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

"I'm happy inside allll all of the time" -Bob Marley

Aloha!!

We had another great week here in the desert! I'm starting to not even notice that it's crazy hot. It has just kind of become a part of life haha! People say that the hottest months here are August and September, so it's still only going to get hotter!

We did some service at Lord's Table this week, where we feed the homeless and hungry. It's funny, there was one week where a couple ladies that come in said that I look Elvis and had me say "thank you very much." Now I'm known as Elvis by some of the people that come in. But now it's starting to get a little weird.. One of the ladies that started it was asking me what days we come in and I told her that it kind of depends. She said, "okay, well I need to bring my 17 year old daughter to meet you.. I've been telling her ALL ABOUT Elvis!" 

 0_o

Besides that things have been pretty good! You can't go to Lord's Table without hitting up Apollo Burgers and getting one of their crazy burgers! This time I got the Mac n' Down, which is just a massive burger with chilly and an extra patty made of fried macaroni. It was actually one of the harder one's to finish that I've had!

Our investigator, Yolanda, has been struggling with her back issues and has been waiting to have her back surgery in a couple months. She has been worried about hurting her back in the baptism and has been debating on whether to wait until after the surgery. Well, miraculously the doctor said she could have her surgery this week! She went under surgery on Thursday, was feeling pretty sick the first couple days, but is making a good recovery! We will stop by next week to see her. 

Jeremy is going through an interesting time.. But honestly, I don't think he's ever NOT going through an interesting time. He has read us some more of his poetry that is just completely out of this world! He talks about how he's been close to throwing his TV off his balcony because it is to distracting to him. He's been working on his Mad Art and says that the Lord was telling him that he might have to cut off his right arm to fulfill his chosen destiny as a Mad Artist. He was telling us that he had been praying for death the past couple days, which was really sad, but then he just busted up laughing and said, "what is this s@#%," pulling off a rotten noodling that was on his arm XD  Jeremy never ceases to make our

day :) He has a lot of really crazy things going on in his life, but keeps his sense of humor! He still wants to wait until his life is more in order before he gets baptized, so we are going over next week to help him clean the place up.

Stay positive and love your life!!

Aloha ke Akua

-Elder Johnson

"Today today live like you wanna. Let yesterday burn and throw it in a fire." -Matisyahu

Aloha!

This has been a pretty great week for us! We've had some good missionary work going on. It was Elder Paxton, Klienman, and Brown's year marks, so we had a little fun burning some shirts :) We joked that the burning of the shirts was a symbol of burning away the past. When the burning shirts started blowing the past people were yelling things like, "the past is getting away!"and "you can't stop the past!" I guess that's the type of things thing that's funny when you've been living a missionary lifestyle for so long..

Our investigator, Yolanda, is so ready for baptism, but has a lot of trials in her life that are getting in the way. She has a lot of health issues that prevent her from coming to church. She would also like her sister to come to the baptism, but she lives out of state and has her own struggles with making it here. Yolanda has a strong testimony and desire to be baptized. She is spiritually ready, it's just a matter of time before she's physically ready :)

Our investigator Jeremy is doing well! He's spent many years on hard drugs, which have messed with his mind, but we are coming to find that he is actually a really intelligent person. He went to Arizona State when he was younger and studied Astronomy and Philosophy. He reads us some of his poetry that is dark at times, but also like really good. They're super psychedelic. My favorite one kept talking about "purple moon butter" XD He made it church the past couple weeks, which has been really exciting! 

Another positive note, my knee injury that happened a couple transfers ago is doing a lot better! Don't need that to happen again haha

Stay positive and love your life!!

Aloha ke akua

-Elder Johnson

Pictures from the last 2 weeks:

leg finally getting better!

scab fell off