Alright well I feel kinda wierd sending you a letter when I just skyped with you yesterday. But theres other people who read this email so I will have to tell you all the amazing stories of this week. It was kinda wierd cuz usually during the week I think, oh I have to write my family about this experience. But then I remember that I'm going to see them on sunday so I can just tell them. Ha!
So this week was a crazy. I was kinda scared that there wouldn't be much work to do because it is Christmas break and most of the young single adults are at home. But fortunately we still had a lot of people who were still here. We have really been working with Jonathon and he is ready. He came to a baptism of someone in our zone along with Carl. These 2 investigators are awesome they are both scheduled to be baptized one week apart from each other. At church yesterday Jonathon actually took Carl home so our investigators are getting to be good friends funny how that works.
Went on 2 exchanges this week. One with an Elder Hatton who is good but just doesn't use his planner at all. So I invited him to write everything down. As a missionary you have to write down everywhere you will be and everything you will do, people you will see and people you will call and people who are interested.
So my Birthday was also this week. I must say this has been one of the greatest birthday's of my life. I didn't even spend it with Elder hackett we actually went on another exchange with Elder Reed. He is pretty new to the field only been out 6 weeks. He is intensely shy and doesn't really know the doctrine. But he has a firm testimony in the gospel. The night before I told him that for my Birthday I wanted to see an amazing miracle. I asked him if he could do that for me. He said he could. I then told him that the only way for that to happen is if we are exactly obedient. So the next day we were exactly obedient. Then while we were driving down a road we were looking for a place to tract. I told him to tell me if he felt we should tract somewhere. Out of nowhere he pipes in and says there's a house back there that we have to knock. I was like YES! So we turned around and parked. He led me to a single door. On the other side of that door was a man named Brandon who saw us out there in the cold and immediately let us in. We taught him....everything. Seriously a little bit of everything. He was very open and willing to learn. We invited him to pray and ask God if our message is true. He said, yes I'll do it and I want you guys to come back and see how it went so we have another appointment with him tonight. What a birthday present from this timid Elder.
Also a present I got for my Birthday we went caroling later that night. I've always wanted to try caroling as a tracting approach. So we did. So we go up to the first door and hanging on the door is a sign that says happy Hanukkah. Ha! Well needless to say we didn't sing Christmas songs to a Jewish family. Then we did sing to a few people and they were nice but not interested. Then we sang for this one guy who came out with a beer bottle in his hand and a cigarette in his mouth. He thanked us a lot for the song. We taught him about the restored gospel and gave him a movie to watch. We also got a return appointment. I don't know if he will remember our visit at all but at least we got his number. The next door we knock on was this jerk. We started singing and he opened the door and said, "just stop." So we did. Then there was a few moments of awkward silence and finally I said "can we do anything to help you?" He said no and we left.
Christmas was an amazing day. I must say the highlight was talking to my family. I heard them sing some amazing songs and I got to talk with them each. I love my family. At church we had like 20 people there and most of them were not young single adults but the leaders. But we did get 2 investigators there Jonathon and Carl. We figured it out and that means that 10% of the people at church were non-members. I'd say that's pretty good.
Oh yeah so as missionaries our mission president has allowed us one hour a week where we can go to mormon.org and just see whats new so we can tell our investigators about it. Well we haven't done that for a long time since we're so busy. But we decided to do that again this week. We went into the library and who should be there but good old Jonathon. We pulled into a room and had an unepected lesson with him. I asked him later how he came to know that God answers prayers and he said cuz I met you guys at the library that one day. Pretty cool experience. Then we met with Carl and he said that he had a dream that he doesn't really want to talk about but he said after that dream he knows without a doubt that the Book of Mormon is true. Dah! All these amazing miracles. It truly is a Christmas miracle. I love this work with all my heart. And I know that this church is true.
With Love
Elder Johnson
