Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas!  I hope you all are having a nice Christmas!  Christmastime is the best.  What a great time it is to celebrate our Savior's birth and to remember Him and all that He has done for all of us!  I hope you all take time to remember why we have Christmas!

We had a zone Christmas party on Tuesday!  It was so much fun.  It was a huge talent show that everyone had to participate in so people were dong some dumb hilarious stuff, ha ha!  I was going to whistle a Christmas tune, but my ZL's wouldn't let me :(  Then when we get there, the other zone that was with us was doing some funny talents--I was mad, but it was a good time.

This week was pretty slow.  Elder Kehl got mad six last P day so he was in for a few days.  Then Elder Wuthrich got sick on Thursday so they were both in sick.  Elder Kersten and I went out on Thursday with each other.  It was a good ol' time!  Elder Kehl finally got better so I stayed in with Elder Wuthrich on Friday, Saturday and most of Christmas Eve.  Christmas Eve was nice--we went to the Brock's and they hooked us up with a super nice dinner--steak and twice baked potatoes.  It was super good!

Love you guys--hope you have a good Christmas!  I'm loving my mission so far--talk to you next week!

Salem 5th Ward Christmas Party

With the Brock's

First Skype Call home

Love,
Elder Johnson
204 Boone Rd SE #8
Salem, OR 97306

7 Days 'Til Christmas!!

What up, everyone?

I hope you all had an awesome week.  This week was pretty sweet.  We said bye to Elder Chamberlain on Tuesday morning and we got a new Elder!  His name is Elder Kersten and he is from Georgia.  He has been out about 17 months.  He is freaking hilarious LOL, it's a party here at the apartment.  Just non-stop laughs!

We were definitely blessed this week.  We have been going hard every day talking to everyone we see.  We talked to soooo many people this week and a lot of them were rude and mean...but the Lord blessed us with some new investigators and a ton of potentials.  Our area is starting to progress a little bit.  We had something happen that was pretty cool.  We were sending scriptures to some of our investigators one night and I felt a strong prompting to send Kristina a scripture about baptism.  We sent her 2 Nephi 31:5 and testified about the importance of baptism.  Then we get hit with this game changing text.  She was like, "thanks so much.  I really need and want to be baptized.  Please invite me to the next one so I can see what one is like"  Pretty sweet--she came to church again so that's cool!

Other than that, not too much happened this week.  A couple of people that me and my other comps have found and had to refer to other areas are on date now!  Marcus Sutton and Shane Lowe.  I don't know if I ever mentioned how we found Shane.  Me and Elder Kehl got a call from this member to go visit this guy who he has talked to about the gospel.  So, we're like aight!  We look for this dude's house for hours and finally realize he lied outside of our area....but we had to contact this referral so we just went for it LOL.  We went over and talked to this guy for like an hour about the restoration.  They guy had read to the middle of 2 Nephi in a week and knew it was true when he read for the first time.  We legit could have put him on date right then and there.  We referred him to Salem 2nd that night and now is on date for January 6th, yay!

We have seen the Lord bless us as we have the faith to find.  I am loving my mission so far and all the blessings that come from it.  I hope you all have an amazing Christmas!  It's weird not being home for the holidays but just know I love and miss you all!

Some of the homies L-R Elder Kersten, Elder Kehl, Elder Hill, Elder Mitchell  We have a good time!

Love,
Elder Johnson
204 Boone Rd SE #8
Salem, OR 97306

Transfer Calls :-)

What up everyone? 

Hope you all had a good week!  This week was pretty slow but good.  I went on an exchange with Elder Hill this week.  He is in the YSA Ward and they cover three stakes so their area is massive.  We spent like all day in downtown Salem.  The capital building has this pioneer/lumberjack guy on the top of it but we always say that it's King Melchizedek (Alma 13:17-18).  There were so many people downtown it was insane.  I wish I could contact downtown all the time.  It's so weird that Salem is a capital city.  Love it though!

Oh ya, transfer calls, ha ha!  I am staying here in 5th Ward to finish training Elder Wuthrich.  The homie Elder Chamberlain is bouncing over the mountain to Redmond.  I have literally been with him my whole mission pretty much.  I'm the last one standing from the original quadpanionship here in 5th.  Good times.  We are going to do some work this transfer.

The work has been pretty slow.  Only thing exciting that happened was Kristina came to church finally.  We are still working with them trying to build their faith.  We've been tryin gto find but everyone we talk to isn't having it, ha ha.  I have faith that the Lord will bless us as we continue to work diligently and talk with everyone we will be blessed.

I hope you all have a good, safe week.  I am loving my mission so far.  If any of you are interested in a Christmas card, please send me your address and I'll hook you up, ha ha! 

Love you guys--have a good week.

PS  Enjoy Star Wars this week.  I will be super chapped if anyone spoils it for me---so please don't :-)

Love,
Elder Johnson
204 Boone Rd SE #8
Salem, OR 97302

Christmas Devotional and a Baptism

What's up everyone?  I hope you guys had a good week!  This week was pretty slow, but still a good time.  We had Zone Conference this week--it was so good.  President Tateoka is so inspired and dropped some straight doctrine on us.  It was on how to be a successful missionary.  He said that if we wanted to be the best missionaries we need to develop Christlike attributes.  It was a sweet Zone Conference.

Last Monday, Elder Wuthrich and I did FHE at Bishop Johnson's house.  It was a good time--love their fam.  Afterwards, Bishop and Elder Wuthrich had a nice jam sesh on the guitar and drums.  I just sat back, drank some hot cocoa and enjoyed.  We had a lesson with Josh this week and it was BOMB!  His friend, Nathan, bore a powerful testimony again and the spirit was definitely there.  He accepted an invite to baptism but is still hesitant to commit to a date.  C'mon Josh! 

On Friday, we were tracting and legit, first door we knock on invited us in and we taught him the Restoration and told us he had missionaries before and he believes it's true!  The only problem is that he does not believe in practicing religion so he won't practice or come to church or anything.  Bummer!  He said his wife might be interested so we are going to keep trying with that family.

Last night was pretty nice.  We watched the Christmas Devotional which was super good and then we had Dezy and Kassandra's baptism.  Elder Wuthrich and I were witnesses and did the Missionary Moment after the ordinance.  Good times.  The service was sweet and the spirit was boomin.

Well, that was the week.  I'm loving my mission so far.  Transfer calls are on Saturday, so I wonder what is going to happen.  Hopefully I stay here in 5th Ward.  I love it here!  Love you all and hope you have a good week.

Random Damian Iillard Poster ha ha

Jam Sesh at Bishop's

#LIGHTtheWORLD Day 1 Water bottles are like gold here for poor people so we hooked them up

Elder Wuthrich catching some Z's during weekly planning

Zone Conference

Love,
Elder JOhnson
204 Boone Rd SE #8
Salem, OR 97302

Hello Again, ha ha!

I'm not going to write much today just because nothing really happened the last three days.  The work though is starting to progress in the good old Salem 5th Ward.  Salem 5th A has a baptism next Sunday!  It's John's two little girls.  Should be exciting.  We can't go to other baptisms unless we bring an investigator so hopefully we can get someone there.  We are doing better with finding.  We have some lessons set up with some new people this coming week so hopefully those will go smoothly.

Something pretty crazy happened on Saturday night though.  Elder Wuthrich is a pretty nice drummer and he's always talking about his drum teacher and how they are pretty tight.  Then on Saturday, we had dinner with the Smith's and somehow we start talking about the new referral feature on LDS tools (y'all should check that out btw--you can refer your friends straight from the app and it will be sent to the missionaries at their address).  Anyway, they were talking about who they could refer and they mentioned Brother Smith's brother.  They start talking about him and Elder Wuthrich finds out that Brother Smith is his drum teacher's brother!  Haha it was crazy!  Small world!

Our ward mission leader, Brother Olson, got released on Sunday which I am pretty chapped about.  The guy is a straight G.  I'm anxious to see who our new one will be.  We are WML-less right now.

Anyways, nothing too special these last couple days.  I hope all of you guys are doing well.  Go check out all the Light the World stuff on mormon.org.  You all should do it.  It's going to be fun.

Love you guys--have a good, safe week!

Elder Johnson
204 Boone Rd SE #8
Salem, OR 97302