We will continue to grow and learn...

This week was started off with an exchange with Elder Tani!!! Always my favorite exchanges. He was able to give a baptism interview to someone being baptized this weekend in our ward. Always fun to be with someone from the homeland! We had a lot of fun knocking a lot of doors.

The following day I had to give a training on the role of the spirit in conversion, which I always learn from preparing it. After the training we had our interviews with President Blatter. That never goes bad (yet, cross your fingers it doesn't). We talked a lot about my growth so far in the mission and what trials I need next to grow more from. I think this has been one concept people have a hard time grasping… the fact that growth and change requires hard trials to overcome. I feel blessed to have grown up around family and friends who understand this and try to do hard things to grow from it.

The area I’m in has very little city area and a lot of boonies. Since I’ve been here I have spent a lot of time in the city because we talk to a lot more people and seem to get more done. But the past few weeks we have tried to go out to the more boony areas. It can be frustrating walking 5 min to each house and not talking to as many of people but it needs to be done. It has been beautiful out there as well so it’s a nice place to walk around. And as a result of people having a lot of property a lot of old folks need service! So we went and did that this week. We helped a lady plant tomatoes and cucumbers and pull down an 8 foot scotch-broom. I was sore from that. ha-ha

Teaching this week was great. There has been a huge push from the 1st presidency about baptism. We’re being trained more and more on how to help people get baptized. It’s a great thing to see the view of the whole mission get and more and more focused on one thing. This work is definitely moving in leaps and bounds. There is a new line to our recitations. We do recitations at the beginning of any mission meeting it’s just a bunch of scriptures but now we have added "and in the WA-Tac we Baptize" It’s not a pride thing, it’s a way for us to focus more and more on the result of us fulfilling our purpose.

"Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end."

But it’s true the Wa-Tac does baptize and we will continue to grow and learn and become more and more focused on our purpose while we are here on a mission. I love it here.

-Elder Johnson