Turkey Bowl at the National Mall and Tracting for Dayzzz - 11/30/2015

Hello Everyone,

      

This week has been awesome! It was defenently one to remember. Monday, Elders had a Turkey bowl at the Washington mall. It was really fun! The team I ended up on was one of the best teams so we got to play for a long time. Along with playing football I got to see my trainer, Jimmy Loveless! He was visiting the mission and he stopped in and played some football! It was really good to see him...later that night we had a dinner appointment with a member and he took us to Cafe Rio! It was really good as always.

     

Tuesday we had our weekly meetings as always. We spent pretty much the rest of the day contacting people at the local metro stop. We met some pretty awesome people. One of them his name is D. He is from the South East. He was wearing a pretty beat up jacket with all the NBA team's logos on it. I asked him about it and he told me that bought it off a drunk guy. Anyway he seemed to like the message we shared so we got his contact information and sent it down to the elders in SE DC.

     

Wednesday we went tracting. We actually taught a few lessons! One of them was a Catholic Deacon. He is a really cool guy, he let us in and we had a great discussion. At the end of the lesson he told us that he let us into his home because he felt the Holy Ghost prompt him. We are hoping to get in contact with him this week so we can meet up with him again.

      

Thursday was Tthanksgiving! We started playing football with the ward. Then we got cleaned up and headed to member's home who invited us over. He were pretty much with this member and the family all day. It was a lot of fun, the food was really good and the people were awesome! After we had finished up with them he headed to another dinner with the Lacsamana's, who live up the street in the Gaithersburg Ward! It was great being able to see them. 

       

Friday we once again spent our day finding. We started off with tracting. We were having very little success. We finally knocked into a Hispanic lady who was willing to talk a little bit. It started off by her just talking about the bible and how she loves it so much. We were able to say a few things here and there, but she was doing the majority of the talking. Finally after probably 20 minuets she lets us in and let's us do some of the talking. After about 5 minutes we realize that her comprehension of English is not very high so we decided to play the short version of the restoration video in Spanish. During that video the spirit was so strong. She loved the video and it answered some questions that she had about our church. Apparently a few years ago she talked to some sister missionaries. At the end of there lesson one of the missionaries prayed in the name of Joseph Smith (oh bless her soul) so that turned her off from our church ever since. We were able to explain to her that we don't pray In the name of Joseph Smith.  She is really cool! We passed her off to the Spanish missionaries, so hopefully she will be able to progress in the gospel.

      

Saturday we went tracting... Yay!🎉 we spent a lot of time finding this week. We did not see to much success except for a lady that Elder Bentley contacted. She said she would go to church, so that's pretty cool.

     

Sunday was great! We had a random family show up. They were a part member family who wants to join an English Ward (they were attending the French branch) the only member was the mother. The father and two daughters were non members. After church the Dad comes up to us and asks us how they can become a member 😎 (best question ever!) we are going to set up an appointment with him this week and hopefully put him on date! The rest of Sunday was non stop running. We headed strait to our lunch appointment, after that we went contacting for a while then we had dinner and then we went on exchanges with one of the members of the Ward to help him out with his home teaching! It was an excellent day! 

       

Thanks for all the support! I hope you all had an awesome Thanksgiving! Have an awesome week!

🇺🇸ElderJohnson🇺🇸

New Investigators, Helping on the Farm, New After-Dark Rules - 11/24/2015

Hello Everyone!

This week had been a pretty good one. Monday was a pretty chill day. We just relaxed, went shopping and hung out with our roommates.  After Pday was over we headed over to a family for FHE. It was...different. So the mother of the family is Ex-Baptist so she is really into "PRAISE JESUS" kinda stuff so she was wanting my companion to play the piano while she sang some Baptist hymns for the first 15 minutes. While they were doing this I was just zoned out, staring at these fish in their fish tank attacking each other. It was a pretty interesting meeting. When we got to the lesson part, it went really well. We talked about some of the Commandments because one of the sons just got baptized and he needs to get the new member lessons.

Tuesday was our day of meetings, so that took up a good chunk of our day. Then we visited with one of the members. His name Gregory, he is from Russia and he has recently moved to the United States. He met the missionary's just a couple of years ago. He is a very funny guy.

After that it was about dinner time.  After dinner, we went to go help the youth at a youth activity.

Wednesday we went tracting for a while. We ended up finding two new investigators out of it. One of them is Ebert. Ebert loves the bible and he loves Christ. When we knocked on his door we gave the usual introduction and he was very kind but he wasn't interested. Then he went on some random shpeel about how he worked for the USPS for 40 years and he ended inviting us in to show off an award. He then proceeded to tell us all about the bible. Anyway about an hour and a half later we finally got a few minutes where we could talk. We found out that he had a Book of Mormon and he read it back when he was 19. He still had the Book of Mormon. So we showed him a few verses in the Book of Mormon and his mined was blown. He was very interested about learning more. Only problem is that he says he is very busy so we set up an appointment to meet with him in January. We will probably drop in on him before then so he doesn't forget about us. We also tracted into a guy named Mike who said we could come back Friday so we were pretty pumped about that.  And for the rest of that day we had appointments with members.

Thursday we went and helped out with the Madison field farm. They have purchased a massive house where they are going to board autistic adults.  So we helped move things all around the house. It was very tiring. After we had finished with that it was about dinner time so we changed and showered and so we headed over to some members. After dinner we went home and started calling people trying to set up appointments because that was one of the only things we could do. Our mission has created some new rules for the dark hours of the day because of all the crazy things that are happening in the world. So at night we pretty much have to be with a member at all times or be in our apartments doing some planning.

Friday we also spent a lot of time with members. We helped this one lady in our ward make T shirts. It was pretty funny. Elder Bentley and I made some comp shirts.  They are pretty funny. We also were able to meet with Mike. Mike is a super cool guy! He is from Panama and he has only been living in the area for a couple of months. He is Christian, but has very little knowledge of the bible. We taught him the first lesson and it was going alright. You could tell that he was having a hard time grasping the first couple a points. So we switched our teaching style. We tried to be very visual giving him lots of object lessons and using videos as well. And that started to work much better. As soon as we got to the Joseph smith story he was hooked. He wanted to learn more. He wanted to read the Book of Mormon and he wanted us to come back. We are very excited for him and being able to begin work with him

      

Saturday we spent time finding and making a new area map. And going to our wards coordination meeting.

Sunday was a topical Sunday. We were not able to get anyone to church. We should be able to get at least one next week.

Thank you so much for all the support you give! Have an awesome week!

🦃Happy Thanksgiving 🦃

🇺🇸🦃ElderJohnson🦃🇺🇸

Derwood Ward, Elder Bentley, and Elder's Paul and Elliot Heading Home - 11/16/2015

Hello Everyone!

     

This week has been a week full of surprises. As many of you know, we'll maybe not, it was transfers this week. I am now serving in the Derwood Ward which is right next to Gaithersburg, so I am back up near the area I served for 6 months in. It is going to be a good transfer, but it is going to be a hard one. Both my companion and I are new to the area so we are often times finding ourselves lost and when we got to our area, there was almost nobody to work with, so we are pretty much starting from scratch. This will be the third time I have done this on my mission. I am pretty excited. It is going to be a fun challenge. And I know that the Lord will help guide us to where we need to go and who we need to talk to.

           

My companion, Elder Bentley is really funny, awesome guy. He has only been out for three months and so I am his second companion. He is from Kaysville Utah, and he went to Davis high school. He is very high energy and he is very entertaining so it is going to be s fun transfer

Elder Bentley:

The Derwood Ward is pretty awesome, they really like the missionary's so they were really excited to have their own missionary's, because for a while they were sharing missionary's with the Chinese branch, which means they were not able to spend too much time in the area.We have met a few people this past week and they all seem very nice. They all love to feed the missionary's and that helps us being able to meet the members of the ward. We have also been dropping by randomly and introducing ourselves. Surprisingly, a lot of the members just stop what they were doing a let us in then we have a short lesson with them.

     

Probably the hardest part of the week was transfers. Some of my favorite companions went home, Elder Paul and Elder Elliot. They were both my companions in Anacostia. They are both awesome guys and I will hopefully be able to meet up with them again after the mission.

Elder Paul

Elder Elliot

    

Thank you all for the support that you give me have an awesome week!

Elder Johnson

Aboretum, Temple Trip, Transfer Call Out, and the Ward Primary Program - 11/09/2015

Hello Everyone,

This has been a very interesting week:

Monday- We went to Arboretum which is pretty much a museum about trees. It was really cool.  It was like a forest inside and surprisingly, there was a lot of. It was really fun. After that we went shopping at the new Walmart. It is a really nice for a Walmart.

Tuesday- We had a bunch of our meetings as usual. It  literally took up most of our day. After that we were going to meet with our investigator, Charles, who is still doing really good with everything.

This week one his friends told him to stop meeting with us because we are all fallen angels. I'm not quite sure what he means by that, but Charles did not listen to him because "he didn't have any proof." So everything is still good with him.

Wednesday- We went to the temple with the mission. Once a transfer we get to go do an endowment session with everyone. It was spiritually awesome! The temple was under construction for a few months so we have not been able to visit for the past 2 transfers. It was very nice to be able to go. After the temple we had a few appointments with different members. Then we had our weekly dinner at the church building.

Thursday- We had a few lessons set up with our investigators but all but one fell through, so we spent most of the day just checking up on people but we had little success.

Friday- We went to a few lessons that we had set up with members. It was really good. I really love the members. They have a special spirit about them.

Saturday- We once again had lots of appointments fall through. We were, however, able to meet with one of our investigators. She is not all the way there yet. She has a good spirit about her. Saturday was also the transfer call out. I found out that I am leaving! I am pretty bummed. I really like this area. I also found out that my son is training so I am becoming a grandpa. So that is pretty awesome!

Sunday- We went to church with Charles. We took the bus. Unfortunately I forgot my wallet so I had to borrow money from elders. Church was great though. It was the primary program so as always it's very entertaining. Every once in a while some old ladies will yell "hallelujah!" Ha ha, it was very entertaining.

Thank you so much for your love and support. Love you all

Blessing Day, Halloween Parties, Baptisms For The Dead, and Singing Testimony, Busy Week - 11/02/2015

What is up Everyone?,

       

Another week in the books and let me say it has been a pretty fun/challenging week. First off on Monday we spent most of the day at the stake center for our zone activity. It was really fun. They had lots of different games and relay races, it was very fun. Tuesday we went to a zone district meeting and this was actually one of the best meetings we've had in a long time.  In the evening we had FHE it was taught by one of the senior missionaries who's a little crazy. The purpose of FHE is to help less actives,new converts, and investigators get a better grasp on the Gospel teachings and also to help build relationships with one another. Unfortunately Elder McKinley took it to him when he brought up the topic of Heavenly Mother.  He proceeded to read off the article but the church posted the gospel topics section. It was quite uncomfortable for us missionaries because either McKinley is not the best teacher he sometimes is very forceful and makes it uncomfortable.  So we felt bad for all the missionaries who brought investigators. Fortunately our investigator was not able to come, thank goodness because he is still new to the gospel and I think throwing The fact that we have a Heavenly Mother into his head would be kind of confusing him because he was raised Catholic and he is still trying to adapt to the doctrines of our gospel. He has been teaching FHE for the past few weeks because the people who normally teach it are out of town. Fortunately he has gone home now to spend Christmas with his family.

      

Wednesday was a pretty crazy day. We decided to take our bikes out and unfortunately it was very rainy. We started out going and visiting our investigator Charles, who is at the very top of our area.

We had a great lesson with him. His understanding is coming along smoothly and he is very excited to become a member. His baptismal date is still set for November 29. After we finished up with him we had to go down back to the bottom of our area to visit a member by the name of Brother Bachelor. Brother Bachelor is a very funny man. He loves the missionaries very much. This was the first time that we were able to meet with him and it was a very enjoyable experience. It was really great to be able to sit down and read from the book of Mormon together it was a very spiritual. After we were done we biked up to the top of our area and visited with a less active member. She is very cool very nice. It was great to get to know her. After we had finished of the lesson with her we headed over to the church for our weekly meal that the ward feeds us. This week a man by the name of Brother Harding fed us. He goes all goes all out when he feeds the missionaries. He had the color theme of orange for Halloween so everything was orange like the drinks, and he made orange pasta.  It was pumpkin flavored. He even gave us party favors. They were orange ties, it was pretty sweet!! Brother Harding put the pictures that he took of us on Facebook unfortunately we do not have Facebook so I have not been able to get them. Oops just kidding someone sent them to me. After dinner we travel down to the bottom area once again to go visit Sister Green who is a less active as well. Unfortunately she was not home and we were not able to get a hold of her to reschedule our appointment. Wednesday was a pretty busy day.

      

Thursday was just full of planning and setting up appointments we did have an appointment set up with an investigator, but he canceled on us.

On Friday we were able to go to the temple and do baptisms for the dead. It was sweet, the spirit was so powerful. We are so blessed to have the Washington DC Temple in our mission and have the opportunity to go to the temple at least once a transfer. Later that night we also had the chance to go to the ward Halloween party and help set up. It was a lot of fun almost everybody in the ward showed up so it was a great way to get to know some of the members.

     

Saturday was the day of priesthood blessings. We have the opportunity to participate in four blessings. We assisted in the blessings of twins and two other people from different wards. We literally spent half of the afternoon giving blessings. Then we got locked up at 5 o'clock because some crazy stuff happens on Halloween apparently. The only crazy thing we did was order Chinese carry out. We were pretty reckless #MormonMissionaries. 

Sunday we were able to get Charles to church it was great! He enjoyed church a lot and like I said before he is excited to become a member yippee. Church was great and the testimonies were awesome.  Sister Machen, an old lady in the ward who is a former Baptist, sings her testimony. The song that she sings is an old Baptist hymn. She sings it every fast and testimony meeting so all the people in the ward know the song and they all join in. I wish recording in the chapel was kosher so I could show all of you but it isn't, sorry guys.

      

That is pretty much my week thank you so much for all of those who have emailed me I really appreciate it and it makes my P Day even better. I hope all of you have a wonderful week and enjoy the nice weather wherever you are.