This post consists of questions we asked Mark, and his replies.

Describe your apartment

It is really small. We have a bunk bed, two desks, a dresser, and two doors. Oh and on the dresser is one of those gigantic water bottle things so we can drink because the faucet is no good.. about 100 square feet before you put all that in there. a lot less with it in.

Tell us more about your companion

My companion..idk if i said already.. but is the only member in his family. Has been a member since he was 15, and took 3 months to get baptized after he met the missionaries. Here we have a goal of a 3 week process from meeting them to them knowing that this church is the true church, and being baptized.

How do you get around?

We walk or bus everywhere. Usually hit the bus at least 2 sometimes 4 times a day. The busses are great fun. To get here we took one that was unusually tall. The roof was at my normal shoulder height. One other person had to bend his head a little.

What are the streets like?

The streets depend on where. We often go teach in the Mansion area, which is the most poor area. Their streets are tierra, and exceedingly dry. There hasn't been rain here in at least 6 months, so dust gets all up on the shoes and some on bottoms of pants when you are being careful. In the nicer areas, the streets are paved, something different than asphalt. bigger pebbles are used... but it isn't concrete. Here too the streets are generally dusty. Also there doesn't seem to be much public concern for the cleanliness of the roads. Everyone drops and throws their trash out the cars, busses, bikes. In consequence, there is a ton of trash.

How are you received?

My all time least favorite phrase is: soy catolico. We hear it EVERYWHERE. Usually people are nice and will at least listen to us a little. Maybe 1 in 7 doors will agree to let us back to teach another day, which isn't bad counting the doors which are unoccupied. It is just that the people often are quite close minded towards us and our message of Christ, and additional teachings which would bring them all many blessings.

How are you feeling about Spanish?

My spanish is coming. I and rapidly understanding more and more even though they talk about a billion miles per hour. The problem is when they use words I don't know, which happens a lot. Especially when the words is a key word that decides the meaning of the sentence. I tell most by picking out most of what they say, and then looking at their body language and facial expressions to get the rest. Still tho, last night we were talking to a woman and her sister... and they started to cry. I only understood something about drinking alcohol... probably her husband, and that the sister was feeling very unhappy. My companion did a good job of reassuring her. I tried to do what i could.

Those goals--were they for your companionship?

the numbers like 540 contacts a week? yes. companionship per week

Name the elders/sisters in your district

Oh I’ve only seen them a few times. but we have an Elder here from American Fork, he has 22 months here, and he knows Jared! He played soccer on a team that occasionally borrowed jared apparently, and his brother played on Jared's team.

What are you doing about food?

Food. The food is quite good. I love the rice flavors and stuff. Its \all good.. but i have had to eat fish twice here now. Luckily i am beginning to be able to.

What do the people in your area do for work?

i have no idea...ill try to find this one out.

Temperatures?

A little warm in the mid day, cold at night. It is a desert after all. So short sleeves in the day and coat in the night after dinner.

What is the ward like?

We go to two. One is very good, with lots of people and strong membership. THe other is very very small. I don't know why it is so small, but one of our goals is to work with the bishop on that this week.

What is the name of your area?

Hunter zone, area is Augusto Freire

Any major insights?

Yes.. So many. I wish i had more time to write on them. I have learned more than i could write in 30 minutes. One is that obedience is the most important thing when trying to improve

Any missionary experiences you can share?

yes!

What a great week! alright, let me try to throw out the highlights. We took some investigators to the young mens young women activity, and i had no idea what was going on...basically like always. Anyway they were all just chilling on the basketball slash soccer court and some music came on. All of a sudden the 25 or so youth were doing this sweet organized dance for the next 7 minutes. Way cool.

I just wanna say that teaching people for real is so awesome. The other day we were in a home, actually the nicest ive been in so far. Anyway we were reading 2 Ne 28 with them, discussing the prophecies. They got way into it and how exciting it was that many were true.

Another day we were teaching at a one room home. The candlelight glinting off the tin roof and giving the cinderblocks warmth. it was very very cool.

ahh time to go

love Elder Johnson

September 8, 2010

Dear Mom, Dad, Eric, William, and Paul,

That is a lot of people on the blog! Holy broccoli! The Taiwan [person] might
be Kirsten´s sister... I know she is somewhere there abouts.


Ok, I'll answer all the questions first. I don´t know who Elder Palaoci
is, but in regards to soccer, he is absolutely right. It was really fun
in the Provo MTC, but it is way better here. First off, there aren´t
nine-finity people playing. We usually have about 12 on each team.
Second, everyone is way better on average. I think it is just cuz
soccer is much more popular among the latinos, and this MTC is about
half latino. Oh and Latino is the term we have been asked to used. As
for us people from up north, we are referred to as norte americanos.
Except for Elder Badzinski, he is still Auzi.

The food is intense. Every meal is alien to us. The tastes are all
different, the ratios are different, and the fact that we have rice
and a meat for every meal is diffferent too. I think we even eat more
rice than I had been eating in my final weeks at home. Sometimes meals
are great, sometimes they are mas o menos [more or less, average], and once I had to
concetrate on lifting my foot off the ground. The juices are so weird
haha. Ok... so different. Every meal we have a choice of two unlabeled
juices, or water. The two juices the first day, were of coloration
bright yellow/orange, and a dull light brown [anyone's guess, but mine is Tamarind]. All of us newbies chose
the bright one, and were sorely suprised. I honestly dont know how
that particular juice could have caught on...it was...er...great.
Luckily the juice changes every day, though I often stick with the
safe choice: water.

One day I went for the juice, and drank it. When I asked my companion
what it was, and after serveral minutes of trying to understand him, I
realized he was saying it was herbal tea. uhhh.. is that even ok?

I have heard no word on where people do dry cleaning, but I haven't
asked either. I suspect we need to arrange it with someone outside the
CCM.

The spanish is exploding. Every day is so much better. And my english
is going out the window. When I'm writing in my journal after a day of
speaking spanish, I tend to accidenatlly use grammatical structures of
Spanish or the english version of a phrase I can say in spanish, so it
makes limited sense. Last night I was trying to ask if we could go to
meals in our P-day clothes (which are just casual wear), and I said,
"Can we go to food in our clothes?" Oh and I memorized the first vision
really well in English in the MTC, but then memorized it in Spanish.
Now, the only way I can say it in English is by translating it
directly. But the result is in a different order than the real English
one. Elder Silva (my compañero) laughed at me for a while after he
asked me to say it in English for him.

My companion is a Chilean who knows his scriptures like nobody's
buisness. He can whip out a scripture on the most diverse topics, and
i have no idea how. He says he learned them all in seminary and
institute. Apparently he wasn't sleeping. So I guess I really need to
work on my at hand bible references. He was in a band before comming
to the CCM and they recorded a CD. I got to see some pictures of him
performing live. He plays keyboard.

Ms. Harber remembered me?? What in the world? thats impressive.

A random story. The second day here, Elder Steward kicked a soccer
ball over the wall in a game. We got to go into the world, which was
super exciting at the time. It took forever to find it [the ball], and while we
were looking, a dog smelled or heard us and started barking from the
other side of one of the homes wall. They all have walls in this
neighborhood and the CCM has a 15 foot wall all the way around. A
man came out to investigate the cause of the barking, and gave us a
quizzical look. Instinctively, Elder Stewart asked, "Have you seen a
ball?" He didnt understand. Why? Oh wait this is PERU! Haha Elder
Stewart rephrased, "¿Pelota?" The man shook his head.

That 50 mile hike story is awesome. [A couple of years ago Mark participated in a

Boy Scout activity to walk 50 miles in 20 hours or less. He was successful and finished it

in about 16.5 hours. Missionaries get to walk a lot, but never 50 miles in a day.

So, he can never complain about walking on his mission, because it will never be as hard

of a walk as the 50 miler was].

Ok, I wrote some things down to get into this email.

Today we went to the temple, and it was awesome. The Lima Temple is
one of those Micro temples, and its it definitely micro. To get
there, we are required to take the bus. We can walk back if we want,
however me and Elder Silva took the bus back. It was quite an
experience. The bus to the temple had about 18 seats, and 38 people
crammed into it! It was incredibly crowded. In addition, the ceiling
was about 5 feet 11 inches off the ground, so I stood with my head
completely sideways and pressing against the ceiling. Everyone here is
quite short, the Peruvians around me were probably 5.5 feet at the tallest.
Only two other people on the bus had my problem, and they were norte
americano missionaries also going to the temple. The driver has an
assistant who collects the money of departing passengers when they
drop them off. He stands right in front of the bus door while in
motion. To give an idea of how crowded the bus was, he just left the
door open on the way to the temple because there wasn't space to close
it, and he held onto the rails, leaning out the side the bus between
stops.

On the way back from the temple, we missed the bus. But another came
about 10 seconds later. There are a lot of buses here. It was not
nearly as crowded though, which is good. But this time, since it was only
me and Elder Silva getting on, the driver started going the instant
both of my feet touched the floor of the bus. Consequently I almost
fell and was able to give people on the bus a good laugh. The driver
did this at every stop, and it caught me off guard every time. So
everything was more or less ok until the bus took a turn off our road
to the CCM! They don't really have routes as far as I can tell, and
there are no bus stops, they just pick you up wherever you are, but they
are more like mass taxies. Someone had to be dropped off a street
over I guess. Elder Silva and I both looked at each other as we turned away
from familiarity and into the wild unknown Lima with nervous looks. We
tried to jump off, but when Elder Silva asked the departing-passenger-money-collector

slash door guard, he said some spanish words that even Elder Silva didn't understand.

I remembered the time when i jumped off the bus sans you all in London. Paul was with me
right? [No, Mark jumped off all alone and the bus took off. He started running; we tried to keep

him in sight, but weren't able to get off until about a block later--it all ended well,

obviously, but, it was very scary.]

So we keep driving who knows what direction, the door guard keeps
telling us no one knows what and we are steadily growing more nervous,
when the bus suddenly stops and he motions for us to leave. It cost 1
nuevo sol to get both of us wherever we were. We looked around, at
each other, and around again. Haha. Ummm... We were by a gas station...
Oh, behind the gas station is a nice fence! Luckily for us we could see
the Regional church headquarters building from where we were, so we
headed there. Remembering that the CCM was right by the headquarters,
we were able to make it back to the CCM alive.

So by the way, I got a hair cut the first day I got here. Which is
odd, cuz I had one two days before leaving Provo. I have not hair
now...they buzzed it way short. But it isn't even a really good chop!
There are uneven hairs all over the place!


We went to tottus (similar to walmart) after the temple today, and
there were odd bottles in the drink aisle. The notable ones were tall
and skinney 1.5 liter bottles, and taller and a little wider 3.3 liter
bottles. They look pretty great for water rockets... I kinda want to
take a few home in 1.9 years.

The area authority came the other day and talked to us (in spanish).
He talked about while we are on our missions, we have similar
responsibility as apostles. It was very cool.. Obviously we lack the
keys and authorities that they have, but we are here to a similar end.
It was cool. I had to listen to the translators. Im not that good yet.
However, I needed no translation in the temple.

and I'll send pictures of stuff next week


Love
Elder Johnson!