"We're a part of something special" -Nahko

Aloha everyone!!

This has been a pretty stellar week! On Thursday we had the chance to have a conference with Elder Dube of the 70. That was REALLY cool. It's kind of cool how each General Authority that has come to speak to us is each unique in their own way. They each have their own personalities and roll with it! Elder Dube is from Zimbabwe and has a great sense of humor! He was very enthusiastic and exciting, while still teaching by the spirit. It's those kind of meetings that motivate me to be a better missionary!

While at the conference we had the chance to see a lot of other missionaries from the mission. I always value the time we have to see buddies from the mission because you never really know when the next time you see them is going to be; especially if they are going home soon. I got to see my one trainer that is still kickin' out here in the mission! I freaking love Elder Infanger! I learned so much from him when I was being trained and it's been so cool seeing him around the mission the past year. I can't believe he's going home in a week! I'm going to miss him.. Just as much as I miss my other trainer, Elder Rudolph! Man, I can't even comprehend how lucky I was to be trained by those two.. 

Well, taught some really awesome lessons this week. We taught a woman named Valerie, who was a former investigator, but we recently started teaching again. She is doing awesome! In our previous lesson with her we asked her why she wanted to be baptized and she said she couldn't put it into words in the moment, but that she would get back to us on that. This week when we saw her she had written down her answer. He answer was beautiful. She said that she wanted to follow Jesus Christ and that she believed in the Book of Mormon. She even mentioned something about wanting to be a temple worker!

We started teaching a man named Jose this week. We had met him on the street a few weeks ago and he was surprisingly nice to us. He was very excited about having us over for dinner even thoutgh we had just barley met him! It almost even scared us a little bit going over to his place. Most people aren't that excited about having us over at first. We didn't want him to go all Saratov Approach on us ;) But no, he was actually a genuinely nice person. Super cool! He ended up taking us out for pizza and we were able to talk to him about what we do as missionaries and about his religious background. We will be meeting with him again this week :)

Our other investigators that we've been seeing a lot are doing well! Joseph is working toward his baptismal date in November and Sergio is still making progress :)

Stay Positive and love your life!

Aloha ke Akua

-Elder Johnson

Elder Infanger heading home

I'm front row second from the left

from 9/12 email....."Build bridges; don't destroy them... Let love conquer pride!" -President Uchtdorf

Aloha!

Man, is this already week 5 of the transfer?? The time really does go by.. These past couple weeks here in Ontario, California have been pretty eventful! We ended up teaching a lesson to a Pastor.. or did he end up teaching us? It was quite interesting hearing what he had to say and learning about his beliefs, while sharing our beliefs his him as well. As a missionary, you learn that not everyone is going to accept what you teach, and that's okay. In the end we all come from the same God or Creator, after all, which is why it's so important to love and respect people for who they are, regardless of their background or belief.

It's really nice that my companion, Elder Gomez, grew up speaking Spanish. That comes in handy A LOT; whether it's talking to people on the streets or even teaching lessons! Like the other day we knocked on the door of a Spanish lady, who allowed us to come in and teach the Restoration! Well.. Elder Gomez taught the Restoration. I said, "mucho gusto," and then did a lot of smiling and nodding :) This scenario happens fairly often, which is cool, but then we always turn them over to the Spanish Elders.

I'll tell you what, the mariachi music is starting to grow on me. We hear it all the time down here! It takes me back to the time in Utah when I had 104.7 as one of me pre-sets."Mi Preferida! Mas Musica!" XD We hear it coming from cars all the time and houses as we bike by; especially on weekends! We bikes past so many fiestas on Friday nights! They've all got laser lights, mariachi music and all.. It's legit!

We actually have an investigator that lives in the apartment right across from us! There is a lot of craziness going on with his 8 roommates, so we usually go to the park with him to talk.He came to scripture study with on Wednesday evening, which was pretty cool! It's funny, in the Missionary Handbook it says when you can't arrange for members to bring investigators to church to "bring them yourselves if members are not available," but then states directly after that "investigators are not to be given rides in mission vehicles." Elder Paxton and I had talked about how that's a bit contradicting. We should bring them to church, but they're not allowed in our vehicles? How can this be??
Well I think I finally figured it out this week when we went to scripture study with Joseph ;) Joseph was rollerblading behind us as we biked to church, but he was feeling pretty tired partway there, so I let him grab onto my bike and I pulled him the rest of the way to the church Marty McFly style! Well, in actuality it was probably more Napoleon Dynamite style haha But there you go, I brought him to church without him entering a missionary vehicle ;)

We've taught some other good lessons this week as well. We picked up a new investigator with a nice lady who was part of another Christian faith and had never talked to missionaries before. She liked our message and said she would read the Book of Mormon. We should be seeing her again next week!

Stay Positive and love your life! 

Aloha ke Akua

-Elder Johnson

With a fish taco

"Journey in peace now. You don't have to be afraid." -311

Uh-oh!

Guess what day it is??

GUESS. WHAT. DAY. IT IS???

HUMP DAAAAAAAAAAY!!!! WOOT WOOOOT!!!

Sorry, I couldn't resist ;) But it's true, just 3 days ago I hit my year mark. It's honestly just bazaar to think It's been that longs since I've seen any of my family for friends back at home. It's gone by fast though! It makes me think of Thomas S Monson's talk, Finding Joy in the Journey. He quotes the Music Man, where Professor Harold Hill says, "You pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find you've collected a lot of empty yesterdays." I've come to realize that relative to the rest of my life, this mission experience is only a small chapter, and that it's so important to make every day count! There have been ups and downs, but overall this first year has been incredible. I can't wait to see what part 2 has in store :)

Well, I've now been down here in Ontario for a couple weeks now, but haven't been able to send out on email yet because of a temple trip we went on last week. It's been great! However, it turns out that even when your bike does get stolen from your balcony at night, the mission WILL provide you with a mission bike to use, sooo I'm still not off the hook from biking. But, It's honestly not even as bad biking here as it was in the hi-desert. It's a little less hot, and oh my gosh.. there aren't NEARLY as many hill. There might be a very slight incline at some points, but it is NOTHING compared to monstrous hills Elder Paxton and I tackled daily in Hesperia! I still have nightmares about Peach Ave.. 

But the work has been really good here! Elder Gomez and I got a text earlier this week from one of our investigators saying that he wanted to be baptized. That sure isn't a bad text to receive! He has some struggles he's working with, but if things continue to go well, he should be baptized at the beginning of November! :)

We also met another lady this week, who was a former investigator. She had some problems come up in the past, but she still wants to be baptized, so we are hopefully going to help her get baptized in the next couple months!

Life is good, folks! Stay positive!

Aloha ke Akua

-Elder Johnson

Redlands Temple day

Hump Day package!!!

Hump Day socks

Traditional burning of the shirt

It's so green down here!

Aloha!

Well folks, after spending the first half of my mission entirely in the desert, I have finally been transferred down the hill! It's crazy, I've been in the desert surrounded by dust, dirt, and Joshua Trees for so long, it almost feels like I'm on another planet.  I'm now serving down in Ontrario in the Mountain View ward. I'm excited for the change! My new comp is Elder Gomez from Utah (just like half of us out here). He's champ!

The last few days in an area are always a little sad; saying goodbye to all the people you've worked with and spent most of your time around. I was able to see a lot of the people we saw quite frequently, which was nice :) I had to say goodbye to Elder Paxton, who I served with for 3 transfers, which equates to about 4 1/2 months, which is quite legendary, if I do say so myself! He's staying up in Hesperia to take care of Mojave River.

We saw Jeremy a few times this week and he read us some more of his comedy routine, and boy, it's golden! He has a bit where he talks about things to say when a telemarketer calls and it's all insanely weird, dark, and often a bit edgy, but soo funny. He's been a little depressed lately, but he's slowly, but surely making progress.

Stay positive and love your life!!

Aloha ke Akua

-Elder Johnson 

"This fire is outta control" -Franz Ferdinand

Aloha!

Holy cow.. Last night was insane.. When we got out of church yesterday at 4, the there was a huge dark cloud of brown smoke in the sky. At around noon yesterday a fire started right near Silverwood Lake, which isn't too far from where we live in Hesperia. By the time evening came around the sky was just completely full of smoke and the fire had burned about 1500 acres and was 0% contained. When we came in last night at around 9:30, we found out they were going to be evacuating our whole zone down up to Victorville! It was crazy.. When you cram 8 Elders into a small apartment, you're asking for one crazy night! But it's doing better now. We're moved back into our place in Hesperia and sky isn't AS full of smoke as it was. The last I've heard is the fire has burned 4500 acres, but is now 5% contained haha.

Other than the fire, this week has been a fairly good week. We saw Yolanda, who is still making a recovery from her surgery. We saw a couple of our investigators that we haven't been able to contact for a while, which was really good.

 We finally made it over to Jeremy's to help him clean his apartment! But it didn't really go the way we thought it would.. He wanted to start my clearing off a couple of the tables he had that were clutter with junk and bottles and bottles of pills. We literally dumped everything off the tables into garbage bags. We were about to take the garbage bags out, but Jeremy stopped us and said he didn't want to get rid of all that stuff; he just wanted all the stuff in garbage bags to get it out of the way. So we set those bags aside and got some separate garbage bags to put in everything that was for sure garbage, like used paper plates and empty macaroni cans. After a couple minutes he said, "alright, that should be enough." Elder Paxton and I just looked at each other like, "what??" We hadn't even made a dent. Jeremy kept saying that he was too scared. He was too attached to all the junk lying around his apartment. It was pretty sad, but we ended up helping him type up his poetry, which was good for him.

Life is good. We all go through hard times, and each of us has our own unique challenges, but remember that everything will be alright. Your heavenly father loves you and he is there for you :)

Stay positive and love your life!!

Aloha ke Akua

-Elder Johnson

Serving at the Lord's Table

Fire too close to home....

Sunday night evacuation

"Put that pain to some good use, anyway" -Nahko

Aloha!

Holy Cow, Is it August already? As the old Green Day song says, "it seems so frightening; time passes by like lightning." Seriously though, I'll hit my year mark this month and it totally does not feel like I've been out that long haha

This has been a pretty interesting week. Last Monday, Elder Paxton actually dislocated his shoulder during sports at our zone activity. He was in excruciating pain. I think the worst was waiting around in the urgent care for 45 minutes while he was just in constant pain, but once they fixed him up he was A LOT better. They did give him some pain killer that was six times more potent than morphine, which for sure helped XD

Because of the injury, He has to be off the bike for a couple week, so the work has been a little slow. We've done quite a bit of walking, which I actually don't mind too much. It's kind of nice :)

Yolanda had her surgery and is doing really well! They went through her throat to get to her neck, so her voice is a little weak, but she happy and in recovery mode!

Jeremy said some pretty interesting things. He told us one of his incredible new poems. I remember there was some line about "vomiting purple furniture" XD

Stay positive and love your life!!

Aloha ke Akua

-Elder Johnson