Henderson...

Well another week flew by! :D It is incredible how fast they go! We were blessed with some great weather this week! Some of it was a little extreme and had some pretty crazy wind, including two fallen trees behind our apartment. That was pretty sweet! I was standing outside our balcony watching them both start to finish!

The weather that followed the storm was the blessing. We were back to 70 degrees! That meant that everyone was outside just relaxing. We made some of the best contacts ever! One of the great things that happened was that we ran into a less active who has been inactive since he moved here from puerto rico. He has two sisters here and a Mom as well. We are sooo excited to contact them this week to be able to get them active again! The Henderson ward needs some spanish members!
That is probably the biggest change of all. The fact that I am only speaking about 30% spanish right now. Elder Swinney and I are trying to change that to help out, but hey! Who knew I would ever get to teach an English investigator!

The main thing that happened this week was that we got to work quite a bit with two investigators Angela and Pedro. They are both progressing fairly well but are going through some pretty tough decisions to be able to live the law of chastity. They are definitely going to need prayers! We built some very good super trust with Pedro on Saturday when we helped him move to his new trailer.

The members here in Henderson are great! I pray for the gift of the English tongue to be able to talk to them haha. But boy do I like the southern attitude. Everyone is so crazy! :D Have to love them. :)

I'm running low on time, but I love you all so much! The work is picking up here and I'm excited to help it out! Don't forget to put on the gloves and get to work! :)

Elder Johnson

Country!

Hey y'all! I am a true southerner out here 'n Henderson! Henderson has only been open for two transfers to the Spanish work, so we are working with two active Spanish members! The Henderson Ward is great! Elder Sullivan, my trainer, just finished being here in this area after training Elder Swinney. So I am with my "brother" in the mission! Elder Sullivan went Zone leader in Raleigh. That's basically our Spanish Assistant to the President spot haha.

I have to say that being in Henderson is going to be sooo much different than Cary. I have such a hard time communicating in English! Not to mention the new language of southern I have to learn haha. The drive up to Henderson with Brother Owens was one of the hardest conversations I have ever had.

I really have not gotten to know a whole lot about this area yet, but one thing that I really have been able to learn, is that we are all children of God. It is incredible to me how the exact same love that I have felt in Cary, is exactly how I feel right now with those we are teaching. It can only grow from here, and I cannot imagine where it will be after two years!
I know that missionary work is the work of the Lord. I have come to truly love it. I feel like the attitude of Alma is beginning to settle in, "And now it came to pass that the sons of Alma did go forth among the people, to declare the word unto them. And Alma, also, himself, could not rest, and he also went forth." We get so stuffed up in the apartment! There is nothing better than to get out and go talk to people!

I love y'all so much and I hope that you have a great week!
Élder Johnson

 

Tomorrow I get transferred

Tomorrow I get transferred, so next week I will get yall my new address. In the mean time you can just send stuff to the office and they will get it to me.

Transfers are so weird! I feel so strange! I have been here for so long now! And honestly I am soooo excited to move on! Cary has been sooo amazing! But I personally cannot grow without change! It is so important! It gives you the opportunity to create new and refined goals, and I am super excited to be able to work towards them! There are sooo many attributes of Christ and a consecrated missionary that I can still improve. And will always be able to improve haha.

This last week was super good. We were able to finish off strong and have some good lessons to be able to make progression with our investigators. I am super sad to not get to keep working with them, but the thing is, is that I do! :D I can still support them through Facebook and help them to resolve their doubts. It won't be the main focus, but it is so amazing that it is possible. The nets are being strengthened!

One miracle that we saw this week came most definitely through the lord's plan. A while back Elder Sullivan and I had an amazing lesson with a referral from a member. But then she started to work two jobs with only one hour of break in between the two, and during that time she slept. We had to discontinue her because there wasn't any time. She just had an accident at work however that took her out of work for a week. Our member informed us and we stopped by to see how she was doing! We had a super great lesson and she accepted baptism! The spirit was so strong! The Lord knows that she is ready and has put her into a situation to hear, and act. She lost the second job sadly, but gratefully at the same time. :D It truly was a blessing to her, and we hope to be able to bring the spirit to her to testify!

This last week I have been studying hard to prepare myself to be transferred to a new area. And I have learned some amazing things about our purpose as missionaries and followers of the Gospel of Christ. He taught not by chastising him, but by giving him the responsibility to teach by example where to find Christ and rest.

Alma 37:33-34
"Preach unto them repentance, and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ; teach them to humble themselves and to be meek and lowly in heart; teach them to withstand every temptation of the devil, with their faith on the Lord Jesus Christ."

"Teach them to never be weary of good works, but to be meek and lowly in heart; for such shall find rest to their souls."

I love the scriptures! I bare firm testimony that The Book of Mormon changes people's lives. I can guarantee you that without the strength from The Book of Mormon we will not be able to find rest in our lives sufficient to enjoy the peace of God. We will not be prepared to accept the spirit into our lives. We will not be prepared to learn what the Lord is trying to teach us through the different trials we go through.

I love yall so much! Espero que tengan una semana excelentísimo y que se aferren al Libro de Mormón!

Con mucho cariño,
Élder Johnson

Me, Elder Tingey, President Mortensen, Elder Graham, Elder Coca

 

 

Weather? Delighful!

Hey y'all! While the weather out there is frightful, the weather out here's delightful! One thing I quite enjoyed this last week was that it snowed! :D Not a super common experience that you get out here haha. Everyone went crazy! For 1 inch of snow, school was canceled for four days! What luck! What luck it was for us as well! We were able to have some super great lessons over Facebook with some investigators that are normally at school. Obviously being teenagers and on break, they were stuck to their Facebook :D One of those miracles was with a friend of Tony, a member! We have talked to her a lot when we have seen her, but never really been able to sit down and talk to her about the gospel. We don't worry, since that's all Tony talks about! :D She has asked us for a blessing before, and has had great experiences with missionaries, and we were finally able to powerfully bare testimony of the church and prayer. God inspires us through simple actions to be the means of a great work! The simple question of "How do you know that the Mormon church is true?" opened up a world where the spirit could reside and testify!

Another miracle that we saw this week was that we finally had a lesson with a potential investigator we found two transfers ago from knocking on a door. We taught five very elect people! They even turned off the Super Bowl for us! Which we had noooo idea it was on last night till then. Thanks hispanic culture! :D The names are Sandra, Gabi, Lorena, Maria, and Gilberto. We are super excited to work meet with them!

Well it's official! We got a call from President Bernhisel this week, and I'm leaving the area! And Elder Tingey is training!! :D Ah that's going to be so good! I'm super excited for an amazing last week here!

I hope and pray that everyone is having an amazing week and that miracles will happen!
Élder Johnson

Helamán 3:35
No obstante, ayunaron y oraron frecuentemente, y se volvieron más y más fuertes en su humildad, y más y más firmes en la fe de Cristo, hasta henchir sus almas de gozo y de consolación; sí, hasta la purificación y santificación de sus corazones, santificación que viene de entregar el corazón a Dios.

:D

Hey Y'all!

This week was such an amazing week! We were able to find success in so many different ways! Oh and this week was Elder Tingey's birthday! Now I'm not exactly sure how to describe the great week we had, but what I can tell you is that the lord has blessed us with so many tender mercies. One tender mercy was food. :D We Have literally been fed by the members at least once a day for past 2 weeks or more, save for one day. And through a service organization we are trying to work with, we received 6 bags of food! It doesn't matter if they're members or not, they like to give us food. We have been so blessed. Because I'll be leaving in two weeks the members are requesting that I sign them up on the days we don't have haha! That aspect has been the greatest miracle here. I love the members so much. I pondered for a while about whether it is possible to go through the whole mission in several areas, and to love every single person I meet. I have often felt that there is only so much love that you can give out to people, and that there are only so many people that you can truly care about. That meant to me that saying goodbye to someone meant that my love came with me. BUT! That is not the nature of Heavenly Father! He loves every single one of us. Millions, Billions, Trillions of us. And I'm saying how come I have sooo many friends I don't need on facebook?? But we can do it. We can have perfect love for each person we meet! But it's going to take some help from the man above who knows how.

I am so grateful that the love we have for those we meet can last. I will always love the people here in Cary soo much! And somebody that I have come to love a whole lot is Gloria.
Here's the finishing touch to her story :)

Gloria got baptized!!!!!!! And confirmed!!!!!! We realized at the last minute that she really wasn't expecting the confirmation part. That was our bad haha. After teaching her for more than a span of 6 months, there was a lot that she had forgotten, and that I had forgotten if we had taught or not.

Now I gave a pretty good story last week of Gloria, but we ran into one last bump in the road. Thursday around noon we got a phone call. Gloria was calling off the baptism!! WE GOT SO NERVOUS! We talked, and talked, and talked, trying to figure out exactly what her concern was. It came down to tithing, and being able to stay strong. But she was pretty nervous. We talked to her for a total of 1 hr and 45 mins. Holy cow! We had to slow down so much, talk simple, and explain very well to her the doctrine she didn't understand. When we reached the end of the conversation we asked if there were any more doubts or concerns and she said, "What do I need to bring tomorrow?"!!!!!! Ah that was a huge scare.

Her baptism went super well. She was very nervous and cold beforehand, but afterwards there was such a big change. It was incredible. Someone who had such fear and doubt, was so happy. Last night I was thinking about the whole experience, and I realized that Gloria is a few years older than you and Dad. To have such a huge change was such a miracle. And her family is going to change immensely. A scripture I read this morning was in Alma 19:6 about king Lamoni. I think it describes the change she had really well.

"Now, this was what Ammon desired, for he knew that king Lamoni was under the power of God; he knew that the dark veil of unbelief was being cast away from his mind, and the light which did light up his mind, which was the light of the glory of God, which was a marvelous light of his goodness—yea, this light had infused such joy into his soul, the cloud of darkness having been dispelled, and that the light of everlasting life was lit up in his soul, yea, he knew that this had overcome his natural frame, and he was carried away in God—"

I love you all so much! I know that we can be changed just as Gloria, Lamoni, his wife, and Ammon!

Till next week! :D
Élder Johnson

¡Y aconteció!

And it came to pass!! Ah one of the greatest things that I feel that we have been learning from our mission president is that we are out here to make things come to pass! Wow what a difference that made this week! We had one of the most amazing experiences where we made something come to pass, and through soo much faith, prayer, fasting, and time!

Gloria is going to be baptized this Friday!! I have been teaching Gloria ever since I got here! Well, we did stop teaching her for about a transfer. But that transfer made a huge difference. And like I said, it came down to our faith that she could make it.

Whenever we have talked to Gloria about getting baptized she has always said, "I want more time to study the book." well in Spanish she said that at least haha. But we were having the hardest time to find out what she meant by that, because practically everyone says that, but they all have a different doubt. Basically I can tell you that we never could find the doubt. She wouldn't open up to us! But I definitely know now that I have soooo much more that I can learn to be able to follow the spirit to be able to find peoples doubts. Yet, since we had been struggling in that aspect, we decided to move forward with something else. The faith that she was ready to enter into the waters of baptism.
About three weeks ago when we were doing weekly planning we were looking forward to when Gloria could get baptized. We both felt that the 18th of January was the day. We had plenty of time for that. So we set forth trying to meet with her as often as possible with the members. Well we had one of the most amazing lessons with her with Brother Martinez, her primary friendshipper. We went into the lesson, and by himself started to teach her from the scriptures! We read in 2 Nephi 32 where Gloria was in her reading, and tried to move back to chapter 31 to talk about baptism, and Brother Martinez jumped up to the plate and went right ahead and read verse 13!

"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, I know that if ye shall follow the Son, with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent, repenting of your sins, witnessing unto the Father that ye are willing to take upon you the name of Christ, by baptism—yea, by following your Lord and your Savior down into the water, according to his word, behold, then shall ye receive the Holy Ghost; yea, then cometh the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost; and then can ye speak with the tongue of angels, and shout praises unto the Holy One of Israel."
Ah it was so great! That was the Thursday before the 18th. And we invited her to be baptized the 18th still. She said she'd pray about it! The next day we had a dinner with her and the Regulez family, and the other elders as well.

We basically talked to her for three hours about being baptized the next day. Those three hours were super uncomfortable haha. I personally knew that my words weren't meant for most of that night, so I spent the time eating, and praying in the bathroom for the others haha. After three hours we ended with a song, and Gloria had decided we'd call saturday morning at 8:00 to confirm the baptism. Ah she was killing us! :D But the spirit in that home was so strong at the end of the night.
We were super happy to hear that due to the many testimonies of baptism given on Friday, Gloria felt the chills really strongly from the spirit. We talked to her and she firmly stated, "I am doing it Friday!" We were soooo happy!! She truly is ready!

We had soo many miraculous experiences this week with investigators getting married without telling us (Lorenzo and Ivonne) and good quality lessons with our investigators.

Thank you so much for your prayers! We were blessed this week because of them!

Have an amazing week, and make this week come to pass!

Les quiero muchísimo!
Élder Johnson

Amazing week!

This week was an amazing week! We have been seeing incredible progress in our branch and in our area. We are trying to take a little bit different approach with Gloria right now, since she is doing just about everything to be progressing but still doesn't know when she wants to be baptized and commits herself to other things before the gospel. Basically we aren't talking about baptism haha. We're sending the members to visit or talk to her, to try to help her feel like she truly belongs. We are praying super hard for her trying to exercise such great faith! Please pray for her still! :D

Erika is still on track, but we still don't know when! Everyone in the branch gets surprised when we say that she's still not baptized. Something is keeping her from moving forward to what she truly wants.

We were able to teach a whole lot of lessons this week that went super well! Thanks to Facebook, blogs, excellent referrals, and members!

Sorry this was so short! But nonetheless I love y'all a ton! I am super excited for the wedding this week! I can't wait for the pictures! I pray for y'all and hope that everyone heals well from their wounds!

Les quiero muchísimo,
Élder Johnson