Luke's Priest quorum advisor was visiting Arizona and found two bikers wandering the streets!! Thanks for the photo, Shep! So glad to see he is doing good!!!

Luke and his new companion!!!

New Address...New Area!!!

6985 W Solano Drive North

Glendale, AZ 85303

My new area is in the City and it is in the southern part of the mission in West Maricopa. The ward I cover are called Independence and Aqua Fria wards!! There is a lot of great work happening here :)

My Companions name is Elder Bryce Bennett!! I wonder if we are related :) He is from Syracuse!!! He played football for Syracuse High and we apparently played against each other!! He is a titan and I am a Lancer. One other interesting fact...he is a BYU fan!! So as far as football teams are concerned, we are total polar opposites!! LOL!

The new house I live in is awesome!!! We live with a single guy!! He isn't home during the week because he is a trucker, and so most of the time we have the house and all his food to ourselves!! haha ;)

We are teach A LOT of investigators!! The two wards that I cover, used to have a set of missionaries in each ward, but when I came into the area we took on both of the wards and the total area here is a little over 25 sq. mi.!!!! Our teaching pool keeps growing and growing!!! We are currently teaching about 10-15 people and over this next week it should be growing a lot to about 20-25!!! The work here is going great and there is a baptism that I will be a part of this next Saturday. So, as you can tell, it is going great here. It is a mainly referral based area, because the members, and the Spanish missionaries find the people for us to teach!! :)

I am in a bike area!! It is A LOT of ground to cover on bike!! The AP's called us the other day, and we should be getting a car in the next few weeks! That should be good. We are teaching WAY too many people to be covering this on bike.:)

The work in this area is going really well!! I don't know who everyone is yet, but we have a baptism this Saturday with a guy who contacted the missionaries and said that he wanted to be baptized!! That is pretty cool!! We received about 7 referrals yesterday at church, and so that is really awesome!! We are going to be contacting them asap!! :) This area is a lot different demographic then Anthem was, it is REALLY Mehicano ( a lot of Mexicans) ...haha but it is fun!!! It reminds me of where we used to live in SLC but a little bit more dirty...So something really, really, really, really awesome about this area is that The Arizona Cardinals stadium is in it!!! We haven't had the chance to go over there and take a pic next to it, but I promise that I will have one next week!!!

So that is all for this week!!

Hope yours goes great!!

Love,

Elder Johnson

They got to be in a suite for the performance!!! Wow!!!

Luke and Elder Rivas holding their tickets to see the Motabs in the Arizona Centennial celebration!!! Pretty dang cool!!!

Had to publish this picture of Luke holding his companion!!! Happy love day to all!!!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

So this week has been really busy!! That is a really good thing!! We had a lot of lessons this week and that is really good Monday-Friday was really nice with a nice full day on every one, but Saturday was really slow!! It was the Arizona Centennial this week, and so I assume that most people were downtown for that. Speaking of the Arizona Centennial we went to the Motabs!!! They were performing for that, and it was so awesome!! It was in the Arena that the Phoenix Suns play and it was so good!!! We had to get permission from the Area 70 over our mission because it was out of our mission (surprisingly downtown phoenix is NOT our mission...haha), and so that was really cool!! We didn't even get back until about 11:30 at night and that is the latest I have stayed up on my mission!! We had permission to so it was okay. Downtown Phoenix was so awesome!! It doesn't have a lot of skyscrapers, but the ones that are there are pretty big!! I got to see where the AZ Diamond Backs play and that is a huge baseball field and also the many ghetto parts of Downtown Phoenix!! It kinda smells a lot there. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures because we couldn't take our cameras in the arena and so it was kind of a bummer, but I have really good memories! :)

So another week in Anthem for me and I love it here!! Transfers are coming up, I don't really know what is going to happen, but I am hoping that I stay here for at least another transfer. I think that I will stay here, it is so nice here :) So the family we have been teaching is doing great! They still aren't coming to church yet, but the member who is fellow shipping them keeps encouraging them to come, and so do we, but that is really all that we can do. People have a choice and we need to respect that. We had the couple that I baptized in November with us and he shared his story and the father is now really wanting to read the Book of Mormon and said that he will take time out of his nap time at work to read the Book of Mormon because of hearing his story to his conversion!! They are so great and have an amazing spirit about them!! :) I think that is really good progress with him. He was the one that wasn't as committed as his kids, but he is slowly but surely coming along.
Jenn is doing great too!! We had three lessons with her this week and she is so stoked about her baptism!! We are teaching her the commandments and she is understanding them and recognizing when she breaks them, which is good, but we need to have her actually not get to the breaking of them part! But we are happy she will be ready for her baptism at the end of the month.

All of our other investigators are coming a long, and we are doing everything in our power to help them progress towards baptism!! Anthem is so awesome!! The members are awesome, and I am excited for them to help with the work of the Lord!! :)

7 months! WOW!!!

Well, another week of wondering where the heck the time has gone!!! I hit my 7 month mark today and that is super weird!! I know I say that every week, but it is amazing to see the growth that I have had in the Gospel!! I have a pic of me and Maddie at boondocks in my scriptures and I looked at myself and noticed all the things that I have experienced these past few months from the time that pic was taken. If I only knew all of the people that I would touch at that time, it would be super crazy to know. Yesterday Don bore his testimony about his journey into the church. It is amazing to see the his life and my life and how they came together to bring him into the gospel. We were out street contacting the other day and we talked to this baptist guy who believed some real crazy things, but there was something that stuck out at me that he said. He said some things about predestination and foreordination and I really thought about my patriarchal blessing and how the Lord has been preparing not only the people, but me as well to help others come back to Him. If I am faithful in keeping His commandments, he will, as President Monson puts it, "Shape the back to bear those burdens place upon it".

So Emma is doing great!! She texted us the other day and said that her mom wants us to meet with her and her pastor from her church to talk about some things that they don't understand about us. It is amazing the misconceptions that people have of us, so hopefully we will going in there and teach about what we believe and that stuff. Hopefully it doesn't go into a bible bash, but if it does, we will just follow that example that Jesus Christ set for us. We will do it in a way that he did. Listening and not allowing the spirit of contention to enter the conversation.

The family we have been teaching is doing great too, they still won't come to church, but they are being uber fellow shipped by the Anthem ward and so hopefully they can come back next week. We went to a Superbowl party that one of the members had and they were there and they were being fellow shipped by many people. Don't worry mom I didn't watch the game...even though it was really tough...:)

I love this area so much!! It is so exciting to see all of my hard work and dreams coming to life!! I have grown so much here and am trying to become the best missionary I can be!!

Well, so dad wanted me to explain one of my days this week, so I will...let's see...so the day is February 1, 2012. Got up at 6:30, 6:45 went outside to take a walk, 7:00 ate a big bowl of frosted flakes, 7:30 got in the shower, 8:00 started personal study, 9:00 ended personal study and started comp study, 9:15 had to go to Chiropractor for Elder Rivas, 10:30 got back and finished comp study, 11:30 had some Tina's burritos for lunch, 12:30 had an appointment cancel on us so we went and worked on mormon.org, 1:45 went and visited some Prospective Elders, 3:00pm went to a member's home and had some milkshakes and talked about missionary work, 4:00-6 Visited some Less-active people, 6 had dinner and a lesson with the family we have been teaching, 8:30 had missionary coordination mtg in the Anthem ward, 9:30 Plan for next day, 10:30 in bed...so that was one of my days this week.

Well this week has gone great!!

Hope all is well back in good ald Utaar :)

Love,

Elder Johnson

District Conference (I like Popcorn)