December 18, 2015

December 14, 2015

Well we just got out of a long meeting with President to finish up the transfers. We have pretty much everything and everyone figured out so far, the group that goes home Wednesday is the biggest group ever to go home and we are getting one of the largest groups ever of new missionaries so it will be interesting! There are tons of changes, and I also know who my new companion will be and he is great. He still doesn’t know, we are actually the only ones that know but he is wonderful. I am super excited to have him as a companion. Today we have to go run errands and make sure the transfer van, and our two trucks are super clean and ready to go pick up the new missionaries at 3. Pres is super big on presentation, so when we ever pick up a new missionary, everything has to be perfect. So we will pick up the greenies, then we bring them back here to the offices and we do like 3 different trainings with them then at like 6 we go to presidents house to eat dinner with all the greenies and president and his family. Then I will be making the rounds in the transfer van to drop off 13 different sisters because we have to spread them out with a bunch of different sisters here close by because they don’t go to their area till the next day when transfers happen. So they will spend the night with some other sister missionaries here then in the morning before they go to their areas, we have breakfast at presidents house so first things tomorrow morning I will be making the rounds again to pick them all up.  (Elder Cruz says hi) Then after the transfer meeting I will have the 27 dead missionaries with me that go home Wednesday morning. They have some meetings till 5 then we go and eat dinner at presidents house and then they have a dead party Tuesday night which is a lot of fun. Then Wednesday morning they have breakfast at pres house then I drop them all off at the airport! Crazy next few days.. Also I got to go to the temple Saturday which was super cool:) I will tell you more about that when I have time, but I have to go now, I love you!!

December 7, 2015

So I don’t think I ever explained this very well, but this last transfer I got a new companion, Elder Lattanzio and he comes with me when I travel around to other zones and work with the zone leaders, but at the same time I still have elder Cruz as my companion and we still travel together but now when us 3 travel together.  They will drop me off places to work with zone leaders for a couple days then they will come pick me up. So it is a little confusing but I have two different companions. One from Mexico and the other from Argentina, they both have lived here in the US for a while now though so they both speak English fine. But here is just a picture of us in front of our ranch;)

This was a pretty cool story that happen a little bit ago, this kid is a kid that Elder Cruz and I both taught in Brownsville and we went back there not to long ago. Elder Cruz did a baptismal interview with him and he finally said yes to being baptized! So last Sunday we drove back down to Brownsville and my comp baptized him which was super cool! I taught this kid when I was with Elder Boyer a couple transfers ago and Boyer is still down there so it was super cool to get to go back down there and see this kid get baptized after having us three teach him for so long!

Sister Bely teaching the Elders to make cheesecake!!

November 23, 2015

So this is the Ramirez family, we just baptized them this last Sunday and they are so amazing!! They love the gospel so much, we walked in Sunday night to have dinner with them and Amabeli, the mom, is in cooking with her phone playing the Book of Mormon! They feed us all the time, and they are so willing to help us with anything and do anything to help out the members of the ward. Anuer (the dad) has been trying to get his working Visa so that he can stay here in the US and work, since he is from Mexico. So he had been trying to get that for the last 3 months or so and the day after he got baptized it showed up! THEN the very next day all of the sudden he received his residency in the mail and he wasn’t expecting that at all which means he is basically now a US citizen! It is so hard for people to get that down here because there are so many illegals and we know that since he was baptized and did what God wanted him to do that he was blessed! Then yesterday he got a call saying he could go down to Mexico to visit his other 2 daughters that he hasn’t been able to visit for the last 3 months! The little girl, Alyson and the little boy, Luis are just adorable! It is so cool to see how much the gospel blesses families when they live it! I am excited to get to go with them to the temple to be sealed a year from now!!

November 18, 2015

This Is elder Gilliam, he just went home a couple days ago, he left mid transfer because he served in Mexico before he served here so his time was up , but he is a really good friend, he lives up in northern Idaho and is going to take me Wolf hunting when I get back. I had to take him to the airport at 3am then my comp and I ran a meeting for all the sisters in the whole mission for the whole rest of the day so it was quite the day!! The other pic is from Brownsville, yesterday afternoon we got back from Brownsville. We went down there for an exchange and we saw this leaving the parking lot, so we had to get a picture on it!!

Hi Mommy what are you doing?? I was wanting to chat with you but you must be busy, so that's okay! That is crazy about what happened at work this week! I cant believe Bryant did that! Sounds like he just has a lot of stress and is having a hard time controlling it all.. That is cool that you got a bunch of job offers right after all that! Blessings!! You will have to let me know what you end up deciding to do.. Just choose what makes you the most happy! That is what matters at this point!! Also, you will have to send me a picture of that cousin of Nick’s if you ever find one, so that I can see if she has a chance or not;) Yeah dad told me he bought a lease at the club, he also told me he is going to buy me one also:) That is awesome that Brock made the basketball team, that makes me super happy to hear!! The family that we have been teaching is getting baptized tomorrow, the mom's name is Amabeli and she has been trying to add me on Facebook so if you see her name add her please! She really wants to talk to you! She said she wanted to tell you some things and she wanted to meet you! She is so excited for the gospel, it has been so cool to see how fast they changed and how ready they were to hear the gospel when we showed up!! This week we just went down to Brownsville for a couple days to help them make some things happen, then first thing in the morning we will be going down to Brownsville again to baptize a kid then we will be coming back to baptize the family!! It is also Alisons birthday today, so I bought her a journal so that she has something to write in to remember the day of her baptism. I will send you some pics on Monday if I have time so you can see them in white! Things here are going good though, this next week we have the 3 day meeting, starting Monday night going till Thursday and we will have every leader in the mission here with us for those 4 days and it is going to be nuts! My comp and I have many hours ahead of us of planning where everyone is going to sleep and where they will work for those 4 days, then after the meeting on Thursday, we will be heading up to Laredo for the rest of the week! Also, on Monday night we are going to have an FHE with the family we are baptizing at the mission presidents house, so that will be awesome!! Little nervous.. but it should be super neat! They are going to teach them more about missionary work and about temples so it should be amazing. But things are going great, and a crazy week is coming up!! Write me back mommy, I want to hear from you!

October 31, 2015

Wow, Brockles is on his first date??? That is so crazy to me... he seems like he should still be asking mommy if he can go play with his friends! haha You will have to send me some pics of him when you can! Yeah tonight we have to be home by 6pm for the rest of the night and we will be having 4 missionaries with us that go home this next week because they have their final interview with pres today then they will stay with us till they fly out. Each day we will be getting a few more and by Monday night we will have 17 missionaries with us that will be flying home Wednesday morning! We will probably get some trick or treaters since we live in a house in a decent neighborhood!  I don’t need any candy right now! I am trying to get huge of course and lose all of my fatty yucky weight! I get plenty of bad food when we eat with members, so I am trying to eat decent when I can! I have a goal of being at a solid 200 when I get home, right now I am at 192 and I have gotten rid of most of the fat I have gained here on the mish! We go to the gym almost every day from 5-7 even when we have to travel because my comp is trying to lose a lot of weight before he goes home. All the missionaries will sleep at our house, that is the main reason we live in a house, we have a bunch of bunk beds in there so they will all of a bed to sleep in. Yes, Monday we have to go to the airport to pick up all the new missionaries and on Wednesday we go to drop them all off at the airport. This next week is pretty crazy with everything that happens at transfers! Of course Brock thinks he is pretty bad, he is probably on cloud 9 right now! haha
These are some pics of the family that we are teaching, the little girl (Alison) she is the cutest little thing and the mom and dad are wonderful. The have a date to be baptized on the 15th of November and they will be my pride and joy of my mission when they get baptized here in a couple weeks. Amabeli, the mom, calls us her angels, she always says, "mis angeles tengo una pregunta..." They  are super cool and we are super excited for them. We have already talked about going to the temple after baptism and they thought that was super cool and is something they really want to do so I will be coming back down here to Texas when that happens! They have fed us dinner twice already the last two weeks and they are progressing really quickly! They have lots of questions because they are a very smart family and want to know everything about the church but they are wonderful!

October 24, 2015

Well here is a little of what went on this last week, Tuesday my comp and I had a meeting with President Maluenda for a few hours and he gave us about 200 things to do before Elder Dube arrived at 9 O'clock Tuesday night. So all day Tuesday we were running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to get everything done for President. Then Tuesday night Elder Dube (of the Seventy) arrived and then first thing Wednesday morning we had a meeting with Elder Dube, his wife, and President Maluenda and his wife. It was such a cool meeting, and it was really cool to see how much our mission president and Elder Dube trusted us because they asked us to be involved in a lot of things I never thought we would get to be involved in. We discussed the needs of the mission in that meeting and then planned out the rest of the week with those two and their wives. Then Wednesday afternoon we had meeting with all of the Zone Leaders in the mission along with President and Elder Dube. We then took the two couples around to a few different apartments and we then had a companionship study with President and Elder dube with a set of sister missionaries which was really cool. Thursday morning we had a meeting with all the missionaries here in the southern part of the mission which is about 100 missionaries and my companion and I conducted the meeting for Elder Dube and we got to work a lot with him and help him during all of his meetings which was a lot of fun, it made us nervous a lot but it was a very cool experience. So we had that meeting pretty much all day on Thursday, then Friday we drove up to Corpus with him and had the same meeting pretty much with him but for all of the missionaries in the northern part of the mission. Then during lunch on Friday, he asked us to take his wife to the airport for him, so I got to drive his wife to the airport about 30 min away so we had a pretty fun chat with her about their lives which was really neat being that they are both from Zimbabwe. Then we returned to the meeting in Corpus, and after the meeting got over just my comp and I got to have a cool little meeting with just Elder Dube where we just discussed things about the mission. He gave us counsel for our life and then after that we drove him to the airport. Sorry I skipped over all the little details because there was a lot that happened but it was a really fun, crazy week. I learned so much and I am super grateful that I got to work really closely with a general authority for a week. It was an experience I wont ever forget!! Elder Dube was so full of energy all the time and was so funny! I thought he was a big guy, but when he walked in to our office he was a pretty small little guy but was a big voice! He kept us laughing though and we had a great time with him!! Other than working with him, that is all we did all week! The days before that we just did a lot of preparation with him coming in to town! Things here are going great though, I have only taught one lesson all week with all the time we spent with the mission pres and Elder Dube, but we are teaching a family of four right now and they are amazing. It is a mom, dad, and two kids and when we stopped by Wednesday night, they had made dinner for us and they had already found the gospel library ap on their I pads and they were just sitting there waiting for us! We taught them about the book of Mormon and the dad asked us when we brought it up if it is a book that comes from the painting of Jesus coming to the Americas that he saw at church on Sunday and my comp and I just looked at each other and just said "SI!" and started laughing because we were so amazed that he had put it all together on his own. They are a wonderful family and we are super excited for them!! So things here are going great, I think I have slept a total of like 20 hours this week and put over 1000 miles on our truck but I am loving every minute of it! But this is just a little of what is going on down here!! I hope you all have a great week!!
Love, Elder Johnson

October 19,2015

Hi Kimbo, how are you doin?? Sounds like mommy could just party this whole last week and nobody would know! haha What did you end up doing all week then? I hope you had time to curl up with a blanky and read a book! Hey I have learned to love to read!! So when I get home that is something I will do with you now! Before the mish I hated anything to do with reading! You need to read the book, The First 2,000 years, written by Skousen. It is a super good book, it is a doctrinal book for the church but it is super good! Or before that you need to read, The Infinite Atonement or The Great Apostasy. They are all super good books I have read here on the mission that I have loved a lot! Thanks for ordering the patriarchal blessings, and hey you guys can’t just lose those! You need to study those consistently! Brock wrote me about Sage, that is super sad!! And super scary!! Its good to hear that he is doing better and that he will be okay.. Tell Brock to always use his head!! I remember coach Kunzler. He was pretty cool. That is good to hear that Brockles is a hard worker, how has he been doing lately? What has he been up to? Sorry I don’t have much time to write, pres just called and is sending us to Corpus right now to pick up a missionary that is going home in the morning for medical reasons, but this last week was crazy as usual but it was super good. We had a meeting with a zone on Tues., another on Wed, another on Thurs. then we came back home on Friday, then Saturday we had to head up to Laredo to do some things for pres and we got home at 1 pm on Sunday from Laredo and our church starts at 1 so it was pretty crazy! We found a super cool family this last week, the mom dad and two of the kids came to church yesterday and today we set up dinner with them at bishops house so that should be great!! We are super excited for them. We are just trying to keep up with them with all the time we are gone on the road but they are doing super good! Yesterday we baptized a 15 yr old boy named Oscar, he was a kid that missionaries had worked with in the past for a long time, and this last week we had a super good lesson with him and we committed him to be baptized on Sunday and he got baptized! This next week we should be baptizing another lady and her daughter so hopefully all goes well. Things here are going good though, this week is when Elder Dube comes down so it should be a crazy week because we will be taking him to tour the mission and work with him to do some training and basically just do anything he asks us to do. I am excited to get to work with him a lot this week! It will be him, Pres Maluenda and my comp and I working together quite a bit so that should be super cool! Anyways, I hope you have a great week mommy, I love you!!

October 14, 2015

Baptism of beautiful Olgalita!

 

 

October 12, 2015

Hi Mommy How are ya?? Yeah the libraries might be closed, but we email in the mission office since we work here all morning on Mondays. My Sunday was good, on Sundays we are usually inside the church for about 10 or so hours with meetings and what not. We have to go to meetings with Pres, or meet with stake presidents or bishops sometimes, but Sundays are always super busy that is for sure!! So dad is heading to Florida for work then? And then he is going to go do some fishing with Sherwin also?? That sounds like a fun trip for him! I would love a little treat for Halloween! This last week we traveled for almost 700 miles so we spend plenty of time in the truck and having a little something to snack on is always nice! Did you get the pictures I sent on Saturday? Mommy, you fell down again!!??? I don’t know if you should even leave the house without a little helmet on!;) You cant keep falling down though!! I guess some more zumba or exercise would help you with your balance! I already told dad I think, that I am going to whip you and him into shape at the gym when I get home!! I want you guys as healthy and here with me as long as possible!! Sounds like the work situation is pretty crazy! Just do whatever makes you happy!! Our P days are pretty weird as the APs because we have like half a P day Saturday and another half Monday, and when you are in a zone there is always a zone activity where you get together as a zone and play basketball or soccer or something but we don’t belong to a zone so we just bounce from zone to zone usually on P days going to a different zone each P day to do their activity with them. Today we didn’t go to any of the activities though because we had too much to do here in the office, because the rest of the week we are going to be gone. Last week I didn’t sleep in my own bed from Tuesday till Saturday night and this week will be about the same!! Things are going great though!! Yeah I read my Patriarchal blessing a ton and it is really cool how much I have been able to get out of it being that it is such a short Pat Blessing. Also, something Pres Maluenda mentioned is that he received a lot of guidance through reading his parents patriarchal blessings, so I want to see if you and dad would be okay with me reading yours? And if you are, if you guys would send them to me? My comp just got his parents and he has really enjoyed reading them and said its super cool to see how the things that are said in their blessings apply to him. But only if you guys are okay with that, I would love to though! Anyways, I hope you have a great week mommy, I love you!!

 Well this morning on our way back from Laredo, we stopped at Falcon Lake (where we baptized when I was in Zapata) and took some pictures. We are in the US and the land on the other side is Mexico! There is a line down the middle of the lake that divides the US and Mexico.

 Okay so the picture of us and all the stuff in our truck was us with few sisters we were taking up to Laredo, it started pouring so we had to put the stuff that couldn't get wet inside and the sisters were a little squished!

  I got pretty tired during conference and I couldn't stay awake long enough to finish writing a sentence! I would write like two words then fall asleep, then two more then fall asleep! I thought my notes looked pretty funny!

 This was a lady that we just recently baptized, and this was a lunch we had at a members house. If you can see I am sitting on a little step stool, and my comp is in a little hannah montana chair! This lady that fed us, doesn't just feed us but, stuffs us!! She doesn't let us say no after just 2 plates of food and makes us keep eating and makes us just about throw up every time!! haha

October 5, 2015

Hi Kimbo!!
It’s all good, my P day is both Saturday and Monday, we have like a half P day both days, but I will usually email just once and usually it will be Saturday but sometimes on Monday just depends on the week. I watched general conference at the church, it was super good!! How did you guys like it? Yeah, you could tell Pres Monson was struggling a little bit.. I hope he makes it to next conference at least!! That is funny about Izzy with the sock!! I can’t believe she had that sock with her for so long!! Man, Izzy is chiflada (crazy)!! She better not ever get tubby! You guys gotta keep her in shape! That is crazy about the title company, if you could choose an option which would you choose?? I like the part with you owning some of it!! Then we can make it huge and get rich!;) It would be a good little investment though.. Keep me updated with all that! That is funny and sad about what happened in front of Kay's house!! Something I have learned on the mish, is when things go bad to just keep a good attitude. Pres talks a lot about controlling our agency, which is something so simple but so hard at the same time! He talks about how it all comes down to just simple choices we take every day, like when something little happens or something doesn’t go our way, just making the simple decision to have a good attitude makes a huge difference. That is something I have learned on the mish, because there are a lot of things that don’t go our way and I have learned to just keep a good attitude about everything and it has helped me a lot!! And it also helps those around you also that may be going through the same thing. Things here are going great, I am starting to get accustomed to the tiredness which is good! Yeah so this last week, since I am here in McAllen again, I was able to baptize Olgita! I baptized her family when I was here like 6 months ago and she just turned 8 and they were waiting for me to come back to baptize her so when I get here she got baptized!! It was super great to see the Cavasos and Olga and her fam! I love those families a lot!! Yeah I am still going to the gym every morning from 5 till 7 and it is great! I am going to whip you and dad into shape when I get home! I see such a big difference in the days I work out and the days I don’t in the morning, at start you are tired when you work out in the mornings, but after a week or so you feel great every day if you get a good workout in the morning! That is why it is part of the missionary schedule! My goal is to be a solid 200 by the time I go home, right now I am at 191 so I have 9 more lbs to go! I am doing great though, super busy, tons of work but I am loving it all! We will be road tripping like all week this week and the next, then the week after we have mission tour where a general authority comes down and we take him to tour the mission so that should be fun! I hope you have a great week mommy, I love you!!
Love, Elder Johnson

　
　
　

October 3, 2015

Well I am emailing today just for a little bit, but I didn’t get any emails so I thought I would just send one out to let y’all know what’s going on down here! I will email again on Monday, but just for a short time since I am emailing right now. So I would love to hear from you before then!! This last week just flew by and I cant believe its already the end of the week.. We had a meeting with all the zone leaders this last week with President and sister Maluenda, and the joke around here has been when Pres Maluenda is going to receive the call the be made the new apostle this weekend! haha But for reals a lot of us are pretty certain he will get that call someday!! It is super amazing getting to work so close with him and I am really enjoying it a lot!! These next few weeks we will be traveling pretty much every day, this month is when President does interviews with all the missionaries, so we go to all the zones in the mission and pres does personal interviews with each missionary and in the mean time my comp and I give training's to all the other missionaries till they all have had an interview with him and we usually start at 8am and we will finish around 5 or 6pm each day... So my comp and I will be giving oodles of training's these next few weeks! Then at the end of the month we have the mission tour, where a general authority comes down and we will have one big meeting with him with all the missionaries here closer to the border and another with all the missionaries up in the northern part of the mission and the cool part is that we are the ones that drive the general authority around for those few days he will be here so we are super pumped for that!! We are hoping its an apostle or someone cool because then we will get many hours of one on one time with him!! But things here are going great, life is crazy but I am loving it!! I hope you have a great week!!
Love, Elder Johnson

September 26, 2015

 I got to take one of my very best friends and drop him off at the airport this last week because he came to the end of his mission, Elder Worley.

Hi Kimbo, how are you doing?? That is awful what Quik Check did to Granny, pretty low blow and not very respectful. I hope she is doing alright, she told me she is just going to be retired then? Or what is her plan?? What is she going to do all day now?? I saw the pics of the big kill!! I haven’t heard anything from them about the deer, but I know they weren’t planning on me emailing today, but I will be emailing on either Saturday or Mondays now, I don’t know which or how often, so it will be kinda random, but it will be Saturday or Mondays from now on and the rest of my mission! 
So this last week has been a crazy one.. So on Monday afternoon I got the call from President to be AP and on Tuesday morning I had to get to McAllen bright and early, but Monday night we were busy visiting a bunch of people I wanted to say goodbye to, so we got home about 9:30 and I started packing and doing laundry and what not then I finally got in bed about 3am. We got up at 4am to run over to the church real quick then I got showered and I had to be up to McAllen early to have a meeting with president and my new Comp, Elder Cruz. We then had the Transfers meeting at 9am and it ends usually by 10:30 and we start sending people up to their new area with their new comps, and I had to load everyone up in the big Transfer van that pulls a big trailer to put all the luggage in and we took off to Corpus. It was a 3 hour drive up, and I picked up a missionary up there to bring down and it was 3 more hours to come back down and I was running on 1 hour of sleep so it was a tough drive but I made it! Then we had a meeting with all the missionaries that were going home right when I got back to town, then we took them to Presidents house where they have their last supper. After that all the missionaries that are going home have an FHE with Pres and Sis Maluenda and us as the APs we get to go to all of that and they have a little going home party then we headed home at about 11. Then next morning we had to get up super early to take them all to the airport. Then these last 3 days I have been to the airport 3 more times picking up and dropping off missionaries and I don’t think I have gotten to bed before 11 yet, and we have not slept past 5:15 yet either but things here are going great!! I have never been so busy in my life, and this will be what I do for the next 3 transfers! I have never been so exhausted but at the same time it is a lot of fun! We have made a bunch of changes to the mission, like combining and splitting zones so we have been super busy with just random things, but at the same time we have a few people we are baptizing tomorrow in our area so we are trying to keep up with them, but we have had time to only visit them once this week and all we did was just commit them to be baptized this Sunday and that is all we had time to do and they are going to get baptized tomorrow so that should be fun! Tomorrow we will also be driving up past Corpus to take some missionaries up there and possibly Laredo so I imagine we will be on the road all day tomorrow! We very rarely work in our area, when we are in town at the most we get like a couple hours a day to work in our area but we will be on the road traveling a lot of the time. I think there is only one week this whole transfer where we will stay in McAllen, in a couple weeks we will be spending 2 days in Corpus then 2 days in Sinton back to back so that week is already gone but it is a lot of fun! I am just trying to get used to it all right now!! I am super pumped for these last 4 ½  months to be able to work so closely with Pres and Sis Maluenda and be able to travel the mission a whole bunch! So in the mission there are just 2 houses that missionaries stay in, like there aren’t members there but where they actually have the whole house to themselves and that is the house in Brownsville where I just was and the AP house. So I have been spoiled, I have gotten to stay in both the houses and I will finish my mission in this one! I don’t know the address, so just send everything here to the mission office because I am in here every day now. My new comp is Elder Cruz, he goes home next transfer and he is from Washington state. He is a super good kid and a hard worker and I am excited to be with him. As an AP our purpose is to lead and guide all of the Zone leaders in the mission, to keep all their missionaries in check, we have about 200 missionaries we are in charge of. We get tons of calls from Pres to just go and do random things, or pick peeps up from the airport, or do whatever it is pres needs us to. We don’t work in our area hardly at all and we just work with all the other missionaries that are leaders in the mission to help them become better leaders and help them to better help those in their stewardship. I got your cookies and shirts, thanks so much Mommy!! Those cookies were gone the second they got in the door! What is new up there in SF?? Was Dad excited about the deer? How is baby Brockles doing?? Does Ty have a girlfriend yet? I hope you have a great week Mommy, I love you!!
Love, Elder Johnson

September 22, 2015

Okay, well sorry I didn’t email yesterday, and sorry that you aren’t going to get much of an email from me today either. Yesterday was pretty crazy let’s say. It was the last P day of the transfer so we had a bunch of things planned here in Brownsville, then on top of that in the middle of the day I received a call from the mission president letting me know that I had been called to be the new Assistant to the President for the mission. That was a pretty big curve ball but I am super excited! I have to leave to be in McAllen by 8 am, and I have a meeting with President, then at 9:30 is when transfers happen so tons of the missionaries will be at the mission office, and it will be announced there that I am the new AP and then I have to drive the giant transfer van, pulling a huge trailer up to Corpus full of missionaries and then drive back down to McAllen to meet up with my new companion again to go to Presidents house with all the missionaries going home. So, I will be taking off to Corpus by 11:00 hopefully and there is a meeting with the going home missionaries and Pres at 5:00 and the goal is for me to be back for that and it takes exactly 6 hours to drive to Corpus and back so it should be a crazy day! Then we will deal with the dead missionaries and they have a little party at presidents house then we will get home close to midnight tonight, and we take them to the airport with President first thing tomorrow morning! I am basically just going to kiss sleep out the window! haha Right now I am running on just a few hours since I had to pack and do a bunch of stuff last night then the next few days are insane, but I am super excited! Sorry I can’t write everyone individually but I will now have P days either Saturday or Monday just based on our schedule but I will write you guys better then! Im sorry, I love you all!!
Love, Elder Johnson

September 14, 2015

Hi Kimbo how are you doing?? Sounds like Mexico was a blast!! Did you and dad both enjoy it?? I am glad you got to feel the weather down there, I don’t know if here it is quite as hot as down there, but the humidity and heat is pretty dang close I believe!! I am pretty worried about coming back in January because I am going to FREEZE when I get home! Guess I will just have to extend till June..;) How was snorkeling?? Like did you find anything cool or did you just swim around in circles?:) I hope dad didn’t put on too much weight.. being that it was all you could eat all the time! How did you like el agua de sandilla?? What did you guys like better, the cruise or where you went this last week?? Because we have got to have a fun family trip when we all get back home again! That is good to hear that Kira got baptized, I cant believe that she is already 8 yrs old!! What has Colt been up to lately?? Things here are still going super great, I am really enjoy being with my companion, but I am pretty sure it will be impossible for us to stay together. Because right now I am the Sr comp and he is Jr comp, but he is a super great missionary and will be bumped up this transfer for sure and go be a Sr ZL somewhere else so I don’t think there is any chance of us staying together to be honest, but we will have to see what happens! We can always pray for it! haha This is the last week of the transfer so it should be interesting to see what happens!! This last week we didn’t really have anything crazy happen to us, but we had a lot of success in the zone which made us super happy. Right now we have 26 missionaries in the zone and we have seen them all change so much which has been super cool to see and they are all seeing a ton of success! This next week we should be baptizing close to 10 people which should be a lot of fun! Each Sunday is so crazy and so exhausting but I really love it a lot! Last night when I got off the phone with one of the district leaders in our zone I found my comp asleep with his suit on his bed. I tried waking him up and I threw things at him to try to get him to change but he just kept falling asleep so I just left him like that and at 3am he woke up and changed out of his suit I guess! haha We are working hard down here on the border and it has just been a lot of fun!! Sorry I don’t have anything crazy to tell you guys, but things here are going great still! I hope you have a wonderful week!! Oh and could you send me maybe like 3 new short sleeve white shirts please?? All of mine are getting hammered and starting to look pretty bad and it is hard to find them anywhere down here so I would appreciate it if you could send me those!! My neck size is a 15 1/2. But I hope you have a fun week catchin up on things mommy, I love you!!

September 7, 2015

Hi Kimbo how is Cancun treatin ya?? I would be super down to go down there as a family! Especially being able to speak Spanish now, it would be a lot of fun for Tyler and I being able to communicate with the people down there! What are you guys planning on doing down there?? Hey if you can find agua de sandilla, Pronounced- (agua day Sand-iya) you have to try it, it is a drink that a lot of Mexicans make here and I love it!! In English it translates to water of watermelon but it is super good!! But yeah I think we should do something like that right when I get home:) Well tell Daddy happy birthday for me here in a couple days! Man you guys are getting old!! Sounds like it should be a fun get a way for just you two! You guys probably flew directly over the top of me yesterday, being that Brownsville is over on the coast and Cancun is just straight below me just a long ways away. Things here in Brownsville are still going great!! This last week our zone hit a record we are pretty sure for bringing the most investigators to church in a single week. As a zone we had 31 investigators come to church which was super awesome!! We are looking to baptize so many people in the month of September and it is just tons of fun seeing how happy and pumped all of our missionaries are in the zone! We have seen a bunch of missionaries change so much and it has been so cool to see them change and want to be better. And as they have done that, they have all seen so much success in their own areas. The meetings were great in McAllen, each night I got to work back in my old area since we had to stay there for a few days and it was a lot of fun getting to go back and visit a lot of people that I used to visit. I visited a family that I was teaching while I was there and the missionaries had stopped teaching them, but I stopped by with them on Wednesday night and I committed all of them to be baptized on the 13th, which is this Sunday!! It was a super good lesson and it was super cool to see them and see how much they have changed since the first time I met them. The family just consists of a dad and 4 kids, the mom was killed in a hit and run accident two months ago. So it is a pretty sad situation but it is super cool to see how much just having the knowledge of the plan of salvation can help someone. I also got to visit another family that I worked with a lot that was just a family that wasn't very strong in the church. He went to Iraq for 5 years and just lost his faith completely then when he returned a couple years ago some missionaries found him and helped him and his wife and 4 kids come back to church, but when I visited them this last week I set a date for them to get sealed in the temple together which was super awesome!! They are going to be getting sealed at the end of October and they were super pumped! My companion and I are having a lot of fun together, he actually served in Guatemala for a full year then went back home for some personal reasons, and he had to stay at home for 2 years then he was able to come back out and they sent him down here to McAllen and he finishes in December. He is a super great kid and we have been having tons of fun together. Things are still going great here on the mission, one thing that I have learned for sure is that God is easy to please, but impossible to satisfy. Just knowing that has given me so much drive to just go and do all I can during these two years that I have down here. This next week is the last week of another transfer.. I cant believe how fast each transfer keeps flying by, but I am just going to make the most of each one! I hope you have a fun week down in Cancun!! You have to send me tons of pictures when you guys get back!! I love you!
Love, Elder Johnson

August 31, 2015

 

 

 

All the cars in the water had been ruined by the water and so slowly one by one they were pulled out of the water but we had counted, in this one intersection there were 13 cars that had been wrecked by the water!! We spent a lot of the day, helping others push their car out that had been ruined by the water! There were places where we drove in our truck and the water came over the hood!!! Yes it was that deep!!



 That is the border that is touching our tail gate:)

Okay, well here is a little of what has happened this last week: On Wednesday I went and worked in a different area with a couple missionaries to help them with some investigators that they have and it was super cool. I was able to talk and teach a lady and commit her to be baptized on Sunday. I did their baptism interview right then and there and yesterday her and her two kids were baptized!! It was a super cool experience and was super cool to be able to see them be baptized. Then on Saturday and Sunday me and my comp had just a super crazy couple of days! We had 6 baptisms in our zone and we were just running from place to place helping missionaries and we are having some issues with some of the missionaries in our zone and it has just been crazy. I don’t know if we have spent more than an hour in our house that last few days!! Then today the assistants to the president came down and we had a super fun P day, we got permission to go out to South Padre Island for P-day with the APs today and it was a lot of fun!!! I will send lots of pictures of that to y’all. We played some beach volley ball and walked the stores there. We can’t get anywhere near the water of course so that was a little tough! haha But it was a lot of fun going on a little road trip out there. It is about 45 min from our house and we stopped at a big light house on our way out to take some pics because you can go up into the top which is pretty cool! So we did that today, then we got back to town and a giant storm came through with hurricane warnings and it was super crazy and we got a bunch of calls from the missionaries in the zone saying that they are stuck or they are surrounded by tons of water so we had to tell everyone to park their cars and not touch them because with how deep the water was it would just ruin the engines. So then we had to go and pick a bunch of our missionaries up and take them to their apartments since we are the only ones that have a truck so we spent the rest of our day doing that and pushing cars out of the water that had their engines ruined!! Crazy last couple days and tomorrow we head up to McAllen for the next 3 days because we have another couple meetings so we won’t even be in Brownsville this week really then we will be down to the last two weeks of the transfer already. Time just flies by and weeks feel like days right now to be honest!! I am loving the mission and I love being a missionary. I love being able to just serve others all the time and be able to change peoples lives. By doing that I know that it has changed my life more than anything and I love the change it is bringing to me!!

Okay Mommy, I am going to answer every single one of your questions..

1)How are you this week?
1) I have been doing great this week, We saw tons of miracles here in the zone and I got to go and work with a bunch of missionaries in the zone because they had people that could possibly be baptized but the missionaries just weren’t making things happen so I got to go and teach those people and many of them were baptized on Sunday which was awesome!!

2)Did you trap the possums?
2) We haven’t gotten the possums yet, we still don’t have the trap..:(

3)Did you get a package on Thursday? Did it come early enough in the day, before you left for the day? Were the cookies totally destroyed?
3) I got the package, and it came early enough so thanks so much for that!! It was great to get mommies cookies right at my doorstep:)

4)Do you still get to go to the gym?
4) Yes, I just got a gym pass here and I am still getting huge'. :) A member gave me a big thing of protein and I make a dang good protein smoothie lets just say:)

5)Do you ride your bike still? Are you going to sell your bike down there or bring it home?
5) Yes, I do still ride my bike, not very often because our area is huge, and we have to do tons of running around here in the zone since we have so many missionaries here. But we still do have to ride them every so often. I think I will probably ship my bike home, just because it is worth so much more than what I would get if I were to pawn it or something here. Most just ship it home for like 60 bucks so I will probably do that but I haven’t really though about that yet.

6)What do you and your comp eat?
6) Me and my comp don’t eat a whole lot because there is so much work to be done and we don’t get fed by our members here very often, I am losing weight which I am not very happy with because I have a goal to go home at 200 even and I got here to Brownsville at 196 and I am currently like 191 so I just got to go harder in the gym!

7)Do you still see lots of Border Patrol? Do you still drive a truck?
7)Yes we see lots of border patrol here, yes I drive a truck. I will have a truck the rest of my mission because all zone leaders and the APs get trucks so pretty much no matter what I will have a truck which is great. I have been able to drive a truck almost my whole mission!

8)Are you doing lots of teaching or more managing of missionaries?
8) We have been spending lots of time on our missionaries because there are some issues that we have been having but we still are teaching a lot of people also. We are just crazy busy all the time!!

9)Have you had any bad storms/hurricanes?
9)Speaking of storms, yes we had a huge storm today! I sent some pics, let me know if you don’t get them. We spent a lot of our time today pulling people out of the water and helping missionaries that had gotten stuck.. but it was a lot of fun! We spent a lot of our day in water up to about our waist!! And I am not joking!

I still can’t believe that Brock is in high school.. I would make him wait on going to dances, looking back, when I went on that date with that girl a couple months before my bday it just didn’t really feel right to be honest, but I am not his parent! I would just suggest making him wait a bit, being that is what the prophets have said. I cant believe that there are houses coming in by our house!! That is not okay! Have you guys thought of moving at all or is that thought just out of the ideas for now? Are the Olson’s still planning on moving?? That is super funny about Izzy, how did you teach her to do that? She sure is cute, but seems like a little bit of a beast at the same time! I hope you had a great week mommy, I love you!

Love, Tu oso