13 January 2018

fam,

The last two or so weeks have been weird, but good, serving in a trio. Transfer calls came in Friday and it really never is a surprise. My first area was Grandville Spanish 1 and as a trio we also covered the Spanish 2, "the other side". Elder Magalei will be "transfered" back to the sp1 area with Elder Waters. I'll be with Elder Rencher for likely the next two transfers in the apartment we are in right now.

Elder Johnson
1830 R W Berends drive sw apt#2
Wyoming, Mi 49519

After we emailed last Monday we quickly tried our hand at making some tacos de pastor.  They turned out slightly off from how we learned from the francos but the were quite good. Pics will be added

Later that night we had a good lesson with Griselda. We walked in and she was like "you've got 25 minutes and then I have to leave." We taught a really fast word of wisdom lesson. Everyone always pushed back on coffee, everyone, and Griselda was no different. She was like "even coffee??" We talked about the different blessings she has noticed in her life from ever since we started teaching her and promised that these would only become more abundant as she lived the commandments we shared with her. She agreed to try. We would have been out on time but we've never left that house without being given a load of food. She warmed up some hot coco and we made it out well over her set ending time. 

Tuesday we meet with the Francos. We talked about their reading in the Book of Mormon and how church went for them. Its a weird scenario; Juliana wants Marco to learn English, they want to go to church but feel like they can't leave the taco shop, the English ward for their area isn't the one they are going to, if the family gets passed off the one kid not baptized with be taught by English elders and we will continue to teach Marco. It's a small mess, but we'll work something out. Marco mentioned he just felt really good for the rest of the Sunday. That's the biggest blessing of taking the sacrament ever week at church, you just feel better because you have the blessing of having the spirit with you. 

Thursday was pretty intense. Its started off a little rough. Elder Rencher wasn't feeling well and it looked like we were going to stay inside. At around 2 he got up declaring we were going to do something today. We had a few referrals we wanted to stop by so we made our plan and headed out. It was the warmest day of the week, peaking up around 45 degrees if I remember right and just pouring rain. I was driving and we had stopped by a bunch of people and no one really let us in. We were wet, slightly cold and at about 6 we stopped by a gas station. I got out to fill the car up and heard this weird sound, It didn't register but I saw a few stopped cars in the road next to the gas station. I noticed some people moving in that direction on phones and it finally clicked what I was hearing, hysterical screaming. Looking around I saw someone on the ground in the road and realized the screaming was coming from that direction, specifically what looked like a person laying in the road. Elder Magalei, Rencher and I ran over to see if there was anything we could do. We got there as some bystanders carried this lady to the side of the road. Beyond that, no one really knew what to do aside from stand around and look nervous calling 911. We were able to shelter her from the rain with some yoga mats from some random bystander. Turns out the stuff we learn in boy scouts really works, we did all the things they say to teat for shock and within a minute or two hysterical screaming became relatively calmed breathing and crying. She seemed to have been hit on the side pretty hard but was coherent and conscious. Cops arrived in about 5 minutes and a medical team from a firetruck was only another 2-3 minutes behind them. We handed all responsibility over and then went back to typical proselyting.

One thing I found interesting about the whole experience was that although everyone wanted to help no one knew what to do so they just stood around as this lady was in obviously a significant amount of pain. They looked to us, for what ever reason, for direction. We asked for the things we needed and people quickly helped out. Being prepared helps us preform when things get hard or when unexpected things happen. Did either of us know someone was going to get his by a car and that we would be there to help? No. Would those people have helped if they new what to do? For sure, but didn't only because they hadn't made those decisions and preparation before they needed to. Be prepared. 

Mission life is weird. I definitely felt like we were in the right place at the right time.  

-eric