the last few weeks!

last week-

This week we had another baptism and confirmation. Tereza, she had been having problems with alcohol and coffee but this week she was ready for baptism. She actually needed two people to help baptize her, she is kind of big and has problems with her spine. So me and another ward member helped in the baptismal service.

I made a new language plan, I'm trying to memorize 5 words a day, one scripture, read a page in the book of Mormon in Spanish and write a paragraph of what happened in Spanish. I'm trying to do these things to better master the language.

I got a bit frustrated with Elder Llaguno. Yesterday we ran into 2 sister members outside are apartment. they both close to our age. I kept trying to say things like "oh well we need to go.." "we need to make plan for tomorrow bye" but he kept talking to them. They asked for some water so I went a got them two glasses of water. One of them said she had two go to the bathroom. Elder Llaguno looked at me as if he were unsure and I just said "NO, sorry" Even though she didn't ask i made it clear she could not come into our house. Finally they both left. But today I got mad again when we were going to write our families he didn't have any money. He wanted to go to female members house to ask if we can use her computer. I had to remind him that the rules say we cant use members computers and say I would pay for it. Those things just make me mad because he knows the rules. He is ending his mission in 4 months but is disregarding the rules. He should be setting the example.

This week we are going to look for more investigators we are really out of people to teach.

 

Love Elder Micah Johnson

 

this week-

Well...I have some bad news. Elder Llaguno has decided to go home. I will try to explain what happen.

You remember those two girls from last week? Well when Tuesday came around while we were studying my companion told me that he wanted some cookies so we stopped by a small store but he lied to me and instead decided to use their telephone booth. We have a cell phone so their is really no point in using another persons phone unless you want to do something your not suppose to do. We went back to the house and I was feeling mad that he had lied to me like that. When we were done he said that we had reimbursements and wanted to get his money. So we went to the ATM at the market and guess who happened to be there? The girls. They were talking fast and I had no Idea what they were saying. They were talking about a person they knew who was a member in our sector so i thought we were going to visit them so we got in the car. It turns out we were going to the Macroplaza for food. Its against the rules to leave your sector with out permission of the leaders. I finally put it together that he had planned this and was feeling worse and worse by the second. We got to the Macro plaza and I was feeling just horrible. They wanted to go eat Pizza but they needed to go get money so Elder Llaguno said we would meet them there but on the way there I told him I didn't feel good about being there and before I knew it my voice was getting raised and I was yelling that so we ended up ditching them which made me happy but this really made Llaguno mad. He started walking really fast trying to make it difficult for me to catch up and all the while talking about how if I wanted to obey the rules I needed to be at his side at all the times. Later we got a call from the zone leaders and we explained what happened. One thing I am thankful for is that Elder Wilkinson wanted to get my side of the story so I got to tell him. The next day when we had district study I went and explained to the zone leaders what happened. The next day we had interviews with the president. I just told him what happened. Llaguno told him he wanted to go home. He managed to persuade him not too but yesterday after having a hard day with rain he decided to go home. Part of the reason he wanted to go home I believe is that his family is inactive and are encouraging him to come home. Also after our two baptisms we don't have many people to teach. The Other part is that we have been having communication problems due to my struggles with Spanish and he had little patience .When I learned he wanted to go home I felt some pain in my soul, I wish he would have changed his mind. Even though he was unkind I know he is going to regret this for the rest of his life or if not now in the after life. When I was driving home with my new companion I was feeling pretty down but as soon as we got home I already felt 10 times better with him. While I feel sad this has happened this has just strengthened my resolve to study Spanish and to complete my mission with honor. I will not loose sight of why I am here. I still remember something dad said in a old email and I have decided to make this my theme: Give me this mountain.

Love Elder Johnson

2/20/2012

This week we have been doing a lot of walking and visiting members. Some interesting things have come up in are lessons though.

As I said earlier we have been doing some tracting, people here react a lot differently then what I expected. In the US if a person is not interested in hearing your message they will say it. For some reason that is still strange to me, some people will just lie, por ejemplo we were trying to visit a person we had given a lesson to before but had not seemed too interested. We came back and her husband was there and told us that he was there by himself waiting for a telephone call. Right after that his son came out of his room and came to the door to say hello. He got really stiff and nervous like we had just caught him doing something really bad. I don't understand, maybe there conscience gets pricked or something.
A excellent experience we had was with Ana Marie. We decided to teach her about temples and doing work for dead family members, this is normally a lesson that the ward missionaries teach. But we felt impressed to teach it. This was also my first time teaching this principle. First we asked if she had been reading and praying about the Book of Mormon and about Joseph Smith. She said yes and we asked if she had received an answer. She told us of how she felt a lot more calm and peace in her life since she has started to do these things and said that she took this to be a YES!. It was amazing feeling knowing that an investigator has demonstrated the faith and received an answer. Whats also amazing is that she started to express how she wanted to quit drinking coffee, this is even before we had taught her the Word of Wisdom. The lesson just got better from there. I was teaching her about how important it is to do family history work when I felt something tell that I should testify of the blessings my family has received from doing family history work. After I said that though I thought to myself "why did I say that?" After our lesson she said that when I testified she felt that doing family history work is important and is going to the classes to learn about how to start. Best lesson ever.

We also have a new investigator who came to church named Brenda her husband is a less active member and she asked and we gave her a blessing. She has a lot of questions so I look forward to teaching her again.

Love Elder Micah Johnson

Dad- Tell the Southwick's congrats! Keep giving me updates on them. I wont be able to see there fare wells but I will be there for there homecomings. Yo memrizo cuando Jose smith tiene vision con Dios y jesucristo. verses 16 and 17. sorry I don't know how to do the accent marks on this computer.

Grandma and Grandpa-thanks for your email! Sounds like snow was in short supply this year. People complain that its cold here but it feels pretty warm to me. Jazz need to rev up there game it sound like. I think about you guys too and am grateful for the emails

Thank you for all the prays and support everybody

Last Sunday we had a interesting experience. At church its really common for people to just come into the church walking off the street, this one guy we met named Israel just decided to come over and he had never even met the missionaries before. We sat with him and talked for a bit. His family had been taking lessons from the Jehovah Witnesses but he said he did not like their views about God and their other religious practices. We went and taught their family about the restoration. They were all listening very well. When talking about the great apostasy I talked about how they had in their house 3 different bibles with different wording and told of how people started to interpret it differently. We had to close pretty fast though because...Jehovah witness came and had an appointment with them. We invited them to read and pray about the book of Mormon. We scheduled a lesson for next Saturday and left. When they showed up though they did not look pleased to see us. oh well. We will see what happens. But I have high hopes for them.

Elder Mayo and his companion also baptized this week which was cool to see.

This week we have also received excellent references of people that want to be baptized. One named Kathy who is the daughter of a former bishop who is now inactive really wants to get baptized so we are going to have a lesson with her later.

A key indicator we have is lessons with members. For the most part having a member there can make the lesson 10 times better. But I learned this week that we need to be very careful in who you invite. One of our investigator is named Anna Maria, we brought her next door neighbor who was a member but she started going off on how other churches were bad and evil. She also kept cutting us off and binging up topics that we did not want to get into. I have to admit during the whole time I wanted to tell her to be quiet. Luckily by the end she had become silent and we were able to testify with the spirit.

Are other investigator Elvieta did not feel good enough to come to church, la gripe, the flu. I hope next week she feels better and will come to church.

Love Elder Johnson

This maybe a bit random but I find it interesting how when I tell some people I'm from Utah they say"oh so Mexico" I say "no Uta- ah yes Mexico". This Friday is a zone conference so I expect some letters then. Yeah I have gotten better with conjugating. Right now I just get frustrated with the boot verbs or the irregular. Tell me in the next email the Southwicks mission calls, okay? 

Lydia-we teach so many people that I am having trouble keeping track, my companion is really nice. He is very caring and is very cool. I love you too.

Me and Elder Guevara are keeping our apartment a lot cleaner now. It easier and helps us do the things we need to do. I feel better with the language, but I have some days were I am doing really good and other days were I don't do to good. With some people its easy for me to talk with them and understand them. If its somebody new I usually have problems. But I am always getting better each day. We mostly have done service by helping people move from different houses and little random acts of service by helping people who get their cars stuck. I'm very happy here

This week has been what I would call the Refiners Fire. Me and Elder Guevara feel like we got slapped. But in a good sort of "wake up!" sort of way. First the AP came, Elder Smith and Morales. It was a big surprise for me and my companion. They took a quick look around are apartment and chastised us about how the place was a mess and the spirit wasn't here. We went around for the next hour directing about what needed to be clean and where things needed to be. I´ll be honest 95% of the stuff around the house belonged to Elder Guevara but I could have helped clean up a lot more before by putting his stuff away. The APs also told me that I should help to organize his stuff and that I need to get a part in my hair. That specifically is not a rule the president requires but the old president did. But because they are my APs I'm going to start doing it. This has proven to be more difficult, my hair does not like to do the things I want :) but I will keep trying.

The next day we had an area conference with the president we did some practices, but the defining moment was when he showed us a graph of how our key indicators were all going down especially baptism for the past 6 months. Our district only baptized one and that was the Zone Leaders. We have received a new key indicator, contacts, we need to contact 15 people daily. Hopefully this will help

We also had exchanges that day. I was with the leader of our zone, Elder Wilkinson in my area. He came in our house too and was a bit annoyed at how messy the stuff was. He gave me some tips on how to learn the language better. Later that night I woke up to him talking in his sleep...in Spanish. cool.But what he told me I think he is a little crazy with the Spanish, he said he use to wake up at 4 to practice and study Spanish. So he only got 5 1/2 hours of sleep. When the president found out he quickly put a stop to that.
That same night however we had to go with the president to the hospital. He was surprised to see me, and I think he wished that Elder Guevara was there. Guevara was in the offices as a secretary so they are pretty close. Anyway the reason we went to the hospital was because his daughter had a weird growing lump which might be cancer, that's what it sounds like I could be wrong, they didn't explain it well. But I got to help out in giving her a priesthood blessing with the president and Elder Wilkinson which was very powerful, the spirit filled the room.

The next day we cleaned out our house and now it looks spotless. Me and Elder Guevara have a goal now to keep it clean. He is worried a lot lately about the lack of results and is now putting forth more effort to obey all the rules for which I am extremely grateful for.

This week none of are investigators came to church, this surprised me since the day before we had taught Yohida, Cindy and Guadalupe (family of 3) about the importance of attending church and did it with powerful testimony. Free agency.

Now with the new month approaching me and Elder Guevara have become regenerated and ready to get those baptisms.

 

Stake Conference

We had stake conference this last Sunday, it was televised from salt lake city and Dallin H. Oaks spoke but it was translated into Spanish and I honestly had no idea of what he said. This was also due to that some investigators came in the middle of it (which i am very thankful for) and we were running around helping them to find seat and giving Book of Mormons.

A new investiagor we got is named Luiz, he was baptized but never confirmed. weird. We need to check with the president to see what we need to do. But he might have to get rebaptized and confirmed. But he told us that he wanted to get baptized and confirmed.

Sadly we talked to Gracia and she told us the reason that she did not come to church was that she went to the catholic church and wants to stay there. We talked to her for a bit. I told her that we cared about her and we here to teach her because we know how much the gospel can bless her life. I think that got to her a bit but she still wanted to stay with her church. I consider teaching her a learning experience. Looking back I wish I had focused more on receiving an answer to know if what we say is true. But I felt alright leaving, I felt that maybe in the future some missionaries will see her name in the area book and come and visit her and she will come to church.

We are also teaching Fernando who seems ready for the gospel.

We are also teaching a guy named Eduardo who is very open to the gospel. But I hope its for the right reasons and not just because his girlfriend is a member.

Last Monday we went and climbed a mountain, its called cerro colorado. I don't know if i sent a picture of it but it has the Jesucristo es el senor, on it. I was the first to get to the top and then Elder Mann (our zone leader) came and asked "you were a boy scout weren't you?" "yep". Afterwards we went and got some Chinese food, it tasted a bit different then what I had before but was delicious. It was a lot of fun. I forgot my camera but I will send pictures soon.

Yesterday was the last day of transfers. Elder Mayo is staying here and training a new missionary, his old companion Elder Minqueiz is going some where different. Elder Mann is going to Mexicali (probably spelt that wrong). My friend Elder Benson got called to somewhere else. I hope we will be in the same district again. His old companion elder Del Angel is done with his mission and going home.

Love Micah Johnson

commitments

Hey guys! I hope everything is going well. Heard Utah finally got snow, very cool.

Well...to be honest our entire district has been having a rough go at it. Me and Elder Guevara invited 8 people to attend church again but just like last week none of the people came. I don't know but we try to keep spirits high. Salvador has stopped visiting with us altogether but we passed by him and gave him an English copy of the Book of Mormon (prefers English to Spanish). Our investigator Nancy has up and left. We stopped by to visit and the door was open and everything in the house is gone.

Gracia has a baptismal date. We are really happy by that, but she is not keeping the commitments. I feel like she isn't listening to us. She keeps telling us about problems and difficulties in her life and we try to keep telling her how the gospel can help her but she still doesn't do the things she needs to do. I think I'm starting to understand how Christ feels when people wont do what they are suppose to even though its to help them. Right now we are trying to find some more investigators through working with the ward which has been a great success we have received tons of references to go on. This week I have also been starting to take the lead a bit more in teaching lessons, I think I'm starting to get a bit better but at the first attempts I get really flustered especially after I say something and they said they cant understand my Spanish luckily Elder Guevara is with me to help.

The ward continues to be great, they tell me that my Spanish has really improved. I hope that's true and that they are not just being nice. Our district had an interview with President Carreon, all went well. Many of the families ask us to come over and visit them which is always nice. I also received the package that you sent with the ear plugs, pictures and the debit card. I desperately needed those ear plugs, I woke up one night and thought we were being attacked by a screaming Banshee, nope just my companion snoring. I show this one family we keep visiting a lot an old picture of our family where I have long side burns. They said I looked like Elvis. I also got that along with some mail from my friends including Blake's letter and letters that were sent to me while in the MTC.

Dad-at first I really felt frustrated by that, we were not being as effective as I wanted because of our people living so far away from each other. But we are starting to run into more people by street contacting which has been great and improving. It turns out with the bikes that they were only for elder Mayo and his Companion Elder Minquiz. But I went on splits with Elder Minquiez and I got to try the bikes, we sure got to our appointments a lot faster and on time. I'm sorry I'm still trying to work on figuring out our address. We live in a neighbor hood filled with these pink apartment buildings. That probably doesn't help. sorry. I will get it soon. I will probably be with Elder Guevara for another transfer. Training lasts for 12 weeks, and every six weeks is a transfer, so probably be here for two transfers.  Mom- Sadly no, they are not keeping  the commitments. I think one of the problems is that I have not been teaching by the spirit as much as I should have. Do you and dad have any advice on following the spirit? Or with getting investigators to keep commitments?  In order to find people me and elder Guevara are thinking of starting a class at church to teach English. A lot of people are asking if we would do that. Sounds like fun.

Love Elder Micah Johnson

ps. The bible in Spanish has the book of Micah spelt like this: Miqueas (me-kay-us)  cool.

 

feliz anos!

I hope you guys had a great new year. My new year was a bit like my Christmas, I woke up and did everything I usually do then at around 12 go "oh its 2012...cool." When writing in my journal I thought a lot about the past year, last year at this time I was in my last year of high school. Feels like a life time ago. In the night it felt like a war zone, fireworks and gun shots all night and people shouting.

This week we got 3 new investigators. The first Nancy already has a baptismal date but she has to either marry the guy she is with or leave him, probably leave him, she hates the guy. While going to visit her, she left us a note saying that she had gone to visit her son, but we street contacted the guy next to us which is how we got are next two investigators, Salvador and Mary. I went up and started talking in Spanish when he stoped me and told me that he spoke English. It turned out his brother is a member of our ward, both Salvador and his brother Juan lived in the United States for most of their lives but Juan was deported and Salvador decided to come back to Mexico before getting deported. Both of them have been, in there words, In The System, prison for most of their lives. They don't say what for. He expressed that he wanted to make changes in his life, he told of his heroin addiction which makes me nervous. Most missionaries who teach drug addicts describe them as eternal investigators and that they don't keep commitments. I hope that with him and his girlfriend its different. Unfortunately we invited Nancy, Salvador, Mary to church but none of them showed up. dang.

Another piece of sad news for us in our zone is that one of the missionaries went home, Elder Vicab, I had gone splits with him a little while before and he seemed fine. This week I went on splits with an elder in my district from Canada he has been in the same area for 6 transfers and hopes that at the end of this transfer he gets to go somewhere else. Then I went on splits with one of the zone leaders, Elder Mann, sadly I got us lost many times. oops. With Elder Benson from Canada we saw the sight were the temple is going to be, right now its just an empty lot. While I was with him tracting a drunk came and thought I was Brigham Young and that Elder Benson was Joseph Smith. Very funny.

This week about a 150 people from Utah came, they were a group called homes with out boarders. They gave out clothing and built some houses for people. I didn't know any of them since most were from Orem but a couple of them that were getting ready for missions came with us to teach which was a good experience for them.

With Gracie and Santo, our other investigators, they are not making real progress, their not praying or coming to church so I hope they change and keep our commitments or we might need to stop coming by.

Love Elder Johnson

Lydia-The people here are a lot nicer then those in America. I really like talking with them. I like talking to people in Spanish too, they tell me that for only being here for 4 weeks my Spanish is getting really good. I hope that's true and that they are not just being nice.

Dad-Well just as long as the cougars don't go to the championship bowl game or a really big one while I'm gone, I'm good. how did Jimmer do in his first game? The Olympics starting soon? How is Mitt doing? Sorry a lot of worldly questions. I think your Spanish was right I understood it all. Your right about the differences in the Spanish too.

Mom-you should get something really cool. I know you guys asked for my address, idk, ill try to get it as soon as i can. How goes teaching? Grandma and Grandpa-there is really no snow? here its very hot, I'm sweating. Keep the letters up, tell Adam congrats from me, Ashley too.