November 28 and December 5, 2011

I bet Mark had fun driving this vendor's cart!

Dear family,

November 28. 2011

How is everything family? We are approaching the Christmas season and it gets hotter and hotter here.. which weirds me out, but I'm accustomed to not having snow for the least.

Yesterday it was cool. We found a man and his sister and we could teach them. We felt a little like Paul when in Acts 2 the people had a desire to do, we told them "repent and be baptized" They expressed doubts and following the spirit, we could find out that he feels addicted to drinking. So this morning we studied how to help people overcome addictions in Preach my Gospel and we shall teach him again today with his sister. I hope we can help him with that. Unfortunately he has worked in the mine since he had 15 years and has to go back in a week or so... but I want him to be able at least go back able to resist the temptation to drink.

Probably the experience most powerful this week was the baptism we attended. It wasn't from our area, but rather a different one in the zone, the Branch Camana. In all the intercambios (exchanges) that we have done in these days we were able to teach every single one of the 3 people who were baptized in that branch. I got to baptize the investigator Elias from the sisters. It was touching. When their district leader interviewed him a week after we taught him, he asked that I could do it. In the water, Elias told me that he didn't want to plug his nose to do it more like Christ, and he wanted me to put him ALL the way down in the cold water. When he came up he had such a huge smile and leaving said, "I feel really good. Really, really good." That was a pretty special moment. When he shared his testimony at the end, he said he was so happy to be baptized, and hoped he wouldn't be the last, since he knew this is the true and living church of Christ. One of the others who I taught in interchanges (exchanges) with Elder McNeil and Elder Ramirez gave them thanks and mentioned me too! That made me happy.

Baptism of Elias

So this week has to be way more. I was trying to work with a faith unbreakable like it says in Jacob 4, but I need to up it more. I desire the abilidad (ability) to do whatever the Lord wants me to do, like Nephi said, if He tells me to say unto the sea, make yourself land, that I can say it and that it happens. I know the Lord wants 25 baptisms in December. I have to change a ton to write that history for the Lord.

I was studying this morning and I realized the question that so many here ask: what is the name of God? and the question of that as a defining and proving doctrine of their religion isn't any bigger than a question about the nature of the Trinity and the way the scriptures talk of them. John 10, Mosiah 5 and 15 and Helaman 14:12 or 12:14 I think, helped me to clarify the idea that was forming of how to answer, and DyC 110 makes it completely clear. In the end I realized, the Book of Mormon once again answered the question and the real doubt comes down to accepting the truth of the Book of Mormon and having the faith to ask of God. I was thinking about this since the other day we were teaching some investigators and some others knocked the door and came in rich with a spirit of contention right when we were leaving. When we quickly made the appointment with the family, he said, “Can I come?” Haha so I had to clarify that question a little again. But really every question or doubt that they can have reduces to the wall of the faith. Can they carry out the experiment of Alma and Moroni to have for the least the desire to know and to read, meditate, and ask, an invitation to all that comes from God.

Reading again the conference talks, we read what President Eyring said. Three things to make every branch or ward a force of strong priesthood holders: 1. A president that knows how to sit in council with his quorum and value their opinions. 2. Faith that leads to be able to develop in the unit charity the one for the other, and 3. An understanding of the priesthood and how to work righteously to take part in the work of the immortality and eternal life of man. Not sure how good this is in Arlington, since I was like a newborn puppy who doesn't open his eyes then, but we are working here. Read it!

Love Elder Johnson

Dear family.

December 5, 2011

Wow. It seems like I’ve been in Camana forever. Last night in the district center I felt like I knew all the members of the district. So this week we’re gunna do some good work. Last Wednesday we had the Conference with the President for the zone leaders. Always so edifying. I was thinking about the gifts of the spirit.... and I’m not sure if I’ve already written about this, maybe more than once.. but I’ve been thinking a lot. It’s just that the mission president so obviously has obtained gifts of the spirit and complies with the charge that the meetings be carried out by the indications of the spirit. I want to be able to always do that with the investigatores (investigators) and that in our branch it happens that way. We were conferencing with the District President on those lines. How to do it. 

I felt so good in the First Presidency Christmas Devotional! It was awesome. I loved hearing and seeing the tabernacle choir sing JOY TO THE WORLD especially. How awesome was the thing! Wow!  I just went running to pick up the two new missionaries for the zone and got back really fast!  That’s fun. The new missionaries seem awesome. One is the most loving missionary in the whole mission. Indisputably. The other is kind of new so I don’t know anything about him but he seems awesome. Elder Stoddard. Back to the devotional. We went with Brother Cabrera!

This Brother Cabrera we just barely started to teach. Almost a month and a half ago we contacted him. We talked to his family since then and they are awesome. Coming back from a baptism with Elder Ramirez we felt like we should go to visit him. So we went straight there and only had time to teach him no more. but in teaching him he demonstrated such a desire to repent and come to Christ. Running on the way out at 9:20 (we ran 8 minutes to get back before 9:30) I said, We want to invite you to church tomorrow, those feelings that you could feel today, you will be able to feel in the church tomorrow. Will you come? Yes!. So we knocked his door early in the morning Sunday but he wasn’t there and we were thinking,”oh no!” But when we got to church he got there just after the sacrament. He stayed the three hours. He loved our class we gave in Sunday School about the personality of Christ, enjoyed priesthood meeting, and all! Then he committed himself to come to the Christmas devotional. He got there a little late but we had mistaken the time anyway and he actually got there 15 minutes before it started and felt really good watching it. So cool it was. Then he found a childhood friend who is a member and en fin (in the end), had a great experience. 

Before the awesome devotional we taught another man and his kid who also were filled with the desire to do what Christ wants and prepare to be baptized like Brother Cabrera. He is a suitmaker and when I invited him to church next week said, “How will I go?  I don’t have a suit.” Pause....ha haha. anyway I have really been trying to roll out love for all the people. Maybe I have forgotten a little.. or maybe I just haven’t ever really been really loving, but anyway I’m finding that in having love for the people, they begin to be able to feel the love of God in their lives. And through me, they come to Him. This was a big theme of the counsel with the Presidente on Wednesday and it’s so true. My companion now has to feel that same kind of love for the people.

We were brainstorming the other day about how to help everyone in the world go through the conversion process that my companion and I have seen in our missions in ourselves. We took out three important things: 

1. Feel the need to change, 
2. Have a responsibility and a good leader to follow up and help, 
3. Read the scriptures every day to understand our covenants and the priesthood.

Which reminds me that one of the missionaries in the  zone asked me for a blessing of counsel and comfort. It was a very sweet experience to be able to communicate the profound and moving blessing and see my spanish magnified so that it could have the Lord’s desired effect.

Love Elder Johnson

October 6, 2010

Dear Home,

I haven´t seen her [Clarice C.]! I was wondering about that... hmm. Maybe it is in some room here waiting to reach me.

Paul: I wrote this down for you on October 1: Wake up, September ended. Also, the computer I am typing on has an external 216 watt power source. So.. watch out Crysis.

We leave Tuesday for the mission field!!! We are all so excited slash tensions are rising. I think a lot of people are nervous about having the real deal: a companion all day with no one else to talk to except investigators, the companion probably going to be native, and the investigators for sure, and a whole new place, whole new schedule. In my district, we cover a spectrum of speaking ability from quite good, to still iffy. I understand near 80 percent of what the latinos are saying during enseñanzas, which is teaching practice. Granted they are talking about church stuff, and speaking clearly. The people I have met outside the CCM tend to speak quietly, and with non-chuch vocabulary that I am not as used to.

BUT, tho I am a little nervous, I am super archey iper mega extrodanario excited for getting there!

How´d the week go? It was hard, stressful, awesome, spiritual, and megasweet. We had Conference! that was definitely the highlight of the week. I have never enjoyed conference so so much! It was cool to be the missionaries speakers were talking about, especially when President Monson did the state of the church thing at the beginning. I took about 12 pages of notes, and am working on a synopsis of conference with the main thing for me in each talk, and when that main thing is something I need to implement in my life, I am highlighting it. I think I might have to summarize the synopsis tho... there were a lot of talks, which we all enjoyed so much. The two days were all smiles around the CCM.

We were the only people in all of Peru to watch conference live at church. Peru had elections, and there is a law that no one can go to church or any other organized meeting. It is apparently to keep the people under control, but means Peruvians watch conference a week later in a re-broadcast. Luckily, the CCM is somehow not technically an organization that falls under that law through some awesome loophole so we got to watch it live!

Did anyone else see the Sherinians (please correct that spelling haha) on the between conference program after Saturday morning??? The whole world saw them! Also very cool, during Priesthood session, my Chemical Engineering 170 study buddy, Andrew Naylor, got a portrait shot for almost 1.5 seconds! He was in the MTC Choir and I about had a heart attack. I didnt see Elder Ian Christensen unfortunately... did anyone else?

I was wondering if lots of people are having trouble converting to Monson with the huge follow the prophet theme. Especially noticed with the repeated 14 points. My favorite points were the prophet does not need qualifications to talk on a subject, and the prophets words don´t need to follow the knowledge of the time, citing especially Joseph Smith with the Word of Wisdom and translation.

I also really liked Eyring´s talks, and his recounting of how he realized what he was to talk about. In the MTC we watched a talk by Elder Bednar who mentioned how the talks at conference are not collaborated, yet always show trends. It was very cool to see that happen, as speakers would often set up the next speaker, and introduce his topic, and the overall themes of following the prophet, being close to the spirit, honesty and agency, and obedience. Bednar in that talk spoke to those who wonder: how do you know when it is the spirit. His response, was: "Don't worry about it, be a good boy." He cited three examples in his own life where he didn't even know it was a prompting of the spirit.. yes that's right an apostle didnt know... but definitely without question were.

The first, he just gave a large amount of money to a traveling general authority while on his mission in Germany. Thought it was a good idea at the time just to help him out, but didn't know it was a prompting. The Authority later that day got stopped by an east german officer to check his and his wife's identification. His checked out, but his wife's didn't. The authority didn't even realize the severity of the situation, and that they almost arrested and took his wife from him, They had no money but what Elder Bednar had given them. When they handed it to him, he left them alone.

Another was when he was a stake president. His son and the son of one of the Elder's Quorum Presidents´were playing a championship game during some Saturday Stake Conference thing. He struggled with his conscious, thinking that he was just rationalizing leaving, but did leave with that other father. They talked for 2 hours, had a long interview, watched the game, had fun. Six months later the President´s son died in an accident when chopping wood. That game was the only one the dad was able to watch his son play.

The last was when Elder Bednar was an apostle. He just felt like he should change the topic of a conference talk one morning only a few days before conference. He ended up changing it, and to his suprise, found that his new topic meshed perfectly with the speaker before, and the speaker after him.

I am going to continue studying the talks.

Question: Sister Cook in the Sunday morning session mentioned a Carmen Cutler. Are we related through the Cutlerites? That would be sweet!

Question: I was swirling my hot chocolate, and a bubble formed. The bubble moved to the center of the vortex and stayed there. It would happen every time I swirled it. I think this happened because of the inertia of the spinning liquid and the displacement in the surface it takes to float the bubble. So cuz it is bouyant, it got moved out of the way towards the middle kind of like if it was below the surface. Is that right? So that would be why ships would be sucked into a oceanic whirlpool too, right?

Today after going to the temple, we went to Metro and Tottus. I finally gave in and treated myself to a 3.2 sol slice of chocolate cake. I haven't bought anything else tho! except pens I guess. Anyway it was very very very good. Probably helped by the fact that I missed breakfast. Metro had biodegradable plastic bags! Do any stores back home do that or are they just way ahead of the curve here? On the way back we hopped on the bus, but unlike the normal somewhat high g ride, this guy drove more similar to Paul. He was passing busses, slamming the breaks, stealing passengers who were about to board other busses. Not saying Paul does that.

¡Estoy animado para el campo! "Pues he aqui, el campo blaco esta ya para la siega. Y he aqui, quien mete su hoz, con su fuerza, atesora para si, de modo que no parece, sino que trae salvación a su alma." Es muy interesante para veo los cambios en mí vida. En los ultimo dos semanas, cambié mucho mucho, y tambien cambié los semanas antes.. pero en un camino bueno. He aprendido mucho sobre español y el evangelio. Estoy en jacob 6 en mi leyendo en el libro de mormon. Cada dia leo en voz alto para mas o menos trenta menutos. Entonces leo muy rapido en español, y aveces tengo un accento bueno. En dos mes, seré muy bueno en español, y para eso, estoy animable. Ayer, Elder Stewart y yo damos un libro de mormon a un mujer de la comedria. Ella ha leido! En cena hoy, preguntaremos que fue. Bueno, necisito me preparo para cena y nuestro charla fogonera. Me encanto Peru y mi llamamiento misional! Tengo mucho gracias porque estoy en el servicio de dio. Tengo deseos de servir a Dios, y soy llamado a la obra!

[I'm excited for the mission field. "For behold, the field is white already to harvest; and lo, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul." It is very interesting to see the changes in my life. In the last two weeks, I've changed a lot and I have also changed in the weeks before that. But, in a good way. I have learned much about Spanish and the gospel. I am in Jacob 6 in my reading of the Book of Mormon. Every day I read out loud for more or less thirty minutes. Then, I read really quickly in Spanish and sometimes I have a good accent. In two months, I will be very good at spanish and for this, I am very excited. Yesterday, Elder Stewart and I gave a Book of Mormon to a lady in the cafeteria. She read it. At dinner today, we asked her how it went. I love Peru and my missionary calling! I am very grateful that I am in the service of God. I have desires to serve God and I am called to the work!]

Love Elder Johnson