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