I'm Engaged

Sup,

Saturday morning we were sitting there doing our studies and we hear the fire alarm go off in the halls. It went off for a couple minutes before we decided to do something about it. We called the Portuguese Elders that live on the floor below us and they said that they had evacuated. We decided we probably better evacuate too. We grabbed our stuff, some grabbed journals, others grabbed pics of girls back home, I snatched a couple of those classic caramel apple suckers off of my desk and we called it Gucci. The lights were flashing in the hallway as the beeping of the fire alarm deafened our ears. The elevators weren't working so we did the first thing that we could think of… We ran down twenty six floors worth of stairs. We got outside of our building to see it surrounded by 6 fire trucks, but no fire in sight. Turns out there was no fire and the alarms malfunctioned. We were out of breath and had sore legs for nothing but at least we got a picture haha. Pics or it didn't happen!

We survived the fire of 2015!

 My companion from highland and I parted ways for the day so that I could go on a split with my Zone Leader, also from highland, Elder Christensen. I love splits when you already know the person well. Elder Christensen and I served together the whole time I was in the Bronx and now we room together in New Roc. It was a busy day because we had to deliver all the mail to the city. We deliver the mail to the city every Tuesday but since #StormJuno was last Tuesday we weren't able to go out, so all the mail accumulated.

Split with Elder Christensen - Word to your mother

When we started deliveries our sleek minivan, with all the seats taken out was filled to the very brim. The city was madness because it was the city of course. It was my first time driving through the city without my trustee guide, Elder Moss. It is so hard to be a good representative of Jesus Christ when you are trying to maneuver through NY city traffic, your patience gets zapped. I never considered myself to have road rage but when everybody is honkin' for no fetching reason I become..... A.. A.. A monster. Other than almost getting side swiped by some taxis it ended up being a great time. All that time in the van gave Elder Christensen some good talking time, I was able to learn a lot about him. There is a lot that can be learned from hearing part of someone's life story. There is great things to be learned from people's pasts. Just think about the scriptures and how we learn about other people's pasts. I will let that one bake your noodle!

Elder Moss and I were wandering around the streets of New Roc last P-Day and we came across a ghetto old fashioned suit store. Inside we found some gorgeous ties. The ties had Bulldogs on em and were some of the fattest ties I have ever seen. We decided to purchase the ties for 10 bucks and have companionship ties (a common tradition in our mission). But since this is New York and we are a couple of classy young chaps we couldn't be walking around with fatty ties. Nobody would respect us! So we decided to skinny the ties by ourselves. It took an hour or two but we unstitched the ties, cut off excess material, sewed those puppies back up half the width that they were and wore them to Mission Leadership Council.

Comp Unity Ties with Elder Moss - Also word to your mother

Speaking of Mission Leadership Council, it was amazing! President Morgan is such a stud. Every time he talks I feel like he tears the roof off of the room and let's the inspiration from the heavens come rushing into my soul. This MLC was a little different than the other ones I have attended. This time we had an egg drop activity. We broke off into groups and had to make something out of 50 straws and a roll of tape that could catch an egg dropping from 10 ft high. We had 15 minutes to complete the task. For 15 minutes we along with the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders created something that could catch the egg. Ours ended up catching the egg and it was unharmed. It was a fun activity but there was a point to be made, we didn't just drop eggs cuz it's fun. 

President Morgan at the end of the activity asked if anybody had thoughts of home, or if anybody was jealous about the vacation their family was going on, or if anybody was thinking about the fun stuff they were going to do when they completed their mission. For these 15 minutes everybody was engaged in this activity and thought nothing of other things. For the short two years I am serving the Lord I need to be focused on the mission. It's easy to get distracted of what your purpose is as a missionary and honestly, I needed to hear that. President Morgan always says, "One foot in, one foot out, leaves the heart and mind with doubt." That applies to any task in our life. If we are anxiously engaged in something we will be able to see miracles.

Thanks for the support.

Elder Tyler J Johanson