Doing My Best to Stay Focused!

Family & Friends!

I hope you all are doing well!  This was a good week out here.  Lots of teaching and not too much finding (which is what we like:))

We taught Jessica twice this week and she is progressing really well.  We brought a member with us to one and they clicked so that's nice.  She invited her to the next ward activity.  Members here are the GOAT.  So missionary minded, it's sweet.  We will be teaching another member referral hopefully this coming week, I'm pumped.  She is super prepared.

We got back in contact with Sherron!!  She is so awesome.  She has gone through a ton recently and is super prepared for the Gospel.  She is committed to reading two chapters a day.  We are working on getting her to church thought.  It seems like something comes up every single week.

We started teaching Charity the new member lessons this week.  She is so freaking solid, wow!  She got her temple recommend and she gave a Book of Mormon to her best friend and is sharing the Gospel with people at work.  She is on fire!

Things are going good here!  Doing my best to stay focused these last four weeks!  I am gonna miss being a missionary so much.  I know this is the Lord's work!  I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

Pictures from our hike today and also a picture from proselyting in Wheeler, OR this week.

Love,
Elder Johnson
3416 Domingo Ct Apt C
Tillamook, OR 97141

Baptism!

June 17, 2019

Hey everyone!

Happy Father's Day to all of you fathers!  Especially my amazing dad!  Can't imagine life without him!

Thank you for all the birthday wishes!  I appreciate it!  Can't believe I'm not a teenager anymore :(.

This week was super good.  Charity's baptism was on Saturday and it went so well!  So many members from the ward showed up and a bunch of nonmembers came as well.  The spirit was super strong!  Charity's grandparents are members in the Willamina Ward so it was awesome to see them again.  Pretty cool.  There were about 6 or 7 people from her past church that came (including the pastor).  They had lots of questions for us after the service so hopefully we will be able to teach them here pretty soon.

We had one sad thing happen last week.  The guy who we put on date last week (Josh) dropped us because he got baptized into some Christian church in town.  He said that for now he is going to stick to the Bible and his Christian church.  Super lame.  Hopefully he will have another chance to accept the Gospel.

We found a super cool new guy though named Al.  He grew up religious but hasn't been to a church in a very long time and is looking for one to go to.  He didn't know a whole lot about the church other than the classics like polygamy.  We taught him about the Book of Mormon and the organization of the church and it seemed like it answered a bunch of his questions.  He thought that the Book of Mormon was our version of the Bible but he got super interested in it when we taught him what it really was.  As we left the house, he said, "your church is moving up in my rankings."  ha ha  Hopefully we can surpass the "Tillamook Lutheran Conservative Church" which is his current #1.

Everyone else is doing pretty good.  We taught Jessica this week and she has been keeping all of the commitments that we have left with her so far!  We are going to teach her the Plan of Salvation tonight so hopefully that goes well.

I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

Charity's Baptism

Teaching some of the Seventh Day Adventists about modern prophets and apostles!  It was pretty sweet!

The Mitchell's hooked it up nice with a lemon lime cheesecake for my birthday

Love,
Elder Johnson
3416 Domingo Ct Apt C
Tillamook, OR 97141

Last Transfer

June 10, 2019

What's up?

I hope you all had a great week this week.  We got transfer calls on Saturday and I am staying here in Tillamook for my last transfer!!  I am super excited.  The work is booming so I can't complain about that!  The Lord is blessing us big time.

We are super excited for Charity's baptism this weekend!  It has been amazing teaching her!  She finished the Book of Mormon this week and totally knows it's true.  She (was) a Seventh Day Adventist (that is probably the most dominant religion here in town). There are about 10 families who feel like they aren't getting the spiritual fulfillment that they want from the church (which is why Charity started investigating) and she invited some of those families to her baptism and they should be coming!  It should be good!  Her interview was Saturday and she passed :-)

We had an awesome lesson with Josh this week.  We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and had to correct some of the false doctrine his pastor had dropped on him earlier this week about baptism.  He felt the Spirit and committed to be baptized on July 27th!  he has some stuff he needs to work on so hopefully he will make it!  I trust that he will!

One night after dinner, it was like 60 degrees and sunny so we went out proselyting without any jackets or anything.  We walk to the other side of town and of course the rain clouds came rolling in (they always wait for us to come outside it seems like).  Anyways, it started DUMPING!  We got so soaked.  I was so mad because our weather app said 0% chance of rain all day.  Weathermen literally have one job.....

That was the week in a nutshell.  I hope you all have an awesome week!  I love you all!

Love,
Elder Johnson
3416 Domingo Ct Apt C
Tillamook, OR 97141

I Love Oregon!

June 3, 2019

What's up everyone?

Another good week here in the Pacific Northwest!  I love it out here!  It's bittersweet that I only have 7 weeks left in the greatest work in the world!  This week was pretty eventful so here we go...

Tuesday we had our car fast day...not the most fun thing in the world, but it works!  We talked to a ton of people and got a couple return appointments.  We talked to a guy named Ron who asked for a Book of Mormon after we taught him about it so he has some potential.  We are going by tomorrow.

The next day we had zone conference in Forest Grove.  It was super good.  We talked about involving members in the early stages of someone's conversion as well as using family history more when finding people to teach.  Right after zone conference we had exchanges with the FG 1st Elders.  I was in Forest Grove with Elder Sellaro.  He came out a transfer after me and we were zone leaders at the same time so we've had good times together at MLC.  He is a super good missionary though and we implemented a lot of what we learned in zone conference in our exchange.  We had so much success using a family history approach!  We found quite a few people using it.

Thursday we had another lesson with Malaki.  He is a funny little kid, ha ha.  He has been enjoying primary and reading the Book of Mormon stories book.  He is progressing as much as an 8 year old can, ha ha.

Saturday we finished the lessons with Charity.  Her interview is on Saturday and is still set for June 15th (if she passes ha ha).  She is almost done with 3 Nephi already!

Those are the highlights from the week!  Transfer calls are this week and I am PRAYING that I stay here for my last transfer.  I will be a happy Elder if I do!  Haha Love you all, have a great week!

Enjoy some pics from the past week:

Birthday photo with the Tateokas

OSM Rock

Love,
Elder Johnson
3416 Domingo Ct. Apt C
Tillamook, OR 97141

I Hate Cats!

May 27, 2019

What's up everyone?

This week was really good.  We have been seeing some really cool things happen here this week.  We did lots of teaching this week which is always a good thing.  We will just get right into it.

So last Monday, we had a lesson with the guy we are teaching named Josh.  We taught the Restoration and also gave him a church tour.  It went super well.  He is going through quite a rough spot in his life at the moment so he is super interested in the peace and hope that comes from the Savior.  We were hoping to meet with him again but his phone died and so we have no way to contact him now.  He told us it was going to happen so we are just kind of waiting for that situation to get all fixed.   (He is staying at a Christian church in town so we can't exactly go there to contact him!)

Tuesday was our car fast day so we did lots of walking.  I got attacked by a freaking cat while talking to someone on their porch.  This cat straight up jumped at my face and scratched me all up.  I was so mad I was about to drop kick this cat but I just chucked him super far.  It was kind of hilarious but my hatred for cats went way up that day.  We also had a lesson with Charity that day and it went well like always.  She is just golden.  She is already on Alma 60.

We also taught Malaki this week and that went pretty well.  He is a beast.  He loves baseball so I have been trying to relate the Plan of Salvation to baseball and it has been kind of helping.  He just has a super short attention span.

Other than that though not too much else happened.  Sherron was sick so that was lame.  The other people we are teaching are slowly progressing but they're doing good.  We got a call from a former named Rob asking us to come over and help him quit drinking.  We told him he could just get rid of all his Bud Lite but he didn't ha ha.  We are trying to get him to an ARP class cause I don't know jack about addiction.

Did some work with a machete on Saturday--so that was fun!

We take pics after every lesson with Charity so here is one from two weeks ago

District Council.  We made a nice trip out to FG

Anyways, I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

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