October 29th

Family and friends,

 

Sorry I cant write all of you, the transfers make things a little tight.

 

First off, to the family, I got my package, and im so grateful to finally have American stuff. I dont know how long it was sitting in the office for, but im happy that I finally got it.

 

So anyway, today was transfers. What they do for transfers is on sunday night, we plan and do everything just like normal, then between 930 and whenever that night the assistants call the zone leaders and tell them all the changes in the zone, then the zone leaders call all the areas and tell them if they are changing. So we were waiting last night, and waiting and waiting and Elder Stocking was ready thinking he{d be gone cuz he had been there already 3 transfers, and so he thought I would stay and lead the area. So at 10:35 The zone leaders call us and they asked to talk to me, so my companion and I were a little shocked. Then he said you are going to las islas malvinas. Which for those of you who dont know are some islands just off of Argentina that they lost in war to the Britains and its a very touchy subject for them. So me and my companion laughed and said "hahaha good one, so whats the real news?" then he said youre going to las islas malvinas with elder Lauder... and we thought for sure it was a joke. Then he said, I have a few more people to call I will call you back. So we waited and waited again, and I started packing a little cuz I wasn{t really sure. Then he finally called back and explained that there is an area called las islas malvinas, which is way it the provencia. So I was super shocked, cuz yesterday my companion had said bye to everyone, and I didn{t say bye to anyone haha, so now its going to be a little weird for him to go to work today.

 

So anyway, today (and last night) it decided to rain a ton. The way we do transfers, is we call a guy, called a remisero. He{s like a taxi driver but he just uses his own car and he{ll go pretty much anywhere unlike a taxi. So we wake up at 630 like always and try calling some, but they all are saying that the roads are too flooded to work... so we had to go to a members house and wake them up and have them look up remises for us that would be willing to take us. We were supposed to be there at 9 but didn{t get to the offices until 10. It was crazy. Then I found my companion and around 1130 and we headed back to our area. I get to the area, and its nothing like capital buenos aires... There is like two 2 story buildings in our area, then I ask, do we get a lot of help from the members, and he says "Yeah, from the active ones". Then I ask, "How{s the Bishop" and he tells me "Its actually a branch president, we only have 20 active members in our branch, actually yesterday we broke the record and 21 people assisted sacrament meeting." So there you have it, thats what Im in for right now haha. I{m super excited, I know im going to have to work super hard, but im ready and willing to do it. Im pretty sad to be leaving San Cristobal, but obviously there is a reason for me coming to this area. Next week Ill send some pictures so you can all so what its like.

 

My companion, from what I know so far... He{s from Utah...and his family is all Utah fans, blech. He played water polo and was a swimmer though. Hes the oldest of 7 annnddddd thats all ive really learned this afternoon. Im excited to work here though. This is going to be a big test, and also I get to bless the sacrament in spanish for the first time so im really excited for that too :) I{m trying to get some things together so I can send a package home too, but its a little bit hard to do it all in one week so within the next 2 years you will receive a package haha :)

 

Well, I hope everything goes well this week, I hope you have a good halloween, and yeah.

 

Yo sé que este is la iglesia verdadera. Sé que Dios es nuestro Padre Celestial, y que Él mandó a su Hijo a la tierra para establecer su iglesia para que podamos tener las cosas necesarias a regresar a Él. Sé que las familias pueden estar juntos para siempre. Sé que el Libro de Mormon es verdadero y contiene palabaras verdaderas de los Profetas antiguos que hablaron con Dios. Les amo con todo mi corazón y les invito hacer todo posible para prepararse a vivir con nuestro Padre Celestial un día. Que tenga buena semana!

 

Con Amor,

Elder Johnson

October 22

Meat Truck

Supermarket

Justin's companion making fries.




 


Chapel where they attend church.




Justin, his companion, and a couple of Peruvian members.

 Family,

Thank you for the uplifting words.I know I´m in the right place, its just that it stinks when everyone else is having success and you are just sitting there working your butt off and not seeing results. Transfers are one week from today, so we´ll have to see what changes are made and if anything new comes out of it. The good news is, that on the 28th, we do have a set baptism. The only worry now is that his mom is in Peru, and his dad wants her to be here for it.... ughhh. But we talked to our leaders and we got permission to have her on skype to see the baptism, so tonight we have an appointment with the family, and we are going to talk to him about that. Also it´s his cousins birthday, so we are going to cook french toast for him. So that should be super fun. They don´t have maple syrup here, but Elder Stockings family sent him maple extract, so we are going to attempt to make our own. If not, I´m going to be more than happy to eat french toast with or without it.

So sounds like the weather is pretty weird over there right now, but apparently spring started about 6 weeks ago here, the only thing is that its rained or been cold for 95% of the time. Yesterday, it rained a ton and we had 2 appointments fall through so we did a lot of walking in it, and we didn´t have are jackets with us. I was pretty excited because I love the rain, (then usually the members give us hot chocolate too haha) but it turned out no one was home haha. I also decided that for sure for sure for sure peruvians have the best food in south america. We ate this thing called loma soltado and its rice, meat peppers and french fries, all together. I FINALLY GOT TO EAT SOMETHING SPICY!!!! It was so delicious and it was from a restaraunt so it was made almost perfectly. It was definitely the best meal I have had here on my mission.

I believe I told you about the girl we were teaching english too. It turns out that she is super weird. We´ve gone to her house 3 times to teach her and then at the end of one of the lessons she told my companion that one day they were going to get married. It was super funny and we started laughing cuz we all felt like she was being a little weird. Then my companion was super direct and was like, "Sorry, but thats not going to happen." and stuff like that. We had a member with us too who was super direct with her. We were pretty bold on the rules and everything, so pretty sure she won´t be a problem anymore, especially because she told us that she would be going to church si o si with out a doubt and then we called her and she said she had an emergency and would be there for only sacrament meeting (sacrament is last in our ward) and sacrament came around we called her again and she was still busy haha.

So its been raining a ton, we might finally have success, and things are starting to look better. There is a Chilean in my ward, and he helps us out a super ton and he told me the other day that he would by me a soccer jersey from chile or colo-colo, I thought that would be something that matt would like to hear. It´s fun to work with him too because he teaches us a lot of chilean slang. It´s super weird to think that in every country spanish is different. Like what I spoke in Fresno, doesn´t work here haha and then there is a word in Argentine spanish that means cry baby, but its one of the most offensive swear words in Chile. I definitely feel like my spanish is improving pretty quickly.

Yesterday I had to give a talk in church, and I prepared a ton, and I was super excited to speak, and my companion even gave a shorter talk cuz I wanted to speak for a long time. But turns out that Argentina has to be different than everyone else, so yesterday was mothersday in Argentina, so there was a lot of speakers and I only got to speak for 5 minutes and I was super ticked. I hope I got my point across though. I can´t remember who it is in our ward, I think its brother farnsworth, but I talked about how he always talks about the gospel to people when he flies places. A lot of people said they liked my talk but I didn´t feel like I said what I wanted to in only 5 minutes.

October 15th

Family,

Thank you for the update. It is really sad, but I´m glad she doesn´t have to be suffering any more. Could you send me a picture of the cement thing? and if we have any pictures with her to please. I would like to see that. I hope everyone is doing okay there. I´m fine here.

So this week was quite the let down. I´m tired of not having any success out here. Me and my companion feel like we are doing everything right, and we´re just not having any success. This week, we had a 10 year old kid, whose dad is a member. He was less active for a long time but recently started coming back to church. His mom is super catholic and doesn´t want anything to do with us. This sunday, David was going to get baptized, but on tuesday his mom said that he needs to wait and make sure he really understands what he´s doing. Which he does, because we already gave him the interview and everything and he knows. Then we had a lesson with the dad, and told him that he needs to talk to his wife and do all thats possible to change his wifes mind, because the longer he goes without being baptized, the longer he´s not going to have the Holy Ghost, and the longer satan is going to be able to work on him. So the next day we called, and he said that he talked to his wife, but nothing changed... we´re pretty sure that he didn´t talk to her and that he´s just scared of her. So nothing changed all throughout the week, no matter how hard we tried. it was really upsetting on sunday, when the dad didn´t even wake him up to take him to church. :( but we´re going to keep working with him and hopefully this sunday.

Then on tuesday, we had to go 1 hour by train to go to the presidents house for transferly interviews, where I thought I was going to receive my package, but I didn´t haha. so that means I probably won´t get it until october 29th when we have transfers. I guess the best news of the week was that this lady that has been waiting to get baptized for a long time, and has been goign to church every week for months, but isn´t married. Is finally going to be able to get married, but on november 20th. So whoever stays here next transfer is going to have a set baptism haha.

But ughhhh,, I just have no idea at all what we are doing wrong right now, I just hope that we can see success before too long.

Something funny that happened, yesterday the stake had this competetion thing where all the youth give a talk and they choose the best talk or something like that from each ward then they compete against the whole stake... something like that. but then they were taking a ton of pictures of the kids at the pulpit, and the bishops wife told him that they aren´t allowed to be doing that, but they continued anyway, haha. Then after that, they asked for everyone to give all the youth a round of applause, then one of the sisters sitting next to us just shook her head and said, I don´t think we´re supposed to do that either. It was super funny, and we were all just waiting for some lightning to strike the building or osmething.

Ohhh yeahhh,,, I just remembered something I can share with you haha. We had divisions with our district leader on wednesday, and I was with an Elder from Chile who started the mission the same day as me. He went to the Argentina MTC so I put 2 and 2 together and found out that Ian Hatch was in his district in the MTC. Then that night, we ordered a pizza, at 9 pm from a restaraunt that is 1.5 blocks from our house. Like its from our house, to the dutsons house, we can see it from our apartment. We have to be in bed at 10:30, so at 9:45 I called and said, I ordered a pizza 45 minutes ago, and with the terrible customer service here, the lady said, it was not that long ago... but anyway, its coming. So we waited 10 minutes... still didnñt come. Called and they said oh yeah its on its way. Then at 10:10 I called and said look, We ordered a pizza more than an hour ago, you are 1 block away and it hasn´t come. then he asked me about 10 times if I was sure, because all their orders had already been delivered... then he said alright 10 minutes and it will be there. So at 10:25 we called and I let the Chileen talk because he could be more bold and he said, we oredered a pizza an hour and a half ago and its not here, so we want to cancel it, and the lady pleaded with him for so long to just wait that it finally got there at 10:29, so we had to eat our pizza in the dark in bed haha it was super pathetic, so I was just thinking I would let you know thatyou should be greatful that your pizza gets there in 30 minutes or less. Thats a huge blessing.

Anyway, thats my week. Hopefully I can have pictures of a baptism to send home to you next week. I love you. Don´t forget to read and pray every day.

Love,
Elder Johnson

October 8th

First off, I cannot believe that missionaries can leave at ages 18 and 19 now, that is so insane!!!! After I heard that I was just so excited and all I could think about was how incredibly quick the missionary work is going to grow and about all the people who could leave right now. I just wanted to yell with excitement, I don´t really know how to explain it. I was just so happy. I was also excited to hear that Tucson is finally going to have a nice building in the city, haha :p. Yeah, the first session was a little rough for me though, because they didn´t have an english session in the stake center we were at. So for the second session we went to another one and watched it in english. Then we don´t get to see the priesthood session because it starts at 9 pm here... I was a little bummed about that. So then the sunday morning session, we had to go to the spanish session cuz we had investigators there and so that was a little bummer once again that I didn´t get too much out of that session. It´s just that it was hard to take notes and listen and have the apostles and prophet saying big words that translate into big spanish words. Then for the last session, (youre going to like this one) we got the stake president to set up an english tv for us, because we now have an investigator who speaks english. :)

So there are some elders from another area, whose apartment is in our area. A few weeks ago, they were leaving their apartment when a guy yelled, "Hey Mormons!!" So they quickly turned around after hearing english and all, and they got the guys information and told him that we would come by one day. So for the past 2 weeks, we have been going by and calling his apartment number, but he never answered. Then one day, we were just walking by and me and my companion, without saying anything both turned into the entrance, and rang his apartment number. He answered, "Hola?" with a TERRIBLE spanish accent. Then I said, "Uhhh, is this John?" He says, "Oh, yes, hi!" I then say, "Hi John we´re umm, we´re the Mormon missionaries." Then he said, "Oh no way? Alright! Do you guys want to come in?!?!" He is super super friendly, and he is an english teacher, who travels from country to country teaching english and starting english schools, then leaves the school off to someone else. Right now he is here in Argentina, not having any success. He told us that he feels super lonely right now, and that he is 60 years old. All he does is sits in his apartment all day and smokes and drinks. We talked to him about baptism, and he wants to get baptized, and he goes back to the united states for good in december. So we´re going to be working really hard with this guy, but it is going to be an exciting thing. It is also pretty hard to teach in english, as funny as that sounds, but its going to be a cool experience. I think it would be super awesome to baptize an english speaker here in the depths of Buenos Aires. 

This week was pretty successful too, which was refreshing since we have been having some rough times. We have a baptism set for this weekend, and a baptism set for every weekend til the end of this month. One thing that happened this week that was super cool, was that super awesome kid from Peru, that is living with his aunt uncle and cousin, we talked to his cousin, and his cousin wants to get baptized, so on the 28th is when he will be getting baptized. The kid that is a member, will turn 16 on the 22nd of october, which means that he will be able to receive the priesthood, and then be able to baptized his cousin. I am super excited too because that will be possible my last sunday here in this area depending on how transfers go. 

Oh and how could I forget, I got my ingrown toenail removed. We went 1 hour by subway to the south american church offices, which was definitely the nicest building I have seen here. And the doctor numbed my toe, and cut my toenail then ripped it out. I thought it was going to be a lot grosser than it was. But its just been really painful all week. It shouldn´t hurt too much longer though.  

I hope you enjoyed the empanadas. We get empanadas every thursday from a member. I´m kind of getting sick of them but I´m just thankful to have real food and not be eating flour and water like some missionaries have to do. Anyway hope you all have a good last week of break. I hope you enjoyed conference and got a lot of inspiration and advice you were looking for. I love you all!! Until next week!

Love,

Elder Johnson

October 1st

Family,

This week, like many in the past... was pretty rough. A lot of things got switched around for leaders and stuff and so we had some plans fall through cuz we werent informed about meetings that were going to be dropped for us. Well, to start things off good, we were reading through the information sheets of past investigators, and we found 2 girls and their mom who had been to church before, and their older brother was already a member for more than 6 years. The sheet said that their mom wasn´t interested at all, but obviously she gave her son permission to be baptized so we thought that we would head on over and see if we could get in and find out what was up with them. It turns uot that they were super interested a while ago, but their dad wouldn´t give them permission to be baptized, so they couldnt, and with that they stopped going to church (for some reason their brother stopped going too). So we were talking to them all week, and we shared some messages with them and we asked them, "if you could be baptized tomorrow would you do it?" and they were both really reluctant, and they told us that they were scared of what their dad would say. Then we talked to them more and found out that their dad doesn´t live with them and he only has time with them on saturdays and sundays and he just randomly calls and gets them for like 4 hours each day. So that meaning that they only need permission from their mom. Although we knew they weren´t going to be able that week, we were working super hard to get them, and their brother, to go to church so they could be baptized this week. So we called at 830 on sunday morning and he told us that he was too tired because they went to a wedding saturday night and didn´t get home until 6 am.... so none of them came to church.

So thats a bit of a bummer right now. The rest of the good things that happened this week, are that one of our recent converts moved away, and now we just found out he moved back. and he is super capo, he´s only 15 and he wakes up at 5 and goes to all the peoples houses that don´t go to seminary and wakes them up so they can go at 530. He´s a super stud. and so we found out they people he lives with aren´t members. His aunt uncle and cousin and they all came from peru. So the first day we visited them they fed us arroz chaufa, no idea what chaufa is but arroz is rice and it had a ton of meat in it and was super good. then the next day we had siviche which is raw fish covered in super spicy lemon sauce. IT WAS SO GOOD!!! I am beyond jealous that will is going to Peru on his mission because they are so super friendly and they have the best food in the world. It was incredible. Then also, mcdonalds here has this thing on sale and its a triple cheese burger.. when I say on sale, here that means its like 2.75 for it but still, I don´t know if they have those in the united states but it was stinking delicious. 

Also I was on divisions with our district leader and we had lunch with a family from ukraine... and the kids only speak spanish not the parents so they translate through us... and obviously someone translated wrong cuz we didn´t get lunch haha. and it was super but super awkward. 

So thats all the news I have. I can´t believe the wards split again. Thats gonna be weird to give my talk when I get back in a different ward. they should have a plaque moving ceremony or something for all the elders, cuz right now there are a lot out and we´re pretty important :p. Oh and if youre going to make empanadas chicken is the best or ham and cheese. Let me know how they go. Oh also you need to try milanesa and let me know how you like that. make sure you soak it all in mayo cuz thats how they do it here :p

I love you all, thank you for emails, and hopefully I´ll get my package this week. Oh and I can´t wait for conference, hope you all receive the answers youre looking for! Make sure the kids stay awake for conference cuz now I understand how important it is and they need to also. 

Love,

Elder Johnson

P.S. I have an ingrown toenail and I have to get it removed on tuesday or wednesday. I´ll have pictures next week :p Love you mom! haha