Calder Keith Moody!!!!! That's really close to my name. Clinton Keith Johnson. His first name is really close to my nickname for Caleb, Caler. Man I'm so excited for you Kirsten. I can't wait to meet him in person. He will be over a year old when I finally get the opportunity. Sounds like this was a pretty busy week for you people. Well let me just tell you it was for us too.
So this week was another awesome success. I don't really know where to begin. We are continuing to teach James and he is moving along very nicely. But....he didn't come to church yesterday so...we have to postpone his baptism another week. He also has to stop smoking before he can get baptized but I have hope for him. I think he will be baptized on the 23rd.
Ok so Ted Park was going to be baptized this last wednesday but....well....lets just say he had an interview with the district leader and....His baptism is going to be postponed. He was SUPER busy this week so it was kinda disheartning cuz we didn't get to meet with him at all. But we will meet with him this week for sure and hopefully set another date for baptism.
We had another awesome field trip this week. So the Portland Mormon Choir and Orchestra came and we got to go see them sing. Lets just say it was Amazing. Also this guy named Dallyn Vailes Bayles came and was the soloist. He was really good. He is in a bunch of the church movies. As missionaries we were exorted (or strongly encouraged you could say) to bring investigators to this performance. We were searching forever for people who could come. After calling all our investigators we were beginning to lose hope. But then we decided to look through the area book for former inverstigators who might be interested. Elder Sheide just read through all of them and then I told him if it would be a good idea. One of the last people we called was Chuck and Glenda Garinger (Glenda is a less-active member and chuck is a non-member). They are both in their 70's. They said they would love to come. So we gave them some free tickets and they came and LOVED it. Chuck said at the end that there were a couple songs that he got teary-eyed. And the best part, they said they would try coming to church. So they came to church and LOVED it also. They really got to know some people in the ward which is awesome for fellowshipping. When Chuck first saw me he said, "I want a Book of Mormon." So we gladly gave him one. Chuck said he would read out of it and the Gospel Principles manual. Chuck also has a very hard time with retention. He is in the beginning stages of Ahlshiemers Disease. He asked me, no joke, 5 times yesterday when we would meet next. I told him all 5 times, "Tuesday at 5, Chuck." But he is a really cool man.
We also started to teach this less-active named Braden Gentry and his non-member wife Alisha. She is....was very pregnant. So Calder was born on April 10th right???? Well that if that is true then that is a very big coincidence because Alisha just had her baby on the tenth. Last we heard at least. Anyways we taught her and they both are pretty receptive. Braden came to church and I was sitting next to him and all the sudden he got up to answer his phone. When he came back into the room he said he got the baby call. So he got up and left. This was the only time that was allowed.
Another crazy thing happened this week. We were in Salem for District meeting and on the way home we were just driving on the highway and then all the sudden something started to rub up against the front wheel. We pulled over on to this bike path to check it out. It turned out that the splash gaurd for the tire had come loose a little bit so I moved around a little bit and thought I got it all secured. So we went on our way again. Then it happened again. So I "secured it" again. Then it completely fell off and started dragging extremely badly on the tire. Needless to say we had to cancel a few of our appointments that day to fix our car which was a huge bummer. I mean we never cancel on anybody. Tons of people cancel on us, but we never cancel on them. So it was a strange experience.
So I'm writing this letter a day late and the reason for that is because yesterday the zone went on a trip to........the Coast. It was AWESOME! We took this sweet picture of the whole zone dressed in our baptismal clothes. We also drew OEM (which stands for Oregon Eugene Mission) in the sand and stood right behind it. It is an awesome picture. I will e-mail it to you when I get the chance.
But anyways I've got to get going. We have a busy day planned ahead of us. I just wanted to let you know that you all rock. Keep doing what your doing, unless you doing stuff your not supposed to be doing, then cut it out and start doing good stuff.
Elder Clint Johnson
