Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Brooklyn

SOOO this week was the first week that I have like been in an official companionship. its just me and elder jean BUT elder Campbell and elder Jones are still living with us and we all do comp study together. so its been a real different expierience when you have no idea how to work and then there is no one there to tell you either. its like walking around like a chicken does with his head cut off and then preaching the gospel while all of this is happening. im sure it doesnt actually look like that but it sure feels like it.

so because we have split our area just like our companionship we have litterally no one to teach once again.... Like i said last week the Dure family is looking pretty bleak and could use all the help in the world. this is pretty much due to the fact that they dont speak english very well and so they cant get a job easy. and they are all living together so their kids are all there together but during the day they are all out and so they have trouble for finding people to watch their kids. its really complicated and there is nothing the church can do for them so we are just checking up on them for now until everything gets less crazy.

we did however have a baptism this week!!! Jamarie finished being taught by elder Jones and Campbell and was baptized yesterday. it was a great expirience and he was baptized with another kid in the primary named tyson who the zls taught. Elder jones baptized him and will be confirmed by his neighbor kyle next week. it was a great day and probably wont happen for at least another 3 weeks for us cause we are pretty much starting over.

we did find one new girl named ruth who has lived in the states for about 4 or 5 months now i think. we went over to her place to teach and her cousin showed some real good honest intrest so we are going to visit them next week and see if they read and we will commit them to baptism. ruths husband was there and asked why we have to go to chruch cause we can pray in our homes and then ruths cousin raphiel started preaching to him. real funny that we didnt have to answer the question and that it resolved itself but yeah good expireience.

the other person we found is named smitty. he is shirlie dure's friend that she braught last week and he seems real interested and we will do the same thing for him this week. thats pretty much it for the people we are teaching. we walked soooo much this past week cause we are trying to find people to teach which requires some walking.

i got 5 min left so ill just end with saying that president nelson changed the music policy so now we can listen to anything that has soft lyrics and invites the spirit with no romantic lyrics. i have yet to figure out what this means but send me some instrumental music and ill love you forever....

anyway thats all for this week see ya!!!!

-Elder Johnson

i feel like my journal entries are repeating

so two weeks ago its seemed like everything collapsed on us. we lost contact with two of our investigators and our baptisms that we thought we set had more setbacks. this week things repaired them selves. we dropped in on shirlie who is part of the Dure family. she had been sick or not home all the week before so when she saw us her face just lit up. she is still meeting with us but she cant come to church still cause of work :(

the other sisters we havent met with either cause they have found a new english class that can help them with thier GED too but its for 7 hours a day. so they cant come to church and cant meet with us at all. the rest of the family is hard to meet with too cause of the father that is there most of the day too. we are trying so hard to get in there and they have come to far just to be too busy to meet with us. kinda frustrating.

we also found last week a guy named emanuel who had a baptismal date before we started meeting with him. we came in and could see that he still has a really strong interest. its pretty promising that he will progress especially since he dosnt work on sundays. our less actives this past week were on fire though. we were able to meet with terry and vinia each and they both fed us. they said they were going to come to church but both of them had things that came up at the last second.

we also did a street sweep which is where we set up a booth on the street and talk to everyone about the church. from what everyone said about other street sweeps that they did this one was really successful. i had some success with talking to people but also met some very interesting people, and the other elders in my zone set me up with some great experiences too.

first off sister valentine pointed out a man that was walking away from us and she said that she thought he would understand better in creole. so elder jean and i ran after him but before we could open our mouths he started screaming that mormons were from the devil in perfect english. we didnt even speak to him in creole and then another guy came up and said he would pray for us and for us to stop our demon worship. we came back and sister valentine asked us if he spoke better in creole with a huge grin on her face... sigh....

after that i came to a realization that most haitian people are really friendly and even if they dont agree with you they will still take a pass along card and say have a nice day. after meeting alot of haitian people i started talking to a jamacan guy. i gave him a pass along card and started talking about the BOM. he took the card ripped it up RIGHT in front of me and walked off. i really not starting to like bob marley and his "carpe diem" theology. bottom line was that we got a lot of names for the sisters and for the spanish elders.

the cops here are really funny. every time we pass them they always say to stay safe and to not stay out late too long. this is really funny cause the only people that bother us are homeless people asking for money that we dont have. we pass jahovahs witnesses everyday in like mobs of em and im glad that we have yet to have a colission with em.

EXCITING NEWS: my first transfer is over and im going to be paired ONLY with elder JEAN. elder jones will be living with us too and he will be a district leader and work with elder campbell, my mtc companion, who will also be living with us (yay). so for the past two days we have been running around getting ready for next transfer which includes putting up a new bunkbed, dresser, and desk, all while moving all our stuff around.

sister valentine is moving out of our district which is sad cause she was super fun and made things going. it seems like the sisters find the craziest people to teach. they brought a mental guy to church who will probably start stalking them and the district leaders said he wasnt accountable so he couldnt be baptized. it was a VERY interesting church meeting.

jamarie is still being baptized on the 16th so that is super exciting and he is really ready for it. after him though we are going to have to work really hard to find some more people cause everyone else is not progressing :( things looked really promising but now not so much now. anyway it was a really good transfer and we will still work hard next trasfer as well.

have a great week!!

-Elder Johnson-

The toilet is white

Sak Pase!

so we are at the library again. the more i look around and see what people have here it makes me realize how well i had it off in mckinney. even looking at the library makes me gratefull for the one back home... it also makes me wish that i used it more back home too.

not much has happened in the missionary work here. last week durring one of our lessons after english class Marie-Francois braught a friend with her. this is super great but she is trying to prepare for baptism this next week and so we are going to have to teach her a lot of commandments in the next week that hopefully she wont have any problems with. the reason why her friend was such a problem was that he asked a lot of the same questions and once again our member that was present talked for WAY to long about why we dont pray to joseph smith. all i would have said in response to that question would be like "no we dont. did you not hear the opening prayer?" but Guerby the member there talked for about 30 min about it. bottom line the lesson had nothing to do about the gospel of Jesus Christ, which was the plan for the evening.

after that little shin-dig we got a nice lesson afterward from our trainer about everything we did wrong. it was really frustrating cause i feel like i explained everything right but then elder jean redid everything i said like they didnt understand. that was really the highlight of the week cause i view it as a turning point that our companionship is taking. our other investigator jamarie has on the other hand THE BEST lessons that we have ever given. they are in english so i think thats why they go a little better.

hes super awesome and has been doing everything that we have asked him to do. its totally messing with my mind cause i thought we would baptize the Dure family long ago but things keep getting pushed back and they have yet to develope a pattern of comming to church. i think jamarie is going to get baptized before them and we have been teaching the Dures for 3 weeks more than him.

well thats all the madness that has been happening with our investigators. besides that i have some good news that our toilet is WHITE. crazy huh? like i said before our pad was NASTY when we got there. we did deep cleaning last tuesday and everything is WHITE. its beautiful. i told elder jones that he could eat his dinner off the toilet seat cuase it was that clean but he didnt take my offer.

i have responded to everyones mail that i recieved last week (woah) so you should all be getting it in a few days. we are going to Coney Island today. its not an actual island but an amusement park that is on the boardwalk. its the origonal location where Nathan's hotdog stand started so ill be tasting some authentic newyork food in about a half hour.

so im not going to talk much about conference other than that i stayed awake for the first time in my life. one of the district leaders investigators showed up and he even showed to the priesthood meeting. all i can say is that if that dosnt get him baptized i dont know what will. it was really strong and kinda gave us a ilttle breather which was much needed after dealing with all the people that we teach with and who we teach.

thanks for all the mail and mom keep sending my friends emails. TYLER NEEDS TO RESPOND.

love you all and have a great week :)

A bit more...

we went on splits on friday. it really wasnt that exciting except that my district leader elder kiser had this INTENSE conversation about God with a couple of muslim guys that stopped us in a car. it was in the pouring rain and elder kiser didnt give up. elder jean and i just held the umbrella while he testified of Christ being the son of God and how joseph smith was the prophet who restored the gospel. i did some more studying about some old testiment stuff cause i figured im going to get asked one of those questions one of these days so i might as well be prepared for it. so i thought that was pretty cool how much my district leader knew about the muslim faith and how much he knows too. that is all.


once again,


Elder Johnson

Another week of interesting people

Well not a lot happened this week, just a bunch of interesting people that we met. Last monday for pday we played zombie capture the flag which was super awesome and super hard to play even though we were only playing against one zombie. also last pday i realized how pricey NYC is and how over priced food is. wonder bread is 4$ and milk is 4.79$. what a rip. anyway i guess thats what you get for wanting to live in a city that 18 million other people want to live in. for the zone activity i made a quiche that was OK. and that is being generous. being on a missionary budget i didnt put that much bacon in it and no ham so it was pretty much spinich. it was SUPER healthy haha. this week im going to make chicken lime soup and that should be yummy.

the people we met with and taught were a little different this week. We taught the Dure family who are the haitian family that we found two weeks ago. its hard to teach them cause they all have different schedules and their father doesnt let us come into their house without being completely distracting and drives the spirit away. we are now on the thrid lesson for two of the sisters marie-francois and marie-carmel. the third sister shirlie has been taught the fourth lesson and is pretty much ready for baptism except that she has to get sundays off and come to church. the rest of the family, which is the mother susane and the brothers philip and alex, is still on the plan of salvation.

The second person we tried to meet with is Emmanuel jean. Everyone here has the name jean or marie in their name. its REALLY confusing when you look down your contact list and thats all you have written. haha. Emmanuel has yet to meet with us but is really interested and works a lot, just like the rest of NYC. we met his friend at the door and she wouldnt even tell us her name cause she was so against us. it was really funny after though cause as soon as elder jean and i (mostly elder jean) spoke in creole she opened up and told us her name. we even saw her the next day and she stopped us and talked to us. people are really funny here ahah.

The third person we are teaching is Jamarie. Hes from Trinidad and is 11. his step mom loves church and has been a member for years. she started to bring jamarie to church and he wants to get taught the lessons. apparently hes afraid of water but i think we can fix that pretty easily ahah. we helped his mom clean out her place so she could start renting the bottom floor of it. the guy that is moving in is lds and an rm and hes even a musician. i think he will be great for teaching and his family sounds super awesome. jamaries mom's (sis brewster) daughter works at the chase bank where we get cash from our cards from. shes kinda inactive but we come by and see her every couple of days when we need cash. she usually sees us first and stops to say hi.

Ive met some pretty interesting people like i said this week. First there was Evet who was a referal that was in the area book. we stopped by her house to find that she had broken her leg in two places and had no insurance cause shes right off the plane from haiti. her son wasnt paying for much help and she said he only works two hours a week. kinda was a touchy subject for her neighbors that were in her house cause i think they think that hes a lazy bum that ditched his mom when she needed a lot of help. we really dont know what to do with her but just to visit and teach her. we were going to talk to the bishop about if there is someone that we can put her in contact with that could help her. we know that we arent supposed to solicit the welfare program of the church so we were just looking for a way for her to get some insurance or a green card or somehting. sad story and we really want to help but there is almost nothing that we can do that will help her directly.

Another person we met on the bus yesterday noticed that we were missionaries for the church and asked about us. i confirmed what he said and asked if he was ever interested. he shook his head no so i gave him a pass along card. upon receiving this he picked up his phone and dialed the number on it to get a free book of mormon. he was speaking english so its not like there was a language barrier like there usually is but w/e... we were going to get his address and phone number either way haha.

anyway thats all for this week. thanks for the mail. i got a lot of letters this week that i will try to respond too. btw it takes about 5-7 days for mail to get to me from Texas. so yeah. oh yeah and send me some pictures on whats happening at home! ill see if i can locate a card reader so i can send some home too. have a great week everyone!!!

Elder Johnson

Flood Service

Ok well im at the public library so i have limited time to type today. so ill see what i can muster up in 30 min.

this week we were called to serve to help new jersey recover from the hurricane irene. they also got flooded again last week so the damage there was alot andit was kinda sad to see everything and everyone and the state they were in. the first time we went it was a wednessday. we went with our zone in the mission and met up with the elders in new jersey. the houses we did then werent really that bad but still effected. the first house we helped out was this guy in his 50s and he had a dodge viper and then his wife pulled up in a bmw z4 and THEN he drove away in his ford f350 with a full cab.

it was kinda wierd serving someone who was well off but still his basement was flooded out and all the walls had to be replaced. we ripped out the wood 2x4s that were holding up his walls and that was pretty much it. the next house we needed to wear masks cause of the mold that had started to grow from the water. it was 2 weeks past the flooding so add that with sitting water and thats what it looked like. anyway they ran out of masks so i didnt get one and they didnt want me to go in the house cuase i could have gotten sick. so i just kinda sat outside like a bump on a log cause they had nothing for me to do, i talked with them a little and made em smile so at least i was helping their spirits.

the next day we went was on saturday and this day we went with the ward. there were only two people who went on the bus with us cause everyone else drove their own vehicles. so we only worked with the ones on our bus. it was kinda sad that we only worked with only two members cause we were hoping to get to know the ward better but it was all good cause we got 2 referrals off of them and they said they wanted to help come teaching. it was a small but needed testimony that alot of help comes from the ward that is much needed.

so the first house we went to was this guy who was about 70 and his house was RIGHT by the river that flooded... so everything from like 6 feet up and under was destroyed and needed to be replaced. it was so sad cause he was sleeping in his car cause he had no where else to stay. his house was BAD. everything had mold on it and worst of all he had a hobby of fiddeling around with electronics so we hauled a bunch of computer equipement out and i just about died. the poor guys kitchen was even worse. good thing that the sister missionaries took care of it though cause i couldnt even breathe neer the kitchen. anyway we had the task of removing his carpet and move stuff out to throw out. i wanted to do more but there wereother people that needed help just as bad.

we did a short job of removing some dry wall for his neighbor after that. it was fun cause we got to remove whole walls with nothing but a crowbar and a hammer. verry fun for 19 year old guys. after that short work we went to another neighbor down the street and moved everything out of his place to the couches to dressers. we then TORE DOWN a shak that had floated into his yard. that was sooo tiring.

i have 5 min left :O our investigators are going well. they showed up to church and are keeping commitments. i think we will baptize one this next sunday and two next sunday. these are all in the same haitian family we found last week. we have a lot of people to see that were referred to us but the service toook alot of our time last week. so pretty much we have a lot of potential and just need to hit the pavement hard. oh and i made a kiech that is gunna be eaten today by our district. ill tell you how it goes. and we FINALLY mopped our place and so its clean!! yay!!! anyway love you all and write me some more!!!!!!!!! 

elder Johnson

At the Mission Home

This is Zach at the NY-New York South mission home with Pres. and Sis. Nelson.  Doesn't he look great?