Teaching in Toronto

Hello! First off I received exciting transfer news last night. I am staying in Sarnia and will be training a new missionary! I am humbled and grateful for the assignment. My mission president also assigned me to be a district leader so it should be fun learning the ropes and balancing the both at the same time. I am going to need a lot of help from the Lord. Whoever my trainee is, he is blessed to begin his mission in Sarnia, a lot of good things are happening here. Continued story from last week Last week I talked about how my companion and I got our car stuck in the muddy trail. It happened at 3:00 p.m. on our way to give a lesson to our investigator Austin who's dating a member of the Johnson family. Immediately after we got stuck we thought, ya we're going to need some help. The Johnson's we're the closest members to us (8 min drive away) so we called them up. Austin happened to be at the Johnson's place so sister Johnson sent Austin on their quad to...

Hello, Lots of stuff happened this week. Here's what happened on Wednesday. We are driving to the Johnson's who live outside the city a little ways (I was the passenger). We're getting close to the destination and the GPS says to take a left turn to a road where there is not one. The road looks more like an ATV trail that you could maybe get an off-road truck through. In my mind I'm thinking well let's try a different road but my companion from Arizona, who's well acquainted with off-roading decides to just turn onto the trail and start going. No words come out of my mouth and I just watch as we slowly trudge through this trail with our Rav4 SUV. I'm calm despite the nagging thought of, "how are we going to get out of this?" It goes well for about 100 meters but the trail gradually becomes more and more bumpy and muddy. Finally, we reach a halt. The wheels spin in the muddy water and we are done for.  We just sit for a moment, then the ...

Hi, I have don't have much time to write. Sunday was packed with events. We forgot about day-light savings so we arrived to ward council in the morning an hour early tehe oh well. That meeting went well and then our new investigator this week came to church. His name is Austin he's 17, has a catholic background and has a really good heart. He started dating an 18 year old in our ward name Morgan in the summer (Morgan is preparing to serve a mission). He's been to church and mutual activities a couple of times and he agreed to meet with us. He felt religion was pushed on him growing up and it turned him away from God. He loves how members of our church treat each other like family and he really enjoys coming [That's because it's the true church Austin]. My companion and I are going to focus on helping him come unto Christ and receive the gospel, not just to come unto the church or his girlfriend. We are going to see him every Wednesday with his girlfriend being t...

Hello! Glad to hear from those who email me every week. It might have been a Canada-Wide Primary presentation day yesterday because we had one here in Sarnia too. I would guess in every ward primary presentation you would witness the following: a 3 or 4 year old boy who pretty much eats  the microphone as he yells what's whispered into his ear. I always get a kick out of it.  Kari is the 10 year old investigator we're working with and her grandma is Paula. She is catholic and is a critical and intelligent thinker. She loves Kari very much and doesn't want Kari to make the decision to be baptized until she's completely ready. Omitting the details of the whole family situation, Kari won't feel comfortable with getting baptized until Paula is okay with it, and for the time being, Paula is not okay with it. The good news is this: Paula has agreed to read the Book of Mormon and investigate the church. I met with her for the first time on Tuesday (her second lesso...

oo much to write about this week, I'm going to pick the fun stuff. Mark and Michelle are recent converts and they love the missionaries.  They own a small farm. Elder Larson and I helped them out with a few things around the farm for a couple of hours and I loved it. They have about 75 hens for eggs with a couple roosters and about 75 all-white chickens bred for meat. They also have 75 more little meat chicks about 8 inches tall right now. They have 2 pigs who are soon to be sent off to 'farm paradise' and a couple more pigs for making more piggies. It's just a blast spending time on their farm. It's a ton of work to own a farm of course, but it's enjoyable work. I can honestly say if I was raised on a farm, I would have thoroughly enjoyed it. Growing up in the city was good though, more opportunities to work with people rather than animals. Missionaries here spend their p-days with the "The Leather Man". His name is Al Williams and he's a ...

Greetings, I'm loving it in my new area Sarnia! There are so many good things happening in this ward. There's a 10 year old named Kari who's a daughter of a new convert. She's investigating the church and doing well with reading the Book of Mormon and coming to church. It's the first time for me teaching someone who's not an adult which is a great experience. Angela, an investigator in her 50's, came to church for the first time yesterday and brought her 11 year old granddaughter as well. She loved how she felt at church and enjoyed the gospel principles class.  Our residence is a guest suite connected to a members house only 1 km from the church, it's a perfect set-up. We only had one dinner appointment last week but we've got 3 this week, soon enough it will be everyday :) It was fun cooking lunch and dinner everyday (we do simple stuff for breakfast), my comp likes to cook as well, so we made some good stuff including a stake dinner. T...

Hey! If you don't receive my email when expected, it either means p-day was moved or I'm dead. If dead...then I guess you wouldn't be getting an email from me. I was very surprised to receive the news that I was being transferred. I had the next week planned out and was in the mind set that it was just another week of work in Sault Ste Marie. I thought for sure I was going to stay another transfer to make it 6 months in the Soo. I guess you never know with transfers. Although I was surprised by the news, I was also grateful. I have been sent to a wonder place called Sarnia! Yesterday, my Mission President took me in to storage room in the stake center where an old closet was sitting. He opened the door and said, "Go on in Elder." I did so and something magical, yet disappointing happened. I arrived in Sarnia but realized that it wasn't Narnia. Sarnia is about an hour west/NW of London Ontario with a population of 73 000 people. It is on the o...

Hello! My eyes were opened this week. We received another media referral. John, a man in his 60's ordered a free bible. We met with him and he was very open and honest. His life story is a mess, beginning with child abuse and leaving home at 14. He daily schedule was a cycle of going to work during the day and drinking at night. This was his life, day by day, year by year, for decades. He has 2 kids but his family is not really together in any way, shape, or form. He's recently decided to come back to God and he has found himself again. He said that since he turned to God, this is the first time in his life that he has felt happy. Physically, his past has left him in really ruff shape. At the very least, I can help the Savior heal his spirit. We gave him his free Bible and a Book of Mormon and we hope to see him tomorrow. It was yet another eye opening experience I've had on my mission. To see the difference in people's lives when they are close to God compared ...

Hi,  Recently, I learned that an Indian Summer is a period of unusually warm weather in the late autumn season. It's not late in fall yet, but this week has been one of the hottest weeks of the year here in Northern Ontario. The summer was cooler and rainy but yesterday, for instance, reached a humidex temperature of 100+ F (humidex means how hot it feels). The missionary work has been heating up as well. :) On Wednesday we did what's called PEC splits (Priesthood Executive Council is when the priesthood leaders in the ward meet together). In the evening we went on splits with the bishopric and dropped by people who we'd like to see at church more often. It was my first time doing it since I arrived here in the beginning of June. It was very effective and fun. I would highly recommend to any ward or branch to try it out. We are going to do it monthly so I'm excited about that. It combined the efforts of the full-time missionaries with the ward leaders beautifull...

Hello. It was a crazy week. I spent most of this past week away from my proselyting area. My comp. and I left early Thursday to stay in an apartment 6 hours away to be close for zone conference the next day. Zone conference was once again a wonderful experience. I got to see my recent companion and my MTC comp again who are both awesome guys, just awesome. After Zone conference we drove back north 3 hours to stay in Sudbury where our Zone leaders and district leader and comp stay. A total of 12 missionaries stayed in that apartment Friday night, it was pretty fun. Saturday we all played sports together in the early morning, attended a convert baptism courtesy of the Zone leaders, had a stake sponsored dinner and attended the adult session of stake conference. After that we got some Dairy Queen and us 14 missionares stayed over night again in Sudbury. If you haven't served a mission then you might think all Elders are calm, well behaved and strictly obedient. Well that is false....

Hello! It was a great week! We were busy with appointments, service opportunities and a ward activity. We even got to paint tar on a driveway which was fun. Took before and after pictures of it for proof. The most exciting thing from this week was a referral we received from out west. We'll call her Melanie. She is 25, has 2 kids and is pregnant and is living with her boyfriend. She is First Nations and her dad is a chief. Melanie's mom lives in B.C. and is going to be baptized this month, she has had quite the conversion journey. A couple of weeks ago, Melanie recently contacted her mom; she needed help finding more peace and direction in her life. Her mom said there are people she needs to talk to...so we got the call. It's known within my family that there is a good history between my family and the First Nations people. My grandpa was a prime example of that. The interesting thing is Melanie said that she recognized me, she felt she had seen me before. Eithe...

Hi there, (btw, my next p-day is Tuesday) It was transfer calls last night, I will be staying in Northern Ontario for a 3rd transfer. I'm excited to see what the Lord has in store. Although, the work has been very slow over the summer, I have a feeling the fall season is going to drop some tasty missionary fruit if you know what I mean.  My current companion Elder Fabiano (we were together 2 transfers) will be serving with my MTC companion Elder Kaku which is awesome. Elder Fabiano is a great guy, I will miss serving with him. I hope I get to serve around Elder Kaku someday, he is so sweet! With transfers, comes the spirit of change. I've learned a lot about change while on a mission. Change can be stressful, it can be exciting, it can be terrifying, it can be not that bad actually. "Wait a second...Elder Johnson, you're only 20 years old, what do you know about change?" I may have only 20 years of life experience, but if I put together the exp...

Hello! Missionary work is still moving along here. We had a member referral first lesson which was sweet and a former investigator wants to meet with us. The Lord is helping us find people to teach. Leslie who is ready for baptism is very ill so we're praying for her to recover. The missionary work is beginning to brighten up here. The solar eclipse today was nothing special from our perspective in Northern Ontario. It barely got darker outside. I looked up the definition of an eclipse and I found it interesting how the moon is classified as a "celestial body." I thought tehe your wrong it's a terrestrial body, we learn that in primary! Scientists refer to all bodies in space as "celestial  bodies" so there you go.  Solar eclipses don't happen too often; more common I think, are "spiritual eclipses". You might see where this is going. Sometimes things obstruct our connection to celestial guidance (spiritual light). Jesus Christ is li...

Recently, I've learned how helpful and essential goal setting can be on a full-time mission and in life in general.  We had a zone conference near Toronto last Thursday which was a blast! My companion and I got to see other missionaries in person for the first time in over a month. The closest missionaries are 4 hours away so we don't see missionaries very often. It made me appreciate the social aspect of a full-time mission; in other words, spending time with other missionaries. It's like they say: "You don't appreciate what you've got until it's gone." As part of zone conference we learned about effective goal setting. Our mission leaders had received training from church leaders for a 4 step program for goal setting. I've applied these 4 steps in my missionary work recently and it is awesome. If I apply this program over the course of my life, I will be able to accomplish many great things. I want to share a simple version o...