#MenAreThatTheyMightHaveJoy

Wed, Jul 8, 2015

Hello.

I hope your Fourth of July was on point!

This iz me bean me in frunt of a flag thingee

 My fourth was good. It kinda just seemed like another day tho. There wasn't even that many American flags up or anything. I guess that's what happens when you live in a place where most people are immigrants. The Puerto Ricans and Dominicans used the Fourth of July to party pretty hard. But they use any day as an excuse to party pretty hard. Loud music into the wee hours of the morning. The Bronx went harder for Puerto Rican day than they did for the Fourth of July. It makes you wonder sometimes if there are any Puerto Ricans actually still left in Puerto Rico. It's all good it's just different from Utah. Good times. Good times.

Funny Story: In my almost 8 months that I have spent in the Boogie a Down Bronx I have only managed to step in dog poop twice. This week happened to be one of those times. Dogs=1 Elder Johanson=0. The worst part is that we went into the Waterman's (The senior couple) home and I tracked it in all over their living room.... My bad haha.

Friday we had Mission Leadership Council with President Smith. He is amazing! He is full of energy and enthusiasm for the work. He got hype. For MLC each of the zones put together a presentation about the unique things of our zone. Of course we included things like:

1. Sisters can't go in the south part of the zone for safety reasons.

2. The sisters in our Ward have a ginormous amount of work because they be scurrying around the area tryin to teach all the single mommas.

3. The work load never ends. The potential here is crazy.

After our presentation we presented a gift to President Smith. We got him a du rag. Now President Smith has a scarlet colored du rag he can sport around the mission home or whatever. The assistants got back to us a couple days later and they said he looked good in it.

After MLC we all hopped on the Metro North train and headed to the Bronx for the Yankees game. It was a blast being able to see the whole mission. I love the friends I have made out here. 

With love from the boys. Please notice my ex companion
Elder Judd acting trill with the cap in the background.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang a song or two and the National Anthem. It was nice.

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir on blast 

Then we watched some baseball. Elder Rasband was at the game so we were able to meet him. The only bad thing is that we had to leave at 9 o clock just when the game was getting good. Turns out the game went 12 innings and the Yankees won with a walk off home run. It's all good though because I wouldn't have wanted to maneuver our way back home through the Bronx at 12 am.

Our Zone has what we call the #MenAreThatTheyMightHaveJoyGoal. Spread it. Hashtag it. Get that stuff trending. The goal is that every single day in the month of July we want every companionship to place a copy of the Book of Mormon, read Moroni's promise and extend the invitation to pray about it. One a day may not seem like a ridiculously crazy goal, but it definitely adds up. The goal is that we will place 225 copies of the Book of Mormon this month. It's been exciting and motivating to get out there and spread the most true book on the face of the planet with Gods niños. 

Elder Wallace and I have seen many miracles already from this. Most of them came at the very end of the night when we haven't been able to pass any out all day and then God blesses us by letting us come in contact with a prepared individual. Last Wednesday aka P-day everything that we had that evening cancelled on us. We decided to go tracting until we passed out a copy of the Good Book. We tracted for two hours and nobody wanted anything to do with us. Our area has a lot of Islamic people. They live in pockets and we just so happened to be in one of those pockets. 

We had about 15 minutes left before we had to go home so we decided to knock a couple more doors. We knocked on a door..... Nothing. Went to the next one and a bunch of teenagers who seemed like total punks answered. It felt like they were waiting to make fun of us, but as we ended our little spiel and asked if they would like a copy of the Book of Mormon three of them wanted one! We were able to talk with one of the girls on her porch for a little bit. She is Hindu and said her mom wouldn't approve of her talking to us so unfortunately for the time being we won't be able to go back but she said she would read! It wasn't a fake,"yeah I will read....." Nah she was legit about it. 

It's funny how it seems that God waits until the last possible moment to give you what you're asking for. I had to laugh with God a little bit that night. Like, why He gotta be like that? Nothing can come too easy. There always has to be a lesson involved with every thing that happens in our lives.

I know every missionary talks about how amazing the gospel is and all that stuff and it kind of just becomes expected buuuut seriously this gospel is amazing. There is nothing I'd rather be doing at this point in my life than by being able to serve Christ in this capacity.

Elder Tyler J Johanson