At the very beginning of the week we went on an amazing exchange with my boy Elder Thomas. My trainee when we were in Newport!! That was really really fun because we got to talk about all the fun times we had together and all the crazy people we taught. Not only that we had a really intensely successful day. We walked down a street to find a place to knock. Since we're in the YSA ward we always look for college looking apartments. Well we actually had been looking to find a potential investigator but his address was wrong so it brought us to a place we'd never been. So we decided that the Lord had put us in this spot for a reason. So we started knocking on some apartments nearby. Well the next door we knock on was this guy named Ryan. He was way interested. We taught him all about the restoration and then right at the end he asked if he could learn more about what happens to us after we die. We jumped for joy. Ok not really but we did inside. We set up a return appointment which will be tomorrow. We then decided to know the rest of the apartments. Glad we did cuz a few doors down we started talking to this guy and we asked if we could come in and he agreed. So we went in and taught him a pretty sweet lesson. Man around here we have a lot of success with tracting.....only through the Lord's guidance though. I know that he is helping us constantly know where to go and what to say. It is an amazing thing.
We had a specialized training meeting this week with President Young which was amazing. He showed us this clip from the movie secretariat. It's the part where secretariat just runs and runs at his top speed the whole race and we likened that to our missionary work where we just run even though the race is already won. We already know that in the end Jesus Christ will be the winner but if we put our entire all into it we will receive a great reward. It was great!
We are still working with Kayla. This is Kevin's (he was just baptized a week ago) girlfriend. At first we were concerned that Kayla was only joining the church because of her boyfriend but time has told otherwise. She is solid! We had a lesson this week and taught the restoration and we talked about baptism and reminded her of her date for Feb 12th. She replied, "I know, I'm freaking excited!" That to me shows that she really wants this in her life. I'm freaking excited for her.
Well the absolute highlight of this week was Ben's baptism. His baptism was....sacred. It was so spiritual. Man I thought if there was any more spirit there we would have to ascend to heaven! We had a musical number with the piano and flute with these sisters in the ward and then we had a talk by Jonathon (baptized this year). But like at every single baptism I have ever been a part of, there was something that didn't go as planned. Seriously every baptism somebody either forgets a towel or fills the wrong font or someone forgets their talk. This time it was the font wasn't filled all the way. For our stake there is a couple who is assigned to fill the font. We told them about the baptism but....well I'm still not sure what happened but for some reason they didn't get the font started filling in time. It takes about 2 hours to fill it. So they didn't start it in time. So when we got there we decided to do something a little strange. Instead of him being baptized backwards like you would normally see he got on his knees and was baptized forward. But it all worked out in the end. And after the baptism Ben got up and shared his testimony. That was probably the peak of the spirit. It is always so amazing to hear a recent convert bear their testimony. I love that guy soooo much.
On Sunday we had a lot of success as well we had this guy just show up to church and said he wanted to be baptized. He asked if had to let go of all gay tendencies to be baptized. We said yes. He didn't say anything. I think he's a homeless guy so we didn't get his address or his phone number so I hope he shows up for church next week. We also had sister in the ward bring a friend. During the second hour we taught her the 1st lesson. She said she really felt the spirit in church and her friend bore a powerful testimony about the atonement. She is solid. Then we went straight from church to another appointment with a girl we tracted into. We didn't have a member with us so we weren't allowed to go in. Well when we started talking to her she said she would be interested in learning more. So we invited her to walk with us to the church because it was about 2 minutes away. She said yes. So we walked to church and then when we got there, there was this random ward member just standing there and we said hey can you come with us for a lesson and he said yes. So we taught an amazing lesson and she said if she came to know it was true she would be baptized. Then we had lunch and then a baptism.......wow that was a good day.
Well that's it for me I know I've probably rambled on for too long now. I love y'all so much.
Elder Johnson
