Thursday, July 31, 2014

Blessings and Lizards

To any Jews or Gentiles that may be reading, hello.

If you're just tuning in this is your boy, Elder Tyler J Johanson. I just got done playing some basketball for p-day. I made a couple hoops. It was ill.

This last week was, without a doubt, the most stressful of my mission so far. At the same time, it has been a great week. Between trying my best to be a good trainer for Elder Burton and adjusting to being a District Leader it's been tough. But, I love it. Elder Burton is a great companion. He is a shortie. He is 5 feet and 5 inches tall. He is from Salt Lake and he likes art. He is pretty shy but he is starting to come out of his shell a little bit.


On Friday we had a zone APF in New Rochelle. The whole zone was out street contacting and I was eyeing for who my next victim would be. I saw a man down the street and I told myself I was going to talk to him. As he approached, I saw 2 lizards on his body, one on his head and the other on his shoulder. I told him I liked them and I asked where he got them. He stopped for a second, looked me straight in the eyes and with a voice full of stern said, "I breed them." The he continued to walk away. What a man.

Elder Burton and I received a call from some missionaries in the Rochester mission. They asked if we could stop by a hospital and give a blessing to a member in their ward. We typed the address into the good ole GPS and it took us to this far out hospital hidden in the trees. We pull up to the hospital and this was no ordinary hospital. It was a mental hospital and looked like something out of "Shutter Island" (never seen it but that how I imagine it.) We went in and had to get cleared by security multiple times and then we walked around this massive, old, empty building trying to find this patient. We eventually found her and we were able to give her a blessing and share a message with her. The building was creepy but she was wonderful. That was a good experience.

I gave a talk this last week in church. We have an investigator who has been investigating the church for over a year. He comes every Sunday but he hasn't been baptized yet because in 1 Nephi there is a verse that talks about how there were horses, sheep, and goats in the Americas and he doesn't think there were those animals in America during that time period due to some science stuff on he read on the internet. He doubts the Book of Mormon but he hasn't read too much of it yet. We keep telling him that he needs to exercise faith and read it. Anyways, I wrote my talk specifically for him. I talked about how "faith without works is dead". Faith is more than just a belief. That belief is great but you have to act on that belief. Even Satan believes in Jesus Christ. The thing that separates us from Satan is that we can do good works and act on the belief in Jesus Christ that we have. The talk went great but our investigator didn't end up showing up... I was a lil chapped.

God loves you all. I hope you know that. I love you too.

Elder Tyler J Johanson

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