Mostly pictures from P-Day of Oscar's son and their day at the track. Top ones are Elder Plaster and Elder Johns. (Like the Monster Hat?)
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Week 30 Pictures
Week 30 Pictures
Mostly pictures from P-Day of Oscar's son and their day at the track. Top ones are Elder Plaster and Elder Johns. (Like the Monster Hat?)
Mostly pictures from P-Day of Oscar's son and their day at the track. Top ones are Elder Plaster and Elder Johns. (Like the Monster Hat?)
Week 30 Letter
Week 30 Letter (1/28/2013)
All
We got a phone call from the bishop to go see a lady in Old Town Murrieta to "evaluate her needs" whatever that means. So we went there on Thursday and met Cathy. We spent the next 15 to 20 minutes listening to her myriad of problems. She was explaining about how the only thing that worked in her body was her heart, lungs and her kidneys. Everything else is shutting down. She is getting dementia because her liver is poisoning her blood stream, her stomach is filling with fluid, her throat is all messed up because she dry heaves up acid all the time, and her throat has swollen to the size of a childs, she has broken ribs because of the dry heaving, and a number of other things, including an extremely low sodium diet that she doesn't know how to cook for and she has to use the restroom every 15-20 minutes or so so she can't sleep and she has to eat 2 ounces of food 9 times a day. Because of all these health problems, her daughter has to watch her 24/7. They can't afford a caregiver. So the daughter is going crazy trying to cope with all of the stuff for her mom and can't make any money. All stuff that the doctors are having difficulty treating especially on her budget. On top of that, her roof is leaking (that pun may or may not have been intended). It is doing that partially because two of her neighbor's trees fell on it and partially because the contractor who added on to her house ran away with the money and did a crummy job. But wait, there's more. Because of former renters leaving a ton of junk, and her father dying last year her house looks like a hoarder lives there (she hates that). There was some other stuff as well.
Cathy was crying when she was telling us these things. You could defiantly tell that she was ill and that there was issues with her house. We sat there wide-eyed as she told us her story. Frankly, I'm surprised that she's still alive. We told her that we would do whatever we could for her. We told the bishop and ward council about all her problems and their expressions matched ours. We've got people working on figuring out what all we can do for her now, It's going to be interesting to see what all happens.
Oscar's baptism on Saturday was simply amazing (despite my companion suffering from food poisoning.) Oscar wanted it small, and it was. Only a few friends from the ward and some family members. Including his brother in law (his wife's sister's husband) Mark and his family. It was Mark that performed the ordinance. I can't really describe the talks on baptism and the gift of Holy Ghost, simply that they were what needed to be said for Oscar, and invited the spirit beautifully. Oscar came up out of the water and sobbed for a few minutes. There were only a few dry eyes in the entire room. The Spirit was so strong, I can't describe it. As someone there said, "we could feel the weight of a thousand prayers, this baptism is a miracle." They are right, Oscar has made a 180 degree change in his life to follow Christ and you can see the happiness in his life and family now. As he said "You just have to put it all on faith and God will take care of the rest. You give what you can give, and he will do the rest."
His confirmation the next day was also very spiritual, and set the tone for the whole meeting.
Words fail to describe the joy I've felt and seen in their family (and I'm not doing a very good job describing what happened either). But, I"m grateful that God gave me the opportunity to be here and serve.
We spent last Monday, p-day, with Oscar and his family. His son, Zay, races motocross and he took us out to the track in riverside. It was pretty cool watching Zay fly around on all the jumps, and teasing the rest of the family. Later in the day we were all sitting around eating sandwiches at Quizno's and Oscar said "this is the happiest time of my life."
It was back to work after 6:00 that day. This week has been pretty eventful. We met and had good lessons with a few less active members that we have been trying to meet with for weeks and they all came to church this Sunday. Which is really good.
We also had a multi-zone conference. Our mission president talked mostly about how important it is to be obedient. To quote (or perhaps paraphrase) the prophet Samuel, "To obey is better than to sacrifice." In other words, the blessings that come from being obedient outweigh the rewards of doing it "our way". We've been seeing the blessings that come from working hard and being obedient. As Josh Smart would say, "you can't beat the Lord in a giving contest."
God has defiantly blessed us here in Murrieta. We weren't able to meet with any of our investigators last week for lessons (aside from doing some service. We cleaned up Terry and Gina's backyard, which was like a redneck paradise. No joke).
But we have found a golden investigator. Her name is Elise, and she is twelve. Her family situation is kind of confusing, but the short version is that she spends the weekend with people in our ward and comes to church with them. She's been going to various wards for most of her life. When we first met her she told us "I'm going to get baptized, even though I'm only twelve." We had our first lesson with her yesterday. She wanted to be baptized as soon as possible so we set a date for the 16th. When we asked her "who God is to her" she basically explained the whole plan of salvation. We're pretty excited to see what happens. We are pretty sure that we are going to make our goal of two baptisms this transfer though.
All in all, things are going great here in Murrieta. Sorry about the jumbled letter. I had a too much to write and too little time.
Thanks for all your support. Please write.
Elder Bryce Johns
All
We got a phone call from the bishop to go see a lady in Old Town Murrieta to "evaluate her needs" whatever that means. So we went there on Thursday and met Cathy. We spent the next 15 to 20 minutes listening to her myriad of problems. She was explaining about how the only thing that worked in her body was her heart, lungs and her kidneys. Everything else is shutting down. She is getting dementia because her liver is poisoning her blood stream, her stomach is filling with fluid, her throat is all messed up because she dry heaves up acid all the time, and her throat has swollen to the size of a childs, she has broken ribs because of the dry heaving, and a number of other things, including an extremely low sodium diet that she doesn't know how to cook for and she has to use the restroom every 15-20 minutes or so so she can't sleep and she has to eat 2 ounces of food 9 times a day. Because of all these health problems, her daughter has to watch her 24/7. They can't afford a caregiver. So the daughter is going crazy trying to cope with all of the stuff for her mom and can't make any money. All stuff that the doctors are having difficulty treating especially on her budget. On top of that, her roof is leaking (that pun may or may not have been intended). It is doing that partially because two of her neighbor's trees fell on it and partially because the contractor who added on to her house ran away with the money and did a crummy job. But wait, there's more. Because of former renters leaving a ton of junk, and her father dying last year her house looks like a hoarder lives there (she hates that). There was some other stuff as well.
Cathy was crying when she was telling us these things. You could defiantly tell that she was ill and that there was issues with her house. We sat there wide-eyed as she told us her story. Frankly, I'm surprised that she's still alive. We told her that we would do whatever we could for her. We told the bishop and ward council about all her problems and their expressions matched ours. We've got people working on figuring out what all we can do for her now, It's going to be interesting to see what all happens.
Oscar's baptism on Saturday was simply amazing (despite my companion suffering from food poisoning.) Oscar wanted it small, and it was. Only a few friends from the ward and some family members. Including his brother in law (his wife's sister's husband) Mark and his family. It was Mark that performed the ordinance. I can't really describe the talks on baptism and the gift of Holy Ghost, simply that they were what needed to be said for Oscar, and invited the spirit beautifully. Oscar came up out of the water and sobbed for a few minutes. There were only a few dry eyes in the entire room. The Spirit was so strong, I can't describe it. As someone there said, "we could feel the weight of a thousand prayers, this baptism is a miracle." They are right, Oscar has made a 180 degree change in his life to follow Christ and you can see the happiness in his life and family now. As he said "You just have to put it all on faith and God will take care of the rest. You give what you can give, and he will do the rest."
His confirmation the next day was also very spiritual, and set the tone for the whole meeting.
Words fail to describe the joy I've felt and seen in their family (and I'm not doing a very good job describing what happened either). But, I"m grateful that God gave me the opportunity to be here and serve.
We spent last Monday, p-day, with Oscar and his family. His son, Zay, races motocross and he took us out to the track in riverside. It was pretty cool watching Zay fly around on all the jumps, and teasing the rest of the family. Later in the day we were all sitting around eating sandwiches at Quizno's and Oscar said "this is the happiest time of my life."
It was back to work after 6:00 that day. This week has been pretty eventful. We met and had good lessons with a few less active members that we have been trying to meet with for weeks and they all came to church this Sunday. Which is really good.
We also had a multi-zone conference. Our mission president talked mostly about how important it is to be obedient. To quote (or perhaps paraphrase) the prophet Samuel, "To obey is better than to sacrifice." In other words, the blessings that come from being obedient outweigh the rewards of doing it "our way". We've been seeing the blessings that come from working hard and being obedient. As Josh Smart would say, "you can't beat the Lord in a giving contest."
God has defiantly blessed us here in Murrieta. We weren't able to meet with any of our investigators last week for lessons (aside from doing some service. We cleaned up Terry and Gina's backyard, which was like a redneck paradise. No joke).
But we have found a golden investigator. Her name is Elise, and she is twelve. Her family situation is kind of confusing, but the short version is that she spends the weekend with people in our ward and comes to church with them. She's been going to various wards for most of her life. When we first met her she told us "I'm going to get baptized, even though I'm only twelve." We had our first lesson with her yesterday. She wanted to be baptized as soon as possible so we set a date for the 16th. When we asked her "who God is to her" she basically explained the whole plan of salvation. We're pretty excited to see what happens. We are pretty sure that we are going to make our goal of two baptisms this transfer though.
All in all, things are going great here in Murrieta. Sorry about the jumbled letter. I had a too much to write and too little time.
Thanks for all your support. Please write.
Elder Bryce Johns
Week 29 Letter
Week 29 letter (1/22/2013)
All:
This last week was rather eventful culminating in Oscar's baptism.
We got a phone call from the bishop to go see a lady in Old Town Murrieta to "evaluate her needs" whatever that means. So we went there on Thursday and met Cathy. Due to time I may have to talk about her next week.
We met with Oscar and his family every day last week.
We even cleaned the church with him on Wednesday morning. He said "I have a free day tomorrow, you have a free day. Let's go help somebody even if it's just clean the church. After making a few calls for suggestions, we went to Brother Green's house. Brother Green is an elderly man in the ward who is going senile. He lives by himself in a big house that has a ton of leakage problems. (almost a third of the first story is just concrete because they had to tear out moldy carpet) Oscar has a lot of construction background so we went over there to see if we could help out with anything. Brother Green didn't want our help, he said that his sons were going to help him with it (the ward says that they've been trying to get his son's to take an interest in their father for a year to no avail) . He then proceeded to (very slowly) show us pictures of his family and asked us where we were from again. After sitting there for awhile we extricated ourselves to go and clean the church. Moral of the story, take care of your elderly parents, and have home insurance even( or perhaps especially) if you've paid off the house.
Oscar's baptism on Saturday was simply amazing (despite my companion suffering from food poisoning.)
I may not be able to finish this entry due to time. I don't know if It will automatically shut off on me. So If I don't get it done, I'll finish next week.
Shoot, I have to do it next week. sorry!
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| Oscar's Baptism |
All:
This last week was rather eventful culminating in Oscar's baptism.
We got a phone call from the bishop to go see a lady in Old Town Murrieta to "evaluate her needs" whatever that means. So we went there on Thursday and met Cathy. Due to time I may have to talk about her next week.
We met with Oscar and his family every day last week.
We even cleaned the church with him on Wednesday morning. He said "I have a free day tomorrow, you have a free day. Let's go help somebody even if it's just clean the church. After making a few calls for suggestions, we went to Brother Green's house. Brother Green is an elderly man in the ward who is going senile. He lives by himself in a big house that has a ton of leakage problems. (almost a third of the first story is just concrete because they had to tear out moldy carpet) Oscar has a lot of construction background so we went over there to see if we could help out with anything. Brother Green didn't want our help, he said that his sons were going to help him with it (the ward says that they've been trying to get his son's to take an interest in their father for a year to no avail) . He then proceeded to (very slowly) show us pictures of his family and asked us where we were from again. After sitting there for awhile we extricated ourselves to go and clean the church. Moral of the story, take care of your elderly parents, and have home insurance even( or perhaps especially) if you've paid off the house.
Oscar's baptism on Saturday was simply amazing (despite my companion suffering from food poisoning.)
I may not be able to finish this entry due to time. I don't know if It will automatically shut off on me. So If I don't get it done, I'll finish next week.
Shoot, I have to do it next week. sorry!
Week 28 Pictures
More pictures from Murrieta.
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| Elder Plaster and I overlooking Murrieta atop cemetery hill. Man... we look dorky. |
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| Elder Plaster and I overlooking Murrieta atop cemetery hill |
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| Elder Plaster and Our bikes |
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| Elder plaster and I walking around at dusk |
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| Elder plaster and I walking around at dusk |
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| Me playing xbox... Just kidding. I was using the controller to navigate to a video we were showing for a spiritual thought |
Week 28 Letter
Week 28 - (1/14/2013)
All
We are having a baptism this Saturday!!! I've mentioned Oscar before once. His Wife and Kids have been members for about a year or two (depending on the person). He's been really investigating for about a year and was basically anti before we got here. It was awesome. We were over there for dinner and family home evening. We ate and played some uno (which was fun) and then sat down for our spiritual thought. We shared a couple mormon messages The Will of God and Flecks of Gold and discussed trials of faith and how we usually recieve small answers not big ones. It was an amazing and spirit filled lesson. And we were talking and then we asked him "Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be Baptized by one holding the authority of God?" He said yes! and my companion said "We will be holding a baptisimal service on the 19th, will you be baptized on that date?" he said yes. Apparently that date is very special for their family. It suprised pretty much everyone (including me). It turns out that Elder Plaster had been praying about a date for awhile and felt prompted to say the 19th, without knowing about all the reasons it is important to them.
It was so cool. We've been meeting with him and he is super ready. Our lessons are amazing discussions gently guided by the Spirit.
They have told us how Elder Plaster and are the perfect missionaries for Oscar. Between the two of us, we relate with him completely. How I think, and Elder Plaster's life. (sorry, I don't have time to really explain) But I have a strong testimony that this is where we need to be (as hard as it may be). Despite how slow the work is here, I love it. Elder Plaster and I rock this town! haha.
We also saw a drug bust the other day. We had tracted the street about a week ago and met the guy there. All tatted up head to toe. And we've seen some suspicious activity at that house. Anyway we were sitting on a retaining wall figuring out what we were going to do when three cop cars (including a k9 unit) pulled in and cuffed and stuffed the guy.
Anyway, got to go. Thank you for your prayers. Please write.
Elder Bryce Johns
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Week 27 - 6 Months Out
Week 27 - Have now passed the first 6 months
All:
This week is the start of a new transfer. Elder Plaster and I are together for another six weeks. I'm quite happy about that. We get along really well, and we're always laughing about something or other between doors.
Last week we had one of the best lessons since we've been in Murrieta. We have been trying to set up a lesson with Emily (one of the priest's girlfriend's (yay for "flirt to convert"...)) for six weeks. We finally had the opportunity, and taught about the restoration. It was great, Elder Plaster and I taught in unity and with the spirit. You could see it in her eyes, overall it was pretty awesome.
Oh yes, wife points. On the mission there are several things that you do to make your wife "hotter" (or so they say). Tracting in the rain, working hard on your last transfer, etc. Aside from these qualitative methods, there are also "wife points". You get a wife point when you find a sprinkler head that is sticking up and you step on it. Because everyone and their dog has a sprinkler system here, they are fairly common. A few days ago, Elder Plaster and I found the ultimate wife point. It was at least a foot tall (which makes it worth about 3 to begin with) and when elder plaster stepped on it, It came back up. He stepped on it again, and it came back up. and continued to do so for the next 57 times he stepped on it (we had to get going after that). We had found the mythical never-ending wife point. Pretty awesome right? One could say that we are kind of easily amused haha.
On a more spiritual note (sortof): If everywhere you go is miserable, what is the common denominator? You. Life is as fun as you make it. Be determined to have a good day, and do it. No matter what stuff goes wrong.
Well time's up.
Thank you all for everything. Please write
Elder Bryce Johns
Week 26 Pics - Christmas Pics.Thank
Week 26 Pictures - Christmas!!!
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| Christmas Eve |
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| Christmas Morning |
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| Thank You! |
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| Our Bikes |
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| The Blooms |
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| Me Sick |
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| The 9 Christmas cards/letters that no one has responded to... |
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| Christmas lights from a crazy street in Temecula that was all decked out and to music. |
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| The Zone on Christmas |
Week 26 Letter
Week 26 Letter
All
After Christmas I spent most of the week in bed with a bad cold which I still haven't gotten comptletely rid of (biking around in the cold may or may not be helping haha). Half of our district got sick. So we exchanged the sick companions to stay with me and for the others to go out and work with elder Plaster. It wasn't all that enjoyable.
Being sick as a missionary is not fun at all. I did however get a lot of study time. I finished the Book of Mormon again. It never ceases to amaze me how awesome the book of mormon is, It is so full of teachings and stories and fun things. For instance, "Karma" or, what goes around comes around is in the Book of Mormon. "For that which ye do send out shall return unto you again, and be restored" Alma 41:15. I thought that was funny.
Another thing I noticed is how the Lord says over and over and over "Keep the commandments and ye shall prosper in the land". Just do the little things people! Which of course is easier said than done.
We taught Terry and Gina the restoration the other day. We found them tracting (I think I've mentioned before) The lesson went fairly well. They are feeding us dinner tonight. They are awesome people, hopefully they want to find out if it's true or not.
Things are picking up with our investigators now that the holidays are over. We are hoping to get ahold of most of them sometime this week or next. We've taught a couple lessons.
Next week (a whole 4 days from now) I'll tell you all about wife points and how we found the ultimate wife point while out finding yesterday.
Got to run.
Thank you for all the prayers and support. Please write letters 8)
Sincerely, Elder Johns
Week 25 - Christmas
We did not get an email from Bryce this week. However, we were able to Skype with him. This is how Melissa summarized it on Facebook:
Merry Christmas everyone! We got to Skype with Bryce today! So wonderful to see him and how much he has matured! He is not my little boy anymore! He is my missionary son. I am so proud of him!
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| Bryce's Tree decorated by his sisters |
Week 24 Letter
Week 24 Letter
(Sorry about the delay - sent 12/17/2012)
All,
This week has been fairly interesting. We have still been doing a lot of tracting and trying to visit people who are never home. We've come to the conclusion that people only sleep here. Most people work in Orange county or San Diego or somewhere other and have long commutes. I was excited when we found a "Vancouver Place". No one was home on the entire street haha.
However, we met with two of our investigators and had lessons (finally).
Heather: She is the housemate of a reactivating sister in the ward. They are both single mothers and have crazy lives right now (reminescent of situations in Highland). We had a lesson with them about faith. Heather wasn't raised with a religious background, but she said that she has prayed and it's worked for her. We also helped them move some furniture and swap out a washer and dryer, those things are heavy!
Our other investigator, Oscar, has been investigating the church for awhile(2 years) now. His family are recent converts of about a year. They are a super cool family. He's been going to church for about a year solid. We had a really good lesson with him. I think he's getting close to being baptized, he want's a stronger confirmation, but he has already gotten an answer. He just hasn't recognized it yet. So we will see about him.
Elder Plaster and I got to lead a bunch of primary kids in the Murrieta Christmas parade, we sang "Christmas bells are ringing" it was pretty fun. We did a lot of biking back and forth that day. Our apartment is out of our area, and we were doing service so we had to bike to and from several times. Of course it's uphill (depending on how we get there, it is usually uphill both ways). We were hurting that night.
One of the ward members almost died on us this week as well. The bishop asked us to visit some of the older members of the ward. So we went and visited Brother Schow. We had visited him before, so we knew that we would need to get comfortable. We asked him about a photograph of him and his wife and he proceeded to tell us all about how they met, and then his service in World War Two (which naturally fascinated me). He was an electrician on the battleship West Virginia. It was sunk at pearl harbor, re floated participated in a major naval battle off of the Phillipines (which unfortunately I cannot remember the name of it) and took two Kamakazies (one of which the Japanese pilot flew out of his plane and landed in a huge pot of beans. He was telling us about all of this when in mid-sentence his eyes closed and his head slumped down and he stopped talking. Elder Plaster and I froze, we didn't know whether he had fallen asleep or died right there. E. Plaster was sure he had died. Bro Schow twitched a few times ("dead people twitch!" - Elder Plaster) I thought for sure that he fell asleep and I couldn't help snickering silently a little bit. We sat there for almost a minute, not moving. At which point we were starting to worry. When Bro Schow started to breath heavily, sat up and continued where he left off as if nothing had happened. It was hilarious. As soon as we walked out the door I busted out laughing.
Well, time's up. Alma chapter 7
Merry Christmas everybody!
Thank you for your letters (',8^/) and prayers.
Elder Johns
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