We got a car!

So this week has been pretty good! I have been able to be with my companion for some time and wow! Never judge a book by its cover! He is freaking awesome! Way better than Elder Hood! He has been out 15 months and is a great guy! He's from Arizona (so he is already way cool) but he's from the north end up in Peoria area. We have been working hard and have been trying to learn all the areas. The car has been a big help with getting to the far ends of the area that we would normally never go to. So we have been enjoying that. We also had a meeting this week for all the leadership in the mission on teaching 10 minute lessons. So now we are to only be at investigators houses for only 15 min., compared to an hour like we used to. So that is something were trying to get used to. The investigator needs to be doing more of the learning and not so much of just sitting there doing nothing. So hopefully this new way will help us out a lot. But while this meeting was happening I got to be companions with Elder Archer, who has been in the field for less than a week, so that was awesome! We went to a BMX dirt track and rode that! We did some missionary work as well... but you always have to have just as much fun! haha That was pretty much our week! I hope all is well in the 480!  Love you all!

Elder Johnsen

 

Last goodbye's to my first companion, Elder Hood.

 

I got to see Elder Reed again!  (They were companions in the MTC)

We got a car!!  Just rollin' around town with my new companion, Elder Wood.

Found a BMX bike park.  Had to ride it!

Cooking us up some dinner.

Selfie!

 

 

A New Companion!

Well this week has been great! :) I have a new companion! His name is Elder Wood! He's a great companion! Along with that... we also got a car!!! So, since we now cover more than one area, we get a car that we split with the 2nd ward Elders -since one of them broke their ankle playing oompah. So that's been exciting! The downside to now covering 2 areas is there's so much to plan and there is no time for anything! And it's also hard trying to figure out who it is we need to teach and who it is that they were teaching before they pulled the missionary's out of the area. Otherwise, nothing new has happened. We have been trying our best to continue to meet with our investigators, but sometimes that doesn't always work out. But a funny story that happened this week! I wrote a Sister Missionary in South Dakota and guess what? She wrote me back! So now I have someone that actually sends me mail! haha So that's pretty cool! Anyway, love you all and can't wait to hear about your guys week next week! :)

Love,

Elder Johnsen

Great seeing you!!

I asked Michael a few questions this week.  These are the questions:
1. What do you think is the biggest change in you, since leaving for your mission?
2. What is your favorite thing about your mission? And, what is your least favorite?
3. Are you looking forward to a new companion?
4. You told us the area that is closing, tell me again so I can look at it on the map. I think you said area 2 is closing and that you are area 3.

Here are his answers:
It was so awesome to see you and to be able to talk to the family last night! :) Well for the first question, I would say my knowledge of the gospel and the testimony I have developed because of it. Before my mission I didn't really know too much about the gospel. But being out here and teaching it has helped me a lot with learning the gospel for myself! I also felt like I didn't really have a testimony of the church, or any of the smaller points of the church. Through sharing the gospel I have been able to build up those points and have been able find my own testimony. Those are the spiritual changes. Physical changes... I have gained 16 pounds. I am a lot more patient with people. I want to talk a little bit about that one. What really gets me frustrated is when you explain something, so simply, and people still don't get it. They just don't listen. And that has taught me a lot about keeping calm and keep repeating myself until they understand what I'm saying. So that can get quite annoying but as long as I stay calm I can get through it and maybe they will know what I'm saying by the end of talking with them!
Alright number 2! My favorite thing is probably personal study, as well as talking to car guys haha. (we all knew that one was a given) And my least favorite thing is personal study! haha Personal study is awesome, but there are times when I get so bored reading the same small print over and over again.. Yes I'm learning tons from it but it's not a car magazine that has pictures and articles or race videos and stuff like that! I also love talking to people, most my companions can't talk to people on the streets or they don't like to, but I love talking to people and I can talk to them forever! (especially car people!) ;)
Number 3! YES! I am so looking forward to a new companion! My companion is great but he's not the type of companion I was hoping to get. He's awesome, don't get me wrong but I wish I had someone a little more harder on me. I wish they would be a little more determined to be a missionary, not someone who's been out for 22 months and is just being lazy since he will be going home soon. So I hope my new companion is a little bit better! I want to be that diligent missionary and I want to be able to get the blessings from it! Plus, my companion knew nothing about cars but would always talk like he knew them like the back of his hand.. I always found joy in proving him wrong! ;)
So for the area, our ward usually has two sets of missionarys in it. They took one set out and gave us the whole area! So on the map theres a thick bolded line running north-south to the right of that is our area (a4,a3,a5,b2,b3,b4). To the left of that line is the B elders area and now its all one area. The area that has no marked off areas is the 2nd ward boundaries. Our ward is like a backwards L. It's kind of weird but oh well. Can't be any more weird then our fence being the ward boundary! haha When talking with the President, when he called, he informed us that we might be getting a car that we will split with the 2nd ward elders, which would help us out a lot when we have appointments in downtown Norfolk, which is about a 6-7 mile bike ride.
I hope everything is well at home! I love you guys very much and can't wait to talk to you again next week! :)
Love, Elder Johnsen

Saying Goodbye to an Elder and a Bike Crash

So this week we have had some good stuff happen, as well as some bad stuff.. An Elder in our district went home for some reasons that needed to be taken care off... But he has promised me that he will be back and will be my companion at least once when he gets back to the field haha! I heard most the time people do what they think is full repentance but once they get to the field they go 'Oh crap, wow I forgot about one thing'. And usually Mission President takes care of that, but sometimes they need to go home. And the way he was talking to us I know he will be back! He was an awesome missionary and was heartbroken he had to go home. So that is good and bad, but now we have Elder Tolman and we are in a TRIO!!!!! Trios are the best because whenever we find a single lady and she has some time for a lesson we can actually teach her! So this will be really awesome! So far we have been having so much fun, and it's only been one day! It reminds me of the MTC when we were in a Trio!
We finally talked to George and asked about his fears about coming to church. He was scared he was going to be the only black person there, so we talked to him about it and hopefully we can see him at church in the next week or two! That's basically the only new thing on our investigators.
We do have some funny news to report though. I had my first good bike crash. We were flying down the side walk going about 15mph, which is a little slower than our average cruise speed, and I saw this beautiful, and I mean beautiful Chevy dually, and I was star struck. I was caught in a gaze dreaming of how I would love to drive it.. then all of sudden, out of no where a pole appeared. And I slammed right into the pole and was taken out of my dreams of driving that truck. I was thrown into the road and luckily, from my bmx days, I ran it off and didn't hit the ground. So I got lucky, and my bike suffered very little damage. Then yesterday Elder Hood, my usual companion, had figured out how to do wheelies on his bike and loves showing off to me and is always looking for ways to be better than me at things. Well karma finally bit him in the butt. Literally. He popped up this one wheelie and went straight up and off the back and didn't ditch the bike, so he landed right on his tailbone and now walks around like a grandpa! haha I was laughing when it happened. It was great! And on that same day I found the best sleeper ever. There was a guy outside talking to his neightbor with his littlee s10 idling. Now this was not any regular idle... This was a stroked 383 small block with a nasty .554 lift cam in it. I pulled up and said 'nice little s10 you got threre' and talked to the guy for a bit. Found out all about the truck. It's a 383 with a huge cam 1.6 roller rockers, Edlebrock high rise intake with an Edlebrock 7150 double pumper carburetor, running 100 race gas. This thing was soooooo ugly looking, but had the greatest engine ever! He built it for the 1/8 mile and I recorded all of it on the GoPro! He reminded me of the farmtruck and daddy Dave's Sonoma. He apparently is the fastest on the streets in Norfolk and has beat a 05 GTO, a turbo civic and a bunch of other cars! He then told me as we were leaving that when I get a chance, I need to put the video up on YouTube so he can see it. (he was 54 I'm not sure if he knows how to use youtube..) But he was so cool! He was very vauge on the hp number.. He smiled and said 'It makes more than 475 at the rear wheels and I will leave it at that!' He was awesome! But that was our week!
I love you guys and miss you all so much! 3months down, 21 more left! We got this! :)
Love, Elder Johnsen

Letter from April 27th

So, my finger... interesting story on that one.. I was fixing my bike and my finger got caught in between the disk and the front fork and ripped my finger apart.. So that sucked. But on the good side, while I was numb the doctor asked if I would like him to remove my wart and I said 'sure why not!' So he got a scalpel and cut the thing out haha! So along with my finger getting stitched back up he removed my annoying huge wart that I have been trying to get rid of for years!!! And he didn't charge us for it either! ;) He was really cool!
So this week we have been able to teach our investigator George again, we gave him a church tour which went well! He's such an awesome guy! He is a rapper, which is cool, but he didn't like what came with that job so he started a family and has since turned away from that career and now loves his family more than anything and he really loves our messages. He was going to be baptized on the 16th of May, but since he hasn't come to church, we will be moving it back. He didn't come because his wife was out of town and they want to do this together as a family, which is really cool!
We then had exchanges with the zone leaders! I stayed in our area and worked here with the zone leader. We got 31 invite others in the 3 hours we were down in the bottom of our area. We had dinner at 6 that day, we started heading back home at 5 and still ended up being late, since we talked to everyone we could! It was awesome! Other than that we haven't been doing much. We are really trying to get more investigators, or at least meet with the ones we have. They never answer the door and never answer their phone so it's really hard sometimes. But we're happy with George and his family, they're so awesome!
Well that's pretty much been our week! Hopefully something exciting happens this next week! haha Not like my finger was exciting enough! :)
I love and miss you all! :)
Love, Elder Johnsen