The Power of the Fast with Elder Johnston

Hello Everyone, 

This week was a a good week. We saw some miracles happen! It was really fun! Our investigator Ken Borton is really progressing. On Tuesday we had a lesson with her and Erin Rodgers was the member who came a long with us. She is really into reading the Book of Mormon, she understands the scriptures pretty well. So we talked a lot about the Godhead and the roles that each of them have. She does not really have a belief in Christ so we were trying to help her understand why we need a Savior, but it just wasn't clicking for her. We showed the video "The Hope of God's Light" which talked about fasting and praying to know if God was really there. At the end of the video we committed her to fasting on Sunday to know if Jesus Christ is real and actually suffered the Atonement. Saturday night after dinner is when we started the fast, she went to a concert that night. But she was talking to her friend who is not a member of the church and she taught her a lot about Jesus Christ. Everything really clicked with her! Sunday she came to church and it was really great for her. She loves the members, she says it feels like she is going to a family reunion every single week haha. Later in the afternoon we had a lesson with Ken. We taught her the Plan of Salvation. One of the best lessons ever! It really helped her see the bigger picture. She says that she is really starting to believe in Christ and that she believes the Fast really helped her with that. She then went on to tell us that she could see herself becoming a member soon! Something that helped me a lot was that she said "if you ever feel like you weren't successful on your missions, think of me. You have helped change my life!" When she said that both Elder Johnston and I had tears in our eyes. The spirit was so strong! She is really gaining her own testimony. Ken is one amazing girl! We will be inviting her to be baptized tomorrow in our lesson with her. We really hope that we can set a date with her then! 

We had a couple of other cool miracles during the week, we were in Two Harbors which is 45 miles north of Duluth. We were trying to see some Less Active members who lived up there because we had been getting member referrals to go visit them. We went to visit the Olsen's who live in the middle of nowhere we knocked on the door and a big man answered the door and was not very nice. He asked who we were and what we wanted, we told him we were the missionaries and then he got his wife who is actually who we were looking for and we were able to go in and meet her and her 3 kids. They all have not been to church in years and we were able to share a message with them and commit them to church. They ended up not coming to church, but they want us to come back next Saturday so that was cool.

This week was good, we needed one good things to happen. It has been kinda slow lately. But that just means we gotta get to work! We sure did that! We went all out! Relied on the Lord and he blessed us for our efforts. Hope you all have a wonderful week! 

1. Miracle from Sunday Night.

2. Plan of Salvation Lesson with Ken.

3. Throwing a snowball at my companion.

Summer in Duluth with Elder Johnston

Hey everyone,

        Not a whole lot to update you on. Our investigator Ken Borton came to church this week and she loved it. She is very socially converted, the ward was super nice to her. She even participated in Gospel Principles class. It was great!


      We had a YSA activity and it was a cooking competition and Elder Johnston and I made Fry Sauce and it was a hit. That was pretty cool! We went up to a place called Two Harbors which is like 45 minutes north of Duluth and we tried to see some people there, not a whole lot happened. This week was a week where not a lot of amazing things happened. We are going to keep trying and working hard so that we have more people to teach.

        The weather is actually getting really warm here. Apparently this Friday we are supposed to get a ton of snow, we will have to see haha!

Make this week a good one.

Alma 26:27

1. Fry sauce we made
2. Missionaries that serve in the Duluth ward.
3. The other elders brought this fish home, so we have fun with it haha

Minnesota is A M A Z I N G! Duluth with Elder Johnston

Hello family and friends,


        This week was another good one. Lots of driving though! We found outon Monday that Elder Johnston and I are both staying in Duluth whichis awesome. But we had a couple of missionaries get transferred fromthe zone so we had to help with travel down to Bloomington. So on Wednesday we drove down the STL's to Bloomington for transfers. It was good to see some of my old companions and missionaries I served around. Up here in Duluth you don't see a whole lot of missionaries often so it was nice to see some!
       
 We had MLC Thursday so on Wednesday evening we needed a place to work so we went with the Assistants on exchanges and so I went with Elder Oldroyd and we also took a new missionary out with us who arrived 3 hours previous of that! Elder Bradshaw who happens to be in the Duluth Zone. He is being trained by Elder Lowell in Virginia! We had an awesome night we taught 3 lessons. We had a lesson with a less active member and shared a scripture about serving, we taught Jennifer their investigator the plan of salvation and it went really well. It was so
cool to go out with a brand new missionary! He is really great! I love Elder Bradshaw already.
       
Thursday we had MLC and it went really well! We got a lot of training from President Forbes about how to correct missionaries in a loving way which was really great. I learned a lot! We also talked a lot about how we are going to apply the change in new key indicators. Overall it was really great! I caught up with a lot of the Elders and Sisters i served around in the Anoka Zone!
 
       Friday we had a cool day. Our investigator Ken invited her college friends over from down in the twin cities and they had a lot of questions for us. We taught the restoration and the plan of salvation in one lesson. It was really cool! We were there for a while and they all want to meet with missionaries now. So we just sent a Referral to the missionaries in the cities. Ken called us later that night telling us that she reading the scripture 2 Nephi 2:11 about opposition in all things. She was asking us what that meant and we talked to her for a good 15 minutes about the scripture! She then told us that she has been praying every night like we invited her to do and she said her faith in God is really increasing. When we met her 3 weeks ago, she didn't believe in God, how cool is that?

        She asked us what our favorite stories/chapters are in the Book of Mormon. So i lead her to Alma chapter 18 because i love that story about Ammon. She called us last night after she read it and said that she really liked it! I asked her how it could apply to her in her situation and she told us that we are like Ammon and that she is like King Lamoni. How cool is that? I love Ammon and we felt pretty cool to be compared to Ammon!


        We are really excited about Ken and how she is progressing! But we want to be teaching more people so we are going to be finding a lot more! Hopefully we can get some warmer weather this week! I love being here in Duluth its really fun!

Pictures -
1. A lesson with Ken and her two friends. Ken is on the left!
2. Driving the AP's truck.
3. Picture from Bloomington.
4. Dunking the basketball.

Hockey is Actually Cool ... Duluth with Elder Johnston

Hello Everyone,

   We had a good week, I really have enjoyed my time in Duluth. It is one unique area! Early in the week we had our zone conference and zone p day which I talked about last week!

We went on exchanges in Ashland WI with the Elders. That area just opened this transfer! I went on exchanges with Elder Black from Monticello UT. He knows Bronz from Blanding (Tanner's Cousin). It was cool to go there! We taught 3 lessons. We found a new investigator and taught one of there progressing investigators and then taught a less active family. We had a pretty good day! I like Elder Black a lot he is a really good missionary. He goes home the transfer before me!

On Friday we went with our investigator Ken to a UMD hockey game. UMD is always top 5 in the country for D1 College hockey. It was actually super intense. They won on a shootout 3-2. Our investigator Ken is so cool! This upcoming transfer we hope that she will be baptized.

Sunday we had like 4 of the less active YSA's come to church that we are working with. It was so cool to see all of them there! We also found out that one of our investigators just got out of jail and he was really progressing. So we are excited to meet with him again!

Some scriptures that I read this week that really helped me that I invite you to go read is Alma 26:27-37.

Thank you! Have a wonderful week!

Pictures
1. Exchanges with Elder Black
2. UMD Hockey Game
3. Us with our investigator Ken at the game.