Well so this week has been pretty good!!  We have had tons of really good success and it has been awesome!!  

To start we will hopefully be having a baptism this week!  Maive is progressing really well and we are going over tonight to teach her a bit more things and then we are going to be having her baptismal interview then her baptism!!  She is really great and is really excited and ready for baptism!!  We are super excited for that because her husband has been less active for quite some time now and because of diligent home teachers he is coming back into activity and is going to be baptizing Maive!!  We are completing a family so that they can be married in the temple and be together forever! I love it when that happens!! 

Then next one is Brittney.  She was the one who came up to us at Church a couple of weeks ago and said that she was taking the lesson is Casa Grande and she is super ready for the gospel and we invited her to baptism last week and she said that she had been thinking about it and she was talking about how she doesn't want to be baptized until she turns 18.  That is pretty interesting because her parents are all for her being baptized and are supportive of what she chooses, but she thinks that she has to know everything about the church before she is baptized.  We helping her through this struggle and hopefully she will have realized that you don't need to know everything about the church before baptism.  She is awesome and her testimony is growing and she comes to church every week and so she will want to be baptized soon :)

We also have Jessica and Amar!  Jessica is growing a ton and quickly!  Amar kind of isn't as much, but he is growing so we talked about baptism and set a baptismal date with them for Aug 18!  We are starting to teach the commandments and they are currently not married, but we talked about the Law of Chastity yesterday with them and they understand it and are willing to keep it!!  They come to church every week and are progressing towards baptism really well!!

The next one is the other family!  Nicole, the mother, is doing great is just soaking up everything that we have been teaching her and is super ready for her baptism!  The father, is doing good too he just has some things right now that are holding him back from baptism.  We are helping him through those things that are holding him back and he is coming along nice, slowly, but surely and that is OK :) We had a really good lesson with him on Saturday with our district leader while we were on exchanges and that was really nice. He said that he had some issues that were preventing him from feeling the spirit and so I gave him Alma Chapter 36 to read on his own and I think that that will help some :)  We are going to start into teaching the kids soon and prepare that whole family for baptism!!  :)  It is going to be so amazing to see them be baptized on Aug 25!!  I hope and pray that they will all be ready by that date :)  i really think that they will.  I am really excited to continue to work with them.  They are an awesome family!! :)

So I that is all the awesome things that are happening here and I just love it here so much!! 

 

Love ya all!!

Elder  Luke Johnson 

So this week has been a really good one!  I have really enjoyed the work that keeps on coming and coming!!  Last month in June we baptized our whole teaching pool, but this month has been a focus of finding more people to teach and boy has it paid off!!  I have now 9 people that we believe can be ready for baptism in August!!  That is so amazing!!  We have already set baptismal dates with some of them this week, and this next week we plan to set a couple more!!  I love, love, love this area sooooo much!!  The members here know their purpose in missionary work, and that is such an amazing thing.  They are always willing to help us, and if they can't find someone for us to teach, they help us to find.  This week we have gone on visits with members at least 4 times a day, all with different members and it has been paying off a ton!!  There is this one family, that every time we go over there and not have a member with us they never answer or are not there!!  I really think that this is the Lord telling us that it is very important to always have a member with us :)  Over this time that I have been on my mission I have really come out of my comfort zone and started asking people for help!!  It has been a real blessing and I have been able to be very humbled because of it.

We have a lot of people who we are working with now and a ton more are coming!!  

We have the first family (well soon to be because they aren't married yet)  Nicole the mom is really into learning more and is came to church with her son for the first time this week!!  Her boyfriend, Carlos, is going to be a bit more of a challenge.  He is really wanting to change and learn more, but he is just not wanting to put the work into it.  We will help him through those things and it will be really awesome to see him and his family be baptized and come closer to Christ!!  We had a super spiritual experience with them this week.  Nicole was asking about her daughter who died as a baby, and where she went.  We taught about the Plan of Salvation and she said that that gave her a lot of comfort to know that she will see her daughter again.  She is really wanting to get to the Celestial Kingdom and when we talked about that she was super happy that she and her family will live together forever there.  She came to church and she said that she really enjoyed and that she will be coming every week! :)

The next one is someone who moved back into our area after taking the lessons in where she was staying with her sister over the Summer.  She is super ready for baptism and she is really wanting to learn and grow in the Gospel and she is one the we will be setting a date with this week.  She is a teenager and her parents don't mind if she is baptized.  They don't want it for themselves but they are OK with her getting baptized.

The next one that we will be setting a baptismal date with this week is Jessica and Amar.  They are coming to church and are really liking it!!  They are really liking the things that we are teaching them, and we know that they are ready to set a date to be baptized!!  We taught them the plan of salvation this week and it was really good for them because it answer a lot of their questions about life!!  There is a great fellow shipping base where they live and hopefully it stays that way.

We taught someone this week who is wanting to know more because her daughter is taking the lessons , and so we talked about the restoration and things related to that.  She is really open minded so that should be a good start to help her understand about what we believe.

 

Our week has been pretty good!  I really love all of the work that is going on here and all of the many people who I have been able to see come closer to Christ.

 

I have really been getting along with Elder Newton and we are working super super well together and it has been something that I have really enjoyed!  We work together a lot!!  It is kind of amazing how different our personalities are and yet we work really well together!! :)

 

Love,

Elder Luke Johnson

 

Computers weren't working, so we got a late email!

This week we have had some great success!!  We taught Maive this past week about the Plan of Salvation and she really enjoyed that!!  We had our recent convert Leah with us and that was great because she and Maive have pretty much the same background and they really connect a ton!! We were able to teach her yesterday and that went great!! We talked about Gospel of Jesus Christ and also talked about how that relates to the spirit world she just recently had her mom die a little under a year ago and that was really cool how we were able to talk about how because she is accepting the Gospel of Jesus Christ she is able to affect her whole family before her.  She currently has a baptismal date for August 4th and she is ready and accepting of it and is excited for it.

We were able to teach Valarie this week.  She still has some troubles with really believing in Jesus Christ and we have tried everything with her to help her to believe.  She is praying, but doesn't receive answers.  We talked about fasting and how that could help, but maybe she just isn't ready to have an answer just yet.  So to really help her understand Jesus Christ more we prescribed reading parts of Jesus the Christ because she is a philosophy major and thinks very philosophically we thought that Jesus the Christ would be good for her because it will help understanding the what and the why.

We were able to meet with Carlos and Nicole and we are trying to continually meet with them so that we can help them to come to church and to eventually be baptized!!  We are working on them so they can be ready for baptism in August!  I have a really good feeling about this family and that they are so ready for baptism now.  We have been trying to work with them for a while now and it feels like they are ready now more then ever!  It is going to be exciting to see them be baptized!!

We also found a couple of new investigators this week and that has been awesome!!!

The first one is Mary and she has gone through some pretty tough stuff in her life and she is really wanting a good religion to raise her kids in to get them on the right path, because they kind of started out a little rough. We are hopping to have her as someone who is going to be baptized in August.

We also have Jessica, who was the one who was referred to us last Sunday.  She came to church and really enjoyed it!!  We are going to be meeting with them on Wednesday and that should be a good meeting because they are really wanting some change in their current life.

So as you can see we are going to have a very busy next month and things here in this are are going great!! :)

Well that was the week!!

Hope yours goes great!!

Love,

Elder Luke Johnson

The blog said this was a lesson on obedience.  Not sure if standing up was good or bad!  Haha!

Clean Car Award, again!!!

Another week....

So this week was kind of a rough one... I am sick...again...with the same strep throat as I had before...I think that it may be my camelbak and because my area isn't the most clean, it is picking up all of these germs and stuff.  So I will have to be better on cleaning it daily.  So that kind of slowed the work down a bit, but I am still trying to do the best that I can!! 

We have a lot of people who have been out of town because of the holiday and so we weren't able to meet with a good majority of them...but this next week should be better we have a few appointments this week, and it is going to be a good week this week!!  We have many people who are just right there for baptism and we will be helping them to start committing to things and help to get them baptized and have a lot of joy and happiness.  

There was a cool experience that we have had this past week, well it is kind of an ongoing experience, that has been happening ever since I got here.  So there is this apartment complex that is a very shady area and were a lot of people try and to avoid.  It is the same apartment complex that Sam and Tiffany live in that were just recently baptized a couple of months ago.  It is a place were if I wasn't a missionary preaching the Gospel and having the protecting hand of the Lord on me I probably wouldn't go there.  But this complex has an interesting story as far as the church entering it.  It all started when a very outgoing member moved into this complex.  He started talking to his neighbors about the Gospel and  a few months later one of them was baptized, then this member talked to some more neighbors about the Gospel and a family of 6 was baptized, then this member talked to some more of his neighbors and another person was baptized.  Then all these recently baptized people started talking to their neighbors and then Tiffany and Sam were baptized.  So this shady apartment complex has some light in it now and now there are members of the church going there to do visiting and home teaching and they are strengthening the light of this shady apartment complex, and now others see that as well!!  Then we got a call yesterday from one of the ward missionaries who are teaching Sam and Tiffany their new member lessons and he said that while he was walking back to his car someone approached him and said "what church are you from?"  He said "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints"  She then said, "I have been looking for a church for me and my family and want to know more about your church because some of the people who live here who are members of your church have talked to me about it and they seem to really enjoy it so I want to learn more about your church". So he called us as soon as he was done talking to her and we called her as soon as we found out and she is really wanting a nice family centered church were she can raise her kids.  I said "This church is exactly what you are looking for".  So we have an appointment with Jessica and her family this Thursday, and she is wanting to come to church next week as well.  It is amazing to see how the Lord really love each of his children and that he protects his servants when he wants his children to hear the Gospel.  So that is a cool experience of the week.

We have a lot of people who are in our teaching pool who we are going to meet with this next week, so we are really excited for that :) We have an amazing family in the independence ward too.  We have been trying to meet with them for some time now, and as soon as we do and have constant appointments with them, they will get baptized fairly soon.  There is also some others who we are going to meet with this week that will be very promising appointments.

Hope your week goes great!!

Love,

Elder Luke Johnson

An Arizona Dust Storm

 

ONE YEAR HAS COME AND GONE!!!

So this week has been going great!!  We found a couple of really promising new investigators!!  So the Monday before we had transfers we got a call from some missionaries in another area and said that they had talked to a guy who was wanting to be taught by us and was wanting some structure in his life.  His name is Alex and he just got out of prison a couple of weeks ago and he is really interested in learning more and has a really true repentant heart.  He really wants God to be more in his life and so he is so ready for the Gospel!!  He lives just behind Conrad and Naomi so he is going to have some really great fellow shippers who have gone through just about the same path as he has.  It is so amazing to see that the Lord has his hand in everything!!  Things are working out just perfectly and you can see how amazing it becomes when you bring one soul to the Lord...a whole bunch follow that one!! :)

On Tuesday night we were out on visits with a member in our ward and we decided to go and see someone who we have been trying to contact for quite some time now!!  His name is Joel and he is super ready for the Gospel!!  I our first meeting with him he basically gave us the first lesson and that was quite amazing!!  We found out that he was being taught by some other missionaries when he would go to his friends house.  He really enjoyed it and requested missionaries to be sent to his house and so we went and he is going to be out of town for this week, but when we meet with him next we will be setting a baptismal date with him!!  So that was dang awesome!!

We were able to meet with an MIA investigator this week, Carlos and Nicole, and it turns out that they moved and were tracted out by the Spanish missionaries, then they told us where she was, we then went to visit and it turns out that Carlos had to have some surgery and that they have been in and out these past few months and really want us to come and teach them!!  I can see that God really wants us to teach them because we were able to find them in a pretty miraculous manner!!  So we talked a bit and are setting some things up to start to actually teach them now!!  It is kind of funny...we were sitting in her family room and teaching her when I glanced over at some pictures that she had just below his TV, and I saw a girl with what looked like a missionary name tag!!  I started to think that other religions were starting to use our idea of the name tag, so I quickly had to ask who that was. It was Carlos's cousin who is serving a mission and that was something that was really surprising!!  You don't normally expect to she a picture of a missionary in investigators home!! So that was cool because I was able to see how blessing come to those who serve :)

So that is some of the many amazing thins that have happened this week!!  We are starting to find more people to teach and to baptize and help to enter the temple to go to the Celestial Kingdom!!  It is so amazing to see this!!  :)

Well that is all for this week!!  

Hope you have fun during the holidays!!  

Love,

Elder Luke Johnson