April 28, 2014

  

Happy Birthday to ME!

 Look Mom, no hands!!

 We are Thugs!!

This may or may not be 80 pounds of ties!

Hey Kimbo,
How are things going at home this last week? Anything exciting happening at home? That sounds like it will be fun with Nae tomorrow. Let me know how that goes, and also tell her to write me because she always sends like a one sentence letter saying “sorry I don’t have time to write you much!” haha she says she sent me something for my bday though. See if she got my letter too, I sent her a letter like a little under a week ago for her birthday so hopefully she got it. How has Brock been doing in his games? How did he pitch? That is cool about Cameron, if you see him give him my email or get his email from him. Do you by chance have Logan’s email from his farewell this last week? I need to email that kid because he is yet to email me and I need to send him a strongly worded email! What has Tyler been up to? I don’t hear much from him. How is he liking it over in Provo or Orem or wherever he is living? How is it just living at home with Borkles and Tubs? Do you guys talk to Chase a lot or does Ty just talk to him because they have the class together? Was that the first time you have gone to the SWAT training thing? I loved going to that every year, because the last few years they would tell us to just run around the halls the whole time and not listen to the SWAT guys to see how they would act with us running around. They wanted the SWAT guys to grab us and throw us in the rooms so that’s why they wanted us to not listen to them. We usually get packages every week and a half so depending on when it shows up during that week is when we get the package.
Things here are going pretty good, but we didn’t have all that successful of a week though. Sunday after church when we went out to the car the temperature in the car  said it was 109 degrees outside! It has been sooo hot these last few days, and they are telling me the humidity isn’t all that bad yet here but it feels like the humidity is super bad to me already.  I can’t imagine what it is going to be like in the middle of the summer.  We have to ride our bikes at least twice a week, so we usually ride two or three times a week.  Since our area is so huge and so spread out though we are usually riding a lot when we are on a bike.  The other day we rode probably a little over twenty miles and it was super windy that day which makes for a good leg workout riding into the wind. We have to ride on a small two lane rode that has no shoulder a lot and is a 55mph road which makes it super sketchy sometimes because Mexican drivers are awful and just come flying right next to us on the road.  The big semi's always come flying by us too and since there is no shoulder they are always super close to us, close enough that when they come by the wind from the truck gives us a big boost on the bike it feels like. We found a lady named Elvia this week that we have been searching for since we got here, and she is a lady who has gone to church for an entire year and fed the missionaries almost every week during that year. What the missionaries didn’t know is that she has never been baptized!! She stopped going to church because of how much Border Patrol there is around the church but she said that she will start coming again and we set a baptismal date with her and she is really solid for that date. It is may 25th so I hope she stays strong till then. We also have a investigator that we found this week that we are about 99.9% sure is gay. He is a nice boy though;) He came to church yesterday though and we have a baptismal date with him also. After church yesterday as we were pulling out on the road we stopped because we heard sirens and we look back and there are a string of Border Police trucks hauling towards us! There were 9 trucks that we counted that came flying by us going who knows how fast! It was pretty cool to watch and they were definitely after some frijoleros!! Other than that nothing too exciting has happened this last week. Me and Elder Shumway are just like best friends and he is awesome.  We get along just like buddies down here.  He got an air soft gun from his family for his bday so during comp study if we don’t do something or he gives me a challenge to do something in Spanish and if we don’t do whatever it is the other one gets to shoot the other with the airsoft gun. I didn’t finish practice teaching in Spanish fast enough the other day so he got to shoot me in the butt with it in the apartment and now I have a bruise on my butt from it! haha We wrestle all the time now too and we have a good time together. Elder Embley came in shooting us with a squirt gun last night when me and him were wrestling on my bed so we both went and held down Elder Embley and soaked him:) Things here are pretty crazy, the work has been tough here and we haven’t had much success though.  This area we are in is one of the least successful areas in this mission and is why they pulled missionaries out of it for a while, but we are learning the area and finding those prepared people here and there. We will keep working hard and find the people ready to accept and grow in the gospel though because they have to be out there somewhere.
I am excited to talk to you here in a couple weeks Kimbo. We are going to try to figure out where we can skype from this week so we can set it up for the next weekend. It will probably be from an I-pad at the church on its wifi. I hope everything is going great for ya!
Bo. Le amo.
Love, Elder Johnson

April 22, 2013

Hey Kimbo,
I sent out another letter to ya yesterday so I hope you get that soon! I have also got all three of your packages you sent me! Thank you so much for them! We had a fun Easter with the eggs and we ate those cookies still even though they were old. We eat just about anything here! I got Brookes package yesterday and that was super nice of her to send that to me! She sent some squirt guns and we have had a lot of fun with those!! My comp has two nerf guns that we play with all the time that are a lot of fun so we mix it up now with the water guns! How is Relief Society going? I am sure you are doing fantastic, and are doing the best anyone could ever do! Most days here are pretty bloody hot, and with the weight I am gaining it is good for me to ride my bike in the sun! It isn’t stopping me at all though from putting on some weight! haha I wrote Josey a letter yesterday and I am so happy she got baptized! That was some of the best news I have heard because I see now how much it changes peoples lives.
Friday, my birthday was pretty boring, birthdays here on the mish, I learned are basically just another day pretty much! My comp made me breakfast and yesterday at Target he bought me a tie rack (I will explain more about this another time). Friday night we ate at a members house and it was their girls bday so they had a cake for her then my comp told them it was my bday too so they put more candles in it and had me blow out some candles so we got a cake! Then they sit and chant "mordida" meaning you have to bite a piece of the cake off of the side, and my comp pushed my head in the cake of course! haha Today we had a zone meeting and our zone leaders made a cake for me, my comp and one of the zone leaders because we all have bdays around now, and of course when they were chanting mordida. I went for a bite and both the zl and my comp pushed my head in the cake, then they didn’t do it because they said they just wanted to see the greenie do it! Those guys are both studs though and are so awesome. Sunday night we ate at the bishops house and we had some American food!!!! They had ham and funeral potatoes! It was Crazy!! Then last night another family wanted to make a dinner for Easter for us and the made us Mole! It was super good, a little different, but it is good! Last week when we ate with a member I ate pig foot for the first time, the texture is nasty because it is hairy and I just had to shove it in... But it wasn’t tooo bad I guess.. We had splits last Wednesday and I worked with Elder Handy in my area, and he is our Zone leader. He is such a stud and he goes home in just two weeks. He taught me so much and we had an amazing day! We have 8 new investigators now and we got 32 referrals which is insane to get in one day! Our goal for the week with referrals is 25 and we got more than that in a day! We had a super good day and we have a lot of people to teach now these next few weeks! So the work has been great this last week and I am excited for this next week! Other than that though not a whole lot has been going on down here. It is super hot today and we are riding bikes here in not too long so I am planning on roasting like a pig today, haha
Tell Colton if you ever see him to email me every week. I love his emails because he is so funny but I don’t always hear from him. Thanks so much for the things for my bday Kimbo, I love you so much and can't wait to skype you in a few weeks! By the way the library wasn’t open yesterday so that’s why I didn’t write!
Love, Elder Johnson

April 14, 2013

Hola Kimbo,
This week has been pretty good, I am so glad that you guys got my letters. My Mission President made me promise him that I would write a hand written letter to my mom at a minimum of once a month but he would like me to send a couple. He said to tell you all hello for him too. I haven’t gotten a letter from you yet. When did you send it? I did get those packages today though because we had to stop by the office to drop off a receipt. DO I have to wait to open them? haha I will so that I have something to look forward to:) I never got the cookies you sent, I got the Easter package and I think the other one is my birthday package because it is heavier. Yeah my companion is great and we get along really well. What did his mom say to dad when she called? She works at the hospital, did dad know who she was when she called? Yes last P-day we BBQ’d our chicken that we killed:) It was tough because it was a rooster and not a hen, and it was an old rooster so that is why she told us to kill it. The meat was tough but good though!
The teaching is going okay. We went on exchange this week and I was with Elder Embley’s companion, Elder Wasden. He is a nice kid and has been out a transfer longer than me. He can’t speak the language very well though, we were on bikes all day and covered a lot of area, but when we stopped to ask an old guy if he knew where someone lived, I asked him if he had ever had the opportunity to meet with missionaries before and he told me he had not so I asked if we could sit down with him. We sat down and taught him the first lesson, but then Wasden and Embly went back to his house yesterday because he wanted to meet with us again, but since he isn’t in my area I don’t get to meet with him again. They set a baptismal date with him and everything. Really cool how just talking with people you can find them that are in need of our message. We have taught that family of five just one other time and we might have to drop them because they are really catholic still and think we believe in the same thing.. we have a hard time making appointments with them too. Last night at 8:55 we stopped by a house that was having a BBQ and started just talking to them and they all wanted to sit and listen to us. So we had a first lesson with two families that both have 4 kids under 16. They both really want us to come back and teach them which is awesome. The family that was just there for the BBQ lives on a ranch that is like 5 miles from that house so I am excited to go out there tomorrow! There are no cities where we work though, they are called colonias but they are just scattered trailers and shacks that have people living in them and a lot of them have goats and horses just tied up to the stop sign or in their front yard. Super interesting and funny. All the houses start out as like a camp trailer then they all start building on from there! I will send you some pics of what I mean, they are super funny!
Yeah this definitely does not feel like the US though. I feel like I am in a foreign country here.
That is so awesome to hear about Josey!!!! I am so happy for her!! I will definitely email her and I will write a letter and send it to their house! I am constantly praying for people like Colt and Gus to make the decision to serve and for my friends to make good decisions. That is so great to hear about Josey.
 Bo, I know you will do great with the relief society! That does sound kinda scary though.. I think I would way rather be here talking to people I don’t even know than being in relief society! haha You will do great though, you always do amazing in whatever people as you to do. If you need any ideas for lessons or something of that sort just let me know and i will try to help ya:)
That is to bad about Brocks team, how has he been doing? Has he been happy with everything. I am glad he liked that letter, I wrote some things in there that I thought he would need, because I think about him a lot and wonder how he is doing so I hope the things I put in that letter help him. I am glad he is working hard, he has always worked hard and I know it will pay off if he keeps pushing.  I haven’t been blowing my call lately because I feel bad if I wake them up here because I actually like them!
I feel so old that I am turning 19! Those things you just said about my fast feet and singing the star spangled banner just made me laugh. I was such a gomer;) Thanks so much Kimbo, I hope you have a great week! I love and miss you mommy.
Love, Elder Johnson

April 7, 2014

Howdy Y’all,
Well it has been another crazy week here on the mission.  It is already over 100 degrees here and is way to hot for me here! Hopefully I will get use to it quickly. We have had some crazy things happen this week. Tuesday we were doing service at the bishops house and the bishops wife told Elder Embley that he could catch a chicken and kill it and have it if he wanted, so of course game on. Catching the chicken was so funny, my comp ran it into a fence and was chasing it all over the place! We finally caught it and chopped the head off then plucked it and it is in our freezer now ready for our BBQ Tonight:) Then Friday night we got a call to give a guy a blessing who has cancer but is not a member, we got the call to do this from a Mission President in Michigan. We had the address and went to where it should be but could ever find it. We stopped people and used their laptops to find it on google maps and it came up with like three different address? It was so strange.. we started going to all of the addresses and couldn’t ever find it after looking for two and a half hours we had to give up and go home. Then at priesthood meeting Saturday night we had an investigator show up drunk! He was telling Elder Embley that he should be the prophet and that he is going to be the next prophet. Super funny but crazy. We are having a hard time getting people to come to church because they are all illegals and so they are scared to drive, because if they get pulled over then the border patrol will come check them for their papers and if they don’t have papers then they send them back to Mexico! Its crazy how things work around here. I hope all is well for everyone, thanks for all the love and support.
Love, Elder Johnson

 Chicken dinner, anyone??

My Comp eating a "neveronsundae" that we made.  With the food here, I am going to gain sooo much weight.  I already know I have gained some!  My Comp has already put on 25 pounds!!

March 31, 2014

I AM IN TEXAS!!

My new companion, Elder Shumway

Well Hey Y’all!!

I am down here in Texas now and things have been pretty crazy! Monday night we slept at the Assistant to the Presidents house then Tuesday morning they gave us our areas and companions then shipped us out to our new places. My companion is Elder Shumway from Alpine, Utah and he is a stud. We get along really well and he is a great trainer. We serve in a city call La Joya, it is right down on the border, and I serve in the southern part of the city. In our area it is 99% Mexicans and the Border Patrol is everywhere here! My second day here when we were on our bikes I watched 9 illegal Mexicans get pulled out of a PT Cruiser! How do they even fit 9 in there? The Border Patrol pulled them out and were putting them in a big Border Patrol truck and we watched it all happen, it was pretty crazy! Most of our members here are not legals either, it is a pretty normal thing to just ask them if they have their papers or not and most of them do not have them. I swear I am not in the US here, nothing but Mexicans and it is pretty sketchy in most areas here. This first week has been crazy but good still. It is already over 100 degrees here and the humidity is already killing me and they are saying it isn’t that bad yet here. I cant imagine what it is going to be like here in a couple months! We ride our bikes quite a bit and we rode them for 21 miles Saturday. We ride half the time and we have a car to take for the further appointments, but we cant use the car very much so we ride our bikes the rest of the time.  We sent a baptismal date with a family of five my third day here so hopefully they will continue to shoot for that date because they are an awesome family. Other than that we didn’t have much success this last week. There are tons of Jehovah witnesses here and tons of Catholics as you can imagine. We speak nothing but Spanish during lessons and talking with people because nobody speaks English. I hope I pick up on the Spanish quickly because we speak it all the time here! Things are tough but I am excited to serve here! I hope all is well for everyone!

 Love, Elder Johnson