A new Investigator and a Barn find Galore!

This week has been a good one! We found some new investigators, as well as taught a bunch of less actives! We have been coming really close to the standard of excellence which is 100 I/O's a week and 15 total lessons with 2 new investigators. We always hit two of those things but can never get all three! So we're trying hard to hit it before the end of the transfer! We don't really have many investigators that are progressing super duper fast.. But they seem to be doing well. We did have a guy call us Saturday saying he was meeting with Missionary's before and wanted to meet with us at 5pm.  He also wanted to come to church the next day! So we went over and were starting to teach a little bit about the restoration and he was like 'Guys I already know the Book of Mormon is true.' And we were like 'Well would you like to be baptized?' and he said 'Yeah! Can we do that tomorrow? Do you guys do it during services? Or how does it work?' So we set him with a date of August 22nd and the next day at church he was there! And he even participated in Sunday School! It was so great to see that! So he's a really great investigator we got this week! Other than that.. nothing too much happening! This next week is jammed packed with things we need to do! So we will be going and going all day! And then we get transfer calls this Saturday which is exciting! Anyway! I love you all! :)

Love,

Elder Johnsen

 

 

For those of you who know Michael really well, we don't get many pictures of him sent to us.  What we do get are lots of pictures of cars!  In this weeks email, he sent over 20 pictures, all of which were of cars.  I mean, 19 of them were cars, 1 was a motorcycle.  Ha ha...  Here are a few pics he sent.

 

This is a Members Truck.  He was quite impressed and gave all the specs on it as far as engine size, tire size, etc. 

I'm not sure if this is a Member's home or not.  But he came across someone with a large garage, a large barn and a very large yard filled with old cars.  I'm sure he spent most of his day there with the guy talking cars.  I'm sure he would love to restore a few of these as well. 

We do get more pictures of cars than we do of him.  But, that is Michael.  It is who he is and he LOVES cars.  It must be a guy thing.  :)

 

 

Wow, sounds like a lot has been going on in the 480! I have been great! I have been trying to have fun but still working just as hard. It can be difficult when you have a companion that doesn't want anything to do with the word F.U.N. I feel bad. I bet he has had a miserable mission. I hope I'm not like that.. so remember if your not having fun then you probably hate what your doing. So anyway I have been good. We didn't teach anyone really this past week. Lots and lots of lessons that fell through.. So this next week we have already packed it full of lessons to teach! We have set up over 15 lessons for this week and counting, so hopefully we can meet with all of them! We have also been slaking in I/O's, so we have been trying to get back up in the triple digits. We have been doing lots of tracting in this area since there isn't any store bigger than a farmers market. So there are no malls to go talk to people at. And also tracting is more exercise, since each house is like a half mile from their neighbor, and their driveways are forever long too. So lots of time walking! In about 6 hours we talk to about 25 people.. so its hard getting I/O's out here but were trying! The members here are awesome! They always help us out and it really makes a big difference being in a ward/branch where members help you! We go on three way splits all the time! Since we sometimes have 3-5 lessons all at the same time! haha I also think I will be shotgun training. Meaning I will open an area that's closed or my trainee and I will both go to a new area. I'm actually really excited if I get to train! The 2 transfers spent training will go by so fast! I'm really excited! :) The down side to training is if you do a crappy job or you slack off, then your trainee becomes a mirror of you. So you have to do a good job so that way they do a good job too and become a good missionary! So I'm excited to do that! Anyway that's about it! I miss you guys and I'm almost 6 months into my mission!

Love,

Elder Johnsen

THE Elder Johnsen in New Kent (July 13, 2015)

This week has been a great week! We picked up 9 new investigators! Which is the most I have ever gotten in a week so far on the mission! So hopefully we can see them progress really well! So being on my mission for a solid 5 months, I know way more than what I knew back home! Before I came out I knew zero about the church. I could just tell you that we don't do harmful things to our body's and we have the book of Mormon. That's about the extent of my knowledge before my mission. Now I know everything! You could ask me anything about the gospel and I will tell you and could even use scriptures to back it up! It's amazing! I study the scriptures differently than most. During the hour of personal study I read just the Book of Mormon. I can read the Book of Mormon in about 60-70 days. Averaging about 7-14 pages a day. I have never actually read the whole book of Mormon so I want to read it multiple times before I get home. So I'm on my second time going through it! The best way I would say for you to study it would be to think of a question you have. Could be anything. And think of that question and read the book of Mormon and highlight anything and everything that answers or helps you with that specific question. Be sure to write your question in the first few blank pages in the book so you don't forget it. And once you finish the Book of Mormon, you should have your question answered and at the end of the books we hand out there's about 14 blank pages. And on those pages you can write the summary and answer of your question. That's the best way I would say anything can do it. We are not required to study the Bible, but I kinda like bashing so I study it every now and then. I use the bible dictionary if there's a word I don't understand. And I have a dictionary to define different parts of the word as well. The topical guide is also huge as well! I have used it so much! before my mission I probably couldn't tell you what a topical guide was or where it was at, same with the bible dictionary. I studied what the word pillar meant in the Book of Mormon. So I highlighted every verse in the BofM and the Bible that said it, and I cross referenced everything and defined it. I also did the same for the word pit. Such a small word, but there are so many things that tie into it. It basically means that if your digging a pit, causing people to do wicked, you will fall into the pit that you dig. So it will come back to bite ya! It's pretty cool! But I would say just to get you studying something, ask a question and highlight the answer to it. I'll send you a couple Book of Mormons and you can all do the same. And I usually say a prayer before getting out of bed, for breakfast, personal study, companionship study, before leaving the house, before going into an investigators house, any time I am talking with someone who is grilling us or bashing I pray to know what to do, for lunch, for dinner, and probably another 5 random times. So a bunch! haha! And yes I'm a much different person! I have changed a bunch! I'm nowhere near the person I was before I left! And I don't think I could ever become that person again!
Anyway, I love you and miss you guys! Enjoy your vacation because I'm enjoying mine more than you guys are! :)

Love,
Elder Johnsen

Letter from July 6th

Well this week has been interesting. What started as what I thought would be a pretty cool companionship didn't end that way.. You always have two companions you don't like on your mission. So here's number one.. I just don't like being micro managed and being told what I HAVE to do all the time, so that has gotten quite annoying. I might deck him in a few weeks if it gets bad.. But I'm keeping my cool and excercising every ounce of patience I have... so hopefully this transfer can go by quickly so I can get out of this companionship. They think I will either be transferred out to go open an area and train or they will both leave and I will train in this area and they will be zone leaders in another area and open that area as well. Guess we will see in a few weeks!  But this week we have not been doing too much teaching because Zone Leaders have so many meetings and stuff. We had missionary leadership council, weekly planning, zone meeting planning, zone meeting, and exchanges! It was alot to do in a week. So we didn't get alot of time to proselyte, which isn't a bad thing I guess, but we really wanted to teach more lessons. We did have one day on exchanges where we tracked for 6 hours, because it's the country out here and every house is like a football field away from their neighbor. haha So we did that and met a really great family! His name is Dean and we told him we were coming around offering service and he was like 'nawh guys I should be good.' But for some reason I felt like I should keep prying and keep asking. So I just laid into him with questions and basically told him we would be there on Wednesday in our service clothes and will start pulling weeds whether he likes it or not! haha And he then started to ease up a bit and said he would be okay with us coming over and stuff, so I told him to have a list ready and we will bust it out! haha He is a great guy so hopefully we can also teach him as well and be able to see something come of it! Otherwise we haven't done too much that would be worthy of explaining in my letter.. hah For the 4th of July it was a proselyting day so we went out and saw some potentials! It went pretty well. Then that night we were bored, so I started catching frogs! Then the other two wanted to join so we went on a frog hunt! We ended up catching 3 total. Which is lame compared to my usual catching ability's... and I also tried to catch a deer.. but it didn't work.. We also had a sweet daddy long leg spider as a pet! We kept him for 4 days. With his legs fully extended he was about 6-7 inches in diameter. They look funny when you put them in water.. haha We fed him other spiders and bugs from the garage and a brownie.. :) He was pretty cool but we finally got rid of him haha He was gross. Not as cool as the frogs.. We also see lots of road kill. The other day we passed by a deer that had been hit with 4 vultures just devouring the thing. haha Just another day in the life of living in New Kent! Anyway I think that's all I got for now! I miss you guys and will be home in a year and a few months!

Love,

Elder Johnsen

I. LOVE. NEW. KENT!!

Wow! Only 4 days in my new area and I'm already in love. They just put a fat boy in a cake factory! This area is amazing! I may hate Virginia weather but... this style and type of area would be the only reason I move out here! :) Will talk more bout that la'r own. (thats some redneck country slang right der) I'm happy to be in a trio again because we can teach anyone! We don't need to find a third male to teach a single lady! It's great! And this will be my third trio haha! Once in the MTC, once in Norfolk, and now here! My two companions are Elder Coltrine, he's from Cali, loves country music and did construction stuff back home and is a pretty cool guy. Elder Thurgood is your typical missionary from good ole UTAH! So you can already guess what he is like. We do already have investigators we are teaching. We have about 8 people we are teaching currently, which is a good size number! We do about 2 hours of tracting each day, which is how we have found most all of our investigators so far! So this area I'm serving in is very country style. When you think of a farm, this is the place. The law here is that you can't buy a house without AT LEAST 3-5 acres. AT THE LEAST 5 ACRES!!!!!! They do that because they don't want to over populate the county. So everyone has horse property and everyone has a cute little barn on their property! The place is just awesome! haha I love it here! The downside is it's only a Branch (maybe because your neighbor lives a quarter of a mile down the street!) But that's not a bad thing! Everyone here is full of love and has that southern hospitality! It;s great! The thing with Norfolk was that I was there for one purpose. I was there to get Sister Fredricks husband to be baptized! And I got him going on the right track so swoop I'm done there! Now I'm here and I think I already know my purpose for this area! There's a guy in the branch who's son has stopped coming to church, because the President of the branch kept bombarding him with questions about going on a mission! (kinda sounds like my bishop) And so he said screw it I'm just done with it. (kinda sounds more like me and not serving a mission) And the best part about this whole story is he just graduated and all he wants to do is work on his cars... (yes this is basically the same thing that happened to me) So when talking with his dad (who has a awesome beard BTW!) He said I think your purpose here is to re-activate my son and get him on a mission. I was like well, I don't know my purpose here, but I would love to go work on some cars with your son though! He told me that me and his son have basically the same exact mindset! So, hopefully I can help out his son and maybe find other people I'm here for in this area! Did I say that I love it here yet? Well I do just in case you didn't know! The main difference between here and Norfolk is that this branch is full of love and every member loves you, they all want to help you out as much as possible! And everyone here is just awesome! haha Well that's pretty much been our week! I hope you guys are enjoying Lake Powell without me... :/ But don't worry and don't fear... POWELL 2K17 IS IN FULL SWING! Me and Garrett have both invited our whole missions to come to Lake Powell with us in the summer of 2017. So there will be a big time party going on the summer I get home! ;) Might want to start making plans for that ;) But I'm doing great and can't wait to hear from you guys! I will include pictures in the following few emails!

Love, 

Elder Johnsen

 

Lightning Storm.

Elder Wood and I.

 

Helicopter Tour.  We got to go inside this bad boy!

Sister Fredricks Family.  They are Navy and took us to see the Helicopters.

Stone age typewriter, right here...

My Zone in Norfolk.

I'm a Missionary Warrior!

My new Area, New Kent.  So much space.  I love it here!

 

GoPro, Zone Leader and Baptism Oh My!! (Letter from June 22nd)

So this week has been a great, interesting, spirit filled, awesome, surprising, sad, and heartful week. To start, I got my back adjusted he did the full 9 yards and adjusted every vertebrae and said my back is way out of alignment. Nothing new to me since I knew that in middle school. I also found out I can get President's permission to use a back pack instead of the side pack that is probably part of the problem. I also believe the two car accidents I was in with my TL and Blake's truck are starting to show their problems. Hopefully it doesn't get worse, I have stopped almost all kinds of working out because of it. No oompa, no lifting, no running. I just sit around and get fat! haha So will see where things go with that! I got transfer calls and...  wait for it...  wait for it...

Hello Elder Johnsen, this is Elder Terrell. I'm calling to tell you about transfers. please know that the Mission President prays about it and fasts for where you should serve next. you are being transferred to....

 

 

 

 

 

NEW KENT and will be with Elder Thurgood and Elder Coultrine as a Zone Leader Baby hahaha!!!!!!!

I definatly didn't expect that.. So this will be a whole new experience! I'm about to be whipped into shape by some zone leaders haha! And I hear New Kent is beautiful so that's cool I guess. Oh and we have a car so that's the best part! haha! So I'm really happy about the calling! This week has been great, we set both of our really progressing investigators with baptism dates! They are both set for July 18th! Which is sad because I really want to be there for their baptism.. And the part that made me really sad was when we were at church yesterday, Brother Sanchez, our investigator, came up to us after Elders Quorm and was talking about setting up a lesson on Wednesday and we told him I wouldn't be there and he was like 'what?' I was like 'yeah I'm being transferred' and this is what made me almost cry.. haha He was like 'well, I really want you to be a part of my Baptism and I wanted you to be the one to Baptize me..' I was like 'awwwh man this sucks!' haha but I told him I would try to get permission to come back! So that was really nice to hear! Our other investigator/part member family is doing really well! He also accepted the date of the 18th of July! He's really cool! Since I'm leaving, he is taking us on a tour of the Little Creek Naval Base! We get to go on one of there helicopters that is flipping huge, so prepare for lots of pictures and videos next week of that! We also have had thunder storms just about every night which has been awesome! I have been making great use with the Gopro in capturing the huge long lightening strikes across the sky! That was pretty much our week! Everything is going great in Virginia! I hate humidity! So just know that Arizona summers are great compared to this garbage over here! I love you all and miss you a bunch!

Love,

Elder Johnsen