Johnson, the Inactive

October 6, 2014

Well, I hope you all enjoyed conference, because there's something I forgot to tell all of you:  I didn't see conference.  Yesterday was voting day in Peru, so we couldn't have church meetings.  President told us that we should watch conference for the first time next week with our investigators, so that will just kill me this week in the offices.  I did hear about that, though, about the general authorities speaking in their native languages.  That'll be fun to see.  Those seventies are powerhouses in their native tongue, like whenever Elder Uceda [Juan Uceda of the Seventy] speaks here.  But yeah, it was really weird studying and street contacting on Sunday morning.  It was like, oh, this is what the rest of Peru does on Sunday morning.  I'd honestly never seen it til now.

We are really happy with how the week turned out.  I'm not sure if I had mentioned this before, but about a week or two ago, we found a man named Roberto while buying a sketchbook to do street caricatures.  We mostly just talked and laughed with him.  Afterwards, my companion realized that he left his Book of Mormon there.  The next day when we passed my, Roberto gave it back and we told him that if he wanted, he could have one for his own.  He surprised us saying that he already owned one.  He was taught once or twice by the missionaries in January, but never again.  Anyway, this week we were able to teach the whole family.  I won't get into details on the lesson, but he told us that his oldest son died in January from Leukemia.  It was one of the sweetest experiences I've ever had to be able to explain to them about eternal families.  Perhaps the sweetest.  It's just something I won't be able to describe well, so I won't.  But it was nice.

We also are going to teach a man that lived in Virginia for about 8 years and speaks great English.  My companion speaks great English as well, so we just hit it off on the street.  We have an appointment for today, so we'll see if we can talk to him and his 14-year-old son.

So, there we go.  Transfers are tomorrow, so I sure hope I don't mess up that PowerPoint.  I can barely make it not telling absolutely the whole world where everyone is being transferred to.  But, I'm staying with Elder Feller. That's the important part for me.  And, if anyone is making the list for people to pray for, go for Angelica, the Garnique family, Ricardo, and the Rojas family.

Glad to know everything is going well.  Love you!

Elder Johnson

Right When You Feel Like Quitting

September 29, 2014

We had another great week.  Only had one day this week with this emergency email that came in, saying that the area has no record of the mission's historical report for 2013 and that the area presidency needs it RIGHT NOW.  I made the announcement in the office right there that we were going to eat at the Telepizza buffet for lunch.  14 slices of pizza later and I calmed right down.  Then it really wasn't that bad.  It was like studying for a pretty easy final.  We only got 1 hour of proselyting in that day, but I did learn that I can write pretty good essays in Spanish.

But really, that was the only out of the ordinary thing.  When something weird like that doesn't happen, we have time to proselyte every day from 4 o’clock on.  That includes us doing our studies, district meetings, weekly planning and so on, so that's really not too much time we end up losing.

(Does it seem like Elder Johnson has an effect on the other elders?  Except for the elder at far right.)

We have been working pretty hard to get this area on its feet.  Aside from Jean, the area really didn't have any investigators, and has had as well a surprising lack of baptisms compared to the rest of Lima. (Outside of Lima is a different story altogether, with its whole set of advantages and disadvantages.  As for me, I'd take Lima.)  We have done some new silly ways to contact, including the latest, which is a door-to-door religious survey.  We ask them 3 questions:  Did you know that Jesus Christ visited the Americas, did you know that there are prophets and apostles today, and did you know that your family can be eternal?  Then, you get a candy for participating.  That was a good one.  

One day when tracting, we found this guy named Claude, who is one of the few Peruvians I have ever met that has a smoking problem.  Anyway, he likes to read and is going to read the Book of Mormon.  In the meantime, I started a diet for him, just to see if I could give up my addictions to help him.  The diet is to not buy food between meals, so Telepizza buffet is fair game.

Honestly, we got up til Saturday and when our many appointments starting falling through, I started to feel a little disappointed.  But then we went and had our first lesson with Angelica, who went to church with a member the week before.  She is ready.  She has listened to the missionaries before, but now she says that she really wants to try it out now.  She has a date for the 25th, and we have another appointment tonight.  It's funny sometimes how we work and fight all week to get something, and on Saturday night, right when you think no one new is going to progress this week, the Lord gives us a softball.

As for me, I will honestly tell you that I love it here.  I love you guys a lot, but I honestly don't like the idea of ending my mission.  I actually was on my bed one night, very sad that my mission isn't going to last that much longer.  I really love doing this, and I feel like something's really changed.

Having a good time.  Love you all and whatever.

Elder Johnson

A Little Chiste [joke] to Start Off

September 22, 2014

-Una vez fui a un restaurante que solo vendia segundos.  Este lugar no tenia mucho exito.  Toda la gente solo se quedaba afuera.  Y por que?  [One time there was a restaurant that only sold seconds.  They didn’t have much success.  All of the people waited outside.  And why?]

--Porque no habia entrada!  [Because there wasn’t an entrance/entrée.]

It seems to be a good hit here.  Thank you, language study.

Well, hello, family!  We had a pretty good week here.  We knocked a lot of doors, found a lot of people...and, of yeah, remember Jean, the dentist that has been an investigator for a long time?  He's a member now!  I know that I didn't bring any evidence with me to prove that he actually got baptized, but I think you can all trust me on this one.  He is really a great guy that EVERYONE thought was already was a member.  Seriously.  We were making phone calls to tell everyone about his baptism after he passed the interview, and they almost always said, "Wait, that guy’s not a member?"  Well, give him two days and he will be.  He was the type to wear suits to church even before getting baptized, so I guess he was able to slip under the radar.

We are looking hard to find other people in the area.  Our area is actually the smallest I've ever had on my mission, so it's given me the opportunity to work differently now.  One day after planning, while I was on my bed preparing to do my pre-10:30 power nap, I asked my companion, "Elder Feller, where are the families we are going to baptize?"  After pausing, he said, "Mercurio."  I said the same.  In the course of this week, we have decided to essentially never work anywhere else.  Honestly, we are obsessed with that place.  It was a bit strange, because on Saturday, after tracting, one man let us in, who we later realized was the uncle of another man we had taught a week before.  We are seeing that things are starting to come together over there.

And, a less active family we were teaching came to church, to our surprise.  I had the husband talk to the bishop and now he has a plan to baptize his son in November!  So please pray for the Rojas family.

Love you all!

Elder Johnson

The Baptism of the Week

September 15, 2014

I'm glad to hear everything is going well and that dad is onto another get-rich-quick scheme.  Haha just kidding. You can delete that if you want to.

We are having a good time here.  We didn't have a baptism this week, at least in our area.  But, we did have one in Argentina.  Elder Feller's mom got baptized on Saturday!  He was super happy, and we were just now seeing some photos.

As for the offices, I'm getting used to everything and we are able to get a lot done proselyting too.  In the office, I just finished a spreadsheet for each area in the mission to use in ward council to track the progress of new converts.  It felt nice being able to get that done, not to mention that I finally understand what F4 does.  I know, I'm a genius.

Doing those things in the office makes me grateful for the time we have to proselyte.  Once I get to the point where I'm copying and pasting til 4pm, I feel like I'm turning into Quasimodo in my spinny chair.  So yeah, I feel like we're making good use of the time we have.

Oh, that's right, maybe I can fill you all in.  Jean is this eternal investigator that is going to get baptized on Saturday, and it looks like the ward mission leader will be able to baptize him.  We live in a neighborhood called Covida, which is a relatively well off place.  We have been working hard in Covida with little results up til now. This week we started working a small hill called Mercurio, which at first we were reluctant to work in because it's a little bit farther from the chapel, and hills generally have a history of couples living together without getting married.  Well, we found some really good people there.  Yesterday, we felt like we should keep going farther and farther in, and the place we tracted is fantastic.  Yesterday we found a married family, which was a very promising sign for us about the area.  Tracting is a lot better in Mercurio than Covida as well, so we are going to contact that place to death this week.  We are excited.

Another nice thing I saw was when I was working on the recent convert spreadsheets for the mission.  I saw the names of the converts in Paramonga, which is one of my old areas.  I honestly left that area feeling like I didn't do much to help that branch, but then I saw the names of the newest converts:  Juan Zuñiga and his wife. When I saw the name, I couldn't remember who it was, but then it came to me:  we taught him for the first time the Sunday before I got transferred.  We all likely will have the opportunity to do much good in this world without ever realizing the great work we are doing.

Anyway, love you all!  Make good choices.

Elder Johnson

I Don't Get Paid Enough For What I Do

September 8, 2014

Ok, we had a great week.  I'm not sure how much I explained about our ward, but it’s called Covida and it's about a 5-minute bus ride from the mission offices.  So, we live in our area, we study in our area, and then we generally go to the offices to do our day job, eat lunch, slam through whatever else we need to do and go back on the bus to our areas.  We really try to get out of there as soon as we can, which I suppose is about the same as a day job outside of the mission.  The packages part of my day job is super easy, but the numbers of the mission job is a bit harder because I use Excel (the word Excel gives me the shivers).  But it's important because I have to send some things to the area and whatever, and then sending referrals just makes me want to punch-dance my rage out sometimes, because there are some referrals that Google Maps is convinced don’t exist.  But, I'm basically caught up.  The offices are pretty fun.

Outside of the offices are a lot more fun.  Elder Feller and I are really wanting to go to town, so we get out of the offices as soon as we can to find new people.  Since we opened  this area and there haven't been a lot of investigators, we are finding and finding and finding.  It is a lot of fun.  We made the conscious decision to trust each other, just to never be embarrassed to even start up a terrible contact.  We have found that we have, yes, started up some poor contacts, but more and more of the contacts every day are people that have previously had contact with the church or people that have a family member in the church.  So in the end, it doesn't really matter how we are contacting, since the Lord is just giving us great contacts.

Basically, the area had one investigator when we came in.  His name is Jean.  He's a dentist that is also studying, so we never had time to teach him up until yesterday, although we met him at church before. As it turns out, he has been investigating the church for 6 months.  The first missionaries to teach him were the assistants, who later realized that they were poaching, and then a fair number of missionaries taught him after that.  When we taught, we basically asked the baptismal interview questions to see where he is. Afterwards, we asked him, "So what is really your doubt about being baptized?"  He said that there isn't, that he just needs to make his decision.  Then we asked what he lacked to make that decision.  In the end, his only real doubt was with his schedule.  He's getting baptized on the 20th.  We left the lesson and we felt like we didn't do anything.  

I don't have time right now to explain everything that's happening here, but I'll just say that we are receiving a lot of help in an area that we heard was very difficult.  As far as I can tell, Covida is the best area I've ever had. I'm with a good companion who is pushing me to do the best I can, and I'm very happy that the Lord knows me and takes care of me.  It's nice to know that it's not too late to change my mission.

Love you all!

Elder Johnson

Don’t Get Too Used to the Spinny Chairs

September 1, 2014

Well, last week was just cray cray.  We were trying to recover from transfers while I was learning what in the world I do.  You all know about my famous stress eating, right?  Did you also know that you can buy a slice of the best marbled cake in the whole wide world in a store right outside of the mission offices for just one sol? Did you also know that Telepizza has a pretty good deal on lunch buffets?  Well, I sure do. I think the practice of sitting on the floor at 6:40, trying to convince myself to do sit-ups, just won’t cut it anymore.

Elder Feller is one of the best companions I've ever had.  I think I've already explained a little about him. He's 23, he's from Buenos Aires, and he's been a member for about 4 years.  He is the only member in his family, but his mom is currently coming to church and listening to the missionaries.  He's a really sweet and humble guy.  We haven't had as much time as we would have liked proselyting this week, but the good thing is that we are working like dogs when we can. It's so great being with a companion like him.  We started a game where the person who initiates the lower amount of street contacts in the day has to buy the other a chocolate before coming back to the room, and it is funny how well it has worked for us to talk to everyone.  We are really excited to be together.

Ok, and I won't lie, the offices are actually really fun.  We live in a room in our area, so we don't usually sleep in the offices unless it's Sunday night, because we stay pretty late doing the numbers and/or eating devil's food cake Sunday night.  I live in a ward called Covida, in the Palmeras stake.  It's a really small area, and the missionaries before weren't able to have a lot of time there to work, but that's about to change, because Elder Feller and I have the easy office jobs!  Woohoo!  It's fun being able to open an area and have completely new expectations and habits.  I'm having a good time here.  Love you all, even if you don't write me.  Jerks.  Just kidding.

Elder Johnson

Blast You, Computer Literacy Class!

August 25, 2014

Well, this week was pretty crazy.  I guess I'll start with where I am right now.  I'm not exactly in my area right now.  As of tomorrow, I will be one of the mission secretaries.  So, I am in charge of the numbers of the mission, which just means that Sunday nights feel like studying for a Computer Literacy final.  My other job is to receive phone calls from the zone leaders when I send letters to the wrong Elder Smith.  It's really a piece of cake.  My new companion will be Elder Feller, an Argentine who is the health secretary. His job is to listen to the various symptoms of the missionaries and then always always just recommend Pepto Bismol.  This is really nice, because we will really be the companionship that gets to proselyte more.  Ha! I'm actually feeling pretty good about being here.  We'll have success here.

I felt a little sad for leaving my area, because this week we had just taught a couple that had gotten married the week before.  The husband, Freddy, has read the Book of Mormon 3 times, but couldn't get baptized where he lived before because he wasn't married to the lady he was with.  But, I'm glad 200 Millas [the name of the area] has something nice to work with.

Ok, Thursday!  I totally went to the temple with Davi!  That was so great.  I was nervous while waiting in the airport, so I ended up buying Dunkin Donuts AND McDonalds for breakfast.  (It was great that my last area was so close to the airport.)  Well, I think that Davi has told you all everything, so I will just say that it was great.  No, it did not make me trunky, or tronqui, as missionaries say here.  It was really the opposite. Being there at the temple was really what I needed to get me to know what I need to end my mission well.

I love you all!  Make good choices, Davi!

Elder Johnson

P.S. Yeah, these are the most recent photos.  The first is my companion, Elder Feller.  The other two photos were from last night, because we always eat in the offices as our reward for making it through the numbers on Sunday night.  Yesterday was completos with lemonade.