Baptism #1

Hey,

This week was amazing! I mean, it had its ups and downs, but it was insane. We had a baptism, Elder Tiebing has the flu, and we found more new investigators this week than the last 2 transfers in Zamora.

1. What was the most spiritual experience this week?

The baptism on Saturday was one of the most spiritual experiences I've ever had. Jonathan was just so ready for it. He is married to a member, and all of their kids are members but he wasn't. But after yearsof meeting off and on with the missionaries he just decided one day that he wanted to get married in the temple. So, elder Tiebing taught him a lot before I got here, but in the last 2 weeks we have taught him 8 times. He even takes notes in the lessons. So yeah, the whole ward came to the baptism as well as a lot of investigators and inactive members. And seriously, when he came up out of the water it was amazing. The spirit was so strong. And I was just taking that in for a second, but then when I turned around I saw that a ton of people were just crying. All of the inactive members, all of the investigators, one guy that just showed up from the street. They were all crying. I really feel like that baptism just started something awesome for this ward.

The guy from the street was a miracle. He was someone the la Laguna elders found that afternoon and they set up an appointment for Sunday night, but he got confused and showed up right as we were about to start the baptism. So I actually met him at the door and invited him in and from there it was awesome. He didn't know anything about us or our church other than what the elders told him on the train, but he could obviously feel something because he was one of the people crying after the baptism. He found the other elders after and told them he would wants to meet and that nothing that happened was a coincidence. That is an amazing example of that "divine design" we've been talking about. ("By Divine Design" by Elder Rasband from October 2017 General Conference)

2. What was the most bizarre experience you had this week?

I mentioned that Elder Tiebing has been sick. That has been really weird this week. He sleeps in every morning and usually takes a nap every day, so that leaves me with a lot of time to fill. I found this list of people in the area book that were just uncontacted numbers though, and I just called all of them. We actually found 2 new investigators that way. It's nothing super crazy or bizarre, but I thought it was weird how that worked out. I never would have found that in another situation.

3. How is it being part of a bigger district? Are you still fairly isolated or do you interact more?

It has been so fun having a big district. We see each other a lot during the week, for district meeting, baptisms, correlation, ward counsel, all kinds of things. And then on pday we will always be together.Today is a little weird because elder Tiebing is sick, so we canceled loro parque and they went hiking without us. We have 2 wards in our district too, so that's cool. Our area covers almost half of the island, so at times I guess it could seem isolated becausewe aren't close to them, but the way things work out its all good.

Hopefully my emails aren't as boring this last few weeks. I know they got pretty lame towards the end of my time in Zamora. Let me know if you have anymore questions.

Elder Johnson