Investigators Coming Out Our Ears!!

Good Week!!! Real Good Flippin' Week!!! We’re looking at a lot of good people and the baptism goal before April 8th is 7 baptisms!!! "How?" you may ask! With Faith!!! 

"Umm... Elder Johns. We've always been taught that faith without wor..."

Works is dead! I hear ya. But we got WORKS too, baby!!! Here's what's happening!

Wednesday we had a lesson with Ana and Antonio. They're still doing good and Antonio got his answer about the Book of Mormon!!! All that’s left is they need to go church!!! We're pretty sure that they'll come this Sunday! They can get baptized too before April 8th!!! Please send a prayer their way!!!

Thursday we did a lot of street contacting and had a miracle contact! It was a woman who had listened to the Elders before and had gone to church once as well. She also has 3 grandkids who had gone with her and really liked it. And they've got nothing better to do on Sundays!!! Her name is Cecilia. We put a lesson with her for the next day!!! We also had a lovely evening at ward council where every idea a missionary had (there's six of us keep in mind) to make the ward better was shot down with no mercy... I loved it. It was so much fun. I can't wait to do it next week..

Friday. More like, "Miracle-day"!!! That's right baby!! This is what went down. So, we were making our rounds and headed over to Cecilia's house. She's not home. But we'll see working with her. So we decided to try another contact that we had named Nuemi. We knocked her door and a kid comes out and tells us she's not there. We began to leave but then, out comes Nuemi calling her kid dumb and telling us to come in! As we go in, she introduced us to 2 of her 3 sisters and all their kids who are ALL above the age of 8... There were 9 people in total!!! We finished teaching and 8 of the 9 accepted a baptism date!!! The 9th is a "rebellious" 14 year old... We'll get him though! Their date is the 8th of April. Please send a couple prayers their way! This truly could be a miracle!!!

Saturday. We did splits and I went with Elder Zea from Belize. He's a really cool guy! During that time we went with Julia. Now, one way or another we are going to baptize this lady!!! All she wants is to see a baptism before she decides if it’s something she wants to do. There is a baptism this Saturday!! Please pray for her that she may have an open schedule to see this baptism, because if she sees it, I know in 2- maximum 3 weeks she'll get baptized!!!

So as you can probably see, the work is picking up pretty nice here in good ol' Valle de Chalco!!! Once again, prayers are accepted!!! #thedeflep #onthroughthenight As Always!!!

Stay Classy,

Elder Johns

Life Is A War

Pretty interesting couple of weeks. I'm not going to get into too much detail, but I'll give a small run down. First- One of our missionaries got assaulted. The Elder is about 5" 6'... maybe. Little did the guy know that he's a double black belt in some kind of martial arts. So everybody was kung fu fighting and he easily defended himself and his companion and knocked the guy out. Needless to say, he's awesome!!

Changes! Halle-Freakin'-Lujah! My new comp is Elder Freitas from Brazil and he's pretty cool. He is now the third comp I've had twice in my mission... Are you kidding me...? I mean, I love the guy! He's great, and I'm glad I'm with him. But that's unheard of!!!  It's rare to be with ONE companion twice. Even weirder to be with TWO companions twice. But THREE?! Some people here might say "loco". Any ways, let's get down to business.

Tuesday we got the changes done.

Wednesday. We went around collecting money from all the Elders in our zone. Backstory on that is that we have a sports day on Monday. So we had to pay for our jerseys. It took way longer than it should have, and while handling all that money, I realized that I will not ever become an accountant. For my sake AND the sake of others.

Thursday??? It felt a little bit more like The Bangles "Manic Monday"! And I WAS wishin' it was Sunday, cause that's my "I don't have to run" day. We were huffing it from our area, to Chalco, back to our area, to the stake center, to the middle of nowhere, ect. And the sun decided to be the hottest it’s been for almost my whole time here in the Valle. So that was lovely. We did however have a zone practice in the morning to prepare for sports day Monday. I've decided that I will not lose my last sports day on my mission so I'm taking this one pretty seriously!!

Friday was one of those lovely zone leader meetings that takes the whole day away. But it's always fun being able to hang out with Elder Reading and Elder Searle! Elder Reading goes home next Friday, and it’s going to be really weird not having him around the mission.

                                Elders Reading, Searle and Johns

Saturday. We had to do a contract in the morning. That was a long and painful process and took forever. But we didn't even finish because he had to leave and talk to his brother who owns the place. So we leave, we eat, and there hadn't been a call.  So we decided to go chill and watch a baptism we had in our zone. We didn't even get through the first hymn before I get a call saying, "it’s now or never with the contract"!  So we tear out of the baptism and grab a moto taxi and haul over to the house. The story stops there. And I don't know how it ends yet because we still haven't finished the contract...

Monday. Sports day. The most important day of the year... right behind conference...  We lost though...

Lastly, I'd like to share a thought I had this week. It was that sometimes, life feels like a war. We may have periods of rest, but there will always be another battle we have to face, until Christ our Savior and Redeemer comes again on that Great and Terrible day. But until that happens, we must fight. And it ain't goin' be pretty. We have to claw, scratch, bite, and yell with all our strength. Now luckily, we have the freedom to choose who we fight for. Christ or Satan. Either way it’s going to hurt and there WILL be tears. Thankfully God has given us the answer to who will win. So it should be an easy choice. But we all know it’s not that easy. And just like the 2000 sons of Helaman, every one of us is going to receive wounds, gashes, and injuries. However, like the example of those 2000 warriors, we can all come out alive according to our faith and diligence that God requires of us. This is His gospel. We are His children. And I am His witness. He loves us. As Always!!!

Stay Classy,

Elder Johns