November 5, 2011

Hello Family!

This week was a "once in a mission" week. (though I hope that we will continue having weeks like these) First off, thank you all soo soo much for the package for my birthday. I really enjoyed everything, especially the SPAM! Woohoo! Everything was great, and the tie is super awesome (and clean). By the way, do not worry about last week, but I really was enjoying myself writing about flying fish. It didn’t have anything to do with drugs.... haha

Anyways, this week, first of all, I completed my twentieth birthday. It was great. I got wet. I guess there is some kind of "tradition" here in Mexico that says that you have to get the birthday kid wet. My companions took this way too literally. They unloaded a 5 gallon bucket over my head!

Other than that, this week has been a real faith promoting week. We (Elder Rendon and I) did not have very many lessons this week, and so we were pretty bummed out about that, but we had like 4 really powerful experiences espirituales. I will tell you about some of them. This Wednesday, as we were walking home at 8:20 in the night, we heard someone calling to us. We started to head over, because my companion (who is short) could not see them, and he wanted to see who it was. As it turns out, they were a group of thugs who were drinking. I wanted to turn around, and walk away, but we did not. We walked right up to them, began to talk to them. It was really strange, because we could literally feel that they had bad intentions with us, and that they were up to no good. There was 5 of them, and 2 of us, and they formed a circle around us. But we just started talking to them, getting to know them. (the whole time trying to keep our cool). As we began to teach and testify to them, we could literally feel the atmosphere, and ambient change. They lost their aggressive stances, and began to ask real question. It was really great, and at the end they allotted us a time in which we could return to visit with them. Then we left. So yeah, by now we are freaking out, because we felt like we just narrowly escaped with our lives... (a little exaggeration) but it gets better. We went to visit them yesterday to check up on them, and see how they were doing. We found one of them, had a powerful lesson, and committed him (Mario) to be baptized. HE ACCEPTED! Yep.. it was great.

Also, another of these faith promoting experiences happened yesterday. We were down in lessons the whole week, and we felt a little down. When we got to Sunday, we went to Hna Sylvia's house to help her so that she could go to the church. She went, and not only her, but she brought her whole family! Than when we got to the church, another two couples came to church. We had a total of SEVEN investigators in the church. I have not had that many since I was in my very first transfer with Elder Cope. It really was a great blessing that God had granted us to receive.

Well, I must be going now, because we have a Family Home Evening with Sylvia in one hour, and we must prepare!

I love you all so much. The church is true. I am so grateful for this opportunity that I have to be a missionary. God allows me to receive blessings and see miracle that I could not even imagine.

Love Elder Johnson