Shared 1/27/14 - South Beach & Queensburgh/Durban area

Jack of all trades. Master of ocean, earth, and sky.

Sawubona!

Surprise! I'm getting transferred again! Got a call from Big Z Friday and he asked me if I'd be willing to go help him open the Iraq Baghdad Mission. So yep... Packing my bags after this then it's off to the Middle East! But also it's probably not good to be bearing false witness while on mission so uh... I should probably tell you that I'm actually still in Queensburgh and loving it. Hoping and praying for stability these last three weeks of the transfer!

Eish man, eish. Lots of changes and lots of adjusting, but I'm loving every minute of it. Elder Higley and I have been spending most of the week trying to learn the area and meet all the members. What a blessing it has been. The members are so excited to do missionary work, and with full time elders in the area for the first time since they moved the APs there about a year ago, we've been welcomed so warmly! I'm just hoping and praying we can live up to their expectations. 

Tuesday we went to the mission home to pick up Elder Higley and we got to meet some of the greenies there awaiting to hear their first areas. One of them was Elder Bryant. He's black, so we asked him where he was from, expecting to hear a country in Africa. We were shocked to hear him say Gilbert, Arizona. I guess being in Africa for so long has made me forget there are black people in the United States as well. Oops :(

We met a member couple named Chris and Betty. As we were talking, Chris pointed to a picture with the missionaries who baptized him, and lo and behold, it was Elders Francom and Kruger! I was so stoked to see such familiar faces, and Chris said they were his two favorite missionaries he's ever met. I couldn't agree more!

Met the bishop and a couple other members over the course of the week. Stuffed pass-along cards into mailboxes. Found libraries we can volunteer at. Looked for stores that would let us set up media stands in front of them. Basically did everything we could this week to be productive with our time and even managed to teach a couple lessons and place a couple Books of Mormon too. Take that, Satan!

Sunday was church (duh), and man... The ward is stellar. Very different than most of the mission... Mostly white and a bit on the, uh... More experienced side? That's a polite way to say they're older, right? Hehe, that's a compliment though. Met with some of them over the course of the day and couldn't believe some of the testimonies I heard. The Queensburgh ward is small, but powerful. So stoked to have the opportunity to work with them. And stoked to be able to continue learning Afrikaans! Beste dag ooit!

I guess just to finish up... I must have really good blood or something, because the Durban mosquitoes absolutely adore me. I wish I could say the same of them, but as they continually keep me up all night scratching at the fruits of their labors, it's hard to find love in my heart. But after hauling mosquito repellent and cortisone cream around for six months thinking "Ah my mama's crazy... When am I ever gonna need this?" I can once again affirm that moms knows best. Thanks mama :)

Stay well, stay positive, love your lives dames en here.

Baie liefde,

Elder Johnson

Shared 1/20/14 - Kimberley, Eating a Chicken, Soccer Game in Bloemfontein, Bus Station, and Pinetown

Take a good look, Pinetown, 'cause it's the last time you'll be seeing these!

Sawubona!

Feels good to actually be able to say that in a Zulu area! But oddly enough, you're reading the title to the email right. Man, this transfer has been anything but normal. At the Pinetown ward yesterday, I got to give my welcoming testimony, which consequently was also my departing testimony. I think it was...Friday night? Anyway, we got a call from the assistants at about 9 asking us to come to the office. "What did we do? Are we getting fire? Wait, we didn't even do anything! What the fetch is going on?!" "No fire," they told us. I guess what was happening is that their area, Queensburgh, has lots and lots of potential and lots of members that want to do missionary work, but due to them being the APs, they don't get a lot of time to proselyte. So since the Pinetown ward has four missionaries, they're moving two of us to their area, and they'll be the other Pinetown elders. But the story doesn't end there... We get a call from Big Z (that's what I like to call President Zackrison, but I don't know that he knows I like to call him that...Sister Zackrison, if you're reading the blog, can you ask him if that's ok?) the next day and are informed Elder Rajaonarison will be getting transferred near Lesotho. So gosh dang it, I only got to be with my hip-hop hipster French-speaking companion from Madagascar for a week. But you know, it's ok. I have a strong testimony that the Lord knows what he's doing and that His hand is in this work. As cliche as it sounds, everything happens for a reason. Just move forward with faith, and you'll learn what you need to learn and do what you've been called to do.

So, long story short... I'll be with Elder Higley this week, white washing the APs' old area. Luckily, I'm in the same boarding for the time being, until they can find a better one in Queensburgh. Eish, be careful about asking the Lord for a challenge, because he just may give it to you! Bring it on!

But other than that, it's been a pretty solid week! The last p-day in Bloem was excellent. I uh... I had been telling Elders Reeves, Gold, and Stengile that I wanted to eat a whole chicken at Nando's for quite some time. So uh... Not wanting to go back on a challenge, I did just that! Ate a full chicken doused in peri-peri sauce. Delicious to the taste, but uh... I paid for it on the bus-ride to Durban that night though...yoh. It taught me a lesson. Be thankful for the little things in life, such as toilets on Greyhound busses. 

The zone hit up a soccer game later in the day though. South Africa's hosting some tournament. No one knows exactly what it is or why it's happening, but we saw Ghana and Congo play. Man... The stadium was empty, but we were in Ghana's fan section and they were WILD. When I got to Pinetown the next day, members of the bishopric had seen the missionaries on TV... Any publicity is good publicity, right?

So just a couple cool happenings from my week in Pinetown... We were trying to find where someone stayed who had called for a DVD, and in the process gave a pass-along card to someone on the street. Didn't think much of it, but we kept on a walking, and about five minutes later, the man comes running after us, panting, and says, "I want to join you guys!" It caught Raj and I both super off-guard and were just speechless. That doesn't just happen! But it did, and it was awesome, and we started teaching him later in the week.

Crazy crazy stuff this week... Hoping for a pretty normal transfer the next four weeks! But with the way things have been going lately, I don't think there's such thing as normal in this mission. But no matter what, the work must be hastened and moved forward! Hoorah for Israel!

Stay well this week, stay positive, and love your lives.

Much love,

Elder Johnson

Shared 1/13/14 - Goodbye to Kimberley and my friends there!

Take a good look, Kimberley, 'cause it's the last time you'll be seeing these!

Sawubona!

Aight, time to get philosophical for a sec. Just as the ship built by the brother of Jared was tight like unto a dish, this email is going to be hectic and all over the place...even like unto this last week.

Where to start, where to start...

Thanks to the cheapness of the driving range here, my golf skills are gradually improving, line upon line, p-day upon p-day. My slice is becoming less of a slice, but on the down side, Elder Gold says my back swing looks like I'm pooping my pants. But whatevs, I don't golf to look pretty.

You know how you always hear about those crazy stories where one of the missionaries in a companionship is like, "Hey, I think we should go back and talk to those people," and the other's like, "Nah man, you're crazy. Quit takin' loony pills," but then the first one's like, "Ah eish man, I really feel like we should go talk to those people," so the other one's finally like, "Yeah ok whatever let's go," and then it ends up being a super neat spiritual experience that put you in the right place at the right time? Well brothers and sisters, I'm here today to bare witness that those experiences DO happen. But unfortunately, I was the missionary in the story that was like, "Nah man, you're crazy." Woops.  Let me explain...

One thing led to another Thursday, and somehow we ended up in an ANC headquarters teaching three guys about the Book of Mormon. One of them, Patrick, seemed to know a lot. He knew about Joseph Smith, the Pearl of Great Price, the Doctrine and Covenants, how long we serve as missionaries, but kept insisting that he wasn't a member. As a member of the ANC, he must know the religious backgrounds of everyone they're reaching out to, so he's done his research. But then he mentions something super specific from one of the Articles of Faith, and we're just like...what the heck. So as he's walking us out to the car, he's finally like, "Hey...you should go check and see if my name's still on the records." HE'S A MEMBER!!! We got talking a little bit more, and I guess he was baptized about 25 years back, in Alabama of all places. But the best part is...he's a Melchizedek Priesthood holder who stays in town! EXACTLY what Kimberley needs to be able to split the ward! If this isn't a testament of the Lord's hand in this work, I dunno what is. So the moral of the story? If you or your companion have a spiritual prompting to do something, act on it and miracles will happen.

So going along with this whole acting on spiritual impressions thing, after reading Preach My Gospel one morning, I decided I needed to start a study journal. I always thought I could get away with using the margins in my scriptures as a study journal, but man...a couple days into it and I'm already getting more out of my studying. The other cool thing is I'm writing down answers to common questions we get from investigators. Eish...they know their Bible here. Just an example, I never heard this back in Mormonville, but I guess there's a scripture in Revelations chapter 7 that talks about 144,000 people that will be sealed at the Second Coming, 12,000 from each of the tribes of Israel, and a lot of people make the false assumption that only 144,000 people will go to heaven.

Friday and Saturday were kind of a downer. Elder Reeves, as we later found out, was stricken with some sort of intestinal infection, so we were stuck at the boarding for a couple days. I guess I shouldn't be complaining... I wasn't the one puking my guts out. Eish, poor guy. :/ But on the plus side, our boarding was spotless afterwards. Two days without a thing to do will teach you the joys of cleanliness and scripture study. Woot! Sunday he was still feeling not that great, so it was hectic...but we figured out a way to make it so I could go out with the ward mission leader, and he had a companion with him at the boarding all day. With it being my last day in Kimberley, I needed some time to say goodbyes...

And that brings us to the big news this week. My time in Kimberley has come to a close. Holy cow... If you told me six months ago that I would grow to love this town, this ward, and these people so much, I would have said you're crazy. But man... So many people here have made differences in my life and I've grown to love them SO much. All the people we've taught, that I've gotten to know. Man...it's gonna be tough leaving, but there's a quote from Dr. Seuss that makes it all ok. "Don't be sad because it's over, smile because it happened."

But the Lord needs me to labor in another part of his vineyard now. Hey Pinetown...ready or not, here I come! Just kinda crazy... Kimberley is literally the farthest area away from the mission home you can get, and uh... Pinetown IS the mission home. So that gives you an idea of how far I'm gonna have to travel tonight. Bring on the red-eye bus trip!

Stoked for Pinetown though. From what I've heard, it's a tough area, but that ain't gonna scare Elder Johnson. 1 Nephi 3:7 to the rescue! 

Stay well, stay positive, love your lives dames en here.

Baie liefde,

Elda Johnson

Shared 1/6/14 - Friends in Kimberley South Africa, Chicken Enchiladas & SBO Pudding, and a War Museum

Hello Chicken Feet.....

Made Chicken Enchiladas for the Carliles

Made Dave Miller's famous SBO Pudding!

War Museum 

Didn't see the sign until we were leaving...