Home - Mission Accomplished!

This is the last post for this blog. Elder Johnson (Clint) is now home! He arrived at about 3:45 pm this past Tuesday, Dec 11, 2012 (I'm a little slow in posting this).

It is super great to have him home again and especially for the holidays. He looks great and is doing great. You can very much tell that the mission experience for him was a tremendous blessing in his life, as it was for many people in his mission, and our family as well. He is planning to continue attending UVU starting in January. If you wish to contact him, his email address is clintj42@gmail.com and his new phone # is:385-201-3014.

He speaks in our church tomorrow, Dec 16th at 9:00 am. The address is 56 W 600 N, Lindon UT. Anyone who wishes to come is welcome.


BTW: We'll be starting another blog soon for Marci. Yep, she has her call and is opening it tonight as soon as she returns home from New Mexico where she has been attending Highlands University and starting as a forward on the soccer team. Look for it soon!

Temple and another sprained ankle

Today we went to the temple. It was awesome we just got back. This is why I didn't write yesterday because p-day is on Tuesday this week.

Last week after we finished e-mailing we went with some other Elders and played some volleyball. It was great fun. Elder Phair jumped up to block a spike, missed it and landed on his right ankle instead of his foot. Quite strangely he managed to stay standing. And suddenly exclaimed, my ankle hurts. And proceeded to limp off the court. Unfortunately he sprained his ankle very badly. Fortunately this gave us the opportunity to request a car from our counterpart missionaries. They handed over the keys with dismay and we have enjoyed driving by car this whole week. We have contemplated pushing Elder Postel down the stairs so as to maintain our privilege of the car. :)

Other than sprained ankles we have had an awesome week this week. We have witnessed miracles with Kirsten. She was set to be baptized on December 8th. The only problem was that she had only come to church once and she needed to come twice and she worked that Sunday. We fasted that she would be able to get work off. We had a lesson on Sunday and she told us she was 90% sure had got it off. But there was another concern that had arisen. She had to quit coffee. She has drunk coffee her whole life and has no desire to quit. This coming Sunday she came to church and since it was fast Sunday (and we figured, hey it worked the first time.) we decided to fast that she would be able to quit coffee. Now it comes time for another one of those I-never-thought-I-would-use-this-skill moment. Before my mission I had a sincere liking for Pero, a substitute for coffee. I had perfected it to taste really good and I had it nearly every day. I hadn't had it all on my mission. On Saturday we taught Kirsten that she needed to quit coffee, she was devastated. I told her about Pero and how much I liked it. She said maybe if it tastes exactly like coffee. Right before the night ended we went to Winco and bought her 3 things of pero. On Sunday morning we brought them all by her house. The second we knocked on her door she was taking her first few sips of her daily coffee. And we showed up with Pero. She exclaimed I knew you guys were going to come! She quickly mixed it up (with my perfected instructions mind you (ps if you ever want to try pero, never try it with water because it's nasty. You always have to have it with milk and a lot of sugar.)) She tried it and said, "I can do this." She has not drunk any coffee since then. YAY!

She will not be able to be baptized this Sunday because she doesn't feel ready and because she is still struggling to quit coffee. I won't lie. I am extremely sad that she will not be able to be baptized this Saturday. But I care far more about Kirsten and her salvation and her being ready for it than me being able to be present for the baptism. Yes the truth must finally come out. I am going home soon. This may be the last letter I write to you all. I love my mission with everything I am. And I love the people here with all my heart.

Farewell to you all I pray that we will all be able to stay in touch forever. I love you all!

Elder Johnson

Natalie's Baptism!!!

So Natalie was baptized this Saturday it was awesome! This whole week we have been preparing for it. We had taught her all the doctrine, she passed the interview for baptism, we invited everyone in the ward, we scheduled the font, we prepared the program, and we set up a tv for the interlude. Saturday at 7pm there was a baptism for a child of record and Natalie's baptism was at 8pm so we didn't have to fill the font or set up the chairs. Everything we could possibly think was prepared and ready to go......or so we thought.

7:30 rolls around and we show up to make sure everything is in order. The last baptism is still going on and we peer into the font and...well there must have been some kind of mis-communication because the font was completely empty! They had drained the font right after there baptism. The font takes 2 hours to fill and our baptism starts in 30 minutes!!! Elder Phair looked at it...frowned...and said, "this is bad." He looked way overwhelmed and stressed then said, "well I'll be in charge of handing out the programs." So he handed out programs and me and Elder Postel frantically began the process of filling the font. We acted quickly. We immediately started the water as high as it could go. We then went around the church frantically looking for anything that we could fill with water. We had a bunch of garbage cans and a cooler and things. We took them to each bathroom sink and to the custodial closet and began filling them with water. Turns out the only water in the whole building that gets hot water is for the font everything is bitter cold. But we had to fill that font and we needed to do it now. So we carried the water across the church and dumped it in. Natalie was like what's going on. We were just like nothing everything's going to be ok. And it was. Despite the worst possible thing happening the baptism turned out wonderful. A bunch of people showed up and the program started only about 15 minutes late. We continued to fill the font while the first part of the program started and then we went in and were able to watch the baptism. Yes the water was cold and yes the water only went up to their knees but hey Jake baptized her first try. It was great!

We had an awesome lesson with a lady named Laurie. We found about a month ago. It was a night at 8pm which is sometimes a hard time to work because it's dark and everybody gets way mad when you knock on their door because they think it is late. But we went tracting and found a lady who said we could come back. We have been teaching her for a while now and she has had a ton of concerns. This week we had a lesson at the Wardells home they are a member in our ward. She met sister Wardell and loved her. She all the sudden didn't have anymore concerns. We taught her about the temple and then asked her if she had any questions about it. "Yes how do I get to the temple?" We told her she needed to get baptized first. She said well I guess I will do my best to get there. This is a huge step in the right direction. I love members!

Had a good Thanksgiving this week. We had dinner at Elder Phair's great uncle's house. It just so happens that his grandpa's brother is in our ward. Unfortunately he is less active but he invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner and it was cool. We also had another Thanksgiving dinner at Kirsten's on Saturday. She is doing really good. Last week she told us she was going to quit smoking on Monday. So on Monday we gave her a blessing that the temptation would be bearable. She has gone this whole week and only smoked twice and afterwards she felt sick to her stomach. On Saturday for dinner she looked at us and said, "It worked." It was really good to hear. She just needs to come to church one more time and she can get baptized. We are excited.

Well I gotta go. I love you all!!!
Elder Johnson

That's all I ever wanted

So last time we met with Natalie and Jake they told us they didn't want to meet anymore but she still wanted to be baptized. Well this Sunday an incredible thing happened. Jake was ordained to the office of a priest. So now he will be able to baptize his wife. We set up a lesson for this Sunday and we were very cautious. We didn't want to push them in any way. We asked if they had any sort of time frame for when they wanted to be baptized. They responded quite unexpectedly by saying she wanted to be baptized this Saturday. So we are going to have an amazing baptism this Saturday!

Last time I talked about how Sarah (a girl talked to while on our bikes) came to church. Well this week we sat down with her for the first time. We had the most picture perfect lesson EVER. It was great. Right at the beginning of the lesson we asked her if she had received answers to prayers before. She said yes, and went on to explain a story of how she had received her answer. She was in tears right in the very beginning as she talked about it. We then went on to talk about the Restoration of the Gospel. We talked about how Christs chuch was on the Earth but eventually it fell away. Then it came time to talk about Joseph Smith. We invited her to think about how she felt as we recited the first vision. She did and at the end she was in tears again. We asked her how she felt and she explained a feeling of warmth and happiness. We said, "the way you can always feel this feeling in your heart is by following Christ's example and by being baptized. Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized on December 8th?"
Yes!
"We promise that you will have peace and joy and direction in your life. And when you are baptized you will feel all the feelings of guilt and shame washed away!"
She then said in her tears, "that's all I ever wanted."
It was a fantastic lesson.

We also had a horrible lesson this week with a lady named Jill. We taught the same lesson but when we invited her to be baptized on December 2nd she just stared at us blankly. We asked her again.....and again.....she just didn't understand what we were asking her to do. In the end we invited her like 5 times and she eventually said no.

We have started up a Book of Mormon class. It's one of the finding ideas in PMG but we've never used it. So we decided to try it out. The first week we invited everybody. One person showed up. The next week we commited a bunch of people to come. We had 4 people. This last week we kept inviting more people and we there were about 10 people and 1 of them investigators. It's going pretty well. Kirsten is the investigator that came. Kirsten is AMAZING. She has read up to Alma 48 in the Book of Mormon. She is super blunt about everything. She came to church yesterday for the first time. It just so happens that yesterday the Bishop was released and we got a new one. (this was nice because originally we were scheduled to give a talk but the day before church we got a text saying we won't be speaking anymore. I didn't complain.) She leaned over to me and said, "I like the new Bishop better. The old one seems not as in tune with the modern world." We have a meeting with her tonight and she has been telling us for a week that today is the day......she is going to stop smoking!!! We are very excited. She is so ready. She just needs to come to church once more then she can be baptized. She hardly ever has work off on Sundays though. This becomes an issue. We will pray for her.

So Thanksgiving is this week. We have a shortened p-day today and we get the whole day off on Thursday. So thats all the time I have. Thanks and love you all!!!

Elder Johnson

Stupendous week

Stupendous week this week. Things are really starting to fall together. Last week I forgot to tell you about Elder Postel. We are in a tri-panionship, a tri-fecta, or a three-some however you want to say it. We call ourselves the Tri-force and we have our own cheer and symbol. Ok I guess I should say I call ourselves the tri-force and have a cheer and a symbol. My companions are incredibly unenthusiastic about the whole idea. Elder Postel is a really cool guy. He doesn't like to talk. He reminds me a lot of me when I first came out. He has been out for 6 months and just came from Bend.

So on tuesday we had a meeting in Eugene for all the trainers which was great. On the way back we got a text from Natalie. She asked if we could reschedule our appointment we said yes can we meet tomorrow and she said "I was thinking next week. I'm not trying to push you guys away. I have decided that I do want to be baptized." We were super excited. We convinced her that we needed to meet with her once though and we had a very strange lesson. We taught the 10 commandments and Sabbath day and stuff. At the end we invited her to watch a baptism to see what it's like and Jake said "no we have already met enough. Lets not meet for a week or so." We just gave each other "the look." The look is an interesting experience in a companionship. It is the moment when you pass over the lesson to the next person. We have been working on "the look" for a while because I have the tendency to talk way too much. This is something I NEVER thought I would have a problem with because I don't like talking. But when it comes to teaching I just love sharing it. Anyways "the look" in this case was used because none of us knew what to say. We were all trying to pass it to each other. Finally I spoke up and said, "do you still want to be baptized?" She said yes. To make a long story short they just were sick of meeting so much. We were meeting twice a week and they had other things they had to do. But let me tell you it is quite disconcerting to have your investigator that wants to be baptized tell you they don't want to meet with you. But we talked at chuch on Sunday and they are still good to go. But it probably won't be this Saturday but next Saturday.

We had a cool experience this week. Because we ride bikes it gives us the opportunity to talk to a lot of people. We just stop on our bikes helmet on and everything and just talk about the gospel. It's kinda awkward but who cares. Anyways it's been a little too awkward for Elder Phair and lately he has been passing them by. One morning in our training we roleplayed talking to someone while on our bikes. Then I invited him to do it today. So he rode in front and the second person we talked to was a girl named Sarah. She had been invited to church by her mormon friends a couple times but she had never made it. So we invited her again. This time she came. It was cool she came and really enjoyed it.

We took Kirsten on a chapel tour this week. She liked it I think. She is just reading the Book of Mormon like crazy she is past Alma 21 now. Her big thing is that she can't come to church because she works most Sundays. She said she could come next week. Tonight we will have a very important lesson where we invite her to try to find a way to come to church. It will be intense.

Well thats about it for me. Better get going! Love you all and have a wonderful week!

Love Elder Johnson

Stake Conference and updates

Things are going really well right now. This week we had stake conference. It was really cool. I had no idea they were going to do it like this. But I guess because the church is growing so rapidly, the Apostles and Seventies are spread thin. So for our stake conference they did a broadcast to a bunch of stakes in Oregon. It was really cool. They had Elder Cook speak and also a seventy, someone from the general young womens and young mens. The talks they gave were flawless. Elder Cook spoke about missionary work. Which is a pretty popular topic these days. Which I love. He gave some real stories of people from the Oregon Eugene Mission and the Oregon Portland Mission who had been converted. Unfortunately Savona and Matt were not able to come. But it was really cool because Amy (one of my recent converts from Eugene) was there. It was really really cool to see her and Peter again.

 

So Matt is this 17 year old kid who we've been working with for a while. He's kind of a punk. He likes to skateboard and play football. I thought I had this kid figured out. Then all the sudden he texted us and asked if he could sing a musical number in sacrament meeting. I fell out of my chair! He's really cool. I love doing our weekly plan for him. I always write down notes about what we will teach them. This is what I wrote for Matt. "Talk to Mother about baptism, bribe him with candy, tease him, plan of salvation, commit to read and pray." This is exactly what we did this week. We brought some oreos and when he got an answer right we gave him one. We also teased him about coming to church. It worked last week because he came but this week he had a sleepover at his friends house. We will continue to bribe him and tease him.

 

Ok update for Natalie. We went over to the lesson not really knowing what we were going to teach we just wanted to find out what her concern was. We just asked her a ton of questions. She told us about how she felt like it was weird changing religions but then a t church she talked to a member who had gone through basically the same thing and she was converted. She took that to be her answer. So as far as things are looking now I think she will be baptized as planned.

 

Something really awkward happened this week. I tell my son Elder Phair that if its not awkward then it's not missionary work. Most of the time this is untrue but there are some definite awkward moments in missionary work. We went to this less actives door and their daughter answered. The conversation went like this:

"Hey is your mom there?"

"No she's sleeping."

"Ok well we are new to this area and we just wanted to meet you guys and share a message. Do you know if there's a time we could meet this week?"

"Um I don't know."

"Ok well do we have your number?" (this was a very stupid question to ask. I was trying to ask Elder Phair because he had the phone. So he looked in the phone and tried to see if we had their number.)

He said, "You spell your last name N-O-R-R right?"

"No we aren't the Norr's they live next door!"

 

I have so much more to tell you but I can't. I will just tell you that we also met with Savona, Cammie, and Kirsten who are all doing great. I hope to give you more details next time.

 

Love you all!

 

Elder Johnson

Another transfer went by like the wind

Well another transfer went by like the wind. I can't believe I've already been with Elder Phair for 6 weeks. Transfer calls also came and went and we are staying the same. But wait! On Saturday evening Elder Peterson (my past companion who is now the AP) gave us an emergency call. He said "Elder Johnson we have a special assignment for you." He then asked us if we would have a third companion in our companionship. We of course accepted. His name is Elder Postal. I know nothing about him. He is coming today at 2:15.

This week was AWESOME!!! So this whole transfer we have invited everyone to be baptized. We've some people say they would if they came to know it's true (which we call a soft commitment). But everyone that we have tried to set a date with has just told us no. Well we are happy to say that we finally have some dates. This week we met with Cammie. She came to church last sunday. So we read from the Book of Mormon in 3 Nephi 27. When it got to the part where it explains about how we need to be baptized Elder Phair straight up asked her, Will you be baptized? She said yes. So we set the date for Nov 24th. Sweet!

Then we went straight from that appointment and rode our bikes in the pouring rain to Savona (I found out thats how you spell her name). On the way there we had an interesting experience take place. There was this lady that we passed and she was walking her 2 dogs. Elder Phair got by just fine. However when I began to ride past her I raised my hand to greet her and all the sudden one of the dogs lunged at me and bit me on the leg. It was pretty lame. It didn't really hurt at all but the thing that was lame was that he created a hole in pants. One thing I never ever ever thought I was going to need on my mission was a sewing kit. Lets just say it's come in handy on several occasions.

So anyway we head over to teach Savona. We taught her about the first half of the Plan of Salvation. She really loved it. We stopped right after we talked about our purpose and then we talked about baptism. We set a date with her for Nov 17th. Then we ended the lesson and she was kinda confused. "Is that it? Nothing happens to us after we die?" We appologized greatly and explained that we would tell her the rest next time. She was kinda shaky on her baptism date though. So we invited her to come to baptism this saturday so she could see what it was like. So we went to another baptism in our district. She loved it. The most unfortunate thing is that she got sick on Sunday so she wasn't able to come to church.

So we had two dates we were pretty excited. Then we went and saw Kirsten. So we invited Kirsten to be baptized a couple times before and she always said, "Again? I've already been baptized." So this week during our planning for her we thought of a scripture in Acts 19 where Paul asks people if they received the Holy Ghost. Since they didn't receive the Holy Ghost after being baptized the first time they had to get baptized again so they could receive the Holy Ghost. So we taught her about the gospel of Jesus Christ and at the climax of the lesson we threw down this scripture and invited her to be baptized and this time to receive the Holy Ghost. She accepted and she also accepted the goal of Dec 1st. So we had another date!

Then we went and saw Natalie this week. She goes to church every week but isn't sure if its all true yet. She read a little bit from the Book of Mormon so we hope she will get her answer soon. This week we talked about praying desperately and really trying hard to get her answer. I think she understood. We explained that when we set goals it shows the Lord that we are really willing to obey and that we believe he can answer. So we set a date for Nov 24th.

Needless to say this week has been, like every week, AMAZING. Happy Halloween!

Love Elder Johnson