It's a short one

Dear family,

thanks for the cool poem! I have read it before but I cant remember where. I really enjoyed reading it again.

sorry for this short email but we just got a call and we need to go and help some missionaries get to a doctors appointment because they have spent all their money and dont have reserve funds...

on Saturday Claudio is GETTING BAPTIZED! I am really excited for this. He has been progressing alot.

other than that I am feeling alot better. There are still alot of problems and difficulty but I guess I am increasing my capacity to deal with all of it.

Sorry for the uber short email, I wrote Kaitlen and Ryan and then I was going to dedicate the rest of the time to write you guys but now we have to go and help the other Elders.

I love you!

Elder Johns

Scuba Diving Might Become a New Hobby

Dear family,

Thank you for the great letter, it was something that I really needed right now. Alot of times I dont like to say that I am having a hard time because I dont want to compain to you guys about everything hard or difficult about the mission or about what is going on. Last week was fairly hard because I had alot of stress working on me and being in the ciber writing all of you guys just made me feel so homesick. But now I am feeling much better. My companion is a little difficult but great at the same time. He isnt used to being very obedient and complains alot and its hard enough for me myself to be obedient without having to worry about him and have all the stress of taking care of the zone. He doesnt have any problem with doing the work, he is actually a really good teacher and he is able to win the trust of the people we teach really well so I am very thankful for that. And we arent hating each other either but it isnt the most fun relationship but I am trying my best to love him more and more. He isnt the first hard comp I have had so ive been through this before.

My birthday was pretty nice, The stake presidents wife made me some delicious lasagnia and bought me a small cake. And the sister that we ate with on Sunday gave me a huge ice cream cake from Dairy Queen that was super delicious! It was a pretty good birthday but I really missed being with family and friends.

On tuesday we had a super awesome leadership training meeting that really helped me out and answered alot of personal questions I had about how I can get through this current phase of my mission. Then we had a meeting with the Stake President on Wensday morning and we talked about a plan that we have for the zone (the zone covers the whole stake) and we are excited about it because we are going to be better coordinated with the ward leaders. After that meeting we had interviews with President Jordan. He is a really good guy, I have missed seeing him so often since I left the offices.

We did divisions and my companion thought that he was ready to be here in our area by himself but he ended up getting lost and we missed some important appointments. I had a good time with Elder Rosado. He was really into scuba diving before the mission and told me a ton of cool stories. He is from Veracruz (a state in Mexico). Scuba diving and fishing with a harpoon gun might become a new hobby after I get back...

We only saw Claudio one time this week but he is still doing well. We dont have many other investigators that are progressing but we are having success with the less active members. We have started formulating a ward mission plan with the ward mission leader and the bishop that should help us out alot.

um I cant think of much else to say right now. I have been getting fat but I am going to start eating a little healthier.

Thats cool that dad is going to be a seminary teacher! I would love doing that except for the getting up in the morning part. Seminary played a huge role in my life, more than I realized while I was taking it. Basically everything I know about the scriptures I learned in Seminary.

I love y´all and thank you all for your support! have an awesome week! I still havent heard anyhting about my package but I am sure that it will come soon.

con amor,

Elder Johns

Happy Birthday!

hello everyone,

Its my birthday! I am 21 years old. I dont feel much older but being on a mission makes me feel like Im 40 so I guess realizing that Im only 21 makes me feel a little younger!

We went to the beach this morning which was fun. I bought a pineapple coconut drink to enjoy while relaxing on the sand. We got there at 7am so there were only a couple of people jogging on the sand. Its been almost 2 years since we went to Hawaii and being at the beach reminded me a little of that last family vacation.

My new companion is very different from my last companion but we have been getting along. He is from the state of Puebla and he was a really good dancer. He also has the same amount of time in the mission as I do.

We did an exchange with some Elders and I was with an Elder named Elder Harris. He served in the Last Vegas West mission Spanish Speaking for a few months while he waited for his visa and he said that he met Elder (Tucker) Short while he was over there.

A new couple moved into our ward from another state in Mexico. They had been listening to the missionaries over there for a few months and they want to get baptized but they are having problems with getting married.

one of the hermanas that we ate with yesterday gave me an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen!

Claudio and his family didnt show up to church which was kinda dissapointing. We are going to visit them later today to find out what happened.

Thank you for the many birthday wishes! I dont know why it feels so hard to be here on my birthday, its basically just like any other day, but I feel your love through your emails and that makes me feel better. The stake presidents wife said that she was going to make me some lasagnia today so I am looking forward to getting to eat lasagnia. Thanks for the money and for sending me a package as well, I hope that it will make it through the mailing system.

Thats too bad that Abby has been a little difficult this past week, but that view of mount rainer must have been absolutely beautiful.

I love you all and I really really miss you, have a wonderful day!

con amor,

Elder Johns

New Companion

HeLlo FaMiLy,

Another week and another change under my belt! and another companion. Elder Fernandez is going to train in Victoria! He is going to be openning up a second area in the area that I was serving before I got here (Villas 2). I am really excited for him because the members are really awesome over there and help out a ton with missionary work.

My new companion is going to be Elder Villegas, he has around the same amount of time as I do. It is a wierd change because he was a zone leader in his last area but was only there for one transfer. Ive met him before and he is a great guy. later today around 12, 12:30, we are going to the bus station to make the switch so he isnt with me yet. Ive heard that he has trouble sometimes getting along with his companions but Im sure we will learn to work together just fine.

basically the whole zone is changing. all the district leaders were changed and so now we have new ones, and a new area opened up in our as well so now we are 16 missioneros. We are also going to have 5 trainers and 5 new missionaries in our zone which is going to be AWESOME! I dont really know why but I am really excited to have so many new missionaries. I guess I am excited to be able to teach them and take care of them and stuff, I miss training.

Nothing really big happened this past week. We had to clean the house for the missionareis that are going to open the new area and it was suuuuuper messy. The last missionaries that served there left food in the fridge and MILK! It was all moldy and the milk was spoiled and the electricty got cut a week before we got there so the fridge was just a mess. We took it outside and got it all cleaned up though. silly missionaries.

Claudio is progressing really well, he has been going to church and is excited about the gospel. He hasnt done so well with reading every day but it is something new for him that he is learning to do. His dad and his sister were going to go to church as well but something happened to his sisters eyes and his dad ended up staying to take care of her in their house.

There were 14 less active members in church today (and thats just from our half of the ward becasue there are two other missionaries serving in the other half) so we are having good success in motivating the less active members to attend. We still havent been able to get the bishop to call people to teach the family history and temple preparation classes which is a little frusterating, but we have achieved that all the other wards in the stake have the classes every week.

thanks for sending the photos of Tanners wedding! Its so wierd to think that he is married! He has been one of my best buds since as far back as I can remember. I am glad that Colin was able to enjoy his high adventure and thats a little dissapointing that he didn´t get to go all the way to the top but I am sure that it wouldnt have been so pleasent if the crampons (I dunno what a crampon is) wouldnt have functioned.

Thats exciting news about Kaitlyn! she should be reading Preach My Gospel everyday and reading her scriptures to prepare.

I am excited for my birthday (especially because it will be on a Pday). we got permission from PResident to go to the beach as a zone from 7am-9pm on that pday so I am excited. I hope that package for my birthday that you sent me gets here alright.

I LOVE YOU ALL!

ELDER Johns

Maria's Baptism

Hello,

wooow it is almost August! This week went well. We had a little more success in finding more investigators to teach. And supposedly we should be at the high peak of hot weather but I havent felt too hot. Now that I have become accostomed to hot weather I am sure that I am going to literally freeze when I return to Washington haha.

Maria fernanda got baptized on Saturday! Not many members attended who werent family members but she has alot of family in the stake so there were alot of people. She seemed to really enjoy it and was smiling the whole time. Afterwards we ate tamales and cake. I am really happy that I had the opportunity to teach her and we should be seeing her alot still since she is a recent convert. We visit recent converts at least twice a week.

On friday we had our consejo de liderazgo. I enjoyed it and learned about how I can help our zone to improve and how I can better carry out the plans that we make. President wants us to put more emphasis on street contacting now. Back in November they told us that we werent allowed to contact people and recently that changed but most missionaries still dont contact at all in the street. It is going to be hard to get that to change because alot of missionaries feel nervouse about contacting people in the street and now there are a ton of missionaries who have never street contacted before because they came during the period in which we couldnt contact people. I guess they are letting us contact now becasue we have learned how to work more with members and now we dont plan to go "contacting or knocking on doors", but now they want us to do both things but without planning time to go contact.

We have had an investigator named Claudio but this week we have started to teach his whole family (almost except for his mom) and they all accepted baptisimal dates for September! They seem really interested and we will see how everything goes.

We stopped by the office this morning but my package wasnt there :( and they just went to the post office Wednesday last week. Maybe I just have super bad luck or the price for candy and EFY CD´s has gone up in the black market.

I hope colin enjoys his 50 mile backpacking trip´. I remember that it was super difficult when I went on one when I was 14. It was a lot of fun though. Ahhh Tanner is getting married! crazy, send me some photos and the details. and mom yeah we are going to be recieving American sister missionaries in my mission. Right now there are 3 coming but they wont get here until the day I leave. We have never had sister missionaries from the states here from what I know.

I love you all and hope you all enjoy the first few days of the best month on earth!

con amor,

Elder Johns

Going to Have a Baptism!

¡Buenas tardes!

This week went by really really fast. We made a goal to increase the number of families that we are teaching, and we saw alot of help from the Lord to guide us to more families to teach. A young man named Max invited on of his friends from school over to eat with us when we came over to eat with his family (his mom always uses chili habanero and it makes the food suuuper spicy). His friend was only 11 years old so we couldnt teach him as a new investigator, but we asked him for his address so that we could teach his whole family, Later in the week a found his mom and found out that she and all of her family were baptized in another city but stopped going to church a long time ago but is really interested in learning about the gospel again and coming to church. Her kids arent members though. We´ll see how things go with her and her family.

María had her baptisimal interview on Saturday and she passed! she is going to get baptized on saturday! we are really excited and so is she. It seems like alot of baptisms will be coming from less active families that didnt baptize their kids when they were 8, but thats ok because we are reactivating families and helping them to get back on track. Reactivating a family is just as good as a baptism.

There is a ward in our zone that hasnt had missionaries for 5 months, I dont know why. we heard that there was an investigator who wanted to get baptized, but hasnt been able to do so becasue the ward doesnt have missionaries. President told us that in early august he is oging to put missionareis there but in the meantime my companion and I will be teaching this investigator in the chapel accompanied by a member of his ward. We met him on Sunday and he is a pretty cool guy. He has experienced alot of changes since he started to investigate the gospel because his girlfriend invited him to church a million times (because he kept saying no) so he is really set on being baptized.

We did another exchange and I got to go to another area. To be honest, I really dont like leaving my area and sleeping in another persons bed and knowing that they will be sleeping in my bed, but i enjoy being able to get to know the other missionary and the people that they are teaching. We have alot to teach the zone, but we arent sure how to make it happen exactly because if we try to teach them everything at once it probably wont be as efective. I think we will start with how to plan effectivly and set goals and make plans to achieve those goals.

We had the idea to schedule appointments in the chapel and have more lessons there and maybe get it into a weekly thing in which for one whole day we will teach all of our lessons in the chapel. To be honest, that would be sweeeeet becasue there arent any distractions, its a spiritual place, and it has air conditioning.

no I havent gotten a package, but this next friday is the consejo de liderazgo so I should get it then if it arrived in the mission (I really hope so!).

it sounds like things are pretty crazy with getting abby potty trained. It is probably easier struggling with this right now then later needing to change her diapers for the rest of her life.

I love you all very much! I had a dream that Ryan had taken my guitar and broken it and I almost woke up crying.

Con amor,

Elder Johns

Love Has the Power to Change

Hey!

Weeks are days and days are hours. Time has started to go by faster as Ive gotten even more settled into this new area and have gotten to know the mebmers. We are already half way through July adn I just need to survive the heat for the rest of july, august, and then towards the end of september we might even have some cold days.

This past week went by fast. On tuesday we prepared everything for a Zone Class that we we had on Wensday. In the classes we usually train the missionaries on what we talked about in the consejo de liderazgo meeting of all the zone leaders with president. This time The president wanted to see how we do in relaying the information so he paired up all the zones to give the class on certain days so that it would be easier for him to attend. The assistants told us that we would be sharing the 1.5 hours for the class with the other zone so we would only be responsible for presenting half of the material, BUT on the tuesday night right before, they told us that we were actually going to split up so we needed to present all of the material. We were up pretty late getting it all put together, but it went pretty well I thought. We are supposed to think of ways to make the class interesting and interactive so that the missionaries actually pay attention and learn. It was my first time so I have some ideas of how we can do it better next month.

On Thursday morning we had a brief meeting with our stake president, accompanied by our mission President. We are trying to get a family history class set up in every ward so that the less active members we have gotten to return to activity can start to do their family history work and prepare to enter the temple which can help them to remain active.

one cool thing this week is that we found a less active lady that lives super far from our chapel and we got to know her a little bit. we learned that she had been offended and decied to not like the church because of what happened. We talked to her of Christ a little and told her that she wanted to her to go to church, and she did! She seemed to really enjoy being in church after about 2 years of being inactive.

I miss washington summers. that is cool that there are new missions in Washington. the new total is 5 right? Colin sent me the first email in a while and I was happy to hear from him, Thats cool that his first job is at taco time. He should try the tacos down here.

I also agree that Love is the factor that has more power to change others than anyhting else, and has been one of my main mission focuses. I still havemuch to improve on but I recently made some new goasl on bettering my love for others and it has helped me.

I love you all!

Elder Johns