Conferences

Hey,

This week flew by again. It was weird because we lost a day and a half for zone conference. Which was a good one, but other than that it was a pretty boring week. Not much else to write about.

We were supposed to fly out Wednesday night at 8:30, but we got a call at 7 saying that the flight had been canceled and the only other option was a flight that left at 7:30. Luckily we were already in La Laguna for meetings, so we just grabbed our bags and sprinted across town to grab a taxi. We made it just on time to the airport and flew through security. And then we got to our gate and the flight was delayed an hour. All of that work and it left at the normal time. But that's OK, it was an adventure. It was the smallest plane I have been on. It only had 16 rows of seats and it had propellers. Pretty cool though.

We stayed the night in the zone leaders piso. There were 14 of us, I was lucky to get an air mattress. Most of the guys just put couch cushions on the floor. Then the conference was amazing. President and Hermana Pack started by sharing their testimonies. That was emotional since they will be leaving soon. It's really hitting Hermana Pack. Then Elder Sabin had the rest of the time. He talked about just about everything possible. He covered every part of teaching, finding investigators, doctrine, common questions and doubts, we did practices, everything. I have pages and pages of notes. He is awesome. I don't know if you guys have read his conference talk, but you should check it out. It's a good one. Sadly with the chaos of the mission tour they weren't able to bring down packages. So it will be 6 weeks until I get that one you just sent me.

Yesterday we had stake conference. Unfortunately we weren't able to go to the adult session on Saturday. I guess President and Hermana Pack gave some really good talks. But then yesterday Elder Boom, an area 70 and a senior couple from the temple spoke. It was really good, the topic applied really well to our ward and investigators. They all spoke on eternal families and the blessings of the temple.

Well, we aren't climbing Teide today. The member that was gonna drive us got the flu, so we are going to do that next week. We are on a bus headed to Santa Cruz right now. We are going shopping, so I'll let you know what I end up with. This will be my first time in Primark. Afterwards we're going to play risk with the district. 

Love you guys, 

Elder Johnson

Gran Canaria 🇮🇨

Hey,

Time is going way too fast here. This week flew by and we just realized we're already halfway through the transfer. We were super busy this week. We had 4 or 5 appointments scheduled every day. Only about half of them actually happened, but that's normal. Tuesday and Wednesday I was super sick from my sunburn. That was a bad one. Our investigator with a baptismal date is progressing really well, and I can totally see him being ready soon. We changed his date to April 7. It turns out we havestake conference and general conference so we couldn't do it over the top of those. I'm excited for him though. We also found an investigator from Leeds, England. He is awesome. We are going to eat with him on Wednesday. He thinks my american accent is super funny. There was one sad thing this week, we had to drop 9 investigators. 9.... So we are back down to a smaller group and ready to find a TON of people to teach. 

So I think almost all of your questions were about zone conference and the general authority, so I'll answer that first. Zone conference is this Thursday in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. I just got my tickets, we're going to fly over thereWednesday night and then fly back Thursday night after conference. It should be an adventure. We came up with a pretty tricky plan to get the packages back here. The general authority that is coming is Elder Sabin. He spoke in general conference recently. They are doing conference with him and all of the missionaries in the peninsula on Wednesday, and then he will come down and talk to us on Thursday. I should also get to meet the Bakers at conference. They're serving in gran canaria. 

Cool experience of the week: I have been messaging Cari's old investigators this week. They are super cool and knew exactly who I was when I sent the friend request. I would love to teach them, and it's possible with the mission changes I could end up in Burgos anyway. How crazy would that be?

So we had Chinese twice this week.  There is a delivery place with legit American Chinese. I got sesame chicken, orange chicken, fried rice, chow mein, and spring rolls. I want to get Bahn mi next week. 

We are hiking Teide next week with a member. Love you guys. Thank you for sending the package this week and helping me with everything. Keep me updated on the busy week. 😀👍

Elder Johnson

We hiked Toborno and now I look like a tomato

Hey guys,

Another busy P-day. We went on a hike today that was absolutely insane. That has to be one of the sketchiest, most adventurous things I've done. I think we took some pretty good pictures so I can win theisland photo competition. I'll upload those to the drive. But, I'm running short on time again for emails.

So earlier this week we had President and Hermana Pack in our piso. They were in a rush so we only did interviews, not piso check. But that's OK. It was clean anyway. The interviews were awesome and we tookan awesome selfie with them right outside our doorway. That might be the best picture of the week, or mission.

President and Hermana Pack
Elder Johnson and Elder Tiebing

I'm definitely enjoying the weather here. It's been mid to high 70s all week with sun. And I totally got fried on the hike today. I am so sunburned right now. But I still kinda miss the snow. Im a little jealous of you guys. I completely skipped winter this year and it feels weird.

Our district is still killing it. We have continued finding investigators, but now we are seeing the fruits from that. There are a lot of investigators coming to church now and we have a couple with baptismaldates. It's still crazy to me because none of us know what we're doing. I'm the most experienced one here somehow. That's mostly what I talked about with President. We also had intercambios on friday. I was with Elder Johnson in La Laguna. Intercambios arealways fun and you always see so many miracles.

I still use the recipes you have sent me. If you guys think of any simple Asian meals, let me know. I don't have a ton of access to ingredients but I really, really, really miss Asian food. I need to find a way to get it here. 

That's all I've got for this week. I'm gonna go find some aloe vera and find a way not to die. Talk to you next week.

Love you, 

Elder Johnson

Empty Baptismal Font, Flooded Island

Hey,

Just a heads up, this was probably the most eventful week of my mission. I will have a lot of stories from it. This won't be super organized or edited because I'm short on time, but I want to fit it all in. 

I'll just tell you about the little things first. We got a text today that we will have interviews with President and piso cleaning checks tomorrow morning. So that's stressful. I haven't seen anything in the mail yet. Should I watch for it here or at zone conference? I can't believe I'm already at 30%. It's basically 1% per week, that makes it seem so fast. All of the stuff that you think I don't care about, I generally love. I forget about a lot of things so it's nice to be reminded that the real world is still happening. I'm glad the talk went well in church. And don't worry, I will make sure to kill it with the island photos. I'll win that competition. 

I don't know if you guys heard anything about the islands this week, but we had some massive storms. We got a call from the zone leaders Saturday and they told us we couldn't leave piso on Sunday (maybe more) and all church meetings were canceled. It was insane. So we had to go out and put together a 72 hour kit and prepare to be in piso for a few days. That sucked. I uploaded some videos to the drive. It was insane how much water came down. It was hard to keep busy, and even harder to keep focused being in piso that long. But it was quite the adventure. 

Our ward had another baptism this week! It's a ton of fun being a part of this ward and seeing the progress. Jonathan, our recent convert, is in the Sunday school presidency now. He is really involved in all of the ward activities and his son is thinking about a mission. The investigator that was baptized on wednesday was only found by the hermanas a little over a month ago, but people thought she was a member already because she has been so involved in everything. It was a chaotic baptism though. It was supposed to be at 7, so we started filling the font around 4. But her 3 year old daughter pulled the plug about an hour before we started. By the time we noticed we only had about 15 minutes to fill it. We grabbed bowls and pots from the kitchen and started filling them up in the bathroom and dumping them in the font, then we grabbed the hose from outside and put it through the window into the font, and the hermanas boiled water to warm it up. It was crazy, but it worked. We were able to start on time, but the water was really really cold. Cold enough she screamed a little when she went under. But it was still nice and the spirit was strong. Baptisms are so inspiring.

That was our first day with the new district. I don't think things will slow down this transfer. Our district is still super young and motivated. So far we are keeping up the numbers and seeing the miracles. It's weird seeing everyone from the CCM. It brings back a lot of memories. We started something else that brings back memories this week. We are going to be playing soccer every Saturday now. We played for the first time this week and it was amazing. I miss it so much.

OK, so that was Saturday morning that we played soccer. But I wanted to tell you about a lesson we had later that afternoon. It was just amazing. It started out like most lessons. He believes in God, butchurches are evil and he's never changing. We didn't have any preparation for the lesson because it was kind of a surprise, so we were just very blunt with him. I just said "look, if that's how you feel that's fine. But if you really believe in God, you have to believe he loves you. And if that's the case how can he bless you without a church?" then elder Tiebing shared the first vision. And at that point the spirit was SO strong. It was amazing. So we had a few seconds of silence and then he just burst out bawling. Once he calmed down a little he explained a little about what was going on in his life. Let's just say it's not always easy. But the spirit always knows what we need, and it that lesson what he needed was love. I don't know that I was as loving or patient as I could have been, but the spirit hit him hard. He described it as all the love from his parents, grandparents, friends, us, all at the same time. It's something I knew before, but in that lesson I re-learned why I'm here and what I'm doing. I don't know if I described it well, it's always hard in these emails when I'm typing so fast. But that feeling is what it's all about. God really loves us, and he has given us so much. I love this gospel. I love being able to share it and experience these things. I just wanted to share that little story with you to close my email.

Love you guys, 

Elder Johnson

The devil threw up on the Island...

Hey,

Transfers came and went and we will be together for at least 6 more weeks. Elder Tiebing was a little disappointed at first, but now we're both really excited for this transfer. It's crazy, this means he'llspend 1/4 of his mission in his first area. It's very possible now that I could be here that long too. Our district was kind of torn apart though. We are the only ones that stayed together. Elder Hamilton that flew down here with me is gone. He will be my new zone leader so he's in Las palmas, another island. The rest went to Madrid. I will now be the oldest in our district as far as time in the mission goes. The new guys coming in are all from my mtc group. It's going to be a ton of fun. Oh yeah, there was some sad news. Zamora looks like it's closed now. Idk how long it will be closed for, but there aren't missionaries there rihht now. 

The devil threw up on this island this week. Carnaval is the worst thing I have ever seen in my life. We have tried to work like normal but Saturday the entire district was stuck in piso by 1 o'clock. We spent the rest of the day there and now we have a curfew this week. We have to be in piso by 8 everynight. There is no dress code, it is legal to wear whatever you want, including nothing. We tried to go grocery shopping today in Puerto and had to go somewhere else because the parties are just crazy. There are constantly party buses and floats driving around blasting music. I'll put some pictures in the drive.

So elder Tiebing was certain he would leave, so we had some amazing goodbye lessons this last week. Some of them really helped us with some investigators and we had an amazing lesson with Jonathan, but this week will be awkward when we show up and he's still here. I personally can't wait because I told him not to do it, so it won't be awkward for me.

The weather has been really nice. It's the first time since I've been here that I've really seen the sun. But it was 75° the other day and I loved it. I added some more pictures of loro parque (with my face). That was such a fun pday. We're talking about doing monkey park at the end of this transfer. I guess it's only like 5 euros because a member can get us a discount. I was in charge of planning loro parque last week. So I bought the tickets, food, transportation, everything. At one point I had over 400 euros. I don't really want to do that again, it was a mess. Afterwards we went to a black sand beach that's in our area. We were allowed to do it because there isn't sunbathing so that was nice. I grabbed some sand and seashells for the piso and we took a few pictures.

I love that talk from Elder Uchtdorf. We listened to it a few times in the car before I left Zamora. I think we're going to have a general authority coming to the mission soon but I'll miss it since I'm in the islands. Go figure, I'm always in the middle of nowhere. I'm thinking they will announce something soon for the mission realignment but I haven't heard anything yet. I can't wait to know.

Also, everyone is always asking if I write in my journal. I just thought that I would mention something. I do write still, but for the last 2 months I have been writing in Spanish. I changed everything to Spanish so I could learn faster. Like my tablet, journal, music, even some emails. It's pretty cool. Just don't plan on being able to read anything. 

Love you guys, 

Elder Johnson

Elder Johnson & Elder Tiebing
(Black Sand Beach)

Avacados!

Carnival

Loro Parque 🦈🐵🐧🐬

Hey guys,

This has been the craziest week of my mission! We found even more investigators this week, 5 in total. As a district we made up like 10% of the missions numbers this week. It's so fun to be a part of. We went to loro parque today so I can tell you now that I won't fit everything in this email that I would like to.

Question 1) Elder Tiebing is better. It turns out it was just allergies.

Question 2) my favorite thing was definitely LORO PARQUE. We had so much fun today. We had about 6 hours in the park and then an hour on the beach. I'll put all of the photos in the drive. We sat in the splash zone every time so we were soaking wet all day. I'll tell you what though, we did the orca show right as we got there, and I knew right then that I had gotten my money's worth. We got some cheap tickets from a member. 

Question 3) I have absolutely no idea what is happening with the mission. We were told we will know before they release it to the public but as of right now I haven't heard.

Question 4) my favorite miracle was actually with elder Hamilton on intercambios. We went out and hit the streets all day. We ended up being together for 2 days because of some weird things that happened with the schedule. We worked so well together though. We found 4 new investigators and had some amazing citas with members. I just think that it is so cool that every week we set our goals and work hard, and at the very end it all works out. Those 4 we found put us just above the goal for the week, and once again it was at the last moment. The Lord truly is blessing Tenerife right now.

I'll send a good email next week, sounds like it was an eventful week at home. Sorry I couldnt write more. Also, next Monday will be transfers again. We'll see what happens. 

Love you guys, check the drive

Elder Johnson

He's still sick...

Hey guys,

I love this area. There are some really cool things happening every week. In 3 transfers in Zamora we found 7 new investigators, this week we got our 10th this transfer. It's amazing how different it is.

Our goal for the week was to find 3 new investigators. We knew it would be tough because we last monday and Tuesday to zone conference but it's always possible. Then Saturday morning came and we still didn't have any. So we made plans to go visit a few people and we were thinking it would be an easy day. Boy were we wrong. Not one plan worked. Elder Tiebing was sick the whole time. It was a disaster. But we kept going and I looked through the old area book from a few years ago. We found a part member family that we could visit. In the end the guy we were looking for wasn't there, but his grand-daughter was and she was super interested. After a while her mom came out and we ended up teaching them. Then later we were driving down the road and elder Tiebing saw a guy he talked to a few weeks before I got here. So we parked the car and ran over to him. He was super nice and we taught a lesson right there on the street. All of that happened within 2 hours on the last day of the week and we hit our goal. It's so cool how things work out sometimes. That was my favorite little miracle this week. (we did the math and if the whole mission found at the rate our district is right now, we would find over 1,300 new investigators a month)

I mentioned that elder Tiebing is sick still. He has an appointment with a doctor today. Unfortunately that will be what we do while the district is hiking, but that's OK. As long as he gets better. We had spend Thursday night in piso again because he wasn't doing very well. I'm a little worried we will go the entire transfer and I will never get to work with the real Elder Tiebing. It ends next weekend. There is one cool thing, we found risk in the la Laguna piso so we're playing that today.

Zone conference was amazing this week. Maybe my favorite so far. I don't think we could have covered more. We talked about the change in missions, the new president, mission rules and changes, how to have better companionships, how to work with members, and how to find better. It was loaded. One of the rule changes is hangouts. We won't be able to use that anymore. The rest weren't too big. We have known about the mission change for a while. It's pretty exciting. We will take about half of the mission, so I could totally end up in the south. It all depends on where you are July 1. There is even a possibility that a bunch of our missionaries go to Barcelona. We won't know until they release the official boundaries though. 

Monday night was fun with the APs. We just went on splits so one of them could visit some people. He served here earlier in his mission and he's going home next week. Then after that we ran to a supermarket and loaded up on soda and snacks. We finally made tacos! It's been 6 months since I last had tacos. That was amazing. But yeah, that was a party.

So I'll just finish up with some pictures and talk about some food real quick. We went to an arepa place this week before district meeting. WOW... It was way good. I'll send a picture.

Then we also went to a seafood buffet with an investigator. I know we're on an island so I thought the seafood would be better. It's cheap, but nothing special. Still, it was free food. 

Anyways, talk to you next week, 

Elder Johnson