Week 76 Letter

Corona round 2 week 3

December 16, 2013

All:

The weekdays were pretty average, biking around visiting people. There's a less-active lady in the ward that we've been meeting with who started her own Female Motorcycle Club "Heartless", She's pretty involved with that. But she came to church on Sunday! It was great seeing her there. 

We also ran into a man who didn't remember that he was baptized into our church. His mom joined the church when he was young, presumably he got baptized, and then she went back to being Catholic. He's an older gentleman so naturally, he told us his whole life story while we were there, which was at least mildly interesting it must be said. He wasn't interested though, and didn't really know why the "Mormons keep showing up."

The most exciting thing that happened this week was that I got to go back to Jurupa and baptize Bryan!

(I'm pretty sure I've talked about him in past emails, so I'm not going to go into background)

Elder Gordon called me up halfway through the week and said "Bryan asked you to baptize him, can you be here Saturday at 4?" of course, I said yes. 

The baptism went great, even though there were not a whole lot of people there. 

Bryan's a pretty big guy so I was a little nervous about baptizing him. But everything went smooth. When he came up out of the water, I gave him a hug and asked "how did you feel?" 

I feel "good, clean!" he said. You could feel the joy he was experiencing. A little later on he said "I feel like a new Bryan!" There was a special musical number, while the guy was singing I was playing over in my head all the scenes (good, bad, spiritual, frustrating) from Bryan's teaching process. The spirit that was present there was so sublime. I cannot describe it adequately with words.  

That is why I am here, to help people have that experience of coming to Jesus Christ. I know that he is there and that he performed the atonement for my sins. 

Thank you for everything, Merry Christmas

Elder Johns

The Corona Command Center:

My Companion Elder Wilkinson sitting at the kitchen table at our apartment. This photograph is a glimpse into the typical life(and kitchen table) of a missionary. Scriptures, Preach My Gospel, Planner, whiteboard with names, letters, the area book hiding in the background, dirty dishes, and a roll of toilet paper... 

 Guess what I ate:

That bottle, my friends is Dave's GHOST PEPPER hot sauce. The first ingredient is "Ghost Pepper", and the heat level says "insanity". We all put a couple drops on a chip and ate it. Needless to say, It was very, very, very  hot. I couldn't feel my mouth, I was sweating, and I could have sworn fire was coming out of my mouth. (we topped it off with some Habanaro sauce as well).

Obviously, I survived. And the effects wore off more quickly than I expected. I used to not like hot sauce. But. now I think that everything else will be chump change by comparison.  

Next time we go over to that member's house they are going to feed us Balut... Should be an... Interesting experience lol.