Luke with Elder Rivas who goes home next week!!

The other two are the missionaries that live in the apartment with him!  (Not sure where Elder Rigby is?  Maybe holding the camera?)

This week's news!!!

So this week has been pretty good! We have been teaching a lot of Less-active families that have some un-baptized 8 yr olds and that has been really fun! We have a family we are teaching with a son who is 8 and he is pretty awesome! The whole rest of his family is less-active and at the request of the Bishop we are trying to help him to get to the point of being able to baptize his son and bring him to church, he is starting to commit to doing that and that is great because we were starting to work with him earlier in the months and he flat out said to us that he is really lazy and dosen't want to change. That was interesting and now we have seen the spirit work on him and he is starting to have that desire now. So that is going to be an amazing thing to be able to see and we are going to continue to work with the whole family to help to get them to the temple!

We also have another un-baptized 8 yr old who has a less-active mom because of some health issues and also a dad who is currently deployed in Iraq. So the Bishop want us to go over there and start teaching a girl who is super awesome and we are going to teach her so that when her dad gets back in November she will be ready for that.

We are also trying to work with an awesome part-member family and they are all active members except for Mike and we are trying to teach him and help him to prepare for baptism and commiting to come to Church which will be a bit difficult because he works a lot, but with faith we can over come a lot of things.

We have a pretty cool family who is a part-member family and we helped them move a couple of weeks ago and that really warmed them up to us! We were talking with the father yesterday and he said that he wants the whole family to get active in church as soon as they get settled in! So that is going to be awesome to be able to teach that family!

Elder Rigby is doing great! We had a member with us at a lesson that we had and the member said that you can't even tell that he is a new missionary! So that is really good! He is become quite the missionary and is going to be a really great one too!

Elder Rigby and I got a huge feeling this last week, that the biggest work that is coming and continually coming from this area is completing families and getting them to the temple! We got goose bumps from thinking about how many families are so close to getting on that path to reach that goal that it is really exciting! This next week that we have is going to be a busy who full of blessing the homes of members/teaching part-member family/contacting referrals and some other things as well and that is super exciting!

So this past week we had a mission conference and that was an awesome meeting! We had Neil L. Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve come and I got to shake an apostle's hand for the first time in my life!! That was an awesome experience to have been able to be taught by him more personally than general conference!

Hope your week goes great!!

Love,

Elder Luke Johnson

The ENTIRE Arizona Phoenix Mission!!

Mission Conference with Elder Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve!

This letter was from the 8th of October, I forgot to post!

October 8, 2012

We have been working really hard to find some new people and there is some really great potential that we are finding and hopefully we can make it into something. Elder Rigby (Luke's companion and greenie) went on his first split this last week and he was super nervous about it, but I helped to prepare him for it and he wasn't as scared. So we split up and I went with some one in the Sierra Montana ward while Elder Rigby went to the teaching appointment that we had set up with a new part-member family that just moved in. So he went to that then when he came back he said that he talked with the husband who is a non-member and he wants to learn more. So that is really awesome to see that! He was able to get a new investigator out of that and that was really good!

We are also working with Peter and he has kind of been up and down with some things but he still has that desire to be baptized! So that is good. This last lesson that we had with him we were able to sure up his testimony of the restored gospel so that this next lesson we can teach to him the word of wisdom so that he will know that this is something that he needs to do and it is from a prophet and by the testimony he has to be converted to the Gospel.

We are trying to get to teaching some Part-member families that we have here and we are working very closely with the members to help them with their missionary work by saying a prayer with them and instead of asking the usual "who do you know who would benifit from a prayer", we sit down with them and set goals and make plans to get to know their neighbors if they don't already know them and invite them to do one thing this week to help their neighbors come closer to christ through the plans that they have made. We tried it out with a family this past week and there was some amazing things that are going to happen from that. Then we say a prayer with them to confirm the plans that have been made and offer a blessing on the home and they have that spirit with them to share to others. It is something that I know will work here in this area and it will be a great thing to see all of the things that will happen. So that is some good work that we are doing here and I love it!

Well I hope all is well back at the home!

Have a good week!

Love ya!

Elder Luke Johnson

Monday, October 15 Letter

This week has been a really good one.  The weather he last week got really cool, down to the high 70's!!  and it is getting down to the 60's at night and that is pretty awesome!! Gaging off of last year's experience with the summer this week is going to be the last heat wave of the hot season, then it is down to the 60's to 70's for about 6 months!  So I am real excited for that!  It was nice and cool this last week and everyone is outside and in a good mood because of it and that is really amazing!  I am super ready for the winter here as you can tell because it makes biking a bit more managable, that also means that the end is kind of near, and that is a bit scary but I don't think about that too much. 

 

So this week has been one truly guided by the spirit and it has been amazing to see that.  I really have gained a testimony that God is in EVERYTHING that we do and when we listen to the promptings of the spirit we are able to be guided by him to know what we need to do and where we need to go!  So this week we had some really amazing experiences.  On Tuesday after our District meeting we planned to go and visit this part-member family that the Bishop wanted us to visit and we were having a pretty good visit with them and then he got a call from a member in the Sierra Montana ward who introduced him to the Gospel. She was calling to ask for some help for a couple who she met in a parking lot a few months back who called her and said that they needed some help getting back to Colorado.  She was wanting our number to be able to help them and we were at his house and he was able to give us a ride and we were able to teach this couple the first lesson and give them the number to the Bishop to be able to give them some help to get back up to Colorado were they had a Job and family waiting for them.  So that was an amazing thing!  Because that Bishop followed a prompting to tell us to visit this family and we listened to him and did that and followed the spirit to know where we should go we were able to help a struggling couple with there spiritual needs and the bishop was able to help with their temporal.  So I have really gained a even better testimony of how important it is to follow the spirit in everything.  Then the next day we were prompted to go and use the hour that we get for looking up things on Mormon.org and while we were at the Library I sat next to a man and glanced at his screen a couple of times and saw that he was on facebook talking about the Lord and how he needed help, he talked to me and I was able to get his info to have missionaries go and visit him to help him out with some service and to teach him a little bit about how to become closer to Jesus Christ.  We had to leave but I invited him to check out mormon.org right there at the computer.  So we left and I probably will never see that man again, but because we followed the prompting to go and use that hour for mormon.org we were able to help that man out and get missionaries to him.  I realize that when we follow a prompting from the spirit it is something that impacts eternally and is often an answer to someones prayer.  Then to finish out the week yesterday we were prompted to go to this part-member families house that we have been trying to meet with and it was about 7:30 and when we got there it was dark and all the lights were off, but we still followed that prompting and gave a knock and set something up for this Thursday to go by and start teaching that family!  So that was neat, then I had an impression to go to a family that we helped move the day before and they weren't there but their neighbors were moving in and we offered to help but they declined then we said are you sure and they still declined it, then Elder Rigby felt prompted and got off his bike and just started helping!  It was amazing because they were really appreciative for the help and we were able to help them cut an 2 hour unloading of a u-haul truck into about half an hour.  So that is some of the amazing things that have happened this week and hopefully next week we get to some more amazing things from following the spirit!  Elder Rigby is doing good and is learning a lot!  He is trying to learn the ropes of missionary work and I am trying to help him with that and things are going great!

Well that is about all for this week!

 

Hope all is well!

 

Love,

Elder Luke Johnson