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