September 12, 2011 - Sunny Days in the land of the Huasos!

Elder Wixom and I we had a great week, we taught some lessons did a lot of contacts and we baptized 2 people! It was great. One of them has been going to church for a year and a half without being baptized! So it was a relief to finally see them get baptized and to receive the Holy Ghost.  After much prayer and fasting the Lord performed a miracle and now there is a new member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints!   Now we are working with the rest of the family.  They are a great family.  We had some Churri Panes the other day, and after the baptism we went over there and they had a bunch of chips cake, and some hotdogs that were cut up and meat. In Chile they give you a fork and you stab a little piece of meat and dip it in mustard or Aji and eat it! haha. It was good and they gave us 2 emapanadas too!
  This weekend in Chile is their Independence Day. The 18th So that’s Sunday so that can’t have parties on that day, so Saturday they are having a party at 5 at the church they are going to eat a bunch of stuff and do some things, then on Monday morning they are going to go back to the church to dance the Cueca, and have breakfast and they have games for the little kids. The Cueca is a real cool dance, it’s what the Huasos dance it’s supposed to be like a Rooster trying to catch the attention of the hen its super cool!
 And all of the kids have these little tops that they throw on the ground and a lot of kids fly kites. They are called voluntines in Spanish, and they fight them in the air and they try to cut the cord of the other persons kite!  It’s pretty sweet.
  Today for our PDay we went to Tome and we played some Ultimate Frisbee! And football! It was pretty cool! There was this dog running around trying to grab the frisbee and he would take our feet out as he ran by. haha it was funny, and then after we went to this little restaurant t and had a Churrasco. It’s like a hamburger but with just avocado, tomatoe, I got an egg, and some shredded meat. They are super good!
 The weather has been pretty nice, it is kind of hot today so it’s great! After 9 months of winter it’s about time the heat comes! haha
  But we are really stoked about our sector we have a lot of help from the ward, and the Lord puts people in our way to teach and help bring them closer to Him
  I know that God has a made a Plan for every single one of us, and he wants us to be happy while we are here on this earth. And that’s why The Gospel was restored through Joseph Smith by Jesus Christ who is the head of His church today. I’m grateful for this gospel and the blessings and the blessings will keep coming as long as we obey our covenants and keep all of the commandments.

 I love you guys thanks for your prayers and love! 

les quiero, Elder Johnson

                

September 5, 2011 - Spring is Almost in the air!

 We had a good week. We taught a lot of lessons. We went on splits last night with a couple guys in our ward so we could catch up on our lessons. So that was cool. Our ward gives us a lot of support so that is great.
  We are planning on baptizing two people this week!  We are hoping to baptize a girl who has been going to church for about a year and a half and still hasn’t been baptized. She has had some trouble with her family supporting her. But we have worked hard on getting her to pray and fast for it. So we are looking forward to seeing her get baptized!
 We found this one lady who lives in front of a couple we’ve taught. We have taught her about the Restoration of the Church, and about the Book of Mormon. She is real interested and likes to read!  We are hoping to baptize her in a couple of weeks along with her son. She even came to church yesterday and liked it! She just wants to learn about the Book of Mormon and the Bible. So that is great!
 It rained a couple of days here, but winter is slowly coming to a stop so we are excited to start heading into summer! The Chilean Independence day is on the 18th of September so everyone is getting ready for that! All of the wards have big parties and they dance and eat a lot of food! I heard that Chile pretty much shuts down for a couple of days! haha
 But that’s about it, pray for our investigators that they can receive their answers to help them be able to enter in the waters of baptism! Thanks for everything that you guys do. I am lucky to have family and friends like you guys who support me and the work of the Lord.
 Have a good week!

                         les quiero,
                             Elder Johnson

August 29, 2011

We’ve had rain! Haha Luckily the Chilean winter is coming to an end. The Chileans say that if you survive August you’ll live another year haha. Because one moment it’s sunny and then it pours. That happened to us the other day, we were contacting and it started pouring and we didn’t have our rain gear haha.......rookie mistake!
But we had a good week. We reached all of our goals for our lessons and contacts. We have been working really hard with the mom of 2 who just got baptized. She just needs that little extra ounce of faith and she’ll be baptized. We have been over to her house every day to check on her. And we tell her niece to help her out. 
  Yesterday we had Stake Conference and all 4 of our contacts came so that was cool. There were some good talks. Our Bishop spoke and he talked about the importance of The Sabbath Day. And why it is important to go to church to renew our covenants we made at baptism, and to remember the things that Jesus Christ did for us. It was a great talk.
  But the bummer was that it was pouring yesterday, and no one likes to go outside in the rain. So we had a couple more investigators committed to coming to church but the rain scared them away. So that stunk. But we have at least 1 baptism coming up in the next couple of weeks.
 We have been teaching a husband and wife and the other day when we taught them we committed the husband to pray to see if he needed to be baptized and to see if Joseph Smith was a prophet. And we came back a couple of days later to teach them but they were busy but we asked if he prayed and he said ya! But he hasn’t received his answer yet, so we told him he will need to be patient and keep reading! So that was cool!
  Today for P Day we took a bus up to Tome to play soccer. It was fun! Their chapel just got refurbished, and they got a new soccer court in the back. The court is painted green and the lines are different colors, and it has break away rims for basketball. It is pretty high tech. But since it had been raining the court was wet so we swept it off a little bit and so it was slippery and everybody was slipping all over the place. One of the Elders who was in the same district as me in the MTC is in that sector and he was there, and he flew across the court like Superman after he slipped it was pretty funny.

  Tomorrow we have interviews with the President! And the Zone Leaders told us that we have to do a weekly planning session with the President tomorrow! So that’s gonna be cool.
  Elder Wixom and I are just trying to keep the missionary work here in Valle Hermoso working. We are blessed because we have a lot of returned missionaries in our ward and members who are willing to go out with us, so that helps out a lot with lessons. And we even have a couple that do their assignments we give them to visit investigators of ours. So it’s great!
   We are praying that one of our investigators will soon want to be baptized hopefully it will open the eyes of her husband to, and her daughter. If that happens that will be great! A whole family would be baptized!   The dad is a super nice guy he always gives us stuff to eat, and he’s seen the changes that his family has made.  We are getting closer and closer every week with them. They are a great family! They are one of the great miracles that I have seen on my mission, and I Know the Lord is helping out with this work.
  But everything is going good, it has rained the last couple of days but it hasn’t stopped us. We are blessed here, Heavenly Father is definitely watching over us.
  I hope you guys have a good last couple weeks of summer, and that they are hot ones! haha Love you guys thanks for your support and love!
   Chauuu!
                              les quiero,
                                               Elder Johnson

August 22, 2011

 We had a good week. We had two baptisms! Josefa and her cousin Juan! It was a marvelous miracle! Elder Wixom and Elder Cockrell were already teaching them before I got here.  Josefa  really felt the Spirit. Then this week on Tuesday we taught her, then we gave her a For the Strength of the youth pamphlet to read.  She always read the stuff that we gave her to read, and Juan would read all of the pamphlets to! So we baptized them on Saturday night, and Sunday we confirmed them! Heavenly father really does prepare His children to receive the restored Gospel. Now we just have to get Juan’s mom baptized. Her name is Raquel. Joesefa lives with them. Racquel is Joesefas aunt. But she is on her way to getting baptized!

  This week it stopped raining for like the past 4 or 5 days. On Saturday it was actually pretty hot. We were doing contacts on top of this hill in our sector and we were sweating pretty good. We struggle a little bit with reaching all of our numbers because of the baptisms, but otherwise we did good. Throughout the week a couple of appointments fell, and none of our investigators came to church accept for Raquel Juan’s mom. Juan is 9 by the way and Josefa is 19.

  On Thursday I went on a mini exchange with Elder Ojeda. He’s from Campeche, Mexico. He is 2 exchanges younger than me. He’s really cool. He finished college before he came out so he’s 26 years old. He’s a great missionary. I worked in their sector, it’s called Lirquen. Right next to a port. Their house is at the top of a hill, and they have puppies that live under the house! haha Elder Pulver who I was with in Curico told me a lot about Lirquen because he was there. But it wasn’t as bad as I thought. We had a couple of appointments at the top of this hill, and we had to walk up stairs for 10 minutes. I was sweating like crazy! Haha We taught a lady up there, and then we had a Family Night with 2 new converts, then we had to hustle down the stairs to hike up another hill on the other side of their sector to teach a girl. So I got my workout in for that day it was nice. Then in the morning Elder Ojeda fried some Longenesa, it’s like chorizo, and some eggs. It was cool, then when we were studying he gave me these Mexican peanuts that they cook with honey so it’s like a bar of peanuts with honey coating. It was good it’s called palanquetas! They were good. Then we took a bus back and switched.

  Yesterday after church the family that was supposed to do our lunch couldn’t so we went to another family’s house and we had a bowl of rice beans and.........liver soup! haha it actually was that bad it was good.

  Today for P-Day our zone got to go bowling in the mall that is in Talcahuano. The mall is in the Concepcion South Mission. So it was a special day! We got to go because the mission went over the goal of baptisms for the month. And after we got to eat in the food court. Elder Wixom and I we bought two medium pizzas from Pizza Hut and ate them! haha it was good. They also have Dunken Donuts,  KFC and McDonalds. I guess that one of the converts that Elder Wixom has brings us Dunken Donuts so im gonna wait for that! But it was cool we had a good time as a zone at the bowling alley.

   On Saturday we had an appointment with a guy that lives right next to the ocean. His name is Juan.  He’s cool, he speaks English and he always reads the stuff that we leave with him in The Book of Mormon. We just got to get him to pray and start taking bigger steps for his baptism! He’s perfect though. He’s real nice he gave us a Sprite and some cookies. And when we were walking down there was kids swimming in the water because it was a hot day, and they were jumping off of the rocks, but I heard that tomorrow it is going to start raining again so that stinks, but when there’s rain that means that people will stay in their house and we will be able to get in to teach them!

  And on Wednesday during District Class all of a sudden it started hailing! Then a couple flashes of Lightning! It was crazy! Then Thursday at 3 in the morning it started hailing again! And it was pounding on the glass, and I was shocked that it didn’t break the windows!

  Yesterday was president Monson’s birthday to I think. I told Juan that he became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on the Prophets birthday! He was pretty excited.

  But that’s about it for his email. A pretty normal week, just teaching lessons and talking to people in the street. We are doing everything we can to spread The Gospel!

     les quiero,

                        Elder Johnson