No time to write.... a voice recording instead

Hey,

So, Bueno.

So I got transferred so I don’t really have a ton of time today for emails because I have to pack and say goodbyes. I figured I would just do a voice message and catch you up this way. So I am packing right now. I am going to Jaen. It’s a city that is down South by Malaga. As far as I know, it’s in the middle of nowhere. I’m pretty excited. I’ve pretty much spent the whole mission in areas like that and it’s supposed to be really really pretty. I’m excited. I’m going to be with a younger missionary that just finished being trained – actually by Elder Jordan (my other companion in Cuenca). So I’m pretty excited. I’ll be District Leader again – not gonna be Zone Leader. They are trying to get a bunch of younger Zone Leaders in since every Zone Leader we have right now will be going home in the next three months. Makes sense. In my district, I’ll have the Zone Leaders down there in Granada and then I’ll have four hermanas as well. There’s going to be eight of us but we’re going to be pretty spread out. I don’t know that we will see much of each other – other than District Meeting. But yeah, I’m pretty excited.

As far as this week, it’s kinda been a sucky week. I’ve been super busy and I was super surprised by the transfer and was not ready for the goodbyes. We had not planned anything for that. That definitely snuck up on me. It’s okay though. We have a ton of goodbye’s though. Yesterday that’s all we did. Saturday – same. Today that’s what we are doing. Last night I said goodbye to Gabriella. That was fun. She is pretty cool. I think she will stay strong in the church. She is actually doing mission prep right now so I am really excited for that. She is eighteen so she could go pretty soon. And then we also met with Katty. She is doing really well. We gave her a blessing last night. She is doing really well with the church in general. She is going back to Peru for a month this summer. I should be able to visit with her and Milagros (her mom) this summer before I leave. I’ll have two days in Madrid before I leave and I think I will go back up and see them. She gave me a beanie. It’s pretty cool -  it’s a Peru beanie like that t-shirt I have (same brand and everything). I said goodbye to Juan and all the members, tons of members here. I have probably 200 pictures I could put on the Drive if I wanted to. We took pictures of everyone after church for like 2 hours yesterday. That Javier kid (he’s the one we found playing soccer last week that I said would probably get baptized). He has a baptismal date now. We met with him another time and taught him about the Book of Mormon and prayer. He’s doing really well.  We are going to play soccer with him tonight with all the guys from the ward. I think he’ll get baptized within the next month honestly. But, I won’t be here.

This week has been a shorter week since I wrote you on Wednesday. We had transfers all day Saturday and then it’s been goodbyes since. We had a couple of appointments that went well.

Hopefully I don’t have to pay for any travel today. It will be about 12 hours of travel. I’m traveling all day with Elder Rogers. We planned it out that way on Saturday. He is going waaaay down South – he’s going down to the beach.

Anyway- I will write next week and hopefully have more time to upload some pictures. 

Love you guys!

*this post was a voice message recorded by Elder Johnson and typed for this blog

Juan got baptized.

Hey,

We had another crazy week again. We had general conference, a baptism, snow, exchanges in Cuenca, a session in the temple, preparation for transfers, residency appointments, and the normal teaching appointments. 

Exchanges in Cuenca were a ton of fun. Had 5 appointments fail us so we hit the streets and talked to everyone we saw. We saw some good miracles. We got 8 phone numbers which is good. While we were studying in the church a family walked in and asked if they could talk to us. The dad is a member from Ecuador and he has 4 kids that aren't members but want to be. They moved here less than a week ago. We taught them the first lesson and it looks like Cuencas member count just went from 13 to 18. I love seeing miracles like that in Cuenca. 

So that was Friday. Saturday we got up early to catch our train back to Madrid since we had Juan's baptism at 12:00. Turns out the busses don't run until 9:00 on Saturdays so we had to call a taxi to get to the station. Then we grabbed our train and we got to Madrid at 11:55. We ran to our piso and threw on our suits and booked it to the temple. We were almost on time. The baptism clearly was the best planned, and we had some funny moments, but it was awesome. We had Santi's dad baptize him. When Juan came up out of the water he hugged Brother Montes and then went back under the water to fix his hair. It was pretty funny. His testimony was amazing though. I mean, he's basically been a member for 8 years, he has a pretty strong testimony. 

After that we had a few appointments and then we went to the Mayberry's house for general conference. It was a pretty good setup. The hermanas and elder koppe were there. We ate nachos, cookies, doritos and all kinds of good snacks. Then on Sunday we were with them all day. Conference was awesome. We were all expecting big announcements, but it was kinda nice to focus on the good talks instead. Some of my favorites were from Elder Hales, Uchtdorf, all of President Nelson's, and Elder Hollands. I'm sad it's over. Next time I'll be able to look back and say that I had a baptism the day of the last conference though, that's pretty cool. 

I think we found our next friend that will be baptized. His name is Javier and he's an 18 year old from Nicaragua. He's been here for about 2 months and he met with the missionaries in his country. We have taught him twice and we gave him a baptismal date this week. We're shooting for may 11 with him. 

Transfers are on Monday so we are gonna be busy this weekend. This is the worst part of the transfer. I think time is still speeding up. I'm really hoping to stay. I don't feel ready to go yet. I'm pretty sure I'm staying anyways so.. Also, I got my residency card on Monday so I'm legal again. I'm good to stay until July of 2020. 

I'll watch for the package this week. Keep me posted. Thank you so much!

Love,

Elder Johnson

An update on our people...

Hey,

This week flew by. Elder Goodman and I were not able to work together from Sunday until Thursday night because we had so many exchanges. It was a super good week though. We basically had double the work all week because of the exchanges. This next week we will have 2 more, but 1 of them is in Cuenca. I'm always excited to go back and visit. 

So Juan is going to be baptized this Saturday. It's about time. I don't think it's possible for a baptism to happen on its scheduled date. He actually moved outside of Madrid on Saturday so that's why we haven't dunked him yet. He asked that we still baptize him though because he knows us and he doesn't know the new elders. We're gonna have them come to the baptism so they can meet him. He's doing well though. 

Katty is doing great. She's preparing to get a temple recommend and she's attending institute twice per week. She basically lives in Temple Square now. She reminds me a lot of Jonathan with how solid and quick her conversion has been. She has taken it really well and will soon have a good calling. 

Speaking of Jonathan, his wife Melania, came to the temple this week and we talked a bunch. They're doing great. They're going to the temple once per month. She is primary Primary President and he is Sunday School President and Ward missionary. Their oldest kid is working on his mission papers. Pretty cool considering the family wasn't active last winter and Jonathan wasnt a member. 

I think I mentioned 2 weeks ago that we did a pday with our ward mission leader. Idk if I have told you much about him, but his name is Santi and he got home from his mission 6 months ago. He's 20 years old. There are a lot of people I have loved in the mission, but this guy has become a best friend. We do pretty much everything with him. We are going to Costco with him today. He took us to the center a few weeks ago to shop and we also played card games with him and Elder Roger's and Birnbaumer a few weeks ago. You'll probably hear lots of stories with him in the future. We did a family home evening in his house this week and 27 people came. It was pretty cool. 

Thanks for the 100 day reminder jaja.. Elder Goodman was pretty surprised when I told him about that. We definitely aren't counting down. That's all I've got this week, though. 

Love you, 

Elder Johnson

Update: Santi didn't end up meeting them to go to Costco but they were dead set on getting American milk for the week. So they used public transit to get to Costco which meant the metro, a bus and then a 3k walk (in their missionary clothes). They ran into Elder and Sister Mayberry at Costco (the senior missionary couple serving with them) and the hermanas so they sent their groceries with them while they took public transit back home (another 2 hour excursion). But they said the milk is worth it (and the Costco hotdog they had while there 😉). 

Santiago Bernabeú Stadium

Hey,

We had another good week here in B6. We had intercambios with the APs on Wednesday, so that was fun to change it up. It's our only intercambio where we work in someone else's area. I was with Elder Maxwell this time. We had a few appointments, got Chinese food for lunch, and we contacted a bunch in the street. 

Juan is doing super well. We have taught him almost everything now. His baptism is looking pretty sure for this weekend so that will be awesome. He is really excited for it. We're still working with Milagros, but she's been hard to meet with lately. She got a second job.

In my other areas it's been super hard to get people to come to a one-time soccer activity. The most we ever have is like 10 people. We just started inviting members to do our morning exercise with us by playing soccer at 7am, and we already had a bigger turnout. We have been doing it all week and we have 10-12 people coming. It's pretty nice to wakeup and go play soccer with a bunch of Spaniards everyday.

Our Family Home Evening activity we do in the church every week was tons of fun this week. We had a little competition with Santi, our ward mission leader. If we got 40 people there (we had 8 last week) we could fill balloons with anything we want and throw them at him, but if we got less he throws balloons at us. Luckily, we had exactly 40 people come so we will be filling balloons with eggs and flan soon. It was a good activity though. There was a good message shared and then we played volleyball in the gym. We also made a ton of brownies.

Today we're going to the Santiago Bernabeu! It's Real Madrid's stadium. I'm super excited. We're gonna do the tour. I'll make sure to take tons of pictures. Sorry for the lame email. It doesn't feel like it was a boring week, but as I look back to write about it I'm drawing a blank.

Love you,

Elder Johnson

Santiago Bernebéu Stadium 

Elder Johnson and Elder Rogers

Elder Johnson and Elder Goodman 

Temple Square in Spring 

Johnson & Johnson with Katty

Johnson ~ Goodman ~ Johnson

I went for a swim this week

Hey,

We had quite the week. We weren't really able to do much proselyting because we had mission leadership council, zone conference, and Katty's baptism, but we were really blessed this week. So I'll just run you through it in that order. Leadership council was awesome. It was probably my favorite one yet. We had some really good discussions and it's really cool to be a part of. President had some stuff happening that he had to take care of, but even though he wasn't there for part of it the council just kept going.

Zone conference was a really, really good one. We made some changes based on the suggestions president Johnson gave us. They also gave us a lot more time for our training than they have in the past. We had about an hour to teach the zone whatever we wanted and I loved it. I'm not kidding, public speaking is one of my favorite things I have learned on the mission. It's so much fun. Our part went well and everybody liked it so I think it was a success.

 I'm debating whether or not I want to explain Katty's baptism to you in a voice recording or if I want to take the time to write it out... First of all, it was nice to get in the water. That was really cool. The baptism started off well. She came on time. We had all the clothes ready. The font was full. Then we found out the ward we share the building with was having a party to celebrate the anniversary of the Relief Society. They planned on using the entire building. They had different activities planned in each room. We talked to them for like 20 minutes and eventually got a room to do the talks and stuff. About 5 minutes in they started blasting music on the intercom and refused to turn it off, so we listened to Muse, Greenday, ACDC, and Maroon 5 during the baptism. After the talks we were supposed to do the baptism, but when I got in the font the water only reached mid-shin. The drain wasn't plugged all the way. So everybody went back to the other room and sang hymns while our ward mission leader and I waited in the font. We finally filled it up and she came back in 20 minutes later. Right before I dunked her the Bruno Mars song ended and it went quiet. Right as she came up the Black Eyed Peas came on. It was the weirdest thing ever. She was confirmed yesterday by Elder Koppe and she is officially a member!

Also, we met this guy Juan last week and he's gonna get baptized next week. He's from Peru and has been investigating for 8 years. His whole family are members. After moving here he decided it was time to make the change and take the step. It's gonna be awesome.

Love you guys,

Elder Johnson 

Week 1 - Elder Goodman

Hey, 

This week was crazy, but it was super fun. We are going to start an even crazier week tomorrow. So Tuesday morning we got up early and went to the big train station in Southern Madrid to drop off elder Johnson. It was kinda sad. He's another one of my favorite companions. We saw a lot of success together and we had a ton of fun. After he left I got pretty busy. I was constantly on the phone with somebody that was lost or had a problem. Being travel coordinator is not fun. I bounced around a bunch making sure everyone had a companion until about 2:00 and then elder Hamilton and I went to the other big train station in Northern Madrid to grab our new companions. Élder Goodman came in around 2:30 and we grabbed some lunch. From there we headed back to B6 and life continued like normal.

 

Our week was pretty full of meetings, just like the beginning of every transfer. Élder Goodman seems a little tired. It's gonna take a minute to adjust to the lifestyle of a zone leader in temple Square. That being said I am a little more tired than normal since I'm doing a little extra. This coming week we have leadership council and zone conference. I'm super excited for our portion of zone conference. We always have about 30 minutes to an hour to do a zone training and I love it. I have loved public speaking situations lately.

 

Katty passed her baptismal interview with flying colors on Saturday night. She is so awesome. We started by asking her how to make ceviche and her telling us she's catholic and not changing, but now she goes to institute 2x per week, 2 FHEs, and we meet with her 2x every week. She's in the church 6 or 7 times a week. I can't wait for Saturday. Milagros will have her interview tomorrow night. She should be fine :)

Lunch with Katty and Milagros

Also, we found our next baptism! During the transfer chaos on Tuesday I got a call from the elders quorum president. There is a guy that just moved here from Peru about 3 weeks ago and he's asking if the missionaries can baptize him. His wife has been a member for like 20 years and his kids are also baptized. He just never wanted to do it even though he goes to church every Sunday. I'll keep you updated on the progress, but things are looking good. 

Today we are playing basketball with all the zone leaders and APs since we have the council tomorrow. I haven't changed, I still don't like basketball, but I feel bad if my companion can't play so we always come. Idk what else were gonna do today, but we'll see. We might go get our suits tailored. Oh yeah, I made my decision and I told President this morning. I'm not going to extend. I've thought about it a lot and I feel like that's the right option. But yeah, it's a longer email. I'll be on for a minute today. Let me know if you want to talk.

Love,

Elder Johnson 

The District
(with Elder Johnson before transfers)

Lots of Changes...

Hey,

Sorry you had a hard week. Hopefully everyone starts feeling better soon. We were dying when we read about the Jonas Brothers.. 😂 Are they still with Disney? We had a busy week as well. In fact, we have Transfers tomorrow.

Katty and Milagros are doing super well! We had an appointment with Katty on Friday night. She has kinda stalled for the last few weeks, so we decided not to talk about baptism, but focus more on temples. So we taught a lesson about eternal families and temples and she was super into it. In the end she asked how she could go to the temple, and we told her baptism is the first step. Her feelings towards baptism changed a lot in that lesson and she asked us if we would baptize her. We planned the baptism for the 16. The next day we ate with them in Elder Koppe's apartment. Milagros was there this time and we invited her to be baptized with her daughter. They will both be baptized next Saturday. I'm super excited for them.

Yesterday was nuts. We had 4 eating citas so Elder Johnson could say goodbye to everyone. He leaves tomorrow to go to Sevilla. He's gonna be Zone Leader down there. My new companion is Elder Goodman. He was in the MTC with me and he's another redhead. I'll be training him as a Zone Leader. We took a lot of pictures yesterday though. I'm really gonna miss this ward when I leave. The people here are awesome.

We aren't doing much today. We're gonna go eat with some members at 2:30, but other than that we have no plans. Tonight we're gonna play soccer with some friends and members and then we'll have a family home evening. I'm sure we'll talk later today.

Love,

Elder Johnson

(Josh has been sick for a couple of months and found out this week that he has asthma. The doctor he saw said it could be allergy related or adult onset asthma. Either way, he is being treated and feeling much better.)

These are pictures of some people from the ward in Barrio 6 that Josh LOVES and spends a lot of time with. They took a lot of pictures this week of friends from the ward since Elder Johnson is being transferred. 

Padilla Family selphie

The Jóvenes Family

With Adriana

With Daniel

With Rebecca

With the Benítez Family 

With the Garcìa Family

With the Padilla Family

With the Yucra Family

with Valentina and Adriana

with Santi