This Place is Amazing!

Hey everyone!

This week has been awesome.  This place is amazing, I love it.  Elder Alofipo and I are getting along great and are seeing some great things happen!  We heard the announcement of the new change to talk with families on Pdays so that got everyone super pumped.  It's pretty weird though.

It has been awesome covering two areas especially since the Neah-kah-nie Branch hasn't had young missionaries since like 2010 and the senior couples there only worked with members so there is lots of work to be done.  We have already been seeing success up there.  We are teaching a super awesome couple who are returning to activity after years of being inactive.  The wife's records can't be found thous so she wants to be re-baptized.  We are also teaching a lady who wants to be baptized soon.  She has quit smoking for 30 days now so she is super pumped about that.

Things down in the Mook have been great as well.  The Lord has been blessing us with people to teach.  The people we are teaching are progressing well.  We had an awesome lesson with a guy we are teaching named Tony.  We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he felt the spirit so strongly.  We invited him to be baptized on March 23 and he accepted.  He was sick though on Sunday so he couldn't come to church.  Our boy, Ken, came to church though for the first time and he loved it.  He knows so many of the members it shocked him.  His dentist, his doctor, his elementary school teacher, and some guys he works with are all in the ward!  SCORE!  He also told us that one of his friends is going through a rough patch in her life and he told her that he has been able to find peace through the Book of Mormon!  So, he's already sharing the Gospel!  He will be baptized soon for sure.

We spent a lot time by the coast this week which was awesome.  We are definitely going to be going a lot more on P days.  I am super pumped to be here.  This place is awesome.

Hope you all have a great week.  Hopefully we have another good week.  We found some really cool other people this week that we are pretty excited about.  The work is just going great here, I love it!  Love you guys--have a great week!

The OSM Rock

Elder Alofipo and me

Love,
Elder Johnson
3416 Domingo Ct Apt C
Tillamook, OR 97144

The Mook!!

Hey everyone! 

This week was awesome!  Transfer day was pretty crazy because IT SNOWED!  A lot of rides were delayed because no one knows how to drive in snow (and it was only like an inch lol).  I left Keizer around 10:30 and headed off to Tillamook.  We got 30 minutes out of Salem until we got a call from Elder Joyner saying that I still had the car keys in my pocket ha ha classic!  So, we had to drive all the way back to Keizer to drop them off.  The drive to Tillamook was awesome.  We drove through Willamina which brought back some pretty nice mems!

My new companion is a stud.  His name is Elder Alofipo and he is from West Valley.  he has been out 6 weeks so I will be finishing up his training.  Along with the Tillamook Ward, we are also covering a super small branch called the Neah-kah-nie Branch.  The branch covers 4 or 5 coastal towns where the majority of the houses are vacation homes so that is why it's a branch.  They average about 30-40 people at Sacrament meeting each week and around 200-250 people at Sacrament meeting during the summer.  There used to be a senior couple there but they just finished their mission so that is why we are covering it.

On Friday morning, we got a call from President Tateoka telling us to not go to our district council today because he needed our help moving some stuff out of the senior couple's apartment up in Rockaway Beach.  We drove up there with he and Sister Tateoka and it was awesome.  The whole ride there was right along the coast basically.  It took us about an hour to get everything out of the apartment and then they took us out to lunch and ice cream at the famous Tillamook creamery!

The work here is going pretty good.  We found a really cool person named Armando my very first day in the area.  He was very open and willing to learn more.  He invited us back the next day and we taught him the Restoration.  He is going through some things in his life but he really wants to receive blessings that we testified can only come through Jesus Christ.  He told us that he was going to try and convert his mom to our church as well so he is already doing missionary work ha ha!

We are also teaching a couple of other people who are progressing pretty well.  One is named Ken and one is named Tony.  We had good lessons with them both this week and Tony came to church!  I will give more of an update on them and others next week since I don't really know them yet!

I'm really excited to continue serving here.  All the members are great and very missionary minded.  I hope you all have a great week!  Love youuuuu.

The boys

The Spanish Elders-Elder Woodruff and Elder Morrison

Elder Joyner and me

Saying bye to the man Jeremy Scott

Saying bye to the Leder family

Saying bye to Gene!  Love this man!

Saying bye to our bom WML Brother Thurber

SNOW

Lunch with the Tateokas (Tillamook cheese fries were bomb!)

Tateokas bought us ice cream

Tillamook Ice Cream--we are gonna get fat!!

Cheese

Saying bye to the Greens

Saying bye to the Perezes

Love,
Elder Johnson
3416 Domingo Ct Apt C (448)
Tillamook, OR 97144

Tillamook!!

What's up everyone?

Hope you all had a good week!  We got transfer calls on Saturday and I am being transferred out of the good old Salem 1st Ward.  I am going to miss this place so much.  I have been here for almost 7.5 months and have loved every minute.  I will be heading up to Tillamook to finish training a new missionary!  I am super excited.  His name is Elder Alofipo and I have heard he is a beast!  Tillamook is a small town where there are more cows than there are people!  They make good cheese and ice cream so I'm not complaining about that.  Plus, I will be covering a whole bunch of the coast which I'm super excited about as well.

We had exchanges with the Clear Lake Elders this week.  I was with Elder Gutierrez from Las Vegas.  We had a pretty interesting day!  We did a lot of walking around Salem and Keizer.  We talked to some pretty crazy people.  We had a super interesting lesson with the referral we got named Jill.  It was a good lesson, except for the fact that she was high out of her mind on marijuana.  That was a little bit of a problem ha ha.  It was at a member home, too, so they were a little freaked out!

We had MLC on Wednesday which was really good.  It is always great to be trained by President and Sister Tateoka.  I love them so much.  This time we talked about how we can better bring the Spirit into our lessons.  I learned a bunch!

Honestly, other than that, not a whole lot happened this week.  Sarah and Jeremy are both doing good and working toward the 16th of February.  We had great lessons with both of them this week.  I am so glad I had the opportunity to serve the people of Salem and Keizer.  It has been such a blast.  I am pretty excited to go back out to the sticks.  I love the city, but it will be nice for a change.  I will put my new address at the end in case you wanna send me mail. :-)  Love you guys!

Quick Capitol Building pic

The District

District T-Pose Pic (No idea what this is but apparently it's what the cool kids are doing these days)

Bye to my fav person, Kenn

Bye to the Browns

Bye to the Parkhursts!

MLC

Love,
Elder Johnson
3416 Domingo Ct Apt C (448)
Tillamook, OR 97144

Crazy Week!

January 28, 2019

What's up everyone?

This week was crazy, we had so much going on.  We have seen some really cool miracles happen here in our area.  It has been really cool to see the Lord work through us and to see Him bless us as we work hard.

This week started with an exchange with the Silverton Elders.  I was with Elder Saunders over there in Silverton.  He is from West Haven and has been out on his mission for about two months now, but you would never guess it.  He is such a good missionary already.  We had a really cool lesson with one of the people in their area with a baptismal date. She was able to recognize the Spirit confirm truth to her as we taught her about prophets.  It was really cool.  We also did a lot of tracting.  We knocked on a complex where we got lots of rejection but at one door, we were able to talk with a super cool dude named Jeff who seemed super prepared for the Gospel.  He invited us back on Wednesday to teach his family more.  Those types of doors make all the rejection worth it.

On Thursday, we had Zone Conference.  We hosted it this time which meant we had to set everything up and conduct the meeting.  It went really well.  Zone Conferences are always super powerful.  It is also always good to see mission buds!  After Zone Conference, we exchanged with the Assistants.  I went with Elder Hinck to Newberg.  This was mine and Elder Hinck's third exchange together in the past 6 months and we always have a blast.  We taught a pastor of a Quaker church which was pretty interesting.  He was actually super open and willing to read the Book of Mormon and pray.  We talked to a few people who have interest, too.  Good stuff!

On Friday we got an insanely solid referral named Jill from some sisters in West Salem.  We had a pass-off lesson on Saturday and it went really well.  She is on date to be baptized on March 2nd so I mean we'll take it.  She is super cool.  She came to church the next day and loved it!!  I'm pumped to continue to work with her.  She is a genuine seeker of truth.

Our other people are doing good.  Sarah is still progressing but she was sick on Sunday.  Our boy, Jeremy Scott, finally came to church this week!  That was pretty huge.  Hopefully he will start to progress this coming week.

Tender Mercy last P day.  Saw one of my fav fams from Willamina at a mall in Salem

Exchanges with the Assistants

That was about the week!  Love you guys have a great week!

Love,
Elder Johnson
3647 River Rd N#102
Keizer, OR 97303