baseball game! It was so much fun. It was the Nationals vs the Rockies. All the missionaries from D.C. North and D.C. South were there. the game started at 7 but go there an our early so we had time to walk around and check out the Stadium. It was very cool. It felt so weird to be doing something like that on your mission. The game ended around 9:45 and we did not get home till 1 so we were very tired at ward counsel at 7:30. That is a very brief overview of this past week.

Thanks for all you guys do! have a great week! Byeeee  

Getting To Know Ward Members, Stephen Confirmed, & New Investigators - 08/03/2015

Hello Everyone!

Thank you for your support and your emails. This past week has been pretty good. We have been able to get to know the Ward a little bit better and we are seeing blessings from that. We have been focusing a lot on getting to know people so we can find members that will fit best with our investigators so they can start to fellowship them and it is starting to work out.

      

The highlight from this week was Stephen being confirmed. It was great being able to to be a part of that circle. Elder Rowley was able to be the voice which is a great experience being so young into his mission. 

     

Another highlight happened Friday night. We were tracting a townhouse complex and on the very last house of the night we knocked on a less active lady's house who has not been to church in years. She is the only member in her family and she feels like she needs to starting coming back for her kids sake. We have an appointment with her tonight so hopefully everything will go well there and we will be able to start teaching the family and also get her coming back to church. We are very excited for this opportunity.

     

Another exciting thing that happened this week was we got this call from a lady who used to have a member live with her. She wanted us to change some light bulbs in her house so we went over and got that taken care of. We started making small talk and we found out that her husband died about 5 months ago and she is still having a hard time with it. Well, we told her that we have a special message about life after death. She seemed pretty interested so we have an appointment set up with her for later on in the week. It is going to be interesting because she does not have a Christian background at all. She is some form of Buddhist. We are very excited to see where it leads to.

      

Everything that happened this week just shows me how much Heavenly Father is in charge of his work. If he had no part in this then we would just be wasting our time because nobody would listen. I am very grateful to be on his side and being able to participate in his work. I know I am blessed just to be apart of this great work. Have a great week everyone! 

Love Elder Johnson