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