29 July 2017 Service, Soup, Sabbath, Supplemental Food, and Several types of conversion

fam,

Not a whole lot has happened since Monday. It's the end of the transfer so the usual Saturday P day.

The week started off on bikes. Our P day afternoon we biked around a lot and did an hour of unplanned service for this couple we met. They were shoveling dirt so we jumped off our bikes and asked if they wanted help. They kind of laughed at us a little and told us "this won't be one of your victories we are (insert religion) and you won't convert us," so we offered service and they pointed out our white shits, but we persisted and they agreed. It was pretty great, they were a little nervous at first but after a few minutes we were all good. We came back the next day and shoveled dirt for two hours. Their lawn has these weird dips and holes so we had a lot of work to do. We moved around 5 square yards of dirt to contour their lawn. It felt really good to do some less typical missionary work for a few hours. 

Wednesday Elder Rencher woke up sick so we took a slow day. We had a few hours of finding mid day that we just cut out and he took a nap the whole time. Our apartment is small so there isn't much I could have done. I basically read through the scriptures until I got bored and took a nap as well. Later that night we went to a member's home for dinner. They gave us a soup consisting of beans, eggs, green bananas, and pig skin. It wasn't very appetizing.  

We had a good lesson with a less active part member family. We talked about the Sabbath day. Somehow the whole Seventh-Day Adventist doctrine stuff went over my head when we planned for the lesson. He has never said he was an Adventist but has mentioned Ellen White a few times and I just totally forgot. We walked in had a good chat and we brought up the Sabbath day after the opening prayer and he went on a huge spiel about preparing for the Sabbath on Friday and doing nothing on Sunday.  Adventists are often some of the most devout people when it comes to keeping the Sabbath day holy. We spent the whole lesson on why we worship on Sunday. It went well, and we finished with the fact that all of his questions rely on the question of if Joseph Smith truly was a prophet. The introduction to the Book of Mormon is really good, specifically the last two paragraphs. All objections to our church rest on whether he was or wasn't a prophet, the proof of that is the BoM. If you gain that witness of the Holy Ghost that the BoM is true then you learn a few things, including that Jesus is our Savior and Redeemer and that Joseph Smith was the first prophet of this dispensation. Reading, pondering, and praying are key to that process. Pedro has started to read, which an important step in the right direction. 

Carmen is doing really well. She said she is coming this Sunday. We had two really good lessons the last few days with her. At the most recent lesson, we had a great member come out with us. It's sometimes a little nervous bringing new people out who we have never taken out but it turned out really well. The member teaches the gospel doctrine class and like most of the members in our branch is a convert, and better yet around the same age as Carmen. We also taught her the importance of keeping the Sabbath day holy. We focused on the sacrament and taught out of 3 Nephi 18. She said she wants to come to church and asked if we ever fast. We obviously said yes and explained a little about what is and she asked us to fast with her to help her find a way to stop working on Sundays. It was pretty awesome. The member talked about how her job didn't let her come to church and after a few weeks of praying, looking, and fasting she found a way. 

On the topic of bringing new members out to lessons. We brought someone to one of our lessons with the Aguilar family who doesn't speak Spanish because we wanted to focus a little more with Aldo and the BoM. It was a good lesson but at the end it got slightly side-tracked. We talked about some of the BoM stories and she went off telling about Nephi cutting Laban's head off, Ammon cutting people's arms off which devolved into various Spongebob stories. 

We pulled it back into prayer somehow but only after a significant detour. 

The Aguilars are very interesting. They have definitely become socially converted and aren't nearly as solidly spiritually converted to the church. Someone told me for someone to join our church they need at least 2 of the 3 different types of conversions, which includes spiritual, social, and secular. They are at the moment loving church, love the people, living all the commandments, reading their scriptures everyday but struggle to recognize the spirit's influence in their lives. Our plan is to set them up with dinners with specific members so that they can go and the members can share their conversion stories. So far we have one dinner set up. 

Today we are going on a bike ride to some Indian graves and that's about it, we have like no money for the rest of the month. 

Also, I almost forgot. Our ward had a picnic last week as well as the English ward so our church's freezer was filled with food. They were like, "just give it to the missionaries." So much free food. That is how to make missionaries happy, outside of solid referrals and good lessons. 

2/27/17 White shirts, Spanish, Bellybuttons, Cubans

Family and friends,

It's been a pretty good week and an interesting week.

We volunteer at a food pantry run by some church in the area. We basically just cleared out a bunch of expired food. We had three hours of service planned, but we did all the work in just over an hour. Some nursing students came in a little after we finished and asked if they could practice taking our blood pressure and blood sugar levels. It was really fun talking to people our age and in English. One of the nurses taught me how to take blood pressure levels.  I'm basically a doctor now.

Two days this week we did exchanges. The first day we went out with our district leader, Elder Waters. We knocked doors for a little bit, with no success. I think one person on the whole side of the street opened their door to say they weren't interested. Elder Waters and I just talked for a little bit. He is from Portland and was home-schooled. He also has 12 siblings. That night a ward member bought us pizza. We met him at the place, but he was late. This group of old people were talking about us very indiscreetly. One said, "You can always spot Mormons by their white shirts." We just kind of laughed to ourselves, but we should have talked with them. Oh well. The next morning I wasn't feeling that good. I had really bad stomach cramps and almost threw up. I was getting worse and worse, and then I asked Elder Guerrero to give me a priesthood blessing. That turned my symptoms all around. We later went to CVS and I grabbed some meds and am feeling much better now.

Exchanges with the zone leaders were really good though. We taught a lesson with a recent convert that was interesting. It was really hard to stay focused because he kept talking about League of Legends and how he is in the top 10% of the world. We compared the water cycle to testimonies. The sun evaporates the water (our testimonies) and we have to do a few steps to replenish that water. By reading the scriptures, praying, and going to church we grow the volume of water we have. 

After the lesson we knocked doors for a little bit. Elder Medina, the zone leader, was with me and he only speaks English. We talked with a few people, all English speakers, and picked up a two potentials. We ran into three people who didn't speak English: A man from Bosnia, someone from Vietnam, and a latino. We gave ITL cards to the Bosnian and Vietnamese man, but the latino guy let us in. That was way awesome. I talked with him with moderate success. I basically told him who we are, why we talk to people, asked him about his faith. I understood most of what he said which I was pretty proud of. I also told him we have friends who speak better Spanish than I can and would love to talk with him more. He said yes and said he would come to church next week. We grabbed his info and left. It still surprises me when people will actually open their doors and talk with us for a few minutes. When we were leaving The man quoted something from the bible and said something about it, and I literally did not get a single word.  I just replied, "Si, es verdad" smiled and left.  Haha oh well.

One of the days this week we checked up on a less active kid. He let us in and we invited him to come to church and taught a little lesson. The lesson was 50% Spanish and the rest was English. It was a decent lesson, but the kid's little brother who was probably 5 years old kept trying to play with me, and the TV in the back room was on but muted. I was not really into the lesson, his younger brother kept taking my stuff and trying to play Pokemon with me. The kicker was the 5 year old didn't speak English and he would listen to me when I said, "I can't play right now," in my best Spanish.

Elder Guerrero and I don't have that many investigators, and we had to drop two this week. They are both Dominican and are basically impossible to understand. Our investigator said she doesn't want to change her faith, because she has been Catholic her whole life, but she feels that she knows what she has to do, but won't do any of our commitments. Her husband is on the same page as her. We, more accurately Elder Guerrero, taught a really powerful lesson about faith and how sometimes we need to just act and demonstrate our faith. We shared a few scriptures and left. They asked us to pray for them, and they told us they always feel something different when we are around teaching. We told them we want them to know that they could call us at anytime, and we would love to see them at church, but we can't see them every week. After that lesson we checked up on someone who lives with them who also is taking lessons from us. He is basically a perfect investigator, he just hasn't been to church in a while. It was already late when we went over to where he was, so we basically just invited him to try to make it to church every week. He said yes which was really awesome, and we set up a ride for him. We also got him on a baptismal date, April 8. When Sunday came around he was there for the entire time. He seemed to have a really positive experience. Our branch is pretty small but they fellowship really well.

Door knocking is always a little interesting. This week we had two funny/interesting experiences. The first was with a group of Africans, where only one of them spoke English. About half were Baptists and the other half were Seventh-Day Adventists. The Old African women sat on the couch with us and their 15 or 16 year old daughter translated. They didn't really listen to us and we didn't really get a chance to talk about who we are and what we could do for them. It was also really confrontational. They were asking us how we can have more scripture and how is it not adding false doctrine to the bible. We talked about how God has always worked through prophets and how the Bible is more of a library of teachings of prophets and wasn't a book written all together. We also touched on how we have to give the book a try, and test it for ourselves, because the only place we can get spiritual truth is from the Lord. It was really hard to not be confrontational back, but they invited us back lol. The other was a Cuban atheist and his Seventh-Day Adventist wife. I got about 60-75% of what his wife said in Spanish, but I got maybe 5% of what the Cuban said. He talked so fast and cut words like nobody's business. I kind of just sat in silence while Elder Guerrero talked. Towards the end Elder Guerrero turned to me and said "I don't know, what do you think Elder?" That caught me a little off guard, because the last few minutes the Cuban guy was going off, Elder Guerrero told me in English that he had asked two questions. The first being did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons? The other being when we are in heaven how do we know who people are? I told his wife, who translated for me, in the Bible, it says we were created in God's image, so the better question is does God have a belly button. That really changed the atmosphere of the "lesson" and it was much more friendly, because he thought that was funny. The other question I said the scriptures don't really talk about any of those questions but that I think that if we look different in heaven for whatever reason, we would just know who people are. We got an invite back, and Guerrero said if we come back we need the lesson to be a little more calm. I'm pretty sure the Cuban was on something though. He grew out his pinky fingernail fairly long as if to snort stuff more easily. Either way, when we come back to both of those people, it will be interesting.

We had two really good dinners this week with members. The first was with the Rosales family. It was our Car fast day, which is a day in the week we go without our car, I don't know why and it kinda sucks a lot. We had a ride set up to pick us up from door knocking but they came way late and we had a lesson between door knocking and dinner. Everything went long, and we showed up an hour late to dinner........ That wasn't good. But they let us in and and graciously hosted us. I felt a little bad about that, but they were really nice. They gave us these amazing tacos with homemade tortillas. 

As we ate, Hermana Rosales talked with us. She talks really fast but really clearly, which I've found to be a rare combo. I was able to follow along, probably getting 80-85% and was able to accurately guess another 10%. She talked about conversion. I shared a point that the first generation Mormons on my Mom's side took the lessons for I believe 19 years before they joined. She was impressed that I was able to follow along and add something of value to the conversation. The other dinner was with a member named Andre who is from Guatemala. Last week we talked with a guy who kept talking in Mayan. Turns out the language is called Mum, but is a Mayan language, and Andre speaks Mum fluently. He taught us some words and it sounds pretty sweet. We are going to try to get him to come out with us on a lesson with the guy who also speaks Mum.

Elder Johnson

Week 2, January 19, 2017

Family and friends,


Every district is given a service activity for their stay at the ccm. We have the best service activity. My district is in charge of the welcoming committee. Hermana Clayton came in separately from the main group of Americans, so I didn't get to welcome her here. I was still able to catch her as she was waiting for her companion to arrive. New missionaries arrive on Tuesdays, and Tuesday is pizza night. Hermana Clayton is in my branch, and gave a talk last Sunday. Talking with some of the elders that left Tuesday, it turns out that it is possible to go the whole 6 weeks without giving a talk, so let's hope.


The food here is okay. It's nothing special, aside from pizza night. They bring in like 50 Costco pizzas and it's normally pretty great, but because the new missionaries arrive when dinner starts we rarely get warm pizza. For breakfasts here, we normally have a choice between two options ranging from eggs, french toast, some chicken, potatoes, or pancakes. Every meal also has cereal dispensers for those who don't want the main meal. Lunches and dinners tend to have similar choices ranging from lamb steaks, chicken, mystery enchiladas (because the contents are always different), lasagna, chicken strips, and much more.


Everyday we also have gym time. The Hermanas normally do their own thing because most games we can't play against them or with them if it's a game remotely close to a contact sport. Volleyball is the main sport we play. For some reason two days ago we had the full gym to ourselves so we played 2 on 3 volleyball. We are okay as a district in volleyball, but we dominate in ultimate. 

Yesterday we played 5 on 6, my elders plus two vs another district in our zone. One of the kids not in my district and I were the main handlers and were moving the disc around really well. Elder Henriksen and Pearson are super fast. Henriksen played soccer and his team came second in state, and Pearson was a running back on his football team. Our main strategy was moving the disc between handlers and passing to either Henriksen or Pearson when they were open to move the disc up the field. Our zone leader Elder Wallin gets really intense in the games and we were destroying his team. He was getting really heated and his companion Elder Gardner always had to talk him down. We played 4 games. Our team won by a significant margin each time with the exception of the last game when it was 5 vs 8, where we tied.


Today I was talking with the zone leader and one of the elderly missionaries who is so cool. Elder Eeves flew KC135s as the navigator, but I forgot to ask him if he ever was deployed and if he was where he served. 





Also during one of the devotionals he was up at the pulpit taking questions, and for each question he answered with at least one scripture off the top of his head and gave an amazing answer for each question. Anyway, we were talking and it turns out that one of the Apostles is coming to the CCM mid February to give a devotional. I leave the CCM on the 15th, so we will see if I'll be here.


Our new mission president arrived this week, his name is President Bennett, no relation to the late senator Bennett. He seems like a solid guy, I only had a few minutes to talk with him. He has been a mission president a bunch of times, and I'm also glad I didn't speak with him that much because during the devotional on Sunday he called people up to share their testimonies. Turns out he was calling people he had a chance to really talk with when he was visiting with everyone. Elder Hoyt from our zone was called to share his testimony. He gave a powerful testimony, and talked about how it was a miracle that he was able to go on a mission. He is a member of the army and works artillery. The deal with the army is that he can be on the mission, but if his unit gets deployed he has to go. Anyway, about a month ago he got word that his unit was getting deployed. He went into greater detail over what happened, but the main detail is that in the very last minute everything lined up and he was able to go on his mission. His unit leaves in a few weeks I believe. 

The devotional was on families and the spirit was really strong throughout the devotional until about halfway through. This week we had a district leave for their missions. They had their backpacks with them and one of the elders carried the backpack of one of the Hermanas because it was literally +50 lbs and he had it at his feet. Half way through the meeting, (also important to note that he is sitting on the second row directly in front of the new president), he accidentally kicked the bag and set off a "bop it" that was in her bag. The toy, just starts playing the Spanish commands in the middle of the devotional the elder who had the bag was frantically trying to turn it off while fighting back tears of laughter. It was so funny, yet so bad. The president stops, looks straight at Elder Megeladon , and sternly says "what's going on elder?" and just looked ticked. He stopped his message, we sang a hymn to re-invite the spirit to the meeting and after a few minutes, and after Elder Eeves takes the Bop-it, continues with the devotional. Everything was a mis-understanding, and I don't think Elder M explained what happened.  Oh well, love that guy. 


As missionaries we are told to be exactly obedient. Also one thing that we've been told is that "blessings come to those who are obedient, but miracles come to those who are exactly obedient." One rule I don't love is that we aren't supposed to take pictures on non-P days. The rule isn't exactly the most followed rule. On Tuesday we had an amazing moon, that was massive and had a deep orange hue. The moon was low, the trees are tall and Hermana Petty is short, so she was standing on one of the tables in the main courtyard where we study with her camera trying to get a picture. 





Anyway after as she got a picture her companion Hermana Quigley was helping her get down. Inadvertently, she let go of the camera, which was strapped to her wrist. It swung and hit Hermana Quigley in the face at the same time Hermana Petty was stepping on the edge of the table. Hermana Quigley is reacting to getting smacked in the face as Hermana Petty steps on the edge of the table and the table is tipping over. Basically in slow motion Quigley is bracing her face and Petty is falling off the table, hits her butt on the table but still miraculously lands on her feet. It was seriously so funny. The joke is disobedience brings immediate punishment. 






The CCM really is like an oasis in Mexico city. Our house is on the western side of the campus and relatively close to the fence. The fence it pretty well hidden behind bushes, but occasionally you still hear stuff going on the outside. A few nights ago we heard about 4-5 gunshots close to our house, and a few minutes later we heard sirens. Some elders living in the dorms on the other side of campus about a week ago heard some other gunshots, but I can't validate that claim.