Hello everybody! I apologize in advance for the long email. It's (mostly) good stuff I promise :)
What a great week it has been! Monday was a really long day with all of the travelling so I won't bore you with the details. Tuesday morning was excited though, because I got to meet my trainer for the first time! His name is Elder Coffey and he is from Peoria Arizona (near Phoenix). He's a really great guy and an awesome missionary. He is a very obedient and hard working missionary which is what I am striving to be as a missionary so he is a perfect trainer. We are serving in a town called Woodstock, it's about 45 mins East of London Ontario and about 2 hours West of Toronto and has a population of about 25 000 I think. I have only been in the field for one week but I love it so much already. I am transitioning really well and I am trying to hit the gate running. I have come to the realization that I was very prepared for my mission, and I am so grateful that I took the extra year and a bit to mature and grow in all aspects (socially, intellectually, spiritually) so I can do the work so much better now.
The Woodstock ward was a branch for many many years but it was just turned into a ward a couple of months ago so it has grown a lot! The ward is led by a great man named Bishop Macfarlane who is a convert to the church. He joined when he was 21 and didn't get a chance to serve a mission but he married Heidi who is a return missionary and they have 5 kids. He is the most humble servant of the Lord I have ever met. He loves the gospel and the Savior and his ward so much and he dedicates everything to God. He is so close to the spirit at all times and is also super missionary minded. In a way, he is serving a mission as a Bishop and the first thing he is going to do when his kids grow up is serve a mission with his wife. He's a man I could see becoming a mission president and a patriarch so I am so blessed to be able to work with him and learn from him.
In my first week I met with and taught 4 investigators and 6 returning/semi-less active members. We only had time for a couple hours of contacting ( just talking to people as you walk downtown which is really fun for me) this week and no time for tracting because of all of the visits and dinner appointments and other things.
I would like to share one wonderful experience I had with teaching an investigator this week. My mission president, President Shields challenged all of the new missionaries to invite an investigator to be baptized in their first week so I had that goal in my mind this week. I had the opportunity to teach an investigator named Cynthia who the missionaries tracted into about a month ago. She is 24 and married and has a 7 year old son. Elder Coffey and his old companion met with her about a week before and left her with the Plan of Salvation pamphlet to prepare her for the next time she met with the missionaries. I popped into this equation on Friday and met her and we taught her the Plan of Salvation in a coffee shop. She read the pamphlet before hand (which I hear is rare for an investigator to do) and already understood it so teaching it to her went really well. After we got through the lesson I taught about the importance of the Atonement and the gospel of Jesus Christ and how it is central to the plan. Then I explained how baptism is the next step and I invited her to be baptized and she said yes! Her only concern was that she wanted to learn more about baptism and how to prepare for it, which is exactly what you want to hear as a missionary. Then she said the closing prayer for the first time in a lesson, and on top of that it was in a coffee shop! I am well aware that Cynthia is super prepared and has been seeing the hand of the Lord in her life for a long time so I take absolutely no credit for how well that visit went. I just went in their and fulfilled my purpose as a missionary and let the spirit work within her. I also know that most times I invite people to be baptized it will not go that well or be that easy but I am very grateful that my first time doing it did go so well!
I have learned so many things from the MTC and my first week in the field it's amazing. I would like to share just a tiny snippet of what I have learned. I have learned what it means to be converted unto the Lord. As a missionary, it is our job to "teach repentance and baptize converts." Key word being convert. I have learned that what it means to be converted unto the Lord is to become like him and the only way we can do that is by utilizing the gospel of Jesus Christ every single day. The gospel includes faith, repentance, baptism (covenants), the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end (enduring to the end is repeating those first 4 principles and ordinances). And this "gospel" works only by the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I have learned that people fall away from the church even return missionaries become lost because they were not converted unto the Lord. There is a lot more to what it means to be converted unto the Lord but I don't have time to write so I invite you to ask yourself this today: Am I converted unto the Lord? Do I know and love my Savior? I promise you all that if you read your scriptures and watch conference talks you will find what it means to be converted unto the Lord. Our Savior Jesus Christ gave everything for us, his salvation was not easy, in fact it was the hardest thing anybody could go through. Because he lives we can have salvation, but we need to be converted unto him. Elder Holland said, "Salvation is not easy, it was never easy...because it was never easy for him." I love my Savior and I know the Atonement can change lives and I am so excited to help others use the gospel in their lives!
Have a great week everybody!
Elder Johnson
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