Well this week has been one of the strangest of my mission. Being a zone leader is not at all what I thought it would be like. Well now that I look back I'm not exactly sure what I thought it would be like. Being a zone leader in Eugene is a little bit different than anywhere else in the mission and that is because of one thing, transfers. Since we are the leaders in the middle of the mission we have to help out with transfers a lot. We are given a truck to drive so that we can haul around people's luggage. So on Monday I got to Eugene and immediately went to work helping people load thier luggage. This went on all day. Literally. Then the next day we helped people move their luggage all day. Literally. We didn't do any missionary work til Wednesday and even then we still helped out with transfers. Then on Thursday we went to District meeting and then afterward we had District Leader correlation. Then on Friday we spent forever organizing a board and getting to know all the missionaries in our zone. We have the biggest zone in the mission. There are 39 missionaries and 4 Districts. Being a zone leader is intense. We try really hard to work on our area and then an unexpected phone call will come and then we have to change our plans around and try to compensate. We are really busy. In some of my past areas we have had to wonder what are we going to do now? It always seems like we have to do something though. But despite being so busy, our area is actually suffering. Oh yeah by the way my new companion is Elder Hackett who has been out for 7 and a half months which is less time than me. But he is awesome. He has been the zone leader here for 3 months so he knows what he's doing. We are serving in the young single adult ward here in Eugene. So there are three stakes in Eugene and we cover all the young single adults in all 3 stakes. So we have a pretty big area with A LOT of people. I think there is about 200,000 people here. It is pretty cool though because even though there is a lot of people it still kinda has the small town feel. It is really beautiful with all the fall colors and it hasn't rained once since I've been here. Which is incredibly unusual I hear. We are right in the heart of Ducks territory. So for now I guess I'm better off saying I'm a Ducks fan.
So for the first couple days in this area I didn't really feel like a missionary because all we were doing is just trying to help people move to their new areas. We have very few investigators right now. Elder Hackett and his last companion just baptized a guy named Stefan the day before I got here and he just got confirmed yesterday. We have a few other investigators that I haven't even met yet. So yeah being in a YSA ward is a lot different than a family ward. But it's pretty cool. We get to hang out with people our age at FHE and go to a bunch of activities. The Ward Mission Leader is also a Counselor in the Mission Presidency and...somehow he is also an Area Seventy. He is amazing. He makes the progress record for us and he makes us breakfast on Thursdays.
Despite the strangeness of this week we did see a couple miracles. We were driving down the road and we were about to go tracting. Then Elder Hackett felt like we should go see these members nearby. They let us in and then one of the girls and her friend came in. We started asking her questions about the Book of Mormon and stuff and she seemed really interested. We committed her to read the Book of Mormon and come to church that week. Unfortunately she is too young to be in the YSA ward so we won't be teaching her. But we found someone for another person in our zone to teach.
I prayed really hard that we would be able to find new investigators this week and yesterday we found 2. It was really good. First one was a referral. The second one we were looking for a less active and we knocked on the door and asked for him and he said that he didn't live here. Then we talked to him about the gospel and he was interested. So the Lord answers prayers if you are humble.
Well sorry if this letter didn't make any since I kinda bounced around a lot. It really shows how I feel. I love you guys so much. Thank you for all you do.
Love Elder Johnson
