Elder Kaden Johnson: Last Week in the MTC

Family and Friends,

This week was so good and probably the best one I have had at the MTC! I'm so ready to leave to Oregon in the morning! Everyone in my district is gone. Three left Monday, eight left this morning and the five Salem boys --myself, Elder Crandell, Elder Hill, Elder Eldredge and Elder Smith--are the only ones left. I feel bad for Elder Eldredge. He has bad anxiety so they gave him some medication and he has to stay at the MTC for two more weeks which sucks. My residency has been so boring. Twenty four Elders left last week and they were a party! Now, it's just fourteen of us and a few more elders moved in down the hall but they are really quiet and we haven't really gotten to know them. there are a few cool ones though! We went from about forty party animals to like twenty one. It was a weird change.

This week, on Thursday night, I had the opportunity to give my first priesthood blessing. Elder Hepworth in my district wasn't feeling good all week and randomly asked me to give him a blessing. I was pretty nervous and wasn't sure what to say. When I started, I was totally led by the spirit, I could tell. I can't remember what I said, I just remember how powerful the feeling was. It was awesome!

TRC's. TRC's this week were pretty good. The second time we met with John we brought along our genius teacher Brother Anderson, as a member. It was great! when we started talking to him at the beginning we found out that Brother Anderson knew John's wife. So, that was cool. They had a lot of things in common so it was a true blessing that he was there. We talked to John about prayer. He had some difficult questions this time as well, but we were able to answer them well and we really progressed. The last time we met with him we committed him to pray and to read the Book of Mormon and he said he would. Progress! We did really well with Jason, as well. That dude is a stud. He was understanding everything that we were telling him and was really accepting. His grandparents are LDS so they have been helping him progress.

Brother Anderson always gives powerful lessons and there was one that stood out to me this week. As a class, we read Alma 22 where Aaron goes and teaches King Lamoni and after he was done teaching, King Lamoni prayed to Heavenly Father and said that he would give up his whole kingdom and all of his sins just to know Him. From such a simple principle that Aaron taught, King Lamoni was totally converted. We talked about how powerful a missionary Aaron was. We think Aaron to be a guy way above us and way more qualified but Brother Anderson said something that was way cool to me. He said that the only difference between us and Aaron was a couple thousand years. I don't know why, but I thought that that was so powerful.

Alright, now the good part. Sunday. Sundays here are the best days. They are pretty long, but you feel the spirit so strong. In Sacrament meeting, I had the opportunity to pass the sacrament which was pretty cool and also us departing missionaries sang a musical number. We sang, "As Sisters in Zion/We'll Bring the World His Truth". It was so powerful, everyone in the congregation was crying. It was awesome and the spirit was definitely there. During one of our zone meetings , President Redding told us that they had pushed the Sunday Night devotional back 15 minutes and he said that they usually don't do that unless it is someone special who is going to be there. So, we all got super hyped. Before the night devotional, we had to go to this departure devotional in T3 which was pretty good. They basically just told everyone what to expect in the mission field. After that, they told us we had to stay in T3. The night devotional was in S3 so we were super sad because we were expecting an apostle to speak at the devotional. We were wrong, ha ha! It was a music devotional. We were all sad because we wanted to hear from an apostle. It was Jenny Oaks Baker (Elder Oaks daughter) who spoke and played her violin. It was great, she had awesome stories to tell and she is pretty awesome at the violin. After that they made everyone stay where they were and they had everyone watch, "Character of Christ", by Elder Bednar. I was alright with this even though I had already seen it. It's such a great talk! But, after that when everyone was ready to get the freak out and go to bed, in comes the man himself, Elder Bednar! Everyone went silent and stood up, it was so shocking! The spirit is soo strong being in the presence of an apostle. The room in T3 is pretty small and we were near the front so it made it that much cooler. He did a !&A for a solid hour. It was so good and he said something that was super cool. Someone asked how could I become more knowledgeable of the scriptures lie you are? Elder Bednar's response was great--He turned to Mosiah 8:16-17. It says, 16 And Ammon said that a seer is a revelator and a prophet also; and gift which is greater can no man have, except he should possess the power of God, which no man can, yet a man may have greater power given from God 17 But a seer can know of things which are past and also of things which are to come, and by them shall all things be revealed, or, rather shall secret things be made manifest, and hidden things which are not known shall be made known by them, which otherwise could not be known. I thought it was so cool. He basically said that because he is an apostle, he has those keys and that power to be able to have that knowledge of the scriptures. He said some other great things and it was such a cool experience!

I'm off to Oregon in the morning! I couldn't be more excited. Sorry for the hecka long email, it was just such a good week!

Love and miss you all--have a great week!