September 25, 2013

A nice pig head that was for sale at the grocery store,

Today is the 15th of September, Mexico’s Independence Day. We didn’t really get to celebrate because we’ve been here in the offices all night.

For Mexican Independence Day, it’s a lot like the 4th of July, fireworks and lots of food and get togethers and stuff like that. Here in the Center, they do a concert and then the President of Mexico comes out and they all do a big yell saying “Viva Mexico!” and stuff like that.

Hey Mom! This has been a pretty hectic weekend. On Sunday we went to church and were planning to have a baptism in our church, but there was no gas for the water heater so we had to go to the Stake Center and we had the baptism after church. After the baptism we got all of our stuff ready and went to the offices to start receiving reports. After we got to the offices we realized we had forgotten the papers in our houses that had all the changes on them, and so in order to finish doing everything for all the changes and in order to be able to advise those that had changes we had to go all the way back to our house again. After receiving all the reports we made a summary for President and then reported the numbers to Salt Lake on the computer. Later we called all the zone leaders to tell them who in their zones had changes, but that’s all we tell them and they don’t know where theyìre going until the meeting on Tuesday. Anyways then we went on to make a list of all the changes, by area and what missionaries were going to be there. We ended up going to bed at about 1:00 am that night. The next morning President picked us up at 5:50 am to go to the new MTC here and pick up the new Latino misioneros. There were 5 elders and 3 sisters. We got back to the offices and ate a little breakfast and then started training them on everything about the mission. We finished training them at about 2 and then we ate carne asadas here in the offices, they were way good. After that all the Americans got here, there 19 of them in total! They ate first and then started their training. And they didn’t know hardly know any Spanish at all so after President talked to them a little bit with the English he knows and then he just told me to train them alone on everything! President started to interview them one by one and my comp doesn’t really know any English so he left to do something else and I was there alone. We ended at 9:00pm. By the end of the day I was so sick of hearing my own voice! On Tuesday morning we got up at about 6am to be all ready to go with all the new missionaries at 7: 30. A bus came and picked them and all their luggage up. My comp went in the bus with them and I went alone with President to the Stake Center where the changes meeting was. We split up again, my comp with the Latinos and me with the gringos and we talked about the plan of salvation and how to teach it. At noon the changes started and all the misioneros that had changes were there. After the changes meeting we went to office with president and all the elders that were going home the next day (today). When President had interviewed them all we went to his house where his wife had made dinner for everybody. We all ate dinner and then came back to the offices and slept, and then the next morning my companion and I took them to the airport where us and President said bye to them and that was it. We got back to our house that afternoon and took a little nap and then went out and worked like a normal. We did divisions for one day, and the week went by super-fast because I was in my own area for so little time. We just got back from Wal-Mart. I drove the mission car. I hate driving in Mexico City, the traffic is worse than New York. We had one zone conference today with 2 zones and we have one tomorrow and then one more on Friday. Sorry for not writing you guys until today, it’s been a crazy week as you can see, but I love you mom and am so thankful for all you do for me! Love Elder Johnson

So as you know when you train an elder, they’re considered your "son" in the mission. Here’s a shot with all my offspring. Elder Rivera-my firstborn son, Elder Torres my son, Elder Lowell my grandson, Elder Manzanares my grandson, and Elder Sandstrom my great grandson.