Last transfer 🙃

Hey, 

So this was probably the craziest transfer weekend of my mission. I'm not even sure where to start... Well, they closed our area. The sisters will stay in the ward but there won't be elders. So elder Jemmett is going to Madrid, and I am going back to the canary Islands! My new island is called Fuerteventura. There is only one Companionship on the island, so we might be a little lonely Jaja, but it's gonna be crazy. The big twist is that we are "whitewashing" it, meaning my new companion has never been there either. His name is Elder Backstein. He was trained by elder batty and is in the same group as elder Jemmett, so he's young in the mission. When we arrive tomorrow we will find the bishops house and get the keys to our apartment and then we will start to explore from there. This is gonna be an adventure for the next few weeks. 

We just grabbed a 3 hour bus to malaga and tonight around 8 I'll grab a train to Sevilla. I'm gonna spend the night there and then my flight leaves from Sevilla tomorrow around 2 I think. From there I'm not sure if I wfly directly to my island or if I'll go to a bigger one and then grab a boat to my island. I guess we'll see. I'm super excited though! 

The last two weeks here have been interesting. We worked really hard, but it was as if the lord was preparing the area to close. All of our friends moved away or stopped answering us, and all of our member appointments failed for dumb reasons. We just couldn't get anything going. It's OK though. Friday we did have a little miracle. Antonia, an investigator of 32 years, asked us a lot of questions about baptism in a lesson and as we answered we were pretty direct with her. The rest of her family are members but they can't be sealed because she isn't a member, so after we talked about that we decided to be a little bold and we asked her to be baptized. She was hesitant, but in the end she was excited to set the date for June 8. I really hope she gets baptized. We also found a family during my exchange with Elder Kohlström on Monday that has 2 kids above 8 that aren't baptized yet because the parents were inactive when they were that age. The sisters should baptize them this month. It's hard to leave it all behind after being here only 6 weeks and seeing these miracles this week, but it will be just as cool in the islands. 

I should also mentoon that Elder Johnson is the new AP, so that's super fun. I'll be seeing him at zone conference now and probably staying in his piso before I go home. Sadly I am leaving Elder Kohlström this transfer though. I'll see them all soon enough though when we're all home. I should have wifi on and off during this bus ride so we can chat. 

Love you, 

Elder Johnson

El Castillo de Santo Carolina and the death meeting...

Hey,

We didn't have to travel as much this week so we had a lot more time to work. We did have to go to Granada on Thursday for my death meeting (they changed the name to 'my continuing mission' this transfer), but that was it. Next week we'll go out there for district council on Wednesday and we're hopefully gonna buy some bikes. We requested them a few weeks ago so we can spend less time traveling since there is no public transportation here. We'll be the second area in the mission with bikes. I'm a little worried they're gonna make us wear nasty, yellow, reflective vests though.

The death meeting was super good though. It was about three hours long, which sucks, but the Mayberrys were in charge of it. They're tons of fun. They talked a lot about self reliance and what life will be like when we get home since we won't be high school students anymore. Some of the tasks they gave us were interesting. We had to make a 1 year plan, 5 year plan, and they challenged us to do certain things when we get home like move out of our parents house asap, go on a date or two our first week home, and go to the temple weekly. The talked a lot about bursting the mission bubble as quickly as possible. It was a good meeting and I took good notes that I can look at again in 6 weeks. 

We did something special this week to find more people to teach as a mission. On Wednesday we had a special district council and planned out tons of ideas to find new friends. Then on Thursday the entire mission and all wards with missionaries In them fasted. Then on Saturday we didn't plan any appointments, we just planned lots of finding activities like street contacting, Facebook finding, street contacting again using a big poster and table, and playing soccer with friends and members. It was really good. We found a few new friends from it that have huge potential. 

Today was super fun! We hiked up to the castle. It took us about 3 hours to get there, but it was totally worth it. The pictures are awesome. We had the whole district come out. This is probably one of the most fun districts I've been a part of. I'm not sure what else we can see now. I think the cathedral is the last thing. Anyways, love you

Elder Johnson

We went to the Alhambra!

Hey,

This week was super good. We are getting some good stuff going. We are in Granada for pday today. We came out yesterday for stake conference and then we are taking advantage of being here for the pday. Since we just had to do studies, phone calls, and reports after church it didn't matter where we were. (I hate Sundays as a district leader.)

So a few months ago dad sent me a small section of some book or document that talked about missionary work. In that section it talked about a thing called cottage meetings. They are basically the big family home evenings like we did in B6. I have been working on starting them here and this week we got it going. We had 3 in 4 days and they were great. We are getting referrals like crazy and our friends are progressing much faster now. I shared it with President and now the B6 zone is teaching it in zone conference this transfer and I just got our zone leaders started on it. Thanks dad. Oh yeah, we had one with bishop this week and he fed us crickets. They were pretty weird looking, but they tasted fine and the texture was just like a chip.

One of the referrals we got is named Sergio. He's the 23 year old boyfriend of a returned missionary that lives here in jaén. She invited him to a lunch appointment 2 weeks ago and now he is coming to church regularly and we did a cottage meeting with him. I'm excited to see where it goes. We also found a couple from Paraguay Saturday night. They're awesome. Freddy, the husband, has a brother that's a member. We gave them a book of mormón and explained it to them and then they invited us overtonight to drink some tereré (mate) and explain more.

It's been fun to see these miracles because Elder Jemmett has never seen the work like this before. His mind was blown with the paraguayans and he's super excited about Sergio. In a lot of ways this reminds me of training Elder Rogers. Also, it's elder Jemmetts birthday today so you'll have to email him.

We went to see the Alhambra today and a few other sites around Granada. It was super pretty. I'll send lots of pictures. Love you guys, I'll be on hangouts today.

Elder Johnson 

1,300 km later...

Hey,

I am exhausted. In the last 5 days I have traveled over 1,300 km (800+ miles) in bus. That's pretty far. We ended up in bus for about 16 hours in total. The rest of the week was super fun though. We went to Madrid, Granada, and Málaga.

 

On Thursday we had district council in Granada. It was a really good one. Afterwards we grabbed some lunch with the district and then grabbed a bus back to Jaén. We had Ward council around 6pm and then we grabbed another bus back to Granada for Exchanges with the zone leaders. I was with Elder Eyre. We had a super good day and we actually figured out we know a lot of the same people. He went to Copperhills so...

 

After that we were able to work in our area for a day and then on Sunday we went up to Madrid. It was a ton of fun. We stayed in B6 with Elder Mitchell and Elder Goodman. We had to get up early to go to the residency appointment, and then we met Santi and Elder Koppe and the B6 Hermanas downtown. We grabbed some lunch and talked for a minute, but then we had to run to the bus station to go down to Málaga. It was a ton of fun to hang out with them and catch up on everything. We planned everything out so we can do the same thing the day before I go home.

 

Zone conference was great. It was a lot more relaxed because I didn't have to do anything and it was fun to get to know a new group of missionaries. This is my first time in the zone. We stayed in a piso with Elder Hinckley and Elder Roger's so that was a ton of fun. In the Zone Conference we talked a lot about using the technology we have to find and teach. We are focusing even more on Facebook now. It's super awesome. In fact, even though we weren't in our area all week, we still had lessons and found 2 new investigators on Facebook. All we need is wifi.

 

We got home around 11:30pm last night so we are a little tired today. Luckily we have pday and we were able to relax a little. We went to the museum this morning since it's closed in mondays and then we got haircuts and went grocery shopping. Pretty chill day.

 

I've heard a lot of good things this week about Endgame so that will definitely have to go on my list. Also, that's super cool that Emma did so well in the art competitions. There were some super cool ones in there. The Utah man was crazy. I can't believe Erin got a job! That's nuts. And I havent heard anything about the Q & A so you'll have to fill me in on that.

 

Love you,

Elder Johnson

My District 

Granada Zone

Elder Jemmett 

Madrid