Hey everyone and Family! Well this week was an alright week for LPE, we didn´t receive many good references but we did complete with our goal of 140. Everywhere we did our LPE, the people wouldn't listen to us or they always said that they have their faith, so this week we are going to come up with a better plan on how we can locate the chosen. We were able to however bring two investigators to church, its been like a long time since that happened, but we were very excited to have had them with us. The first one we had with us was Marielos, I´ve already explained a little bit about her, but all we really have to do now is to get her married to Hno. Rodrigo Carmen, and yes he already is a member. Once we get them married she should be able to get baptized by the end of this month, we´re super excited and working hard to get that done. Our other investigator is really special, we contacted her doing LPE, we had already visited her once before about the restoration of the gospel, and she was a little uncertain about it because she has visited a bunch of didn´t churches and has been baptized in a few them. So we left her with the promise that if she would pray with a sincere heart to really know that what we have taught her is true, she would receive her answer. So the next time we went back and asked her if she had prayed to find out the truth, she told us yes but hasn´t received her answer. We followed the promptings of the spirit and asked her what was she expecting to receive and asked her how she felt after the prayer, and after that she told us that she felt peace and comfort. I thought of two scriptures, John 16:7-13, and Galatians 5:22-23, we talked about when Jesus Christ was resurrected and said that he would send the Holy Spirit to guide us, and then we talked about how the holy spirit works. After talking about those principals, she told us and said that she knows that she received her answer and that what we were telling her was true and that she would attend church. That´s just a testimony builder for me of why it is important to follow the promptings of the spirit. All in all we are working hard to find those who are chosen, we know there are some out here we just have to keep digging harder to find them. So I heard dad was sick, well yea I would get sick to if I ate almost 2 pounds of pure salt! Sounds good that Steven was able to skype you from Afghanistan. Tell him to write me if he has the chance, it doesn´t need to be a big letter, just a couple of words would be nice! I wrote him all the time when he would write back! Oh and tell him that he´s the Devil, just say it and he will understand. :D Oh I found out I might be here another three more months because my companion leaves for Mexico August 13th. President told me he might send me a miny missionary, a miny missionary is when someone from this country is getting ready to be a missionary and they have the opportunity to serve for a month and half with the Elders before they leave to go on their mission. So I will be training another greenie and it is not easy to train a greenie, more stress for me. Oh and mom just remember, I´m never going have the opportunity again to shower with warm water, at least until I get home. I can´t believe a lot of my friends will be coming home from their missions soon! I bet that´s something they are hating right now. Well I must be going, we have to go get the visa papers for Elder Vargas. You are all in my prayers and I love you. Send my love to Grandma and Grandpa (all of them). Till next week!

Love Elder Johnson

Dear Everyone,

How´s it going? This week we weren´t able to finish with our LPE goal, we thought about why, and sure enough it´s when we get to our Mondays, we always seem to fall short on Mondays, we end up always saying we will finish during the week then we procrastinated. It never works thinking that we could finish it another day and then before we know it, its Sunday. Yup we will not do that anymore, it doesn´t feel good not completing a goal! We talked about it for a long time, and decided to always do LPE even on Mondays. We always thought since it´s after six we didn´t need to talk anybody, but that never works, and that´s not who we are supposed to be. I was thinking about my calling, we are MTC, which means, we are missionaries all the time, including Mondays, so we´ve put that in practice and I'm sure it will help. We were able to get one of our investigators to come to church, she is progressing very well, all we need to do with her is get her married and then we can baptize her, she has talked to her boyfriend and he agrees that they should get married because baptism for her is really important. Hno Marciano and his family didn´t show up to church. We even passed by their house to bring them but they weren't there. Hno really wants to get baptized, but I told him if he really does and loves the Savior then he needs to show Him. We defiantly can´t do that for them, so I think I´m going to leave after we have one more visit with him. Everything else here is going great, we are striving to improve our weaknesses every day, still praying and trying to search for the chosen. We try to set goals that we know are possible to achieve. So I enjoyed the picture that you sent, I really enjoyed seeing my two Nephews, I can´t believe how fast they´ve grown, time defiantly flies by too fast. It will be weird getting home because they will have no idea who I am. So I heard Steven left, I never thought it would be that hard to hear that he left, but when I read the letter it was really hard. I know that God will protect him, maybe teach him something's he needs to learn out there. If we are both lucky we will come home at the same time and wouldn´t that be nice for mom. :) I speak spanish basically all the time dad, my companion is Latino after all and probably the only time I speak English is when I´m with the Zone Leaders who are Gringos. My spanish is not perfect, nor do I think it will be after my mission, there is still lots of times were people can´t understand me but it´s been way better than it ever was. I just need to fix the grammar up a bit! So we have interviews with President this week, interviews with president are so good, he´s defiantly an inspired man. He was called to be my mission president for lots of reasons and I´m thankful for him. Well that's all I have for the week, you are all in my prayers. Tell my grandparents that I love them. Till next week!

Love you all,

Elder Johnson

This week was a good week for LPE, oh and LPE is when we talk to people off the street or knock on their door and talk to them for 2 min. about the gospel. We were able to finish with 140, I can honestly say I see the blessings from it, it all makes sense to me now, if we don´t do our LPE, we won´t find people who are chosen and are willing to hear the lessons, so really our focus right now is to complete every single week with 140 LPE's. So this week we were able to get one of our investigators to church, her name is Hna Carmen, really all we need to do is get her married to her boyfriend who is a member, we talked about it with them Sunday and they agree that they need to get married because she really feels that she needs to get baptized. We have a family that we are working with right now, they have five in their family, one of them is a member already. They say they want to get baptized and learn more about the gospel but they didn´t show up to church on Sunday. We went by their house on Saturday and they told us they would like to come, we even told them that we would stop by to pick them up, so we did, and they weren´t home. So the next time we pass their house we are going to be stern with them, we can´t do everything for them and they need to make their own decisions! But I will still continue to pray for them. I learn something new every week, this week has been another learning experience for me. There are things I need to improve on, I know I´m not the best missionary and that I will never be perfect, but as long as I keep on trying to improve, I believe that God will help me. We have been a little more successful in getting our ward members active in our activities, they have helped with the missionary work and we had a little better attendance. It just goes to show that activities in the ward can really help with those who are less active. So that was my week. It was really good to hear about the dream Aaron had, it just goes to show that Heavenly Father is very aware of our thoughts and prayers and He works in mysterious ways. Gods work is mysterious, He even uses other people to answer ours prayers sometimes. I know that grandma is in a better place, and really we are not to far away from her, we just need to finish our purposes here on earth then we can be with her again. Ok about this allergy thing, I´ve already told you once at the beginning of the mission, but I know how there is a certain point in life where we start forgetting things and stuff with age. HAHAHAHA! I developed an allergic reaction in Provo, but the thing is they don´t know what causes it, it just shows up very randomly. We will figure it out after the mission, it´s not deadly or anything like that! We don´t have changes until Aug. 1st dad since you asked. Well tell everyone hello and that I love them. Thank you for all your prayers, I love you all.

Love Elder Johnson

This was a good week, we were able to finally complete with 140 LPE, it feels so good to complete a goal, I´ve never my entire mission completed this goal. I know it´s sad! It defiantly feels good that we did it, nothing is impossible if we can complete a goal like this. We weren´t able to bring our investigators to church, we tried calling them and even passed by their house, but it just didn´t seem like they wanted to go, so we are just going to look for those who are ready to listen and that are chosen. We are having problems getting members to lessons with us, it only seems like four members want to work with us, but a lot of their problem is that they have families to take care of and we can´t always take them out with us. I don´t know but we will be having a meeting with Bishop about it. We actually have a meeting with the Bishop and the Ward Mission leader today, we will have our plan Mission ready by the end of that day. We are striving to study hard every day on how we can better ourselves as missionaries and help serve our ward better. We were able to see Wilmer at Church today, that was awesome to see him, we talked to him and he told us that he talked to his boss about getting Sundays off, he works every other Sunday. It´s just so good to see that he is applying the commandments of God in his life and he is willing to change. Sounds like everyone is doing great. I´m having some problems with an allergic reaction again, the nurse says it might not even be an allergic reaction, I guess we will find out. So it is really Hot here, and it rains a lot, but other than it´s really going good. I love you all and you are all in my prayers.

Love Elder Johnson

Hi friends, please forgive my lack of posting! Ive been super busy. I added 3 of Gavin's past letters, starting with June 4th. That should catch us up. Enjoy!

Kristen :)

Hello everyone,

 

This week was a good week and a bad week for us, we were able to get Wilber baptized and it definitely was a neat experience for him.  He seemed so happy after the baptism, he told me before he was a little bit nervous because he didn´t know what to expect.  But right after, he told me he felt great and how happy he was, it´s just so awesome the way people want to change their lives, and they get to receive that change, it´s great how happy they feel after baptism. So we were so focused in figuring out how we were going to get our investigators to church, we missed out on  opportunities to teach others.  I have put a lot of thought into focusing on how we are going to find the chosen, we have a really good plan of how we are going to do that this week. We were able to have two investigator show up to church and they are two families, we are also going to focus on helping them. I also enjoyed the talk by Elder Maynes, I have thought a lot about what he said and it has helped me want to be a better missionary. Well I heard that mom got released from her calling!  Just remember mom, God will have a different calling for you, you will still have a different purpose to perform, Bishop will just have to figure out what that is. :)  The only thing I don´t like about my ward, I don´t like to say it but, they don´t like to work!  So having members bring investigators to church is almost impossible!  But we and the presidency of the ward have a plan of how we can help, we will try it out and find out how it will work. Oh I almost forgot to say Happy Fathers day to dad, and that´s fine that you took $700 out of my account, but it looks like it will be paid back to me when I return home! haha! Make sure you tell grandpa Williams and grandpa Johnson Happy Fathers Day also and that I love them!  I have been taking a lot of pictures, matter of fact, I actually bought a 16gb flash drive to store all of my pictures and I have filled a lot of it up, it should be full by the time I return home. Well I love you all, you are all in my prayers, keep strong and remember to have faith in God.  Till next week!

Love Elder Johnson

This week was a good week on lessons, we are improving little by little. And no we weren´t able to get Wilber baptized, he had to work a lot this last week, so there was no interview.  But next week we have everything planned, we will be able to get him interviewed and baptized. We are having so much difficulty getting our investigators to come to church!  I´ve seriously done almost everything I can do to get them to come, they always say that there going to, we even go by their house´s before church to bring them, but it never works.  I guess we will just keep trying till we get them there. We are still striving every day to focus on the needs of our investigators in our studies, also on how we can become better in meeting our goals every week. We were able to have counsel meeting with the ward and we have some pretty good goals in how we can be better missionaries and how the ward can help us in this work.  I´m hoping we will see some good progress. Oh about the girl JaKell that died, I really didn't know her too much, but it just goes to show that this life is fragile. We can never know what to expect, but God does!  That´s why we have His promise that if we are doing everything we´re supposed to do, we are promised eternal life, that´s why He says prepare now and don´t wait, because we don´t know when it will be our time to go home.  It can be a long life or a short one, but God does love us and wants us to be happy while we are here, we all have a purpose, we all have our callings to be fulfill, whether it be here or in the spirit world. Oh and about the marriage you told me about, Wow!  I don´t know why but that would be terrible if someone backed out of a temple marriage or didn't show up, I think that´s a hundred times worse than someone standing up there fiance at a normal wedding! I seriously can´t believe Jake and John are almost home, the time is going by way too fast!  I only have one more change until I have 1 year in the mission, and I keep hearing that it just gets faster and faster by the other missionaries, just when you don´t want it to. Our ward here in Arce is actually very small right now, we have a lot of less actives.  But we are working with the leaders in the ward to change all of that, we hope that these goals will work. Well I love you all, you are all in my prayers, keep strong in your faith of Christ.  And remember we never know when its are time to be called home so we should be preparing now!  Till next week,

Love Elder Johnson