19 March 2012

WHOHOOO! That’s great about the missionaries going out in the field. Saludos [greetings to] James Pope for me.

Dear Family,

RIght now we are finishing those invitations for the conference. The sister who owns the internet place said she could print them out at .25 soles per page, with both sides printed! And that was the same as the one side color copy and one side black and white place in the center that a member was going to help us out with. Now we will have 2 weeks to try to invite all the area to the conference. This will be fun.

Quote from Elder Stewart (we were walking and I hear: sniff, sniff,..sniff.)

"Is that dutch oven potatoes?? donde, cúal casa? me invito!"  [Where is that house?  I’m inviting myself.] haha. I don’t know what those would be, but we didn't find the potatoes. We didn't have time to look either but all good - we got to smell.

This week has been pretty fun.

Michael is still with some [having some] issues from his family. They caused his great faith to be highly troubled telling him that better would be [it would be better] to not think about God much but focus on studying, doing that sort of stuff. The struggle is helping him read. He really has so much homework. He is taking 19 classes right now. Each one is one time a week for 2 hours.

One of the members is being awesome. She is visiting the two Ivons that we are teaching and helping them to feel good and all. She is really loving with all and fulfilling just about all she possibly can. THAT’s some good help with the missionary work. Help the missionaries!!!

Ana Palomino came to church again! We talked to her this week and she is all animated [excited] to get married and to be baptized and go to church forever. She bought some church clothes this week.. She was the one who went all by herself last week. She lives in another ward.. but is moving here at the end of this month we hope. Since her husband works in the mine (lots of people work in the mine. there are places where 20,000 people live, and 15,000 work in the mine of said city). There are lots of mines here in Peru, see the end of 1 Nephi 18:25.

 [25 And it came to pass that we did find upon the land of promise, as we journeyed in the wilderness, that there were ^abeasts in the forests of every kind, both the cow and the ox, and the ass and the horse, and the goat and the wild goat, and all manner of wild animals, which were for the use of men. And we did find all manner of ^bore, both of ^cgold, and of silver, and of copper.] 

I’ve been reading the beginning of the book of Mormon again in the past days, and it really impressed me the predictions of the great apostasy and the restoration in first and second Nephi. They are very clear. Nephi even saw Christopher Columbus.

Family Ojeda is a family who has the desire to learn from us. The parents are worried about their oldest son who is in those years [must be teenage years!]. We invited them to start reading every morning the scriptures, and Saturday they did! We don’t know about Sunday, but they couldn't go to church for some reason. The mom wants the youngest child to lead them all to the way, basically. But we are trying to help her see how the family would be able to be if they follow what King Benjamin, in Mosiah 4:15, councils about the role of parents (also 14). But we have to go about that well.

[ 14 And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the devil, who is the master of sin, or who is the evil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteousness.

 15 But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another. ]

Mari Diaz, who has gone to church over the past 2 years, needs us to read Mosiah 2-6 with her today. Thats what we planned in the companionship study.

Yesterday we met two people who are a little different. One started telling all types of things that aren’t true... and it was interesting how I could feel that he was lying, even though I had no way of proving it. The next one started out the conversation telling us: I’ve talked to all sorts of people and I’ve asked them what they think of my experience, people and missionaries from every church but yours. He said: When I was five years old I was in front of the house and was looking off into the distance, and from the corner of my eyes I saw a tall, white, beautiful man pass. I wiped my eyes to see better because he was bright, and when I opened them again, he was taking up into a whirlwind. I told my mom and she said it was the devil, and my nose started to bleed.

So at the end of telling us that, he asked us what we thought, what explanation there would be. And at the same time that he explained a little more about some weird stuff, I just felt very clearly that he had never seen such thing. We told him, and he resisted a little, and we repeated that, and he gave up on that attempt. While he talked and spoke about how hell doesn't exist and how we are just a circle and will be born again and have been born before and before and before and how there aren’t really consequences of sin, I remembered Alma 30 and Jacob 7. Those doctrines are not from the Lord. This morning I read 2 Nephi 2:10-14 which is a part that Lehi talks about the nature of the opposition in all things which gives us a good way to know how He [Christ] works and is, and lets us understand His [Christ’s] love. What struck me about the both experiences was how what was true and right was easily distinguished from what was heard, and around me.

Love Elder Johnson