WOW. Love It!

hello hello HELLO!

 

I LOVE MY FAMILY SO MUCH! That's been on my mind this week....just thought I'd let you know! haha.

 

Soooo...I'm so glad to hear that your talks went SUPER well!  I read just a little bit of every one and I can't believe how AWESOME my family is! You guys killed it and I'm so stoked that it went so well and that it could have such a great impact in the members of the congregation!  It's an awesome testimony to me that when we truly PREPARE with a spirit of PRAYER and do ALL THAT WE CAN, we are given the SPIRIT and we are able to talk with the tounge of angels as Nephi promises us in 2 Nephi 32: 2-4!  That's so cool that you were able to experience that....now I would recomend giving Him thanks for the great opportinity to be instruments in His hands and then ask what more can you do!!!  Nothing better than the work of the Lord!  Now I'll just be waiting for that letter from the future missionary!  I'm so excited that he was so touched by your talks it's unbelievable!

 

This week also went well for us too!  We were able to find a few people that are willing to listen to us and I hope and pray that we will be able to help them feel the spirit enough to be willing to accept and live the Gospel of Jesus Christ!  That's the hard part isn't it?? haha.  By the way, this month and a half that I have been here in this area, I have taught more people than in my whole mission that truly have REAL LIFE PROBLEMS! Sure, I have taught people in the past that have their difficulties and struggles, but in this past month, we have been dealing with more than in my whole mission....and it's been such a great learning experience! Sure it's tough, and sometimes I literally have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE what they are going through, because me, as a 20 year kid have not experienced what they have....but I know someone who does!  That's what gives us the power and authority to help these people, it's because we are LITERAL representatives of JESUS CHRIST!  And I have seen that as we do ALL THAT WE CAN....the Lord puts the words into our mouths!  I had actually talked to President Cantù about this and he gave me some words of encouragement and taught me what I could do and I remember this week we were teaching someone and she was explaining everything that was hapenning to her in that moment in her life and I thought to myself.....HOW IN THE WORLD CAN I HELP HER?? and I looked toward heaven and asked God to put the words into my mouth and to help me to help her....and I started to speak and I felt the spirit super strong and I remember that while I was talking, I was thinking to myself....wow, that really makes sense what I'm saying!! haha.  I hope that she will give heed to the words that we spoke to her, but if she doesn't, I know that we gave it our all and that the spirit was in that lesson!  So that was a really cool experience for me, that I was able to put in practice what I had learned from Pres Cantù and we saw the blessing!

 

I truly am loving every minute of my mission....even the hard minutes!  I was watching a talk given to missionaries by Elder Jeffrey R Holland and he talks about those hard moments in the mission.  I have found that in those minutes it helps me come to know my Savior and know what it is that He suffered for me as He was preaching the Gospel and the people rejected Him and spit upon Him, but He kept being diligent and never lost the Spirit until the very end, and then He continued His great work in the spirit world and still continues His great work today with us....shoulder to shoulder!!  It's really cool to know that we have His help and that we are not alone in this work!  Always remember that in the hard moments, that it is a time to come to know who the Savior really is and how much He truly loves us!  Love the atonement, Love my family, Love this work!

 

peace out,

 

Elder Johnson

An awesome family from the ward!

Elder Johnson with Elder Blood

Elder Johnson with Elder Gutierrez

Missionary Seminary

GOOD. SOLID. WEEK.

Greetings family!

 

So you got called to speak in church.......WHAT A BLESSING!!!  Before my mission I don't think you would have heard me saying that.......haha. But now I really see it as a blessing, because sometimes we need a little push to study more or to remember something that we have forgotten with time!  And it's like you said, it's a good time to excercise your FAITH and really truly look for revelation on what to say!  Just make sure you be happy for the opportunity and be happy as you give the talk....others will see your enthusiasm for the gospel and it will spread like wildfire! Great feeling.  I was thinking a little bit about what you could talk about and a scripture came to mind....DyC 107:99-100!  LEARN your duty, ACT in all DILIGENCE never being slothful or lazy!  Love it.  Maybe you could talk about the duty for young men to prepare to serve a mission...because it really is a preiesthood duty and an obligation that the Lord expects of us!  I think it was in 2008? that Pres Monson gave a mini talk in the beginning of conference on that....so maybe you could grab some things from there!  But just make sure that you get them STOKED to go on a mission and see the real reasons WHY they should go!  that is....if you talk about that! haha.  But I know that for me....there has been no greater blessing in the world than the opportunity I have been given to come on a mission and learn the things that I have learned out here....it has been an experience that has changed my life FOREVER....and I hope it will for every single young man that makes the decision to serve and to be a representative of JESUS CHRIST!  Throw your conversion story in about when you met the missionaries and how that changed your entire life and talk about all the blessings that have come to you because those 2 young men decided to serve missions!  Also, 3 nephi 5:13 really sums up our purpose simple, but it's super super powerful!  Alma 26:22 also talks about what is it that God requires of us to do and contains HUGE promises if we do them!  Love the scriptures.

 

Anyway, this week we had an awesome experience that came out of no where!!  We recieved a call this week from a member of another ward here in Culiacan and he had a reference for our area.  The name of the reference is Kevin, he is studying English right now and his teacher is the member that called us to give the reference, and supposedly, Kevin is always asking him a TON of questions about the church and just a bunch of questions in general that anyone who really searches to find the truth might have.  So he asked him if he would like to meet with the missionaries and he was fascinated with the idea to talk with us!!  So we went to his house just this last Friday and met him for the first time...we got there and sat down and the first thing he asked us was....So how does the whole baptism work and what do I have to do to get baptized?!?! WHATT!!!! whoa whoa whoa....slow down there bud, you got to learn the basics first before you go jumping into the font!  haha.  So basically it was a full on miracle that we were able to find him and I know that it was an answer to the many prayers to find the people that are waiting to hear the missionaries....and also a testimony of how important the members of the church are in this GREAT and MARVELOUS work that we all have the resposibility and opportunity to take part in!  YAYY for miracles! ha. Kevin will be getting baptized the 7th of July!

 

I love you all, I'm proud of you all, I pray for you all, and that is all.

 

Elder Johnson

SPECIFIC goals, SPECIFIC plans, SPECIFIC prayers!

hhheeeeeEEYYYYYY!

 

Family, I love you a ton! This week was super super awesome! I feel like a whole new missionary right now. We had something called missionary seminary....and let me tell you that I learned a whole lot!  It was a 4 day seminary so we didn't work a whole lot in the field, but in between the classes we got to go to our areas and put in practice what we were learning in the classes and we basically just lived miracles when we left to go work!  Everyone saw miracles and it was because we were remembered or refreshed on the small and simple things that we hadn't been doing that were affecting the work a ton!  We learned a lot about SPECIFIC goals, SPECIFIC plans, and SPECIFIC prayers!!  And when I say specific I'm not joking!  It was super cool to see that as we put into practice everything that we had learned....we saw MIRACLES happen!  Our areas were blessed a ton and we could find a lot of people that were prepared by God himself and His angels to hear the gospel!

 

We had a super cool experience where Elder Blood (companion for the seminary) and I had planned to go with our ward missionary leader to ask for some references and we had prayed that he would give us 2 references and that one of them would be a family that we could go and teach....also, we had prayed that that day, in that short period of time, we could put a baptismal date with someone.  So we prayed specifically for the things that we had planned and we went and IT HAPPENED!  We asked our ward missionary for 2 references....we recieved 2 references....1 was a family, we contacted the family but only finding one of the kids named Marcos who is 18 years old.....we taught him and invited him to be baptized and he accepted!  Our prayer was anwered just like we had asked!  I learned a lot that day that if we do EVERYTHING WE CAN, and ask God to do the rest....He will always come through!  It may not be the exact way we thought it would be, and we might have to do more than we thought, but He will always come through if we ACT and show our FAITH!  Read in Exodus 14....it's super cool to see how Moses, even though the people were whining and crying (after seeing a TON of miracles!) never lost his faith and was able to do the great miracle of splitting the red sea in half!!!!  We need to trust in the promises that God has given us and fight through all the adversity and do everything we can and trust that God will do the rest!!  We had many experiences this week but I'm short on time and I'll tell you all about them in about 9 months.....hahaha!

 

Also, congratulations Paige and Jake!  I can't believe how fast the time went!  The world keeps moving when you're on a mission and it's kinda wierd!  hahaha.  weeelllpp, I love you all a ton and I'm so happy for every single one of you.  I liked something you said in your letter about learning, we need to be looking for opportunities to learn in every situation we are in and then think of how we can bless the lives of others with the knowledge that we have obtained!  God trusts those who He knows will share what they learn or have obtained!  I love you all MUCHO!!

 

Elder Johnson

HEY HEY!

Family, it's been so long.

Glad to hear that California went well and that everyone had a good time! Now it's time to get back to work.....haha. It will be fine, just take it day by day and know that each day you can work your hardest!  Well we've been doing super well here in MEXICO!  Just working hard and pleading for miracles! We are finding a lot of super awesome people, and almost all of them have some pretty big problems that are sometimes difficult to solve or it's difficult to help them in the best way possible...but we had some super cool experiences where the spirit literally just put the words into our mouths and all we had to do was open our mouth and speak! 

We have an investigator right now named Gibran and his family also are investigators.  But they had something super wild and super sad happen to them recently....this is a family of about 5 kids, who are all adults now. anyway, in a crazy freak accident 4 of the 5 kids were with the dad one day and were all killed...and so now the rest of the family is just super super down and we have been visiting with them a little bit to help them out. Yesterday, it got super intense and the mom was telling us that she no longer believes in God and that she is super super angry with the world and I literally didn't know what to say....but I remember that we just started to testify to her that God really does love her and her family, and a few scriptures came to my mind that we shared with her and after that, she just changed completely.....in the beginning of the lesson we asked her if we could pray and she said....whatever, I have nothing to do with God....and now, she was paying so much attention and you could just tell that she was feeling the spirit!  After all this, we invited her to say her own personal prayer that night and she commited to do it along with everyone else in the family!  The spirit was so strong at that moment and it was impossible to deny that that was the love of God that was upon us in that moment!  I pray with all my heart that she said that humble prayer that she commited to say that night, because I know that if she has prayed, she will feel the love of God enter into her heart and she will know without a doubt that He is there and loves her!!

We also have an investigator named Alexis, he is the son of a less active member of the ward or better said, inactive member considering that she hasn't gone to church in about 15 years! But Alexis has gone a few times with his grandma and really liked the church when he went. We met the family and invited them to a family home evening that we were going to have in the house of a member. we showed up the night of the family home evening and only Alexis was there.....so we asked him if he wanted to come and he said yes, so we went and we had a SUPER awesome lesson with him. He remembered all the feelings that he felt when he went to church with his grandma and so we invited him to church and he said that he would come and also that he would invite his whole family to come also!  Sadly, they didn't come............work....uhhhhh!  Oh well, I hope that we will be able to see them again this week so we can help them come to church this week!  But Alexis is super awesome, he just needs a little bit of family support.  Pray for him....porfissss! (por favor)

Anyway, things are great. I had my first meeting as zone leader which is called concilio....it's where all the zone leaders in the whole mission meet one day in the house of President Cantu and we talk about what we can do better in the mission. It was super awesome and way powerful....learned a lot!  thats the pic I sent by the way! 

Other than that, just here loving the mission....smiling every minute that I'm here because I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THE MISSION!!!!!!! WHOOOO! love you tons.

Elder Johnson