"Give. Always give what you can; even when your allies draw lines in the sand." -Nahko

Aloha!!

This has been a pretty bittersweet week. We had our last zone conference with President and Sister Hobbs, which unfortunately was the last time we will see them before they go home :( It was totally awesome, though. I think I got more out of that meeting than I have any other meeting on my mission. President Hobbs spoke on following the example of Jesus Christ. It was a simple training, yet incredibly influential. What it really comes down to is pride and humility. When we humble ourselves and turn outward toward other people; that is when we find true happiness. "We gain the most when we give." I'm really going to miss President Hobbs.

We've had some pretty good lessons this week. Jeremy was feeling like he shouldn't have any hope for the future because he doesn't want disappoint, so we've been trying to help him with that. He wants to come to church and keeps telling us he will go, but every Sunday morning he call us and has a different reason why he can't make it. This week he said he woke up with too much hate in his heart and that he was worried he'd feel like Adolf Hitler if he came to church. He's making progress.. it's just definitely going to be line upon line haha

We made a visit to a cute old lady that has dementia. She was SO excited to have us there! During the middle of our visit she stopped us and asked what our full names were. She said she was never going to forget us. Five minutes later she stopped us and what our names were again.. She ended up asking us a total of 4 times for our names XD  She was awesome! 

Stay positive and love your life!

Aloha ke akua

-Elder Johnson

With President and Sister Hobbs

Care package from home

Hawaii sticker

Chillin' in Hesperia

"Be an example in all that you do; and goodness will follow you" -Mike Love

Aloha!

Man, this has been a pretty awesome week! We've had a lot happening!

First of all, we saw Jeremy a couple times this week and he's been doing a lot better. He seems happier :) He is more open to the idea of going to church again and be with "the humans." He's been calling himself Pinocchio lately becuase he wants to be a "real boy." XD He is seriously awesome. He told us about some of his comedy routine that he's been working on and it blew our minds. Some of it might not be super appropriate for this email, but one of my favorites was the "Sci-Fi Polar Bear Jesus Routine." Basically he wears a polar bear costume and goes to Antarctica and slays all the penguins with a lazer in his arm and all the Polar Bears look to him as a savior. Then they all drink Coke. With all of that coming from Jeremy, Elder Paxton and I were dying!!

We've been trying a new way of tracting with pamphlets, and we've actually been having some great success with it. We tracted into this lady named Tiki, who had had missionaries over before and was quite interested in what we had to say. Her daughter was there as well and has friends that are LDS and are going on missions soon. After we talked to them for a while we asked if there was anything we could do for them. They sarcastically said, "well you can pull our weeds." Little did they know that is our specialty, so a couple days later we were there pulling weeds :)

This week I also got to go on exchanges and go back to my old area in Victorville. It was nice seeing some of the good people I haven't seen in a couple months :)

Life is good folks. Don't take it for granted!

Stay positive and love your life!

Aloha ke akua

-Elder Johnson

"Today is a good day for my ego to die. Spirit live on in my heart, in my body, my mind." -Nahko

Aloha!

These past couple of weeks have been pretty great. The sun keeps getting hotter, but we don't let that slow us down! The other day some missionaries came and brought us our lunch and said it was 107 out there.. shortly after lunch, we were out there biking! It's crazy, there will be wind blowing as you bike, but it's all hot air. It kind of feels like an oven is open right in front if your face, but it doesn't go away. And this is just the beginning. It's only going to get hotter!

But honestly, it isn't too bad. We put on our sun screen and we tackle those hilly streets of Hesperia! I wasn't able to send out my mass email last week, but we went and hiked Deep Creek on Memorial Day, and it was really cool! It's somewhat close to Arrowhead Lake, which is what is on the Arrowhead bottled water. The mountains were beautiful and it eventually led to a rocky waterfall area. It was really neat :)

We had a really awesome lesson with our investigator, Gretel, who we haven't been able to see in a couple weeks. She helped her with a lot of questions she had and I think the best one she had was when she asked how she could know if all this is true. We read Moroni 10: 3-5 and talked to her about praying for answers. We each bore testimony on the peace that comes from living the gospel and I think we really helped Gretel. 

Life is good! Don't let the beauty of it slip by without noticing. Find joy in the journey!

Stay postive and love your life!

Aloha ke akua

-Elder Johnson

Deep Creek hike....

Eating well on mish...