Call from the Mission President's Wife

This is Brenda. I was showering this morning when Ryan came in and told me someone was on the phone, and asked if he should tell them I'm in the shower. I told him to tell them I was busy. He came back and said they wanted to know if Michael has had a tetanus shot recently. Then I knew something was up. I asked him to ask the person on the phone to please call back in 5 min. I finished my shower, quickly, and when I got out the phone rang. It was the Mission President's wife letting me know that Michael had cut his right pointer finger pretty bad fixing something on his bike. He was at Urgent Care and needed stitches, plus they were going to have to remove part of his nail. I finished the phone call and went about my day. Then, tonight I got a text, from my favorite Senior Missionary, Elder Bingham. He sent me the picture below of Michael in the Urgent Care with the caption 'None the worse for wear. All is good. Elder Bingham' I was so grateful to get this picture. I had been thinking about Michael all day and what I wanted to say to the President's wife is: 'Tell Michael he shouldn't be modifying his bike on Sunday!' I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I'm guessing I will hear about it in tomorrow's email.

Just a little about Elder Bingham. Elder Bingham helped Michael get his bike when he first went to Virginia. I never knew his name or who he was, Michael had used his phone to call and text me about transferring money to his account for the bike. So, the day before Michael's birthday I texted the number and asked for help with getting a cake to Michael on his birthday. I had no idea who I was texting, I thought it was a member of the ward, or someone in the area. After many texts back and forth, I finally asked if this mystery person had a name. He said he was Elder Bingham and that he and his wife were from Alaska and they were serving in Virginia. It was so nice to finally have a name for this kind person. So on Michael's birthday, I had the bright idea to send a picture of the kids and David & I holding a sign wishing Michael a Happy Birthday to Elder Bingham. I knew they were at a district meeting and hoped Elder Bingham would see Michael. I sent the pic of the kids and he responded right away that he was sitting behind Michael at the meeting and showed him the picture. So then I sent the one of David and I. Well, in last weeks email, Michael sent a picture of his desk. Low and behold, there are the pics I sent him on his birthday! It was fun to see that he was able to print them and have them. So, a big shout out to Elder Bingham and the kind man he is. Love the pics and little updates he sends me on Michael. :)

Letter from 4/20

So this week has been a good one! We have 4 new investigators! Two of them are set with a baptismal date on the 16th of May! They are the coolest people we have ever met! They are so nice and want to learn so much more! So we are teaching them, please keep Robyn in your prayers, she is trying to get Sundays off so she can come to church with us. The other two new investigators are awesome as well, we had a lesson with them on Monday that went pretty well! We taught them, extended a baptismal invite and they said they would think about it! So hopefully we can get another baptismal date set for them! Otherwise this week has been pretty good. Nothing super interesting has happened. I keep thinking about cars and how much I want to buy one.. and fix it.. then drive it home form my mission.. It's very tempting.. haha But actually I finally got to work on a car! There was an older guy working on a Cadillac, and he was doing the rear brakes. And I know that on those Cadillacs the piston actually rotates back in, it's not like any other piston that just slides back. So I pulled up, asked if they needed any help and they were like 'actually we might.' So I put my bike down and walked over to where they were and said 'ah your doing brakes' and he said 'yeah, but the caliper won't go back on.' So I asked (it was dark out) what car and what year. He said 'DTS, 2007' and I said 'this specific caliper has to be rotated back in.' So I had him pull the caliper back off, and helped him do it, and sure enough, it needed to be rotated back in. haha So I helped them rotate it back in and put the new pads on and it fit like a glove and was perfect. He was very thankful for me to stop by and they were amazed at how much I knew about cars at only 19 years old.. haha So they said 'sure come on back over!' So we got invited back over to teach them a lesson! Elder Hood did all the spiritual stuff and I did the dirty work on the car, since he knows absolutely zero about cars.. haha But that was a cool miracle! Alright time for some funny jokes, Elder Bingham as you know is the senior missionary in our area.. and he is full of jokes and has the coolest stories from when he was serving in the Army! But he told us his wife treats him like a Greek god... Always bringing him burnt offerings.. hahahaha We died laughing! haha OK another one, he said you know how Brigham Young was a polygamist, and we were like yeah why? and he said do you know what his favorite line was? and we said what? and he said bring 'em young. haha We died laughing again! hahahahah OK those were bad jokes but Elder Bingham is so funny! We love him! Anyway that was our week! Hope everything at home is going well! I love you and miss you all! :) Love, Elder Johnsen PS... My Mormon.org profile is up and running! Here's the link! http://www.mormon.org/me/GXQF/MichaelJohnsen

Went to the BEACH!!

This is a first and you need to show Grandpa Johnsen this... For the first time ever, I have found a Costco gas station empty! And the store was still open I promise!

Virginia sunsets give Arizona a run for their money...

Here's our zone! The Virginia Beach West Zone!

Enjoying P-Day with the other Norfolk Elders!

At Zone meeting.

Letter from April 13th

This week has been a great one! We have seen so many awesome miracles happen! We spent most our week trying to get I/O's (invite others) which is when we talk to people on the street and try to set up a lesson or at least invite them to do something. So we usually only get about 10-15 a week. This week we racked in 55! Which is pretty good for our area, since we don't really have any big populated areas like malls or things like that. But Martin, a guy who has been investigating the church FOREVER (since 1979 to be exact), has gotten Baptized! He really loves the church! The best part about his baptism, he said, was that his son approved of the church. His son is 4 and when his son has been in other churches he has been like 'daddy, I don't like this one', but when he was in our building he ran up to his dad and was like 'daddy I love this church!' He said it was amazing to hear, it warmed his heart. So he said he knows he's doing the right thing and knows what he's doing is right. And his wife, who has pretty much been like 'I don't want anything to do with the church', has been researching a lot about our church on the church websites and such because of his example! So that has been cool to see! We now have 2 new investigators who will be getting baptized here soon! They are set for baptism, but I just need to extend the invitation to be baptized! They are super ready, but I need to make that invitation. He's our groundskeeper and has been seeing missionaries coming in and out for the past 3 years! So he has always talked to us a lot and has asked questions but I guess we finally ​got to meet with him, and he has had almost all of his questions answered! He's really excited to be meeting with us now, and his fiancé is also going to continue meeting with us! So that's exciting! We also stopped by a less actives house. He's doing good but he is scared that since he bore false testimony, when he was a kid, that he is going to be excommunicated... He said they weren't fake, but he didn't mean them. Like he never was able to get his own testimony of the church so that's why he fell away... So we have started working with him! He uses a lot of logic to answer his questions so were trying to get him to rely more on the little faith he has to build up his faith and build up his testimony again! But that's been our week so far! I celebrated my 19th birthday! Good thing nothing special happens on your 19th birthday, cause I celebrated it really lame... haha we can't have fire in the apartment so there were no candles.. oh well.. haha We have been doing great, so far I love the area.. sometimes.. haha people love the GoPro on my helmet. They always try to say hi to it, or they want to take selfies with me! I took a selfie with a guy that's a ex-convict that served 18 years in the county prison for assault and more than 5 armed robberies! Really nice guy! :) So I will include the picture of me and him! :) But we're doing great. I miss you all! :) Love, Elder Johnsen

Slow Week

This week we have not been doing much at all. We have been trying to keep appointments, but people just cant keep them. So, all that we have been doing the past few days is just riding around talking to everyone we see, hoping that we will be able to find that one person that wants to hear of the Gospel! We have been talking a lot about the new Easter video the church put out and we hope a lot of the people we run into watch it at home. But, we got to watch Conference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was so awesome! We didn't have an investigator to watch it with at their house, so we went to the Stake Center. It was awesome to see 30 missionaries in a Stake Center watching Conference! We were basically there all day the past two days. We got a ride over at 10am on Saturday morning, and didn't get home until 10:30pm because of Priesthood session. We were so exhausted! I didn't even write in my journal. I think I even fell asleep in my clothes, I was that tired! I really liked the talks of Boyd K Packer and Linda K Burton and how they were talking about families. And I also liked Elder José A. Teixeira's talk about smart phones and how we need to put them down to not miss out on lifes most important moments. I got lots of spiritual upliftment from other talks as well. It was really awesome actually, to be in the Stake Center to listen to them and to not fall asleep, like I usually do at home.. haha. Lastly our Baptism on March 28th did happen and it was awesome! I gave a talk on Baptism and how I was able to Baptize my little brothers and it went really well! She is an awesome member now! In one year they can all be sealed together as a family! One more thing. We did finally get to teach a lesson to the guy that had the baby we gave a blessing to in the hospital. He is in the other Elders area so I don't know how he is doing, but we did just happen to get lucky enough to teach him once and it went ok.. the lesson definitely could have gone better. We think because of the member we had there, the lesson was kind of going all over the place and he wasn't really engaged.. So hopefully next time it goes better! I'm having a blast out here and love what I'm doing! It can be hard at times when nothing seems to be going your way, but the best thing to do is to just keep pushing! I miss the family but I know I'm in an awesome place! I love you all! And miss you much! Love, Elder Johnsen

Letter from March 30th

So this week I went on exchanges twice! Once with Elder Cowley, and another time with one of the Zone Leaders, Elder Egbert. The Zone Leaders have a car and it was pouring rain that day so that was really nice to have! But when I was on exchanges with Elder Mikelson, we visited a guy who will not come to church. He refuses, because he hates the ward. And at the end of it he basically told us to never come back so I felt really bad. But Elder Mikelson calmed the situation down and he invited us back over. So now when I was on exchanges with Elder Cowley, we went and visited him again. This time though I had a huge spiritual prompting to share a personal expierence with him. Kinda about how I hated High School and didn't really like the people there but I still went. I also shared about how much you loved Bridlegate Ward and how it's been hard being in a new ward, but yet we still go every Sunday. And that kinda opened his eyes a little bit, you could tell he was really thinking and trying to come up with an answer as to why he shouldn't go. There was a time of just silence and he basically said he will do everything he can to attend Sunday. I was so happy that I was able to follow the promptings of the spirit. I then gave him a specific task! haha I told him to come to church and not worry about what others are doing, but come with a personal question that he wanted to have answered. He said he could do that, so I was really thrilled about that! Next, our mission likes to track how many times we invite people to do something, mostly when were street contacting. So when I was with Elder Egbert we had a car, and I thought with a car that would be difficult to get. I was wrong. We ended the day with 25 I/O's which is more than what Elder Hood and I have done in the past 3 weeks. And we ride bikes, which is super easy for us to talk to people! That's pretty much been our week! I will be finishing up my Mormon.org profile so you can share that with people! Transfer calls came two days ago and Elder Hood and I will be staying in Norfolk 1st ward. So no change for us! :) But next transfer Elder Hood will probably be leaving, and I will be getting a new companion, (which I'm really happy for! I'm not really a huge fan of Elder Hood...) but I'm staying positive! :) Missionary work is awesome and I love it out here even though its hard.. I love you all and miss you tons! :)