December 17, 2012

Hey Everybody! They just told us that we can either call you guys on Christmas Eve like we had planned, or on Christmas Day. Which day would be better? I’m really fine either way, the only difference is that on Christmas Eve it would be in the afternoon and on Christmas day it would be a little earlier like at 11 or 12 or something so that we have time to eat the turkey and shrimp we bought today. Oh ya, today my companion and I bought an 8 kilogram turkey and the other 2 elders that are going to come over for the feast bought 2 kilos of shrimp. It should be pretty cool because we can’t go out in the streets that whole day so we’ll just eat a lot and then who knows what we’ll day the rest of the time. Actually this last Wednesday we couldn’t leave the whole day either because it was the Dia de Guadalupe, and that meant there were lots of fiestas. And a lot of fiestas means a lot of drunk people in the streets. It was pretty fun though we bought pizza with the other missionaries and played my new board game I bought and just chilled in the house. This week we’ve really focused on working with the members, and with doing that we were able to find some people through references and through other less active members. We didn’t baptize anybody this week, but A got confirmed and paid his first tithing yesterday. M couldn’t go to church because their baby girls were both sick and she didn’t sleep until 4 in the morning and our ward starts at 8 in the morning. They are some of the coolest converts I’ve baptized, and A´s dad lives by Cancun so I told him one day we’ll meet up there! There’s a family here that lives in our ward and their son is on a mission right now as well. They remind me a ton of you guys because they just want to do everything for us and love us as if we were their son. I know that for the sacrifices of our parents, (mostly the moms), the Lord blesses both our families and us as missionaries. I’ve seen so many blessings in different ways during my mission. The Lord is always guiding us to exactly where we need to be. I know that He protects us as well, and for as ugly as the environment here is, He always keeps us safe and out of harm’s way. I know that this church is true, and though we as members aren’t perfect, the Doctrine of Christ is and by living it we can really be happy and have joy, no matter what worldly possessions we have or in what circumstances we live. The true definition of joy is being well with God. I love you and can’t wait to talk to you guys this week. ¡Feliz Navidad! Elder Johnson I was washing my clothes so I kept it really classy with the red shiny shorts and white shirt...

December 10, 2012

Hey Mommy! Thanks for all the pictures; it looks like quite the adventure you guys had with the Christmas tree! Was it worse than the time we went and walked forever and you cried? Does it look like you’ll be having a white Christmas or is the snow already melting? So this last Thursday we had our zone conference/ Christmas get together. It was with our zone and one other. First we had training from a stake president, President Morales and the assistentes and then we ate. It was one of the first meals I’ve had in 9 months where we didn’t eat tortillas it was a nice change! Also we have a devastating new rule here in our mission; we can no longer eat tacos from the street! It’s really sad I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to handle it, I love tacos al pastor! No but really it’s because a lot of missionaries have been getting sick to their stomachs and appendixes and everything. Well anyways after everybody talked there was a funny talent show and that was pretty much it. I got 2 packages from you guys, and don’t worry I’m saving them till Christmas to open them. My companion and I have been getting in the Christmas spirit; we even bought a mini fake pine tree and Christmas lights to put on it. The only problem is the little tree is too small to hold all the lights so we’re still trying to come up with a better idea to put the lights. A and M got married on Wednesday, and then on Sunday they were able to get baptized. Their baptism was really cool because M’s whole family came and our mission president came as well to our ward yesterday. They’re a golden couple and are going to be great converts. We actually just got done doing a family home evening with them and some other members in the ward. Hopefully we’ll be able to get to teach the rest of the family as well now. They told us we’ll be calling our families on the 24th. I’ll be skyping you guys on Christmas Eve in the afternoon, about what time would be best for you guys? Are you going to go see Jerry that day? I still haven’t bought the turkey yet but I talked to the sister and she supposedly knows how to cook it. They’re excited for the turkey dinner, and one of the less active sisters I invited already invited her non member son to come. Sorry the letter is pretty short today, its because I haven’t had time and the computer I was using earlier wouldn’t let me type very well so I just reported to the mission president and then we had to leave to go the family home evening. Today we had a zone meeting in the morning and then after we went with 2 other missionaries to eat pizza at Domino’s and then we went to Bodega Aurrera, its a big store owned by Wal-Mart, I’m not sure what the difference is or why they have both of the stores here but ya. I bought a board game that’s the Mexican equivalent of Monopoly today because we’re going to have to stay in our house a couple of days this month for the holidays and safety reasons. I love you guys, I’m really going to miss not being with you guys for Christmas, but I know that this area, and exactly this ward is where I need to be. I’ve seen the Lord’s hand in the work we’re doing here and wouldn’t change this blessing for anything. Have a great week and be careful in the snow! The Elder Johnson El misionero mas guapo de la mision Mexico Ciudad de Mexico Sureste...(The cutest missionary in the Southeastern Mexico Mexico City Mission...) I agree!

December 3, 2012

Hey Mom! I’m glad you guys have had a good and busy week, and it sounds like you guys are going to be busy again this week! How’s the weather in Utah right now? Are you going to have a white Christmas? The mouse story sounds way funny; I can just picture all you guys freaking out ha ha. Everything is going really good here. We went to the temple on Tuesday to accompany the family that got sealed. I got to talk hunting for the first time since I’ve been Mexico because the old man that was working at the front desk lives on the Arizona strip, right by Kanab and told about a huge buck he killed on the Kaibab. Sorry I got a little distracted but anyways the temple is super cool here. First we went with the couple to do a session and take out their endowments and then we went to the sealing room where they were sealed together along with their 2 little kids. It was a super cool experience and the Spirit was so strong there. It was also really neat to go through the temple for the first time in Español. This Wednesday, a couple that we’re teaching is going to get married lawfully so that they can get baptized on Sunday. They have 2 little girls, and it’ll be great for them to get married and then prepare to get sealed with their kids in 1 year. This couple is golden, they actually had gotten to know some missionaries from another mission a while ago, but just barely moved here and saw us in the street the other day and contacted us and told us to come by their house. My companion and I were both amazed when they talked to us, they’re golden! I can see that the Lord is blessing us, although we don’t knock doors anymore or anything, we’ve still always been able to find people in lots of other ways that want to learn about our message. I’ve realized that I’ve really fallen in love with the scriptures. It’s awesome looking for an answer to a question I have and always finding it there. It also helps a ton to really be familiar with the scriptures and to always be able to answer people’s questions with a base rather than just giving them a mediocre answer or using my own opinion. Sometimes people have some pretty interesting questions! Well we have an appointment right now with the couple that’s getting baptized this week so I got to go. Thank you so much for everything. I’m grateful for all the blessings we enjoy as members of the Church. The gospel really does help us in every aspect of our lives when we really live it and apply it. Have a great week, I love you! Elder Johnson

Elder Johnson at the Mexico City Temple

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).