Feb. 13, 2012

 well we finally had a baptism here in midwood. it only took 4 transfers but it happened. elder storey and i baptized carolina rosario and you can look at the pics below for all that. but yeah it was such a good service and i was so glad that i had a part to play in her conversion as well.

i also have some exciting news..... im getting transfered. i never thought it would happen but im finaly leaving my first area. i have no idea where im going cause usually some other elder has heard one thing or another but i have no idea. so yeah im packing up all my things which really isnt that hard cause i have been living out of a suitcase for the last transfer so it should be pretty easy.

elder storey is going to be training and hes REALLY nervous about that but i have full confidence in him that he will be great with the new haitian speaker in midwood. this last sunday i was asked again to bear my testimony as a last minute move by the bishop and they gave me about 25 minutes. i actually talked for 20 min without having anything prepared and i think that was a miricle in itself that i was able to do that. cause before my mission it was hard getting it up to 10 minutes.

so yeah a lot of the members here are sad to see me leave and our teaching pool is finally looking good so im sad to leave that but i guess the lord has a purpose for me elsewhere. this next transfer im going to start learning french so i can speak better to people and not just limiting myself to just a pure creole. its going to be interesting but with a 5000 page dictionary anything is possible.

i really dont know what else to talk about other than the fact that im kinda sad to leave here but im glad that i left the area in a much better condition than when i found it. things were hard here and im sure they will be hard where ever i go. im hoping that i will get elder jean as my companion cause i think we could do some real work together. idk but ill tell you all about it next week. have a great week everyone and keep up the good work with emails!!! :) :)

-elder johnson

Feb 6, 2012

well in case you didnt know the giants won cause let me tell you everyone in NYC knows and likes to talk about it. this week in my life of being a missionary was pretty normal but really goooooood. first off we had 5 investigators at church yesterday and 2 of them are getting baptized this sunday as well as 2 the following week and the last one said that she would get baptized next month BUT i think we can change that

so yeah right now we are really focusing on Carolina and Lamartine who are planning on being baptized this next week. Carolina is AWESOME. im not going to lie i didnt want to talk to her about 3 weeks ago at that fateful bus stop because A) shes a beautiful Dominican girl B) shes a beautiful Dominican girl and C) shes a beautiful Dominican girl. that sounds really bad but like i said im not going to lie i was kinda intimidated and i told myself i came on a mission to talk to people about the gospel and not to look for a wife. but that problem was shortly solved when elder storey walked up and said hi. haha lame i know but i learned a lesson that day and we shortly found out that she was totally prepared for the gospel and she was already living gospel standards (which is really rare in ny) and it was a done deal when she came to church and the ward just gobbled her up and she was instantly accepted.

lamartine is the man. he came straight here from haiti and has been really sad and really sick for the past month. he was really on the fence about baptism but he said every time that we come over he feels so strong and then he came to church and said that he feels so good. it especially helped when one of the strong haitian members (se cadimice who is like a second mother to me) came up to him and really got him involved and helped him alot with understanding everything in sacrament.

so yeah those are the people that we are working with so far. sry that this email is kinda short and has not pictures but im waiting for elder sterling who has my birthday pictures so ill send them today when i get them copied. so yeah it was great to hear from everyone and for the letters that i have gotten. have a great week everyone!!!

-elder johnson

ps having a car is soooooo much better than NYC MTA buses

Pics from NY

Jan 23, 2012

Hey everyone this week is sponsored by the Sparticus workout from Men;s Health magazine. this morning elder storey and i put it to the test and now i feel like a spartan... more like a dead spartan but it made the day have a good fresh start. lots of exciting things happened this week and i am hoping even though i have not have a lot of numbers here in midwood that i could maybe stay here for my 5 transfer.

ill hold off on all the exciting stuff so you are forced to read all the boring stuff. HA! its ok cause some of it is funny. so i hope you all figured out who was my companion from my last email that was apparently confusing but just ask kayla for some pictures cause she got some good ones of him. speaking about elder storey i have been really grateful to have him as a companion cause he has experience in the hood of brooklyn and is just the funniest guy ever. all the other elders say that im super lucky to have him as a comp but it just hit me this week on 3 separate occasions that i would totally be lost if he wasnt there to teach about a principle or how to react to a question.

yesterday the bishopric was scattered cause i think one of the speakers called last minute and said that they wouldnt be coming to sacrament meeting so they asked 3 elders (including me) to bear their testimony. good thing it only had to be about 8 or so minutes cause i was really nervous for some reason. but yea i just boldly testified of the church and of what i have learned on my mission. i talked a lot about the BOM because of the next exciting thing...

2 INVESTIGATORS CAME TO CHURCH!!!! WOO!!!!!!! oh man that was a miracle that this ward has been needing for a while. one was a creole guy that the sisters gave to us and that i have been teaching for about 2 weeks now and he finally came to church!!! he said it was his dream to become a member of the real church of jesus christ and he was familiar with the church back in haiti so he is looking pretty solid. he said that he had a question about jesus chirst visiting the americas but i think that it will go nicely with the next lesson we have planned for him.

the next investigator that came to church was named carolina who is from the Dominican republic and she is penticostal so she has a lot of beliefs that are really ingrained in her head but she said she was open to posibilities and i got a strong feeling to show her lds.org and mormon.org and lo and behold as soon as she went home her cousins told her a bunch of anti material (from what it sounds like they are getting multiple beliefs mixed up and just a bunch of nonsense) but we are going to meet with her and tell her that if she continues to read about the book of mormon and find out if its true she will come to know that all those other things are not true and dont matter.

the last great thing that happened is that we visited a member named shaniel and she has a twin sister named shanelle. anyway they just turned 16 and they have NO support from their parents, in their lives, church, and hardly financially cause they dont have a phone, computer or anyother form of communication. anyway we visited them on their birthday which was kinda sad cause they didnt have ANY plans for their sweet 16 so we cheered them up and we (elder storey) made em a brownie. we also helped them over come some trials in their life and talked about how the atonement can heal anything that comes from the burdens of life.

anyway this week was super good and im so glad that im a missionary and have the opportunity to serve here in midwood and help people come closer to chirst. oh one last thing we visited the muir family who are going through some rough times as well and shared with them a mormon message from elder holland which i feel like really inspired them. they are such a good family and i hope everything works out for them.

anyway thats all for this week and ill end with some pictures:

pic 1: elder sterling one of the spanish elders we are curently living with
pic 2:me at a subway station
pic 3: shaniel with the brownie

have a great week everyone and ill write to ya next week!!!!

-elder johnson

1/16/2012

so yeah i just realized that its mlk day cause it doesn't really affect us but still its good to know that one guy had his head on straight. 

anyway so sorry that im emailing a lot latter than usual cause we came to park slope in the stake center and all the staton island elders where already here and all the comps but it was good to see some new faces. this week our pad fell apart and the decaying rat inside our fridge was BAD like really BAD and so elder storey called the senior couple the brownells and they got us out at 7:00 in the morning so that day we were kinda mad that we had to start out our day like that and then drag all of our stuff up 5 flights of stairs but other than that its great to live in a pad that doesn't smell like dead rat.

our new pad mates speak spanish and are super funny about the way they do their work which is the total opposite of how we do it in english and creole. this week none of our investigators came to church which was super sad cause two of them said they would but alas maybe another week. so we visited the couple from st. lucia again and they are SOOOOO SUPER NICE!!!! they welcome us in and just have a loving spirit to them that i can just see the potential in them. we shared the book of mormon with them and this week we will invite them to come to church.

the pictures are my new hair cut, elder storey with his face mask on, and then elder frandson and chan. ok so funny story about elder chan. last thursday we had zone conferance and we got the share our testimonies at the end. elder chan got up and bore his testimony in broken english and said "i love fearlessing. but i have question for you. do you fearless the jew? i fearless the jew. one time i fearless this guy, SO JEW. he study a lot and asked us what is love?" it was so funny but it showed to me that elder chan really came on his mission to preach about christ and he even got a reaction from a JEW and even started teaching a JEW!!! i never thought that was possible cause they usually just scowl at us and ignore us.

anyway other than that edward is still coming to church but has yet to accept our baptismal invite so we will probably drop him cause he is becoming a problem for some of the members and is probably in the church for the wrong reasons.

good news though we found another family to help with in the ward. the muir family is trying to change their lives and start coming back to church. it was great to see them and even better to see that after trucking it through the FREEZING cold weather that they opened the door to us, gave us hot chocolate and cornbread, offered to drive us home, and said we want you to come back. WHAT A MIRACLE. we were truly blessed that day that some one let us in. we are going to help them become closer as a family and over come some relationship problems that they are having as well.

that's pretty much it other than we are playing soccer today and that its freezing here (under 30 degrees) and has yet to snow which is apparently very unusual which is good cause my face froze off last night.

thanks everyone for all the mail that i got and for all the prayers and stuff. have a great week!!

-elder johnson

New transfer, new beginnings

well here we are another week has gone by but i feel like things are going to turn around. we have new zone leaders and a new pair of english elders and a new sister. lots of things changed at transfer meetings and my new companion is fresh from brownsville which is the ghetto of brooklyn. hes heard some gunshots over there and there was just a shooting where this lady was killed from protecting her kids... and that was down the block from where the elders where at.

cool story about elder storey (haha what a pun) the first day he was moving in our pad this crazy lady who always asks us for money but we are told not to give them any so we just always tell her sorry BUT this time she started cussing us out and elder storey started yelling at her too and eventually told her to go away and she just ran off mad. it was a good first day in our companionship and i automatically nkew that i was going to like elder storey haha.

weve been real blessed this week. at first we had to give away a bunch of names of people that we contacted but then just last night we decided to stop by one more house and we met this really nice family from st lucia (in the caribian). it was pretty cool to see that miricle happen and then we had this awesome district meeting where elder carnahan the new zone leader (he was assistant to the president last transfer) told us that we are going to change our zone from the least baptizing one to the most. that its self is going to be a miricle cause we havent had a baptism in 4 months (since i got here) but we are really trying hard to have 1 person for each companionship get baptized this transfer.

we are trying to work on the dad of jamarie brewster whos named marlin and hes this tall guy with dreads down to the floor and has shown interest in the church after a long time of not. so we are going to start working with him as well as the family we found yesterday. we are also going to institute a meal calandar for the ward because for some reason the other one never was passed around and never got started.

those pics from the hockey game look sweet and you know you cant win em all but i know that if you have faith and a belief in something true (like the stars winning) anything is possible. that was scripture in case you couldnt tell. in my attachments i sent a bad one of me at the transfer meeting with everyone that was in the district at the begining and then also a couple of elder storey.

we are going to be playing soccer today so i hoep i dont kill myself but it should be really fun. some new activity in our pad is that it stinks like dead animal cause a rat ate some poison then crawled up in our fridge and died. so now it smells like death in our food preperation area and the scent will make you loose your lunch/appitite. also the tenant above us had a bad leaking problem so its making our walls all bloated and water logged and the person incharge of our appartment is dumb and is trying to not fix it but brother brownel who pays the bills for our housing is not taking crap from them so hes yelling at them at a daily basis and telling them to get on it or we are moving out. im interested in seeing who will win this one.

anyway so pray for the dead rat in our fridge that it can go away and for marlin that he can accept the gospel and our baptism invite as well. hes a super cool guy and i think elder storey and i will make his conversion process the best it can be.

-elder johnson

Dec. 19, 2011

hey everyone this week was amazing because we found some new people to work with and they speak creol!!!! this is super awesome cause its been a while since we have taught a lesson in creole and yester we had a member named charles makison who is preparing himself to go on a mission. we spent the whole day with him and taught a guy named alex prophet who we had found earlier this week.

sorry but this email might be kinda short cause ill be talking with everyone next week also can some one tell me what we are doing for my call home?? just email me details or ill just call on christmas to the house. its w/e.

anyway but yeah we found this other man by the name of duguy and he is da guy cause he has a real desire to find the real church of christ and it felt really amazing to promise him blessings and knowledge if he took moronis promise. i think he will continue to meet with us. he has met with other faiths and done alot of researching but i hope he will see us thourgh.

this week at church edward who the sisters taught but now we are teaching came to church. it was good to see that the ward welcomed him and everyone was friendly to him. also we went to a baptism of an 8year old haitian. a ton of people came and there was a big response from the ward. if only we could get a response like that for a convert  baptism.

today for pday we are going to ihop and i kinda left my pday clothes at another pad of some elders when i was going on exchanges. so im wearing some of elder jones' pants, shoes and a huge ghetto coat that i found in the pad. the pictures i sent are some delicioiuds food items that i made this week including the worlds most perfect steak and a hotdog wrapped in ham and then wrapped in bacon. yes it was pure genius if i say so my self.

anyway i have to go but thanks everyone for the chrismas gifts and ill call next week some time around 3-5 ny time. sorry if thats really vague and i cant remember when church is for you guys so yeah have your cell on if you are....

so yeah thanks everyone and have a great week and i cant wait to call on sunday around 3-5!!!!

-elder johnson

Grand Central Station