November 2nd, 2016

This week has been pretty eventful! So on Friday we had specialized zone training. This is the one that President Gubler and the assistants are in charge of and me and Elder Persicke don't have to do anything. Or so we thought. So the zone training was in Crawley which is a 45 min drive from us so we woke up at 6 to get ready and on the road early and at about 6:45 Elder Persicke realized that we had no clue who was going to make lunch for the whole zone... we made a frantic call to the assistants and asked if they set up for someone to make lunch. They laughed and said nope that's your responsibility. So we panicked a bit and then on the drive there I made a plan to make Chilli for everyone. There were 27 people there and I only had £20 in my wallet so we went to Asda and got as much food as we could buy for £20 then frantically went to the Crawley Elders' flat and made 2 massive pots of chilli and then we bought loads of day old bread rolls and the cheapest tortilla chips we could find haha but it was good and everyone liked haha

The zone training itself was amazing and we talked all about why we do missionary work. President taught us the doctrine of the answers to the 4 questions of the soul. Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? And who am I? We especially focused on "who am I" and learning the doctrine of the noble and great ones and what that means and the amazing potential we have. When we know who we are and what our potential is it changes our perspective on life and it changes what we do. 

We then had exchange with the assistants and it was really cool as I got to be with Elder Tunnicliffe who is from York and is a very good friend and we had some great chats and were able to help each other with different things we were working on. 

I love the friends I have made on the mission. Life long bonds of friendship come when you serve together as a missionary because the work you do is so hard and you are so focused on loving the Lord that it just becomes so easy to love those around you starting with the missionaries you serve with. 

Paul the guy we were teaching dropped us on Saturday after teaching him the Law of chastity. It was in of the most spiritual teaches of my mission but after he sent us a huge message and said he doesn't think he can change who he is and he can't live the law of chastity. We were pretty sad but the next day he said he felt like something was missing so we had another teach last night and the spirit was so strong and we got him back. It taught me the importance of the spirit in teaching and how it doesn't matter what we say or how we explain things. As long as the spirit is there then he will touch people's hearts and begin the change within them. He continues to change me. 

October 26th, 2016

This week was full of new things. I forgot how overwhelming going to a new ward is and learning a hundred people's names in 3 hours. It's nice though because I don't have to figure out the area. The ward seems really nice but people in this side of country are so busy because it's so expensive. Someone who lives in the M25 would pay 200 thousand for a flat the size of our kitchen. The area here is about an hour away from the temple and about an hour away from Central London so it has a ton of people. It's not like inner city but because it's so close to London there's a lot of people and the neighbourhoods are super rich. There are so many posh people and I've never seen so many super cars just casually driving around. Something really cool that we can do in the eastern zones is bring people to the temple to the visitors centre. I got super lucky and on Thursday we got to take an investigator named Paul to the temple. The Spirit of the Temple is so strong and tangible and he definitely felt it. We sat in front of the Christus and talked about the Saviour and what He has done for us. We then asked him what his next step would be to come closer to Christ and he said Baptism!! We set a date for the 19th! God is so good. The last two days was pretty long as a lot of our appointments flogged so we went finding all day both days and got no new investigators or lessons, so that was a bit rough. 

The good thing is me and Elder Persicke are like brothers. We fight and argue but love each other and have so much fun. We both came to the conclusion that we are both usually the leaders of our companionships so it's going to be hard for us not to argue about things. But we both know when we are wrong and we admit it. And we never hold grudges. We are so similar though so we fight a lot.

We had a guy almost call the cops on us. We were knocking and it was getting a bit late and we knocked on a door and the guy was a bit mad and said we shouldn't be doing this and we told him we are just missionaries. He then said he didn't care and we need to stop because it's dark and we could be burglars. So we just walked over to the next and he chased us down and started shouting at us. Me and Persicke both just started laughing and told him it's not illegal we have talked to cops and then he shouted that he didn't care and spew should leave. Anyways after about 2 minutes of us getting shouted out and threatened to get the cops called on us we decided we should just leave and not cause a fuss.
I read a super cool talk in studies today called "willing to submit" by Neal a Maxwell. It was so good. If you get some spare time check it out. Of not here's a sweet quote "For the faithful, what finally emerges is an understanding of “things as they really are” (Jacob 4:13), such as the reassuring realization that we are in the Lord’s hands! But, brothers and sisters, we were never really anywhere else! Demonstrating this great attitude is our beloved and submissive brother, Bruce R. McConkie.  “Know ye not that ye are in the hands of God?” (Morm 5:23) Likewise, “all flesh” (D&C 101:16, Moses 6:32) and “the heavens and the earth” (D&C 67:2)! Perhaps the realization of being in God’s hands comes fully only as we ponder the significance of the prints in the hands of our submissive Savior. (See 3 Ne. 11:14–15.) Some will have to ask what those wounds are, having been estranged. (See D&C 45:51–52.) These are they who “regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands.” (2 Ne. 15:12)   The more we study, pray, and ponder the awesome Atonement, the more we are willing to acknowledge that we are in His and the Father’s hands. Let us ponder, therefore, these final things."
I love that and love knowing that He has me. Even though things suck sometimes and we may lose faith and not feel his hands or at least recognize them, He has us. I love it!

My first haircut on my mission from someone that's not me haha super cool member here

their sweet dog

October 19th, 2016

Some crazy things happened and for some reason they moved me. But the crazy part is they put me back with my old companion Elder Persecke!! So I'm going to be going to Crawley zone, Epsom ward which is about an hour or less away from the temple! I am so stoked to be serving there with him. I do love Elder Tokoragi but I'm exited now to be with a companion who I already know and works really hard and is obedient. The time we spend together is going to be amazing!! I am a bit nervous to be be serving as a Zone Leader but I've been around zone leaders my whole mission and I think I'll be able to figure it out. One thing I am really nervous for is to drive!! All the zone leaders and a few of the bigger areas in our mission drive so that means I'll have to get my English license which is kinda scary because it is the hardest driving test in the world and English roads are insane to drive on and they are really small and it'll be on the other side of the road and car haha but the fact that it took me two tries on my American test and I totaled a car within the first week of having a drivers license will have no effect on me whatsoever...

My last week in Plymouth was great. I got to see a lot of the ward members and me and Elder Wilfley cooked dinner for the whole ward. There was a ward activity/missionary fireside and the theme was kind of like a DA with the missionaries. The sisters printed out a bunch of paper slips with questions on them like "when was the last time you talked to someone about the gospel?" Or "what's a spiritual insight you have had in the Book of Mormon recently?" And placed them on the tables to facilitate missionary type conversation. Then me and Elder Wilfley made food for everyone. It was crazy and took us all night to do. I made chilli and bangers with mash and Elder Wilfley made this really good stir fry. We made enough to feed about 60 - 70 people. It was so fun to cook! And the activity went really well and we had a lot of good feedback on it. It was definitely a good last Sunday in Plymouth. Also had an exchange with Elder Burningham who is one of my favourites. We had some cool experiences as cool experiences always seem to happen on exchange. Elder Burningham has only been out 3 months and I was helping him practice being himself when finding because he felt like he was being robotic so we went knocking in an area that we were led to by a random series of events. I kept telling him that he needs to stop worrying about what he says and more how he says it because it's the Spirit that is the teacher. Well we knocked on a door and a random lady answered and the very first thing he said, very awkwardly, was "do you know the purpose of life" haha she stared at us very confused because it was also pretty dark and just said, "what?" I quickly jumped in and explained who we were and what we were doing and I then started to teach a little bit about the plan of salvation. When I finished Elder Burningham very powerfully testified and the Spirit was really strong. Then we taught her more asking lots of questions. By the time we were done she was excited and wanted to bring her and her boyfriend to church next Sunday. It was really cool and Elder Burningham and I were both able to see that it's not the words that we use but it's the Spirit that we bring that matters.

So excited for Epsom with Elder Persicke!

Love Elder Johnson!

October 12th, 2016

         It's been a pretty good week! I had exchanges with Elder Sullivan who's in my district and it went great. Such a breath of fresh air haha I love exchanges because it gives you one on one time to really get to know other missionaries and help them and just make a good friendship. We had some deep chats about life and the mission is helping us for the rest of our life. He's been out a transfer longer than me so we are kind of in the same point of our mission and we are both loving it.

         Something really crappy that happened was while on exchange we got this call from a guy named Matthew who said he had been taught by some sister missionaries online and he is going to Uni at Plymouth and he wants to be baptized. We were super excited and planned to meet with him Monday. We called him Monday an hour before the appointment and he was coming and was really excited. The appointment time came and we were meeting at the chapel with a member. 10 min past and we called and it went straight to voicemail. We ended up calling 10 or so times and waiting for 45 min and he never showed up. If we still call him it goes straight to voicemail. We even tried calling on a different number and it still went to voicemail.... so either it was a really pointless elaborated joke... or he died on the way to coming. Which ever one it was it sucked.

           The rest of the day has been us moving houses. Moving is the worst!!!! There is so much junk in our flat and we aren't even close to being ready and we have be done by Friday... we'll see what happens. Next Tuesday is moves day and we get our call on Saturday but I'm pretty sure I'm staying. Things have been getting better with Tokoragi. It has been more of me having an attitude change that helped the whole situation. I was reading in Mosiah 24 and it talked about how they bore their trials with faith and patience and everything just worked out. So that's the lesson I'm learning from all of this. I just really don't want to be that missionary who gets bitter about everything when things aren't looking up and then looks back at his mission with negative feeling. I know a few people like that and they're a drag haha

Connor Hess phelps... I'm the wind beneath his wings

We're moving so we all decided to sleep on the floor and have a sleepover. No, there was no real reason for it and yes, we all woke up with sore backs haha

October 5th, 2016

       This week has been pretty good with plenty of ups and downs. Last Wednesday in the evening my companion told the 3 of us he wanted to go home and be done with the mission and take a little break. We had a really good and long talk with him helping him understand that this is the time and place to get strong and to grow. We explained to him that we get hard times in life to make us stronger. The whole time the 4 of us were talking the Spirit was really strong and it kind of felt like we were teaching a lesson to an investigator. He understood and at the end said he wants to stay. It was a bit frustrating but he was fairly good for the rest of the week. 

       I had a really good chat with my mission president about it and how I can help him and help myself because I found myself falling into a rut of "I don't really care anymore" when things would get frustrating instead of getting mad I would just kinda shut off and stop caring but then I would get really down because I wasn't being an effective missionary. President Gubler and I chatted about finding the balance and how in the end all we can do is love and remember that everyone struggles with something but their struggles are just different than ours. Charity never fails because as we love and support others we love and support ourselves and become spiritually stronger.

      The absolute highlight of the week was conference. It was so uplifting and there really was a massive spiritual recharge. Some of my favourites were President Uchtdorf's in the women's conference and Pres Nelson's Sunday morning. I still haven't been able to watch all of the last session because it started at 9pm our time so we just watch one talk a day or so afterwards. Absolutely love it though. Well that's pretty much my week. Nothing too crazy happened after that it was a good week of growth though and I'm very grateful for growth that I'm having out here! 

Conference at a member's house

Caramelized Banana French toast. New favourite breakfast 

Weird Cats

September 28th, 2016

Zone training was in Poole which is a 4 hour train ride away. The train left at 4:57 and tokoragi decided to randomly take a shower at 4:20.... we missed the train. Because of that we ended up getting into Poole around midnight. Zone conference was so so so good!! One of my favourite things I took away from it was how to ask questions and how to dig deeper. Questions like: Tell me more. What did you like? How did you feel? What would it mean to you if....? Asking the level 2 questions really get people to open up and share how they feel which enables us to teach better but it's also just a very good life skill that I hope to master.

My comp is still struggling. He is so hard to get going and to motivate. He doesn't like taking instruction or improvements. It's difficult to be able to teach but it does come. I have to call president every week and give a report and this last time he told me to just keep loving him and be stern. The hard thing is though when I care too much about him and helping him change I get really frustrated so I find myself not caring and just letting things go. Then I feel bad and start caring again and I go through that cycle a few times every week. Also another thing that's been kind of meh is the missionary work in the ward has really been struggling. There are 6 missionaries in this ward and there has only been one baptism in the ward in the past years and he went less active after the second Sunday. We had a chat with the one of the counselors in the bishopric and also the ward mission leader and they had some really bad stories of the ward struggling with missionary work and them pushing investigators away. They both said separately that God won't let people be baptized into a ward that isn't ready. I don't know how true that is but it's definitely making us focus on helping the ward more than anything else. But the mission pressing doesn't want us to focus on the ward. So confusing.... I'm just trying to be the best I can be. 

We were teaching this guy named Jim who we found a while ago and we just never got to do because schedules didn't work out. He has mental illness. He is schizophrenic and has anxiety. We were in the lesson for 20 minutes and it was going well but then he started sweating and shaking and then said he was having anxiety and asked us to leave so we said a prayer and left. It was really sad to see him like that and how he had no control. I wish I could do more for him.

I'm doing good. Been doing a lot to try and help the missionaries in the district. The winter is definitely coming and the days are getting short and shorter. Last year it sucked when it got light at 9am and dark at 4pm. Not looking forward to that but I am so looking forward to the holiday season. All in all life is good though! 

Nightly shakes

Comp study/snuggle time

A random pic

September 22nd, 2016

Hey fam!

Our mission president gave us permission to send the fam a little love and a picture of our tri zone conference. It was a great conference and I learned so much! I love you guys and I love you!! Have a great week

Love, Elder Johnson 

September 21st, 2016

      My week has been pretty good. I got to meet my second cousin for the first time who just came into the mission and it was a really cool experience. He is from the Canadian side and I saw him at DLC (district leader trainer meeting) because his comp is a is DL in my zone. I knew he was coming because my parents were telling me about it for the last 3 weeks but I never thought I would see him immediately because there are 9 zones in my mission. Well we had a great chat and I got to know him really well and at the very end right before he left he said to me "hey can I talk you privately?" so we walked away from everyone and he said quietly, "I'm feeling a bit homesick. How did you get over your homesickness?" I smiled put my hand on his shoulder and said, "great question let me call you tonight!" So I called him and we had a great chat I talked more about the start of my mission and how I struggled with home sickness. We talked about learning from the scriptures and focussing on the day ahead of him not the 700 days ahead of him. I talked about having a girlfriend on a mission too because he is writing a girl and I told him how he can stay focused. We talked for a solid 30 minutes and it was so good and such a tender mercy for me to help my family member. I love how God works!

      My comp struggled a bit this week. I think he is slowly losing the motivation to be here which sucks. It sucks because I don't think there's a whole lot I can do for him to help him change. His main language is French too so that's a bit of a struggle and when he doesn't know how to say something he doesn't have too much of a desire to learn. It's a struggle. 

      The work has been really slow. No new investigators this week and we had a few of our appointments cancel. I don't always understand why times in the mission like this happen, but they do and I know that we grow through the struggle though. I love being here and I love the growth that has happened. 

I was reading in 2 Nephi 4 this week which is one of my favourite chapters in the BoM and verse 33 and 34 stood out to me so much. 

33 O Lord, wilt thou encircle me around in the robe of thy righteousness! O Lord, wilt thou make a way for mine escape before mine enemies! Wilt thou make my path straight before me! Wilt thou not place a stumbling block in my way--but that thou wouldst clear my way before me, and hedge not up my way, but the ways of mine enemy.

34 O Lord, I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever. I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm.

      We get trials all the way through life and I have learned that a lot of the time those trials are there to make us turn to our Heavenly Father. When these trials come the first thing we need to do is turn towards God and acknowledge Him. As we do this we come closer to Him and more quickly learn from our trial. I think a really good "trial replant" is just to stay close to God. This is a lot easier said than done because we always need to be on a path of growth and we tend to like to coast. I love how Heavenly Father has a plan for all of us to grow! He is so good to us

September 14th, 2016

      This week has been pretty uneventful. I got sick on Friday with a bit of a head cold so that put me out that day and I'm just now recovering. The weather has been changing a lot and it's getting very rainy and cold again. Winter is not a happy time here in England. By next month it will start getting dark at 4 and raining loads. But that's why Christmas is in the winter so it can warm everyone's hearts haha

      Me and Tokoragi are doing good and it's been interesting to work with him. He is quite different than most Polynesians for a few different reasons one in particular he doesn't like fish... Yeah that was a bit of a shock haha but we have had some good laughs. One really funny thing that happened this week was when we were out proselyting and saw an old lady cutting some very overgrown brier bushes. As missionaries do, we asked if we could help her and she surprisingly let us (most people don't like getting help). So we finished cutting and putting the briers cuttings into bags. When mostly everything was cleaned up in the bags I looked around the perimeter of the garden to find any stray pieces and I saw what looked like an old dead tree branch that wasn't a brier so I picked it up and then it in the bag. When I picked it up felt a tug of the root snapping and when I did tug Mavis, the old lady, very dramatically shouted, "oh no!" She then said that this bush was 50 years old and she had had it most of her life. I tried to apologize but the damage was done and we very quickly finished and left. She was not happy. We are still laughing at her reaction of the death of her dead bush haha       

        The work has been alright but we are going to have to clean out our teaching pool a little bit as people aren't progressing but that's mission life. We got flogged by Marie when we were going to teach her and Alex and Hannah are sticking to their beliefs and didn't read the Book of Mormon.

        We also have to worry about grown up things as the mission is dissolving all 4 man flats. The mission office told us to buy a flat so this week we have started the process of finding flats and setting appointments to view flats. It's not my favourite, but must be done. 

        A great lesson I was reminded of is the spirit is the key to missionary work and a successful life. As soon as we start to rely on ourselves we instantly let pride in our hearts and lose the Spirit. When we have the attitude of' "I know I can do all things through you" that's when we have the spirit and are successful.

August 31st, 2016

This week was great as far as the work was concerned. We found a lot of new people. The most promising one was a married couple who literally got married a week ago and have been in their house for 5 days. We were out contacting and they were cleaning this nasty house out. We stopped and asked if they needed help and they got super excited. They are so cute and nice to each other it's really funny. We got to help them with their new house and they were so grateful. They are very faithful Christians already. I don't know the name of their church but it's just one of those small local ones who go do service missions in Africa and things like that. We did service for an hour then shared our conversion stories and then had to go so we haven't had a real full on lesson with them so idk how they will receive the message of a restoration but we will see how it goes. I loved the way they acted and treated each other though. You could definitely tell they were brand new at the whole marriage thing. For example, me and Pongbundit were working in the back garden with him and there were these weird bugs and he called her to come check out these cool bugs that we had unearthed and she ran over barefoot to see them and he got all concerned because he didn't want her bare feet to get hurt on the ground. So that was Alex and Hannah then we had a good teach with Marie and Anthony, the couple who lives far away, and it went really well. We spent an hour and a half teaching them the plan of salvation because they had so many good questions like when we said God created our spirits she asked, "if God created us then why are we all so different and why would something he create be so evil like Satan?" Yeah so they are really interested and they will be coming to church on Sunday.

Other than all that other stuff the rest of the week has been alright. There were definitely some ups and downs as there always are in life and in a hindsight way I am grateful for them because they make me always turn towards my Savior. No matter what is wrong in our life whether from our own personal mistakes, the mistakes of others, or just the crappy times in life bringing us down we can always turn towards him for comfort and peace. I love being reminded of that truth which is the most important part of the gospel.

I broke a member's £200 driver

August 24th, 2016

 A cool insight I had last while an area 70 was speaking to us! Worthiness comes from keeping the commandments. Spirituality comes from how much we are striving to come close to God.

As we go through life, our worthiness usually doesn't change. Our spirituality does though because so many variables in life affect our spirituality such as health, time, finance, where we live, friends and family, job, general stress, our study and prayer etc. We often time mix the two though and we think because we are low spiritually then we are not worthy. This is a tool Satan uses to make us feel unworthy and when we feel unworthy and we are low spiritually then we are vulnerable to Satan and can become unworthy.

So something that sucked is Melony dropped us. It was sad too because we had a really good teach with her last week but she messaged us and said she can't join our church because her beliefs of evolution are too strong and deeply rooted and she doesn't feel like she would ever be able to change. We will see what happens with her though. I think it will click for her one day.

The rest if the week was great! A super cool miracle we had was when we went to have a DA (dinner appointment) with a member in a town called Tavistock which is about a 30 min drive from Plymouth. I have never been there and apparently missionaries haven't been there in a very long time because the buses we use don't go out there and missionaries were probably too poor to leave the city of Plymouth. So we went home with the Hoopers after church and we had a few hours in between getting there and dinner time so we went knocking on the houses around theirs. The first street we knocked in we found a guy who was a bit weird but listened and we taught him at the door. Then we had about 10 minutes before dinner and I felt like we should go knock a street really close to the Hoopers house and within a few doors we met Marie who is the mother of two girls. We taught her at her door for about 30 minutes then got an appointment for the next day. We came by and her and her boyfriend/partner (they don't live together) were there and we had such a good teach and they really soaked it all up. She was especially interested because she believed in God, but was so confused by all of the many different Christians religions. When we taught her about how Joseph Smith had the same feeling and he just wanted to know which church was right it really clicked with her. She said she's not much of a reader, but she would take the time to read. The spirit was really strong during the lesson. They were both really excited to see us next week and said they would have their 14 yr old daughter join the lesson too! So stoked for them.

Life is good here in England and I'm loving the growth and change that this time is having on me. I am strengthening my faith in Christ daily and making Him my foundation in life.

kanakai

i made homemade Oreos for district meeting and the were SOOOOO good!!! I got the recipient from elder cox's mom!! 

HALF TIME

The work week was really good. We taught Melony with a member and it went really well and she is progressing at a steady rate and it is sinking in. She has a lot of great questions that don't always pertain directly to the lesson, but we teach to her needs and she has loved it. It's good that she understands that the way to receive her answer is through personal revelation. She wasn't able to come to church because a family member got seriously ill and she had to go to the hospital, but we are seeing her this week! Vicky has fizzled off and is now "too busy" but that's life and some people need more time before the message really sinks in. England isn't the easiest place in the world to do missionary work, but I sure do love it.

One of the highlights of my week was going on exchange with a missionary who is still in his first transfer and was struggling with homesickness when he was fresh. He is from Utah and just barley turned 18. He's a super smart and talented kid though and it's was really cool to be able to talk to him and boost his spirit and teach some things about missionary work and life. Getting to know people and building great relationships has been one of the best parts of my mission. I have made so many life long friends.


It is really weird to think I've been out for one year now. I can't believe it's already halfway over. It seems that every day has gone by faster than the last one. The month of July felt like a week. I'm so glad I'm keeping a daily journal because I wouldn't be able to remember anything that happened on my mission because it all goes by so fast! I love serving the Lord full-time and know this time is turning me into the man I need to be and I have grown so closely to the Lord in this past year. I love it!

August 10th, 2016

This past week and a half has been so great! Melony came to church and loved it. She is progressing really well. We are teaching her again tonight. The sister missionaries in our ward told us while she was in relief society she shared a cool experience about her prayer being answered and how she knows that when she recognized God's hand in her life she feels his love. She is progressing well. Vicky didn't come to church but she had a meeting but we are seeing her again Friday. It kinda feels like she's fizzling off a bit because we have had a lot of contact with her this week but we'll see how it goes. Elder Pongbundit's english is getting better slowly but surely. We have loads of fun and are constantly laughing together. Loving Plymouth and the many good times we have and miracles we see. A fun thing we did this week was go to a Fijians 21st birthday party. There were so many people there and SO much good food I got 4 plates and the last two were just muscles haha I had at least 20! It felt like I was back in Hawaii. We were the only people not from Fiji. A really cool miracle we saw besides Mel having a great time at church was finding Sam. We met a guy while knocking who looked really young but was 19. He was covered in tats and when we asked him if he was religious he turned his arm over to show a cross then pulled his sleeve up to show a picture of Christ. We talked more and he didn't know much about God. We taught about Christ and the atonement and how people can change and be free from guilt and sin through him. It struck a note in his heart and he said he has had times when he did something really bad so he prayed and felt better. We explained how through Christ we can be complete clean. The spirit was strong and we got a return appointment!

July 26th, 2016

This week was great!  We taught Vicky who is now a progressing investigator. She used to be a former but we found her and started teaching her again. She is Filipino and has been living in England for a while. We taught her the restoration and Elder Pongbundit did a great job! The gift of tongues is real. He spoke better English in that lesson than ever before.

We also played touch rugby with some Fijians and it was crazy! So the other missionaries in our area are teaching one of them and they invited them out to play. They wanted as many people as possible so they invited us. It is such a fun sport, but it has a complete and totally different mindset from football so that was different, but I loved it and we are going to make it a weekly thing.

Then we had zone conference where 3 zones come together. That was really good. I really like the mission president. He is an inspired man and is definitely helping the mission stay on the right track. They asked everyone in the mission to prepare a 5 min talk beforehand and when we get there they randomly (guided by the Spirit) choose a few missionaries to speak. I always prepare the sickest talks but never get called on but this time they called on me. I actually didn't prepare this time but used a talk I prepared 3 months ago and had in my notes haha the topic was how Preach My Gospel helps us know our purpose or something like that. I used a movie scene I remembered my football coach a long time ago showed us from the movie 300 about the Spartans. I described over the pulpit to 70 or so missionaries and the mission president the part where Leonidas is with his 300 men and is talking to an army of 10,000 and their leader. Leonidas asks one of the soldiers, "what is your profession?" The man answered a farmer. He then asked another soldier the same question and got a similar response. He then turns around and asks his army, "Spartans! WHAT IS YOUR PROFESSION?" And they respond, "OWU, OWU, OWU!" So I very dramatically acted out this scene, shouting that last bit, then tied it into the point of how we have power when we know our purpose and know what we are here to do. It was the best talk I had ever given and everyone (except president Goobler) was laughing hahaha it was so fun!

The rest of the week was pretty chill. The ward is great and they feed us a lot. We have like 3-4 DAs (dinner appointments) a week. It's great to get to know the members and I love learning from them. People have such cool life stories. The only problem with so many DAs is it makes me chunky.... Morning exercise isn't enough to combat the powerful effect of pudding. Especially when they make eton mess which is my favourite English pudding. It's whipped egg whites with sugar (can't spell that word), thick whipped cream, and chopped strawberries and raspberries!! Loving the area of Plymouth and we see miracles daily! Elder Pongbundit is an amazing guy and I love him!!

Love, Elder Johnson

I made Oreos, Nutella, and peanut butter brownies.. Yeah I'm fat.

My old district!

my best bud Elder Bos who is headed home... Yeah we were a bit gay. Haha sorry