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

August 24, 2015

Hi Mommy how are you doing?? That is pretty cool what Dad and Ty did to you!! I got a pretty good laugh about it as I read it! I cant believe Gunnar is home!!!! It is freaking me out more and more each week because someone is either getting married or getting home off of the mission! Crazy how fast time flies and all that is going on! That is super good to hear that Christian is going on a mission. There is an elder here that played football with him at SUU and know Christian also so I will have to tell him about that. That is crazy about what happened at Judy’s house, is Howard doing anything about what is going on? Or is he just letting them do whatever they want? That is good to hear that you guys got some stuff, it sucks that you had to pay for it but it is still good to hear that you got some of it. Wait, so are you in the primary presidency or the relief soc presidency?? I thought the relief society but then I just read primary. Are you excited for your new calling? Like will you still get to go to our ward or will you be going to other wards a lot?? My momma is a boss! haha Okay, I am super sorry I haven't gotten to write a good email for a while.. Things here have been so crazy lately and I have only had like 10 minutes a week to jump on and email but today I finally have some time to write like normal. Things here are going really well, I live in the house like I mentioned last week and it is a pretty old house but it is actually pretty big! It is a lot of fun living here, other than we have possums in the back yard that we are on a hunt for! haha We have a member that is bringing a trap to us soon so that we can catch all of them:) My area is called Southmost, so I imagine you can guess where it is if you look where I live at on the map, it is most south point of the US and it is a pretty interesting place! It is great though, the border of the US is our whole southern border of our area so it keeps things interesting! I am really enjoying it down here though, me and my comp get along really well and we are having a lot of fun! This last week we left to go to McAllen on Monday afternoon and didn't get back till Friday night so it has been an interesting week! It just flew by so so so fast and I cant believe it is Monday again already!! The meeting in McAllen was great, we had a leadership meeting all day tues, wed and thurs and President Maluenda just knows how to blow our mind. After every meeting all of us leaders just repent a whole lot then go out and work harder than ever before! My companion and I are changing a lot of things down here in Brownsville. He was down here last transfer with an Elder that was going home and the zone really suffered a lot from that missionary that was going home so when I got sent here President Maluenda gave me some special things that he wanted me to change down here so we have been so so busy every day but things have been going great. I love, the mission and I am grateful for all of the crazy experiences I am having down here! I hope you have a great week mommy, and HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!! I can’t believe you guys have been married for 25 years!;) But for reals though, I am so grateful for you and dad!!! I honestly could not think of a better set of parents a kid could have. I love you guys so much and I am so thankful for everything!!!

Love, Elder Johnson

August 17, 2015

Well, this last week has been crazy, and I am so sorry but we are leaving here in 10 minutes to head up to McAllen for a meeting all week. It starts early in the morning and we won’t get back home till Friday afternoon. It is a meeting for all of the leaders of the mission and it is always a super good meeting that we have every 3 months. Well yes, as you can probably tell I am not in McAllen anymore!! After 9 months of being there they finally kicked me out! I was pretty bummed at the same time though because there is a family of 6 we were teaching in my last area that is going to get baptized next week, along with a girl that is getting baptized tomorrow in my last area and also with an 18 yr old kid. We had begun seeing tons of success then they kicked me out and sent me back down here to BROWNSVILLE! The most southern tip of the US!! A missionary just died here this last transfer and I am here with his comp now and we were put here to fix some things and our zone has 30 missionaries in it so it is pretty dang big! We have SO SO SO much to do and we have been so incredibly busy this last week trying to get everything going but things are going really well. I really like my Comp, his name is Elder Boyer and he is from Orem. Here are just a couple pics, this last week I had to go with the APs to go pick up the greenies, then the other one is when we left McAllen to come down here to Brownsville. It has been such a crazy week, but I promise next week I will tell you more!! Also, we live in a house down here since we are the zone leaders for this zone and it is super sick, it is really old but it is pretty dang cool that we get to live in a house! I will send some pics of it next week!! I hope y’all have a great week!! I love you!!

Love, Elder Johnson

August 10, 2015

Sorry, I have to write just a general letter out to everyone because I only have like a half hour to email today because we have to go pick up the new missionaries that are coming into the mission today! I am super excited to do that! President Maluenda asked if I could go with the AP's to help them drive an extra vehicle back full of Greenies because there are a lot of new ones coming in! This last week was super busy and super crazy but it was great. Yesterday we had 12 investigators at church which was super cool! We found a family of 6 that just recently had their mother pass away and they are super cool and they are doing well. They came to church yesterday and the dad loved it and said he would be here at church every week now, so hopefully we baptize them soon! My only worry is that they send me out of the area and I don’t get to see them be baptized! Savannah is doing great, she came to church for the first time yesterday and loved it, she just has super bad anxiety so that is the only thing that has held her back from coming to church, but she is doing really well. Right now we have so many people we are working with and in the next 3 weeks here in our area we should have like 7 baptisms, so lets just hope I stay! Even though I have been here in the McAllen area for 9 months now... I have no idea yet where it is I am going or if I am even leaving, but I imagine I will be leaving with how long I have been here! My comp is pretty dead, but he is doing well. We had a leadership training this last week and it was super great, I am stuck on the fact that my mission pres will be an apostle one day. He is just something else and you cant really understand it till you are with him in a training or receiving counsel from him. Today will be crazy because we have to get 18 new missionaries around then we have got to have all of them sleep in our apt tonight and get them all to the transfer meeting tomorrow! I am doing well though, each week keeps going by faster and I really don’t like it! But I am learning so much and I am loving it here!! It is bloody hot and you sweat the second you step out of the door right now but I am getting pretty use to it! I am worried that when I get home that I am going to freeze!! Well sorry this is such a short email and it is super brief, I just really have to hurry. I promise to write you a better letter next week!! I love you!

Love, Elder Johnson

August 3, 2015

This last week was a little crazy because we had "mini missionaries" here with us all week. Its actually a really cool thing they do here. What happens is on Monday afternoon all the missionaries here in the stake meet at the stake center and we receive 2 teen aged boys, like 15-18 and they come and serve the entire week with us from 730am till 930pm then a member comes and picks them up to sleep at night just because it is a rule that they cant stay with us. So for the whole week we had 2 fourteen year old kids with us. They were pretty cool kids and we had a lot of fun with them. They both went down hard on the bikes which was funny but kinda sad too! We would split up every day, my comp and I, and we would each have a mini with us and we would go work in our area all day and on Friday when one of the mini's was with my comp, they were racing on bikes and the mini tried jumping on a curb and his back will got caught behind a curb and he went flying over the handle bars into a bunch of poles and ended up having to go home till Sunday and he finished with us for the last few hours of the week, but he was pretty banged up and scraped up his chest pretty badly. Then the one I was with was crossing a busy street one day and all of the sudden his tire just falls off and he eats it right in the middle of the road! He just jumps up and grabs the bike above his head and just went running off the road, because it is as fast road we have to cross but he left the tire there in the middle of the road, so I bailed off my bike and went running out there and grabbed it but after I just couldn’t stop laughing because he was this short little chubby kid that I was with! But it was a fun week, full of crazy stories like those! Then on Saturday we did a little testimony meeting with all the mini's and the missionaries they were with in the zone and it was super cool. The bishops son from the Pharr ward I was in, in my last area, he went on a mini mission and during the testimony meeting he got up and bore his testimony, and he is a kid a worked a lot with because he is a really good kid, but he was into some drugs when I first go there to the area a while ago. But I would take him to lessons with me and I worked with him a lot over the time I was there, then while baring his testimony he said he wanted to thank me because I was the one that completely changed his mind and thoughts and that he will be putting in his papers here in 6 months when he can to head out on his mission. That was something really cool to hear and it made me super happy to hear and see how much he has changed. This last week was a little crazy but super good. But this is what happened this last week!! Have a good one y’all!

Love, Eder Johnson