I Plead the Fifth

Hello.

Wanna hear a story that is absolutely radink-to the-hinkulous? So Elder Brown and I were driving around town, coming back home from an appointment when our phone starts ringing through the Bluetooth in our car. The caller ID reads "President Morgan" and my initial reaction was to start squealing like a 1-Direction fan girl, for we knew why he was calling. He called and asked me to train a brand new missionary! So yup, apparently I'm training. I received my brand new companion today at transfers. His name is Elder Burton. He is a short guy that just graduated high school from Salt Lake. That's really all I know about him at this point... We are going to have some fun and do some good work. 

Almost everybody in my district hit a milestone of some sort so we had this cool sign. I meet the top two criteria. (#1. Happy 6 Months! #2. Happy Training)

Then Saturday night I received a call from the Assistants to the President and they extended the call to be a District Leader. There are 4 companionships in my district and not a single missionary has been out over 1 year. 3 out of the 4 companionships will be training, so it will be a very young district. Needless to say, with training and the call to be a District Leader, I am feeling pretty overwhelmed. It will all be good though because God is real and He will help me.

Notable events this last week: 

Elder Brown and I received a 20 dollar parking ticket because we were parked in a 1 hour parking spot for 1 hour and 4 minutes. I guess it was still an illegal activity tho...

 This is after we received the parking ticket. I plead the 5th obvi.

I got asked to give a talk in church this Sunday. It will be the first time I will speak in church since my farewell.

On Friday there was a training done by President Morgan and The Assistants for all of us training. The thing that stood out to me the most was when President Morgan addressed feelings of inadequacy. He read in Ether 12:27 which reads:

"And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

He talked about how the first step of becoming more like God is to recognize our weakness. If we don't recognize our weakness we can't become better. The problem with recognizing our weaknesses is that Satan's greates tool is to stop us from progressing past that first step to become more like God. It made me realize that it is ok to feel weaknesses, but it's not ok to let the adversary get the best of me and leave me stuck there. It will be a hard next few weeks, I am sure of it. I am also sure that I will look back at this time and appreciate the things I will learn. 

I don't know what it is about the mission but I love to learn and get better. Where were these feelings hiding before my mission?

-Elder Tyler J Johanson

Our beautiful district. Elder Schoenfeld was in the bathroom so we took this picture while he was gone. We threw a pic of him up on the iPad tho so we were content.