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

Progress

This week was a good start with a lot of things. The work is getting a little better and we had some fun travel to Málaga on Friday. We found a university library near our piso so we won't have to travel to the church for wifi anymore. That's Gonna save us an hour or two every day. We also got a list printed off of all the members in the ward and the secretary marked all the part member families. We're gonna try to clean up on that and complete some families. We officially have an investigator! We will have at least one lesson to teach every week now. 😅 We had a family home evening with some members this week that was super fun. We brought a friend that is from Africa with us.. His name is Black. It's kind of a funny name but he's cool.

I really like Málaga. It feels like a beach town, but it's still big city. We had to catch a bus at 7am and we came back around 7pm. It was a long day with 6 hours in a bus, but it was worth it. The meeting was good and it was fun to eat lunch with all the other missionaries there. I'm kinda glad I won't be in this area more than 2 transfers though. The combination of all the travel in bus and the big hills we walk everyday is wrecking my hip. I'm hoping we can get bikes and that might help. 

Here's the coolest part! Elder Jemmett needs his residency card so we are going to Madrid on Monday! I'm emailing Elder Goodman, Mitchell, Koppe, and Santi so we can meet up in Sol to hang out. I can't wait to see them again and to be in Madrid. I pretty much bullied the office Elders into getting us good tickets so we can have a lot of time in Madrid. I wasn't gonna let this opportunity go to waist. And then instead of coming back to Jaén that night, we're going to Málaga for zone conference. 

Thanks for the awesome soccer updates! That was awesome. I hope United can pick it up soon. I'm super excited for Ole Gunnar. He's awesome. Love you,

Elder Johnson

Jaén - Week 1

Hey, 

     This week has been super interesting. Jaén is a pretty city and I love being in the mountains again. It only took me about 10 minutes to get my bearings in the city because we actually have mountains to look at. It's been 2 years since I knew which way was North. We live on the eighth floor and we have a big balcony with a great view of a big castle. I'm loving that. 

     We travel a lot in between Jaén and Granada. There are 4 missionaries in each city and we are one big district so we rotate which city we do district council in. This week we had a meeting for all the district leaders in the mission and I had to do a 15 minute "workshop", but since I'm in the middle of nowhere I had to do it over Skype. That sucked. This week we have another meeting like that but I'm going to travel to Malaga for it. I'm pretty excited to get to know Málaga. I just need to go to Cadiz now and I'll have conquered the mission. I've served in 5 of the 7 zones now. 

     The work is interesting here.. Actually we don't have a lot right now. When I got here on Tuesday we sat down to talk about the area and my companion told me that we don't have any investigators and we don't meet with the members, so we average 1 or 2 appointments per week. We've got some work to do. I haven't spent so much time in the street talking to people since Zamora.. I haven't had an appointment yet, but I called a bunch of members last night so we should at least visit them this week. We'll see if we can make some progress soon. 

     My comp is a good kid. He is new in the mission and hasn't had the best examples around him so we are learning as we go. I've never had a comp that I have so little in common with. I can generally talk to anybody about anything but this has been hard to figure out. We have a lot of awkward silence in piso. He's a super good kid though with good intentions and I'm sure we'll figure it out. 

     I got the package this morning! Thank you so much for sending that! I actually do appreciate the treats a lot. I have had a pretty bad sweet tooth lately and nothing to satisfy it. Unfortunately I am in a branch now that doesn't have a TV so the cord doesn't help much, I'll bring it home with me though.. I got rid of my old debit card and I signed the new one so that should be ready to go. Thanks for sending that. 

Love you, 

Elder Johnson

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 😉).