28 Dec—Houston

Family and friends,

Ok, who is ready for the news? I am going to be transfered to nowhere. I am staying in Barrio 8 for another transfer. There is sad news that comes with this good news. Elder Richards is going to be leaving me :( sad day. He taught me a lot of good things, especially with how to be a good leader, and his be a winner attitude rubbed off on me. So, the Houston West zone is full of winners. I will be getting a new companion, and I don't know who it is yet, but hopefully he will be a good companion.

This last weekend we had two baptisms and two confirmations, and this weekend we should be seeing some more of our friends get baptized. This area is really good, and I am really glad for all the things I am learning here. It is going to be another great transfer, and I am really excited to see what happens in the future.

Sad news, I forgot to bring my camera cord this week; it is because we are in Sugar Land, because we just dropped off a missionary who is going home! That is crazy!

Christmas was really good. It was nice to talk with the family and to hear them and some stories. It sounds like every one is doing great. Thank you everybody for the letters and the packages. It really felt a lot like Christmas, and I had a blast with Elder Richards playing with all the goofy toys. For Christmas, we had a zone activity and we made the zone eggs, hash browns, and pancakes. Yummy! Then we played a white elephant game. We split into three groups, sat in a circle, and put all the presents in the middle. Then you rolled a dice, and if you rolled a 6; you get to take a gift from the middle, or you can steal someone else's gift. It was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed it.

Well, I guess that is all until next week!

-Elder Johnson

Dec 20—Houston, Texas

Hey Family!

Merry Christmas! I hope you all are having a great time with Christmas break. Elder Richards and I had two baptisms this weekend. We baptized two little boys named Jacob and Niko. They are the brothers of Jackie, our last baptism that we had. It went very smoothly. So, we baptized on the mission's "weekend in white", which was our goal! We hope to have two more this coming weekend; we will see what happens. As a zone, we are sitting at eight baptized, and zero confirmed. We had a goal for this month to have 29 baptized and 29 confirmed; we need a miracle this next weekend.

Anyway time for a story. We were getting ready for our baptism, and we were in our white clothes, and we needed to get some more white clothes out of the car for Jacob and Niko. So, we threw on our shoes and headed out to the car. On the way out, we ran into Sister Saylin! It was shocking, because we were planning on having a small baptism, with just Niko and Jacob and their family. So, we started talking with Sister Saylin, and she introduces us to her sister, her mom and her dad. Her dad happens to be a member of the 70; his name is Elder Hilburg. So, we start talking to them all, and they ask us how long we had been in the mission, and about our baptisms that night. Elder Hilburg says that we look like very experienced missionaries. They asked us how many we were planning to have in our zone that weekend, and then here comes the embarrassing part. I am standing in my white shirt, tie, pants and my black shoes. These black shoes used to be my proselyting shoes, and need a really good shoe shine. So, they stood out like crazy, and the only reason why I had them on right before the baptism was because I stepped in dog poop.

So, we are standing there and Sister Saylin says "Elder Johnson, it looks like you could use a good shoe shine." And so I said, "Well, Sister Sayin, I am sorry that you saw me in these. I haven't worn these shoes for about three months, and the reason why is because I stepped in some stinky stuff earlier today and didn't have time to clean them." So, then everyone just laughed, and it was a great experience/way to break the ice in front of a 70 and the Mission President's wife. We just kept talking from there.

Well, also we had a cool Christmas fireside for the whole mission this week. President needed translation for all the Spanish investigators that would come, and he doesn't have any Spanish A.P's right now, so the A.P's asked Elder Richards and I to call the Stake President and figure out a way to get all the equipment and translators to the building. That was a very stressful thing to do, because if it didn't get put together well the president's fireside would be a bust for the Spanish investigators. The good news is that we were able to get it done and everything went well.

I would like to give a quick thank you to the members of the ward for all the letters that you have all sent me. They were great, and I will do my best to get some thank you cards out for y'all. Merry Christmas!

Love you all,

Elder Johnson

13 Dec—Houston

Family and friends,

Well, I am trying to think of what to say this about the week. It was a really good week for us. The sad thing was peoples' baptisms got pushed back again. We have two for sure for sure this Saturday and maybe two on Sunday also. And then another family wants to be baptized on Christmas. So it should be a good stretch for us and if we get eight, then that is going to be an awesome miracle/Christmas gift from God.

This week were were really blessed. Felix, one of our passed investigators that moved, ran into us at a complex, and he gave us his address and we went to go visit him and his girlfriend. They are awesome, and are doing great. Then he invited us to go and visit his sister. The big test. If the family likes us, he will really start progressing a lot. We had a lesson with his sister and boyfriend on Saturday with Felix, and she just threw question after question at us, and it was a great lesson because we were able to answer them. Then she wanted us to come over the next day, so we did. We watched the restoration movie with her, and she had some more questions about the Book of Mormon. We answered them, and she told us she is going to have to go to church to see if its true, so hopefully this coming week or on Christmas she will come. She wanted to read a lot in the Book of Mormon, and asked us to give her five chapters that we would recommend to start reading. We gave her 2nd Nephi 29, Mosiah 3, 3rd Nephi 11, Alma 46 or 43 (one about a war because she wanted a war chapter, and also the last big war chapter in the book of Mormon because she wanted a couple of war chapters). We are really excited.

Then we went to go visit a member that we had never visited, and we got there and this lady opened the door who we didn't know. We asked for the member and he came out, and we sat down to teach them. We asked the lady if she had ever talked to missionaries before, and she said she was a inactive member of about eight years. She has been living with the member with her family, and her husband for a while. The husband came in later, and we had a good lesson with them. We left with a prayer, and we asked the member who he wanted to say it and he picked me. Then I was about to say it, and the less active husband said no, I want to say it. So he did. Then after we were getting up and the wife said, I want to say a prayer as well. So she did, and she just started crying saying that it was an answer to her prayers, and we got a return appointment and met the whole family. They have 3 awesome kids who are totally getting baptized one day not far off in the future.

So, it has been a blessing and our teaching pool keeps growing and it's a good thing because we should be having some baptisms coming soon. I really love this place and I hope we get to stay together another transfer. Transfer calls are 2 days after Christmas. The 27 of December, so we will see what happens. It is getting excited. And to answer questions about pictures for Christmas. Hard copies would be cooler than just pictures on the computer. Well anyway, I love you all and thank you for the prayers and all the letters. They are great!

Love you all!
-Elder Johnson

6 Dec—Houston

Hey family!

Well, let's see, this week was intense! I guess we can start with the ZLC (Zone leader Council). In this meeting, we get to set goals for how many baptisms and confirmations we will have as a mission, and also as a zone. We have a mission goal of 500 confirmations this year, and we need 81 this month to hit it. Usually, we around 40 per month. So, we need a ton of miracles this month in order to do it. As a zone, the highest we have gotten since I have been here is 8 confirmations; maybe it was 7.

But Man, God has been preparing the zone for this month. Elder Richards and I sat down and prayed as we decided on our goals, and we went through the areas and felt the Lord tell us that he wanted us to have 29 baptisms and 29 confirmations. That is 7 a week, plus 1 week of 8. It was a very high number, so we kept praying about it and kept having the spirit tell us that this is what he wanted for our zone. We finally came to the conclusion that we better stop asking for the answer when he had already given it to us, or he would get mad. So, then we made the rest of the goals.

Our mission right now has a mission goal for the weekend in white (On the 18 and 19th, the mission has a goal for every companionship to baptize; so that everyone will have a white Christmas). If we as a zone hit the weekend in white, we should be in reach to hit our zone goal. Right now, we are sitting at 4 baptisms for this weekend; and next week we should have 7. With the weekend in white, we should have 11 plus some. Then, the final week with the rest. There is going to be a blizzard down here in the Houston West zone!

Elder Richards and I realized that in order for us to make this goal possible we would have to go back and put some more things on the sacrifice list. And I decided that it was time to get rid of the basketball cards. Man oooooooooohhhhhh man that was a hard one. I went outside and gave them to a kid playing basketball. OOOOOOO man it is worth it though. We are going to see the miracles in the area. We have already ween them. We have had 7 investigators at church three weeks in a row! It is awesome!

On Friday night, we couldn't get a hold of the sisters up in Houston one. They live in the city city, and so we were a little worried for them. 10:30 came around and still nothing, so the A.Ps told us to go and drive over there. It was awesome! We got to go on the freeway and drive through some cool parts of Houston, and see some of the big buildings. Right when we got to the sisters' apartments, they called us and told us there phone is broken and they had been trying to call us for the past 40 mins. So, they were safe and it was fun! And we got to see some of downtown.

Other big news. We got texting! Woohoo. We can text investigators and other missionaries. So it is very exciting. And makes the work a lot easier. You jealous Greg, Jeremy and Tyler? Hahahah. I guess that one of the pros to being a missionary in the states. Right now only the zone leaders and assistants can text. They are testing it out to see how we do. So, hopefully it will spread out to all the missionaries in the mission.

As far as pictures go, sorry Dad, I forgot my camera.... Next week I will bring it. We get to call home for Christmas, and I was wondering what time is a good time for you for the phone calls. As far as Christmas goes, I can't really think of anything that I really need. Maybe some pens and that is about it. I think it would be cool to have a set of scriptures that isn't a quad. But a separate Bible and a separate Book of Mormon. Other than that pictures are always super cool.

Well, I think that is about it for the week. The area is going great and we are hoping for six baptisms this weekend, because two of ours got pushed back a week. So, it is going to be awesome and I hope it all works out!

Love you!

Elder Johnson