Saturday's Baptism!!

So this week was a really good one!!  On Saturday we had the baptism and that was a super awesome thing!!  She is so awesome and invited her non-member mom and sister to it too!!  I really think that her family will come around one day!  It was such an amazing experience to have been able to complete the family.  We talked about the priesthood her husband and he has made it a goal to be able to be ordained a priest and eventually get his family to the temple!!  So that is so awesome! 

That family with all girls in it are still meeting with us and we met with them yesterday night.  We had a good talk about the Sacrament and how that is a way to be symbolically "re-baptized" every week at church as we renew those covenants that were made at baptism.  The two older ones were baptized when they were eight, but then some family drama with their dad cause them and their mom to go less-active so they didn't really feel like their baptism really meant anything to them so we talked about church and the Sacrament to help them understand that more. 

We also met with another family too!  The mom is a recent convert and her kids have just started to take the lessons a few weeks ago and so we talked about baptism with them and the son who is 16 wants to and daughter who is 15 does too, but she wants to feel ready for it.  So we will help here with that.  They come to church every week so hopefully we will be able to see them be baptized in March.

We have some great potentials that were sick this last week, and so this week we are going to focus on them and hopefully be able to make them to new investigators in this next week!  One is a less-active family who have 8 kids and 5 of them are not baptized!  So hopefully we will be able to reactivate the parents and baptize the kids so that that family can make it to the temple!  :)  We also have two to three other families in both wards that hopefully we will be able to start teaching!!  The work is awesome here and there is a ton of great potential that we hope to be able to bring to some good things happening here!

So this week was Valentines day and that was probably one of the worst ones! It started out with planning for of next week and then we decided to go up to a town called Rimrock.  It is a small little town up in the north part of our area and we only go there once a week because it is so many miles away.  We went up there and right as we were about to go to an appointment, they canceled on us, and so we decided to try another investigator who we didn't have an appointment with and right as we were on our way, out of the blue they texted us saying to come a different day.  So that was weird, then we tried a referral we got there and he grandma answered the door and we asked if he was there and she said no he wasn't and so we got in the car and called him and guess who answered?  The Grandma! haha So we asked for him and she gave him the phone and we talked with him.  So we had a granny lie to us, but it was funny!  Then we went and visited a blind guy, and came back down to Camp Verde to have some dinner at Sonic and that was pretty good, but right as we were about to leave our battery died!  So we had to call our ward mission leader to come and give us a jump and we went back home and then called it a night.

Oh yeah!  So I got a message from one of my Recent converts in Anthem.  They are going through the Mesa Temple on March 2nd!!  :)  I really hope that I can get permission to go!! 

So that is some good stuff for the week!

Hope all is well!

Love,

Elder Luke Johnson

First, and awesome thing is that it snowed in Camp Verde last night!!  It was like a blizzard and I had to drive in it!  That was super awesome and it reminded me a lot of driving in Utah.  So that was awesome!  I was freaking out because I haven't seen snow fall from the sky for almost two years!  That was such an neat thing!  Camp Verde is a really awesome place!

So we have a baptism this week!  She is super awesome!  Her husband who is a less-active member is starting to get back into activity and that is awesome!  She was found by tracting and they found out that her husband was a member and then they started teaching her and now she is super ready for baptism! She is getting baptized this Saturday and I am super excited for that.  They are a pretty awesome family.

Other than that this week has been a week of really test our faith.  I think just about every appointment we had fell through, and almost all of our progressing investigators have stopped being interested in the Gospel, so sound disappointing right?  Well it is, but I have not at any time felt discouraged which is such an amazing thing for me.  I can remember that it was a big struggle of mine in the past, with understanding why people who are super ready keep canceling appointments, not coming to church, not wanting the Gospel, etc.  But something that I have really come to know is that there is always a reason for everything, our Heavenly Father know all!  So we were able to spend some more time finding people and talking to some former investigators and all of these great things to set us up for an awesome week this week and the ones to follow.  There is a ton of amazing potential here and you can just feel it!  

 

There was also another awesome experience that happened this week!  So I couple of weeks ago we were coming home from an appointment that we had and it is really dark here in Camp Verde, so I took a wrong turn.  After a wrong turn we ended up in a new part of the Indian Reservation here that my companion had no idea about, so we said that we would tract that area and see if there was anyone over there.  So we did and ended up finding 2 really awesome potential investigators and a former investigator!  We are going to hopefully go back this week and see about trying to teach them.  It was an amazing thing being led by the spirit that day to find that area.

 

So I bet your thinking that the Indian Reservation has wiki-ups and tepees everywhere huh? No, it isn't like that.  There are homes on it and the older reservation is a little bit sketchy, but the newer one is like a suburb type place.  They are the Yavapai-Apachi Indians and of course like all Indian reservations, there is a Casino on it! haha  The Indian people are really nice to us when we talk to them, and are pretty open to listening for the most part.  It is a really cool thing. 

 

So I think that is about all for this week! 

Love,

 

Elder Luke Johnson

SNOW in ARIZONA? Yes, it happens...here's proof!!

Zone conference (held earlier this week) pictures!

So this week both me and my companion caught some sort of food poisoning and I kind of got it worse.  I tried to tough through it, but we had a meeting on Wednesday, when I got it, and I threw up a couple of times.  I had some of the priesthood holders give me a blessing and then we went straight home and rested.  I was up all night throwing up, but I woke up the next morning and felt a ton better!  So I got dressed and everything then went out and did some work!  It is amazing just how much the Lord protects his missionaries!  A normal person would be out for a couple of days, but it only took about 12 or so hours for it to go through me and I felt better after that.  The priesthood is amazing.

So the people in this area are amazing!  There is so much work happening in this area!!  We have a couple of people who are going to be baptized this month.  One is super prepared and she is going to get baptized on February 16 and that is going to be an awesome thing!  We were having a hard time meeting with her this week so on Saturday we were up in her area and we were like we should text her to see how she is doing and to see if her and her husband (who is a less-active member who hasn't been to church in a while) are coming to church.  So he said that he didn't have anything to wear.  I thought we were the same size.  We went home, I got some clothes for him, and then came back and met with them.  Unfortunately, the clothes didn't fit him, and he was trying to make the excuse that he didn't have the right clothes, but we said the Lord accepts anyone no matter how you are dressed!  The only thing that matters is if you are there and talked about the for a bit.  Then the next day he was at church!!  It is so amazing what happens when you just go the extra mile to help and things work out.  I have really learned that it takes just a little bit of the extra mile to help someone come closer to Christ.  So that was an awesome experience!

There is another person in our area.  He is a really great guy and I have only met with once, but he is super awesome and going to get baptized next week!  My companion talks about it quite a bit and so it will be exciting for him to get baptized.  He works a lot in Phoenix, and has a house down there that he stays at quite a bit so it is a little difficult meeting with him but we are always communicating by phone so that is good.

We are also working with another investigator who is part of a family who are all members and has been investigating the church for a while now. He has gone through some interesting stuff in his life and is a really great guy, but he is from the south and has a bad problem with drinking, smoking, and swearing a lot, so he has just recently cut down on the drinking and trying the kick that first, then after he is done with that he will the smoking and then the swearing.  He is trying and it is pretty tough, but he wants to do this so he can be better.  He is super funny and is what you would think of when you would think of a redneck.  I'll have to take a picture some time, He has two confederate flags on his wall, with a picture of Jesus in the middle of it! haha :)

We are also teaching a family that I have really been able to click with because they are all girls and I have   three sisters.  We talked about the plan of salvation and they have a lot of knowledge with the bible because they are in like decathlon for the Bible and so we have been working on that and talking about the spiritual meaning behind the bible and that has been working great!  We throw in a bit of the Book of Mormon to clear some confusing up that they have of stuff in the bible and it is working great! 

There is a ton of great things happening here and it is going to be an awesome thing to continue and build on the work that is happening!!

Love Ya,

Elder Luke Johnson