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