Mom, well, let me tell you! Last night, we were trying to visit a potential on this one street, and we saw this lady in a tiny laundry room (we're talking like, you could fit a single bed in the whole thing if the washer and dryer weren't there.) right next to their apartment, so we went up and knocked on the door to the laundry room, just to be funny, and said hi! Do you live here? This is an interesting place.......she thought we were funny enough to invite us inside on the spot and we sat and talked to her for a bit while 3 of her brothers/relatives (25 years +) played call of duty. She turned out to be 29! So she's YSA! They're a Samoan family. Or half Samoan. Finally they stopped and went away, and we were able to hear better and the spirit was able to come in. Turns out they just had a funeral for their uncle, so we taught the restoration, testified of the importance of families, gave her a Book of Mormon, invited her to watch conference with us on the weekend, and sang God be with you till we meet again. Wow! The spirit was so strong! That's only the second time in my mission that I've been invited in and been able to teach on the spot! She felt the spirit, and we set an appointment to come back on Wednesday.

Our sacrament meeting was just a bunch of musical numbers. It was very pretty, and just full of the spirit, it was wonderful! This is an interesting Ward....half of them just dipped out after sacrament meeting. Thank you so much for the talks! I can't wait to read them! I already talked with President about it. When we were discussing my release date he was the one that brought it up. He said he would give me an endorsement for sure. :) I think now that I'm just about done with my mission I've finally gotten the work thing figured out.....took me long enough.....I'm just going to tell you about C now. When we first started teaching him about 5 months ago now, he thought the Book of Mormon was of the devil, would not touch it, and sad to not ever ask him to be baptized because there was no way he would do it. When we had dinner with him last Sunday, as we were explaining stuff to his sister, who was in town, he basically bore his testimony in the prayer he said, saying "Lord, please give me the desire to be baptized into the church of the Latter Day Saint," and "please give my family the desire to learn about the church, and to have an open heart." Since I was leaving, I challenged both of them to read 3 pages in the Book of Mormon every day with me until the end of my mission. We've never been able to get C to read. I followed up with him on Saturday on the iMessage app we can use, and this is what I wrote, and what he wrote back.

"How's the reading three pages a day coming?! Here's a couple things that I really really liked over the past few that I want to share with you! 

1. In 1 Nephi 2:16, Nephi has great desires to know the mysteries of God. A mystery is something God has revealed through his prophets. So Nephi prayed, and the Lord 'visited him' and softened his heart so that he believed. Verse 17 explains that it was the Holy Spirit that made the things known!

2. 1 Nephi 4:31-37. Oaths (promises) are made, and when these VERBAL contracts are made they are recognized as binding! Pretty cool how people's promises didn't need to be written down and signed. They just lived up to their word.

3. 1 Nephi 5:4-6 explains the method of comforting and consoling people when they are angry or mad. Be humble, jus say yeah, you're right, and then share your testimony of the things the lord has blessed you with as well as what you have faith that he CAN do!

4. 1 Nephi 7:17-18, when Nephis brothers tie him up and leave him to die, he doesn't pray to the Lord and ask him to take him out of the situation he's in, he asks for the strength to change his circumstances. He is accessing THE ENABLING POWER OF THE ATONEMENT!

5. 1 Nephi 8:33, when in Lehi's vision, he and everyone at the tree of life is being mocked by those in the tower, his attitude is just incredible, as demonstrated by the last 5 words of that verse.....BUT WE HEEDED THEM NOT!! This should be our attitude towards anyone that looks down on the good values we have. 

6. 1 Nephi 10:17-19 Nephi explains that he wants to 'see, and hear, and know' the same things, and wants to do so by the power of the Holy Ghost, which is he way God has always worked. What have you liked?"

"Hey bro I am actually caught up with the reading, the book of morman is starting to be my favorite. Am in Washington is their anyway you can get me in touch with any missionaries here?"

Imagine how I reacted to that!!! I was trying not to jump up and down and scream! 

Love,

Hunter

Well everyone, the past week has been crazy, full of ups and downs and forwards and backwards! Fun stuff. I got transferred! I have left the Orange Hills You g Single Adult Ward and have moved to the Placentia YSA Ward. Im really sad to be leaving Orange Hills, but c'est la vie!

That zone was tired of me anyways. It's exciting to be back in the homeland of Placentia! My new companion is Elder S. He's great, and it'll be interesting to see how long we're together for.......the thing of most notable mention this last week....is that A and R are both planning on serving missions! I AM SO EXCITED!!! Like I can't even express how excited I am. :) I also got to wade in a nasty smelling swamp out in the canyon pulling up cat tails. It was disgusting. It was full of nasty stinky mud made up of mud, poop, dead and decomposed animals, and other things of an unspeakable nature. I took a shower with my clothes on and then washed everything twice to get the smell out. My hands and feet were stained from the mud for 2 or 3 days. It was gross. Really gross. So that's the week for you chumps! Love y'all!

Elder Hunter Johnson

I'll be sending a few boxes of music home in the next few weeks. Brother Cannon is sending them for me. Elder Cromar (the one on the run with me) is my grandson! We usually go running on p-day together, and yes, the rain was quite exquisite! I'm glad you've been able to share that story with a few people, and if they want to do that, that would be really cool I guess! Love you all! Where was dads letter this week? This week we met with Elder Hamula, that was really cool. It was just what our mission needs. 




Pictures at the bottom are from a recent preparation day.   OOOH goats!

Wow! Right now it's Friday morning and I was reading this talk by Bishop Victor L. Brown about the Aaronic Priesthood Quorums and it is just fantastic! It's October 1975, you've probably read it dad, but this part I really liked.

"Although there is usually nothing inherently wrong with athletics, super-activities or parties, a self-serving diet of entertainment fails because it aims in the wrong direction. Instead of setting out to accomplish the work of the ministry which the Lord has assigned to the Aaronic Priesthood quorums, this approach largely ignores service and personal sacrifice and seeks to compete in a worldly way for the attention of our youth. When this happens, the youth may begin to think that the Church exists to indulge their whims and wishes and that they should evaluate the Church by the yardstick of self-indulgence. And if they think this way, they may find the world’s enticements more daring and exciting than any we can properly provide. Then, because we have imitated the world, we lose them to the world. There is a far better approach. We must focus on the priesthood quorum and how it accomplishes the work the Lord has given it. The quorum then makes a vital contribution to the exaltation of its members. When an Aaronic Priesthood leader takes the work of the quorum seriously, he is not afraid to call upon quorum members to inconvenience themselves and sacrifice. When these members experience the sweetness and joy of self-sacrifice, which the world at best can only partially give, they begin to regard the priesthood with solemnity, appreciation, and respect. May I reiterate this. If doing the work of the priesthood is the aim of an Aaronic Priesthood quorum, its members will become active and remain active. Members invariably lose interest if the quorum presidency or adult leadership ignores the work of the Lord and attempts to devise entertainment programs to entice activity. It is a law of life: “Only if you sacrifice for a cause will you love it.” So true!!! It's no surprise that youth programs that only do fun activities for mutual are so weak!

The week in general was pretty good. Just a lot of finding. Pray for us to find someone to teach that's ready! We had to drop a lot of people, so our lessons were super low. Earlier this week I found something cool, so I wrote up an email about that, but here's something that was revelatory to me today in church! In the setting apart of the 2nd councilor in the EQP today, President Peters said, "Offer your opinions, but when the one that holds the keys makes the final decision, uphold it as if it were your own." I really liked it, and I think it was meant for me just as much as it was for the 2nd councilor. We had the baptism on Saturday, A was ordained to the office of a priest today!! We are going on splits with him on Thursday and he wants to serve a mission!!! What a swell guy! I love him to death. Please keep C, one of our investigators in your prayers! He's been taking it pretty hard from Satan. His 'brothers' from his church are pretty anti-Mormon and basically plan activities in all his free time so he can't meet with us. I WANT HIM TO GET BAPTIZED!!!!! 

Hunter 

When a young man or woman heads out on his or her mission, they leave their lives behind, often ready and willing to give up everything that makes them who they are. Some of them, like me, have a harder time letting go. Throughout my mission I've wondered if I should just give up playing my violin completely while on my mission, under the pretense that it would simply be a distraction and hinderance to the work of the Lord! I borrowed violins to play in Ward meetings, baptisms, etc....and enjoyed the spirit I was able to bring on all the occasions, all the while wondering, 'Am I just wasting the Lords time?' Eventually, by sheer luck, I was able to obtain a beautifully sounding violin from an obscure antique shop, for a mere $60! I thanked God for the find, and went about my mission as usual. Fast forward 8 months, and one p-day while on a hike, our car was broken into. My prized violin was stolen, along with all my music (it was in my backpack and they just took that). I thought, 'Well, I guess this is God telling me I'm done.....,' although I didn't really want to believe that. The following Sunday, I was to play in one of my former wards, so I salvaged a violin with 3 G strings to do it! After I had played, the Ward mission leader who was speaking, explained that I hadn't sounded up to par because I was playing on a borrowed violin with three G strings! After the meeting a number of people came up to me asking what they could do to help me find another violin. I told them not to worry about it, but they asserted themselves and explained to me that they were going to find me a violin and asked me to tell them if I found a violin I would like. I said, yes, of course I will, but I didn't really mean it. I didn't want to say, 'Here! Buy this violin for me!' Two weeks later I got a call from the brother that was the head of the 'find a violin for elder Johnson committee' asking me to come over to pick up the violin they had ordered for me. Long story short, he had contacted someone he had gotten a violin from in the past, and with the contributions of Ward members, had bought a $$$$ violin. I of course, thanked him profusely, and asked him if there was anything I could possibly do to repay him and the Ward. He said, 'Just play it.' He and everyone that had contributed just wanted to hear it.

The spirit witnessed to me that this gift was something I could use throughout my life to bless others to be able to feel the spirit. I knew as long as I could stay focussed on the real work, the Lord wanted me to use the gifts he'd blessed me with in order to bless others......but a little bit of doubt still remained. A month and a half later, after playing at someone's baptism, I was walking out when a man walked up to me and asked, 'Is that a violin?' I said, 'Yeah!'

To which he replied, 'Do you want a bunch of music? I have boxes of music, you can have it all.' Of course I wanted music! So the following Monday, we took a short trip over to his house and he explained the importance of the music. It had been his mothers, who had been a famous concert violinist, playing an original Stradivarius.

Her violin was stolen, and a car accident left her heavily impaired, and she was never able to play the same. Eventually she died, and for nine years, Brother Cannon had kept his mothers music, thinking that he needed to just throw it out, or donate it to BYU, but never getting around to it. As he told us this story, he told of how he had ended up at the baptism. Some sisters had asked him to give an investigator a ride, and had showed up near the end due to the investigator sleeping in. He was walking down the hall of the church at the exact time I was, and as he saw me, he heard his mother say, 'Give it to him.' As he concluded telling the story he said, 'I've been waiting nine years for the right person, and you are the one my mother wants to have her music.' If the first witness I had had wasn't enough, this left no doubt in my mind off things hat God gives us special talents and abilities to use in his service. My knowledge of this is sure.

"Behold, do men light a candle and put it under a bushel? Nay, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light to all that are in the house." - Jesus Christ

1. - 2. Service at 'stop hunger now'

3. Random photo we had taken of us after church last week.

1. Elder F and I with R. She's the one that opened the door when we knocked and not only said we could come back, but remembered!

She and her whole family got baptized on Saturday.

2. This is the whole family! Except for all the missionaries in it.

And the grandpa and grandma (far left and right) and the dad (guy with beard, but he hasn't been coming to church in years) were already members. The youngest boy by grandpa is to young to get baptized, and the older boy next to him is going to get baptized at the end of this month!

3. The missionaries with R and E.

 Last two are random pictures of missionaries on Pday

A Picture with Elder Clayton from the Quarum on the 70. 

 Touching a first edition Book of Mormon!!

 Hunter is looking forward to a special baptismal service this Saturday of the family he and his companion found while knocking doors.  We'll hear more from him in his email on Monday.  Super Missionary Elder Johnson!  We love you!!!