Museums

Hey guys,

I'm writing emails in a pretty cool location today. I'll upload a picture later. We are visiting all of the museums since today is probably Elder Jordan's last week here. So far we have been to the dinosaur one, the hanging houses, the art museum, and the science museum. I will have to do a lot more with my next companion next transfer.

Yesterday the hermanas from the 8th ward came to Cuenca with a senior couple. We weren't expecting them so we didn't make any plans, but we were still able to meet up last second and eat lunch by the hanging houses. The Candlands (the couple) were super nice and paid for our lunch. I had Gaspacho Andaluz. I'm sure dad will know what it is. I've been living on that stuff this summer. It's nice when it's hot outside. 

Happy anniversary! I hope it was a good one. Sounds like it was a nice, chill day. I'd kill for one of those. It's been a while. Tuesday/Wednesday was my year mark. We didn't really do much. The rest of the district went out to eat together on Wednesday after district meeting, but since we Skype in we couldn't go. Instead we ordered kebab and watched Meet the Mormons. Other than that it was a normal day of work. 

I spoke again on Sunday. (Tell Erin I loved her talk.) This time they gave me a little heads up. They told me Saturday night at 10:00. I found a few scriptures and a quote to share so it at least seemed prepared. It was good though. Probably my longest one. I think it ended up about 20 minutes. They didn't know about the new Ministering program until last week, so that's what I spoke about. Here is the quote I shared. "My dear brothers and sisters, are we active in the gospel, or are we merely busy in the Church? The key is to follow the example of the Savior in all things. If we do that, we will naturally focus on saving individuals rather than performing tasks and implementing programs." I think that is the key to Ministering, and really to anything. We shouldn't do things just to do things. Everything has a purpose, and should be centered in christ. I can't really send you the talk like you did with Erin's because I didn't write it out, (and if I did it would be in spanish) but it's something. 

Love you guys, check out the pictures, and have a good week. 

Elder Johnson

The Church is true - even in Cuenca

Hey guys,

This week was good. We were super busy, so that's nice. We're finding lots to do, but we need to find some investigators. We only have about 3 right now. We have 2 others, but we haven't taught them since my first week.

 

We had to stop teaching Julian this week. He failed his baptismal interview because he was struggling with prophets, so Tuesday that's what we talked about. Things didn't go very well though. The lesson was 2 hours long and by the end it was just a big argument. It was pretty sad because he still wants to be baptized, but denies the book of Mormon and the prophet. He'll figure it out one day though. We'll probably teach him again in my time here.

 

Thursday we had exchanges. I was with Elder Bodhaine. He was in my district my first transfer in the islands. We had a lot of fun. We found a few potential investigators and a few guys to come play soccer with us on Fridays. We also went to an investigator's birthday party. We made brownies and they fed us domino's.

 

I keep thinking that cuenca is the same as Zamora, but there are always new things. I have had to study the handbooks a lot in this area, and I'm not talking about missionary handbooks, these are leadership handbooks. The branch tried to plan a movie night in the chapel. That sounds pretty fun. The problem was that it was a rated R movie and they wanted people to pay to enter. That's less fun. You can tell the church is still young here.

 

Yesterday President Fernando (Branch President) was on vacation, and the counselor didn't come. So it was like Zamora again. We had 3 members from our branch there. 3 minutes before starting we just split everything up. "I'll conduct the meeting, you speak. I'll pass the sacrament, you bless." Then it got really crazy. All at once 25 members showed up that are in Cuenca on vacation. We had to get more bread, fill another water tray, get more chairs. We started 15 minutes late. It was a good meeting though. It always runs smoothly in the end.

 

We had lunch with a member on Friday and I did something I said I would never do. She gave us so much food, and it was so bad. When she left the room I grabbed a few napkins and filled them with food and shoved them in my backpack. I felt bad, but she got mad last time because we didn't eat everything. I had no choice. 😂 It's a good story though.

 

Thank you for sending those packages! I'm super excited to get them. Unfortunately we can't go to madrid to get them. It would cost 35€ and be about 7 hours in travel round trip. I'd rather just wait 2 weeks. We'll be there for transfers the beginning of August.

 

Just so you know, we are probably changing our pday to Tuesday next week so we can visit some museums.

Love you guys,

Elder Johnson

Intercambios on Temple Square

Hey guys,

We had exchanges this week. That was my first day ever working in Madrid. The rest of our district is in the Madrid 6th ward, or Barrio 6, which is in pavones. That's the neighborhood the temple is in. You can see the temple from their bedroom. The intercambio was OK. We couldn't work a ton because we had some meetings and an interview with President during the exchange. We had 1 lesson and then we just contacted the rest of the day.

 

The interview with President Bussey was good. I like him a lot. He's a funny guy but takes the work very seriously. There's not really much to say about the interview though because it was just a "get to know you" interview. He sent out a bunch of rule changes this week though. There were some big ones, but there is one that I'm really not excited for. We aren't allowed to use backpacks anymore. So I have 2 weeks to buy a shoulder bag. Idk where to go to get one. We are going to look around today but Idk if I'll find anything that's very similar to the pictures online. I'll keep you updated.

 

While we were at the temple grounds on Thursday we ran into a few members from Puerto that were on vacation in Madrid. I was only able to talk to them for 5 or 10 minutes but it was nice to see them. That made my day, but then it got even better that night when we saw a member from Salamanca. I saw her from the other side of the temple grounds and I was sure I was seeing things, but then she called out my name. I was super surprised she remembered my name. I talked to her for a few minutes about her family and the branch. Thursday was cool. I didn't expect to see any of these people for a long time.

 

I finally got my meeting with our branch president. We've been trying for a while to find a time. We accomplished a lot in the 20 minutes that we had to talk. We talked about less active members, the branch leadership, how we can use social media to help the branch, and things he needs our help with. He is getting us a list this week of names to visit, and he's going to go out with us twice this week to help us. We're also going to meet with all of the leaders in the ward this week and make a branch mission plan. We're going to set goals and plans for each auxiliary group related to missionary work. I'm really hoping this will work. This branch has potential to grow quickly if all the members are excited about it. And the branch president is thinking about staying here now so he can help the branch. That would be awesome. 

 

We had a miracle last week with a friend named Julian. He is an old investigator that we are meeting with. From the very beginning he wanted to be baptized. The weird thing is that he has a great testimony of everything except living prophets. He seemed to have gotten over everything, but then Saturday night we had a baptismal interview and he failed it because he wasn't sure about President Nelson. Things have moved fast with him, so we're gonna make sure he has this figured out first. But I expect him to be baptized at some point soon. He really is a miracle that came out of nowhere.

 

I'll be on later today to talk more,

Elder Johnson

It's HOT in Cuenca!

Hey guys,

Cuenca definitely feels like a new mission compared to the islands. The city is different. The people are different. The work is different. The weather is different. Everything is different. But it's been a lot of fun so far. The work is very similar to Zamora. We are out on the streets contacting most of the time. We went out for 5 hours one day this week. That's a long time in the hot weather.

 

We have a few investigators we are working with right now that are doing wellish. We decided on a baptismal date with one of them this week, but then he went off in class yesterday. He made all of the members mad and denied everything we have taught him. So he's basically gone now. The other 2 investigadores are pretty new. We've only taught them 2 lessons each.

 

We still have a phone with data so I can check my email each night. The world cup is killing me. I have seen some big chunks of games during lessons when we have them in bars. Saturday I watched 25 minutes of the England game with an investigator on satuday. We live right above 2 bars so it gets loud everytime someone scores. 

I decided against cutting my own hair. It seems like a bad idea because the longest blade is a 5. I don't want a military cut. Thank you for sending me that though. As far as the package goes, the only thing I can think of that I can't buy here is food. Mostly treats. 

I think I forgot to mention I've learned a bit of guaraní. We had 2 members from Paraguay in la Laguna and they taught me since I have been to Paraguay. You guys should come pick me up though. ;) I have plenty to show you here. There is a lot of cool stuff to see and people to meet. (and a lot of them speak English.) 

By the way, we went to old Cuenca today to do some sight seeing. Pics are in the drive. Love you guys, 

Elder Johnson

I got Cuenked!

Hey guys,

Sorry I couldn't write more last week. I really wish I could have. We eventually made it to Cuenca at 11:30 Monday night. I can't remember a time in my life that has been as busy as the last 2 weeks. Like I said last week, I loved training. I learned a ton. Elder Rogers was an awesome companion.

I miss that ward a lot. I will tell you more about my new area in a minute, but since I skipped last week I want to go back a little. Our time with the members was great. I have a lot of their email addresses and Facebooks so I can stay in contact, but it was still hard to leave. From our district of 6 missionaries, 3 left. Both hermanas were taken out so now there are only elders in that ward. Sunday was pretty depressing at church. All of the members were mad at church because we were all leaving and the hermanas felt about about the area being closed. That was a weird goodbye. The lesson with Jonathan was cool on Sunday night. Beforehand I knew I wanted to give him something, and he's always loved my CTR rings. One was a gift from grandma, so I would never give that away, but I gave him the one I found at work. I was surprised by what that meant to him. I gave it to him at the end of the lesson and he hugged me and cried for more than 5 minutes. I don't if it was the ring, or the fact that I was leaving and probably won't see him for a long time, or what. Either way, it was a special moment. He gave me a mate mug that Melania brought back from Uraguay. It's pretty cool. I am so glad I got to know Jonathan. 

The other interesting thing from last week is that they sold the car on Thursday and didn't tell us. All of the sudden we got a message that said, "from this moment on you cannot drive the car." That sucked. We missed 3 citas because of it. We did make it to the ward activity though. Thinking back on this it seems like a lifetime a go. We had some fun games, the trivia went well, and the pancakes were awesome.

I was so happy to go back to the temple this week! It's been like 10 months since the last time I was there. A lot of memories came back when we were on the temple grounds. And right as I walked out, guess who was out front taking pictures... Elder Jäger! We talked for a good hour. It was fun because it brought back memories, and we're both still the same, but we've both changed too. We stayed in his piso Friday night too, so we talked a lot then.

We had to take a bus ride, train ride, and the metro to get to zone conference in Madrid on Saturday. We went in the night before because it took us 4.5 hours to get there. Since last Sunday, I have traveled about 35 hours. That's only in one week. The conference was good though. We met the busseys there, they are going to be great. I will miss the Packs though. We talked a lot about combining the missions in the conference. President Bussey talked about adversity. He said that every time something great is happening, there will be equal opposition. I was thinking about that, and it really is true. The mission hasn't been easy, in fact it's been the hardest thing I've done, but it's also been the greatest thing I've done. I thought of changes Ive seen investigators make, and it's the same. There is always opposition. It always gets harder for them to live the commandments the closer we get to baptism. I also thought about you guys. From what I can see from here, the family seems a lot more centered on the gospel, and I think we have all seen blessings from that. But it makes sense that things aren't always the easiest. Since I have been gone each of you have gone through some sort of trial, or maybe you still are, but it's because something great is about to happen. I liked that zone conference. President Bussey is awesome.

So, here is the big news. I kinda left you guys hanging on the new area last week. Cuenca seems pretty, but we don't really leave our end of town to get over to the old town. It's mostly just tourism. This area is very similar to Zamora. We have a small branch. There were 11 people in church yesterday. The branch president is really cool. He is like 25 years old and a return missionary. The weird part is that he was completely inactive when he was called in January, but he's all the priesthood we have soooo.... He's good now though. He is very involved in the work and this calling has changed his life. I am super excited to work here! I can't wait to see this branch change.

I saw a miracle this week. We baptized Ana on Saturday. She is the mother of a recent convert. She's so cool. I will send pictures. I wasn't expecting that. She really was a miracle because we don't really have much else as far as work here.

Elder Jordan is really funny. He is from Mesa, Arizona. His mom is from Tahiti. He is probably the funniest kid I've ever met. He has super dry humor, but at the same time he is outgoing and outright obnoxious. We get along really well. He has one transfer less than me, so we're pretty close on experience in the mission.

Your questions that I haven't already answered:

How is the apartment?

Big, gross, old. It's huge, so that's nice. But we cleaned the entire day today and we still have a ton to do.

Do I have wifi?

Yes, at the church and McDonald's

How often are we in Madrid?

3 times this week and we probably won't be back this transfer

Am I dying of heat?

Nah, I'm always in the water with all these baptisms.... Jk I'm dead. It's so hot and we're ALWAYS in the street here.

I hope this email made up for last week. Love you guys.

Elder Johnson