November 26, 2012

Hey mom! Thanksgiving sounds like it was really good, I actually forgot it was even Thanksgiving this week until I looked at my watch on Thursday afternoon and saw the date. I ate Mexican pizza that day if you’re wondering, ya with beans, avocados, chilis and everything like that, you know I definitely would rather have turkey! Where are you guys going to go to cut down the Christmas tree? Yes I still remember when you thought you were going to died and started crying when we went 2 years ago, that was pretty funny. Today we went and played soccer as a zone, and then ate hot dogs and had a class after. There are 24 of us in the zone in total. Transfers are tomorrow, but my companion and I are both staying here en La Perla. We’ve really been able to improve the missionary work here a lot, in August, September, and October there were 0 baptisms here, and in this month we’ve been really blessed to have been able to have 5 baptisms. I know the success isn’t in the numbers, but we’ve really been working hard to help the members of the ward a lot. This week we visited some less active members and they told us they were going to be moving to another apartment so we told them we would help them. We couldn’t find a member with car that could help us, but we found a tricycle and moved everything with that! Can you believe we fit 2 dressers and 2 mattresses on one tricycle? 2 other missionaries came and helped us and it took more than 5 hours to move everything. This is the tricycle that we used to help them move.

Yesterday we had a special conference as a stake here. Elder Alonso from the 70 came, as well as another area 70 to release the stake presidency and call another one. We wouldn’t have all been able to fit in a church, so they put a whole bunch of giant tent things in the grass behind a church and we all met there. There were probably close to a thousand people there in total. Our mission president spoke too, as well as the president of the Mexico City temple. After that we baptized 2 girls at the same church and it was really cool because our mission President Morales was there and his wife even spoke at our baptism. I’ll let you guys know more about calling you on Christmas and everything when I find out. Early tomorrow morning we’re going to the temple to accompany a family that is getting sealed. They’re actually converts from my companion from another area that he baptized a year ago and now can get sealed. Most of the missionary’s don’t ever have a chance to go with converts through the temple, so it should be really special for them, I’m really happy for my companion. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to do it with some of the converts I’ve baptized in the first year of my mission too. Thanks so much for everything, I know that because of the covenants that we have made in the temple that we are going to be an eternal family and will be able to live with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ after this life, I love you and have great week! Elder Johnson

November 19, 2012

Hola everybody! How’s everybody doing? That’s weird that Thanksgiving is this week I had really pretty much forgotten about it, Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated here. That’s way cool you’ll be having the missionaries over, I’m sure they’ll really appreciate it. So today I don’t have very much time sorry its because we went to downtown Mexico City today where all the cool stores and everything is. "Buen Fin" started on Friday and lasted until today and it’s the Mexican equivalent of Black Friday in the US so there were lots of good deals in the stores today and I bought a cool suit and like 8 ties. Well first things first; I’ve mastered boiling eggs this week so when I get home if you ever need a boiled egg just tell me. I don’t eat the yolks though just the white part so no need to worry about my cholesterol. Actually maybe you do need to worry about my cholesterol, you see a member in our ward just started his own taco stand and he gives us free tacos whenever we walk by. The taco stand leads to another story, we went to his house the other day and he asked us if we could help him move a little cart down 2 floors on son pretty scary staircases that don’t have a rail. I really wasn’t too worried until we got up onto his roof and it was a giant stainless steel taco stand. Well anyways we moved it down in the first flight of scary stairs ok, but when we got the other scary flight of stairs that was even smaller my rather chubby companion couldn’t fit to help us so it was just the brother and me carrying it. For some reason he dropped the cart and it happened to land right on my big toe. After swearing in my head in Spanish we finished moving it down really fast. It hurt pretty badly at first and they told me to take my shoe off and a grandma rubbed some magic cream on it that was supposed to help. I’m not sure if it was the magic cream or if The Lord blessed me but the next day it didn’t really hurt at all and I’ve been able to walk everywhere just fine. Blessings of being a missionary! A couple weeks ago a 13 year old girl contacted us in the street, and ever since then we’ve been working really hard with their family. This family has hard lots of big problems, but we’ve been really trying to help them and they’ve found comfort in the gospel. The son that would be 20 years old right now just like me was actually kidnapped by a gang about 2 years ago and held for ransom. After doing everything they could, the police called the mom and told her that they had found a body in a canal close by. She went to the scene and after watching the police pull the body out saw that it was her son. I have no idea how somebody could cope with something like that happening. We’ve really been trying to help her a lot and she really changed after we taught her the plan of salvation with the cutouts you sent me. She’s divorced, but her and her oldest daughter got baptized on Saturday, and the other daughter will be turning 8 on December 5th and already wants to get baptized as well. Thanks so much for everything guys, sorry the letter is kind of short this week. I hope you have a great Thanksgiving and have a good time with the missionaries and everything. I love you!

November 12, 2012

Hello Dearest family, That’s crazy you guys got so much snow this week, I’m jealous! I think I’m going to print out a couple of the pics you sent me and show the people here so they’ll stop complaining about the cold! Because it really is not that cold here at all, ha ha. I can’t believe Dane comes home this week, it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago when we went to Hooters and everything to say goodbye to him. So this week was a little different with the new way we’re working. It’s weird to not be able to knock doors, we passed by lots of members and tried to get references, but this new way is going to be a little slower I think because the members tell us the people that they think of as references but then we have to wait until they go and pass by their people and see if they want to listen to us or not. It will be good though because more of the people that we find will be able to progress because they’ll already have friends or family who are members. We actually have a couple of baptisms planned for this week of people that contacted us in the street a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday we had stake conference here. It was really cool because it was a broadcast of Richard G Scott and a couple other people from the 70 that speak Spanish. I think Elder Scott speaks Spanish the best out of the 12 apostles. It was more of a regional conference because it was broadcast to this whole area, and I think they actually broadcast it from the United States. I really liked what Lynn G Robbins said at the conference that "enduring to the end isn’t being perfect but getting up every time you fall". It made me feel good to think that we don’t have to be exactly perfect, but we need to always be improving and correcting our mistakes. I found out this week that I can sew! One of my pockets ripped and just for fun I was going to see if I could sew it and I actually was able to do it! It was the first time I’ve sewn on my mission, but now I’ve been looking for other things to sew because it was kind of fun and I was really proud of myself. I got your Plan of Salvation cutouts a couple of weeks ago, sorry I thought I told you. They’re perfect; we’ve used them in lessons and everything, thank you! I’ll let you know when I get the Christmas packages. I have no idea how Christmas will be down here or what we do as missionaries. I’m sure I’ll be able to Skype again but I’ll let you know when they give us more info about that. I love you guys, I hope you have a great week and make sure to be safe in the snow! Love Elder Johnson

November 5, 2012

¡Hey Family! I’m glad to hear that there’s been so much going on, don’t feel bad about the letter being long, I like to hear everything. That’s great Presidente Morales wrote you guys for the first time, it’s funny that I’ve been senior companion for a couple months and he just barely wrote to tell you guys about it. Halloween sounds like it was pretty fun. It’s weird to think I’ll be home for Halloween next year. Its crazy it seems like a ton of people are getting married right now! I’ll be sure to pray for Lisa, hopefully she can get better really soon. Today we had a zone meeting in the morning so now the rest of the day is free to do whatever. We went shopping and bought a bunch of stuff that the house really needed, like a toilet seat for example!! There’s not a Wal-Mart here but we went to Comercial Mexicana, it’s a big supermarket chain store but it’s out of our area so we have to ask permission to be able to go. So on Wednesday this week we baptized a sister named M. It was great to finally have a baptism in my new area; in fact it was the first baptism here since July! M also got confirmed yesterday and I’m sure she’s going to be a great convert. We’ve been finding lots of other new people here, and hopefully we should be having more baptisms in the coming weeks. There’s been a big change in the mission here these last couple of weeks, and starting today it is in effect 100%, we can no longer knock doors looking for people to teach. We’re supposed to focus on working only with references from the members, and if we have extra time we can contact inspired people the street. It’ll be interesting to see how it changes the mission, I think about 3/4 of the baptisms I’ve had have been references though so hopefully we can have even more baptisms by focusing on working with the members. On Thursday in the morning my district leader called me excited to tell us that we were all going to the temple! He said he didn’t know why but Presidente wanted everybody at the temple at 2 o clock that same day. We hurried and got ready to go, because it takes a while to get there in the bus and metro. A couple minutes later our district leader called back but this time he wasn’t so excited, we were only going to the temple to get a shot!! My excitement quickly turned to fear because you know how bad I hate needles! I was pretty brave though and we got to go to Burger King in DF after so it was worth it I guess. Every missionary that had been on the mission for at least 1 year had to go and get a flu shot. It turns out the new mission doctor for all of Mexico City is from Gunnison Utah and has a daughter that lives in Spanish Fork in Abbey Court. El Día de Muertos this week was pretty cool, the people put out an offering of a bunch of food and everything on a table and it’s supposedly for their loved ones that have died, so that they can come and eat the feast. Well as you probably thought the dead people don’t really need the food that bad, and 3 days after when the food is still on the table the people have a party and eat it all. It’s a really cool holiday I guess I’m thinking about instituting it in our house when I get back, ha just kidding we have Halloween. I still haven’t boiled the eggs yet, but I’ll let you know when I do because it should be pretty interesting! I got the box today that you sent with Brother Garcia, tell him thank you very much. Thank you guys very much too, I have to say the coolest thing in there is the little Preach My Gospel, you have no idea how much better that is going to feel in my backpack! Well anyways I got to go, just want to tell you that I know this church is true and that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer and that through his Atonement we can all return to live with Him and our Heavenly Father. I hope you guys have a great week, I love you! Elder Johnson

We baptized M on Halloween day, and as you can see I bought a super cool tie to go along. It even plays Halloween music and everything! It cost me 20 pesos ($1.54).