Greetings from Brax! *(for Ryan) :)

Merry Christmas! New Transfers! New Possibilities!

Hello everyone! It's the start of a new transfer! Elder Wasden is here! We are going to rock it this transfer. Let's jump in!

On Wednesday night, after emailing, we had a super busy evening! We started with dinner at the J.'s with the H. family eating delicious homemade burgers. Elder Brenchley said goodbye and we were off! We headed over to Brother F.'s house, a less-active member of the ward with Brother T. He's had some serious health challenges in the recent past and knows he needs to get the gospel back into his life. Hopefully we'll see him soon! After that we rushed over to B. and D. where we had a great lesson with them and picked D. back up as a new investigator! She told me that she wants to be baptized before I leave!! Should be late January. I'm so excited! I think she's ready. She said she really wanted to give this another honest try and start reading and praying again. We ended the night with the R. family who fed us an authentic Mexican Enchilada dinner! That was DELICIOUS! Real Mexican food is DELICIOUS. We went home full and happy. Elder Brenchley packed, I cleaned, went to bed...

Woo hoo! Transfer night is always crazy. We got up at 3:30 am to get over to the Transfer Train in Lexington by 4:30 and Elder Brenchley, Elder Tunell from YSA, and Elder Kelly from Rockbridge were off. Headed to bless lives elsewhere! Elder French, Elder Moser, and I headed back and slept for a little while, and then spent the day together! That was a lot of fun! We had a great time. Not a ton happened, but it was still fun to be with them. Elder Wasden arrived at around 7:30 that night on the transfer train, fresh from Maryland! He is great. He's a big goofy guy and we just love each other. He's really jumping in to his responsibilities! We headed over to Brother T.'s, our Ward Mission Leader's house so they could get acquainted. He's a fantastic Ward Mission Leader. Working with him really is going to make the work move forward here!

On Friday we were blessed to teach B. and D. again! They are moving along great. We read Alma 32 with them and committed them to keep reading every day. We also were able to see T., a former investigator from back in the days of Elder Numbers and I. She's hard to catch, but she would make a great member of the church one day if we could just sit down and have an open, good lesson with her. I think one day she will realize how much she needs it!

Saturday was BUSY. We have 4 new district leaders this transfer, and so we needed to go and do training with everyone! We were in the car for 5 hours, whew! But it was fun to associate with all of our District Leaders. They are all super solid and ready to work and lead their district as a Shepherd leads his sheep! This transfer is going to be great because of them. We spent an hour with each of them, and they all have some great ideas.

Sunday was a great day. I love the Sabbath! Church was great. There were two musical numbers during Sacrament Meeting, and they did a good job. B. had her temple recommend interview and is going to the temple hopefully this week!!! That's what I'm pumped for. The end was in mind! She is going to the temple! Then right after her interview she bore her testimony about how she will one day be sealed to her husband C. She is the bomb. We were also able to see W., a Less-Active Member who wants to come back to church! He's great. Miracles are happening! BV is great! I love it here!

Have a great week everyone! I will talk to you all next week!

Love,

Elder Brax Johnson

Sending out Christmas cards!

Christmas lights of BV!

New companion! Elder Wasden!

One of my favorite people G.!

Dinner with the amazing R. family

Seven and a Half Months in Buena Vista!

Hello everyone! I'm sure you guessed it in the title, but I'm staying in Buena Vista for another transfer! Elder Brenchley is getting transferred to Roanoke Virginia, downtown area. He's super excited and is going to have a blast. My new companion is Elder Wasden! He's been out 6 months now and I'm sure he's a superstar! I'm excited to be having the opportunity to serve with him! We are also getting 4 brand new district leaders in the zone, so the next week or so is going to be BUSY! Luckily it will be a little easier though BECAUSE WE'RE GETTING A CAR BACK! A Toyota Sienna to be exact. It has been nick-named the "USS Enterprise." It's a wonderful Minivan. #MormonAssaultVehicle #SoccerMomStatus

Anyway! It's transfers week this week, so it's been 9 days since the last email! I have a ton to tell you about!!

Last Monday we saw the B. family again with Brother T. We showed them the new Christmas Initiative #ASaviorIsBorn (Christmas.Mormon.org) and testified of the power of the Sacrament. Things are moving slowly with them, but hopefully someday we will see progress! We also followed up with a potential we found the day before and picked up his girlfriend as a new investigator! We're having a bit of trouble getting back into contact with her, but such is missionary work, right? 

Not a ton happened on Tuesday. We brought Brother H. to a lesson with J., our Spanish Investigator (we have a ton of RMs in BV and it's awesome) but sadly J. wasn't there. Blah! Why can't people just KEEP APPOINTMENTS. Eh, hopefully we find him soon! We did contact a referral that the M. family gave us, their neighbor C. She's VERY familiar with Latter-Day Saints and was very nice and gracious but isn't super interested at this time. We shared #ASaviorIsBorn with her and left on good terms. Real nice lady!

On Wednesday I was on exchanges with Elder Rasmussen, one of our District Leaders, up in Clifton Forge! We had a pretty good time, tried a few people, ate some Taco Bell, etc. He's a good Elder, headed up to Clarksburg for his last 3 months of his mission. It's been great working with him!

On Thursday we had the Christmas Specialized Training with President Salisbury! That was a blast! I had the opportunity to conduct that meeting, and I guess I did alright. It was a longer meeting than Specialized Training normally is, because we got to watch Meet the Mormons again! President wanted to show us a movie to celebrate Christmas, and so we watched the movie, thinking about some questions that he asked us to think about. Mostly about the effect we can have on people's lives. "What Is Possible For You?" was the last question. Everytime I watch that movie I want to go out and freaking change the world or something. My time will come, right? The quote, "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul," comes to find. Anyway, great movie! Our ward also provided an AWESOME lunch (like, they went all out. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the set up. We have the best ward). We also had Stake Correlation with President Jones and President Salisbury. It's fun to be in meetings with such amazing and spiritual men. You just learn TONS in an instant. After that we saw Sister M. with Brother T.! That was great. She is great! She has been reading "Preparing For the Holy Temple" and is excited to go! What other convert is like that? Man, I'm just so excited for her! Thursday ended kinda badly when Elder Brenchley got a HUGE headache that was SUPER painful during dinner with the H. family, so Brother H. drove us home and I made Elder Brenchley go to bed. He slept it off and we were good the next day!

On Friday we had an interesting lesson with a man, M., who has an interesting set of beliefs. I think he mostly aligns with the Jewish faith, because he doesn't believe in Jesus Christ or the New Testament, only the Old Testament, but he also doesn't believe in a Savior at all, coming or already has come. We had a good discussion with him but near the end it just started turning into him trying to bash us and convince us we were wrong. Apparently he hadn't read 2 Nephi. :) Interesting fellow! We left him with the challenge to pray to know if he is a child of God (because he didn't believe that either). Maybe someday his heart will be opened! We also had dinner with the Hands family that night! During the prayer Elder Brenchley said, "Please bless the Hands that prepared this food," and we all started to crack up. It was pretty funny. To end the night we had a lesson with G. about prophets. The lesson ran a little long so we told him we'd come back the next day and tell him how prophets are called. He wasn't there. GOSH DANG IT. "Do you want to astonish people? Keep your commitments." - President Salisbury. 

Saturday we were able to see B. and J., some cute less-active kids. We shared #ASaviorIsBorn with them and committed them to come to church! B. did!! Hey, progress is progress. J. said he didn't want to come until his Grandpa (who he basically lives with) could come. Brother R. unfortunately is in the later stages of Kidney Cancer and it's incredibly hard for him to move, so he and his wife get home sacrament. I hope J. will start coming again. He's a good kid. We also saw Sister M. again! We brought Brother M., a recently married RM in our ward who is AWESOME. He's super techy and offered to fix B.'s internet for her! What a guy. 

Saturday we also found out that I'll be staying in BV and Elder Brenchley will be leaving. That was crazy to see! Definitely didn't expect it.

We had a pretty good Sunday! We had a long lesson with J. and M. in the morning. The J.'s came with us. There are definitely some concerns that we are going to have to work through with them, but they still want us to teach them! It will definitely be a longer process than normal, but that's okay. We meet people where they are and help them along! Church was GREAT! B. came! Since her medication switch she's been feeling TONS better and is excited for her future in the church! It was the Ward Christmas Program too! Just icing on the cake. For dinner that night we ate at the F.'s, and they made a MASSIVE amount of food. Like, a ridiculous amount. See picture. It was SO GOOD though. Authentic Chilean food is DELICIOUS. 

We had District Meeting Monday morning, and that was a really good meeting. We reviewed Chapter 10 of Preach My Gospel "Teaching Skills," particularly the points of Listening, Asking Questions, and Resolving Concerns. It was a really good meeting and the sisters brought a TON of candy and I ate waaaaaaay too much. Elder Brenchley said goodbye to a lot of people this day. Made a lot of rounds, took a lot of pictures. Tuesday was pretty much the same. Took a lot of pictures and visited a lot of members/investigators/former investigators to say goodbye.

Thank you all for reading this HUGE email. I don't know why it was so long this week. I hope you enjoy it! Have a great week everyone, and I will talk to you Monday!

Love,

Elder Brax Johnson

A great BV family!

Chilean Food! YUM!

Christmas packages arriving at our door! :)

Another amazing BV family!

Merry Christmas to me! Thank you mom!

My new suit and shoes. #nomoreclothesuntilJune :)

Happy December!

Hello everyone! I hope no one is too cold and that December is treating you well!

This past Monday we had the chance to visit a couple members, specifically the A. family for dinner (who made some AWESOME roast) and the C. & E.'s who invited us over for Family Home Evening! We taught a little bit about being a good member-missionary, and then for their activity they wrote letters to the 4 full-time missionaries serving from the Buena Vista ward! That was a really fun activity. They had cards all ready and we wrote a little message in it so they could send it off. That was a great night!

Tuesday we picked up a new investigator! His name is J., he is from Honduras, and he is awesome! He speaks hardly any English, so we brought Brother T., who served a mission to Costa Rica, to translate for us. It was great! J.'s work schedule makes it SUPER hard to meet with him sometimes, but we have an appointment every Tuesday, because that's his only day off! That could pose some challenges in the future, but we'll cross that hurdle when we get there!

Also on Tuesday we had THREE dinner appointments! The first appointment was the S. family, who are an awesome adult couple that have been in BV for a while now, next we had the H.'s, and awesome younger married couple that invited us over for Pizza, and lastly we had the C.'s! Sister C. is the one who cuts our hair and they fed us awesome BBQ chicken and rice. That was really great! We were VERY full, but it was still really nice of everyone to offer to feed us.

On Thursday we had District Meeting! Elder Kelly did a really good job teaching us all about pushing forward and not being hard on ourselves because [feel] we aren't doing enough. The sisters brought Arts and Crafts and we made cool bookmarks for our scriptures while they demonstrated the teaching model that Elder Kopischke showed us. It was really clever and cool! We all went and had BBQ at JJ's after. Deeeeelicious!

Thursday night was AWESOME! It was the Buena Vista Christmas Parade! We decorated our Ward Mission Leader's truck with signs, and walked by the truck as we handed out #ASaviorIsBorn cards with candy canes stapled to them! We handed out all 120 cards within the first half of the parade.... oops. Next year the missionaries need to bring much more, haha. Hopefully those cards get into the right people's hands! 

Friday we had exchanges with the Assistants! Elder Rueda and I got to work Buena Vista! We had a really fun time together. We saw three wonderful families that night! The W.'s, The B.'s, and The M.'s. The M.'s bore a POWERFUL testimony about missionary work, and Elder Rueda, being a convert himself of about 3 years now, was able to bear his testimony that every little thing that we do matters. A girl during his sophmore year gave him a Book of Mormon, and it took 4 years for him to read it. But he finally did! And here he is now, blessing lives.

Saturday we had the Ward Christmas Party! We set up a really fun booth in the front foyer of the church where people could come take their picture for #ASaviorIsBorn and post it to Social Media! I encourage you all to do that as well! Download the signs from http://christmas.mormon.org and post them to FaceBook! That would be a great Family Night Acitivty. Also watch the video at http://christmas.mormon.org if you haven't already and post that! It is a spiritually POWERFUL video. 

Sunday was a great and busy day too! Church was fantastic, with an awesome (and emotional) Fast and Testimony Meeting. I love this church and the chance we all have to bear our testimonies. The Spirit flows when a testimony is born!

After church we had Correlation with our Ward Mission Leader, Brother T., and the F.'s, two of our awesome Ward Missionaries! After that we ran over to the P.'s to eat some awesome chili and delicious FroYo! Frozen Yogurt is the BOMB! We ran over to the M.'s family after that for a short visit with them, headed to the C's, an awesome member family too, and ended with the M.'s, a great younger couple that made awesome Cake Cookies for us. Yay! It was a really great and rewarding night.

Thank you so much for reading this email! I really appreciate it. Have a great week! Make it the best one ever!

Love,

Elder Brax Johnson

#Asaviorisborn - Elder Rueda, his companion :), Elder Brenchley and Elder Johnson

Elder Johnson with the ward mission leader!

The wonderful ward members!

The truck is ready for the parade!

Handing out candy canes and #asaviorisborn Christmas cards!

The amazing Christmas tree of the W. family!

Handing out the Christmas Cards for #asaviorisborn

We are in the BV parade!

Hello Again!

Hello hello one and all! We are going to explore some caverns at Natural Bridge today on a fun tour, so I don't have a lot of time (I say that a lot) but I'll try and be thorough! 

This Monday we had the opportunity to eat with some cool people, R. and N.! We met them a while ago (few months) while trying a former investigator, and they happened to live in that house! We had a good conversation with her (N., we met her the first time) and she said we could come back some time. We did a few weeks/months later (this was last week) and they invited us to dinner! How cool is that? I love meeting awesome people. Hopefully we'll be able to cut some wood with them soon! They need some and R. participates in Timbersports, so he's ripped and can rip through wood, haha. Also on Monday we had a Family Home Evening with the B. family! They are a great less-active family that we saw last week, and Sister B. works on Sunday, so at the moment she is unable to come to church. We ended the day with dinner with the H. (Two dinners in one day)! They are awesome members of the ward.

Tuesday was MLC! We drove all the way up to Charleston and got to have it this time at the Mission Home! President and Sister Salisbury have a really nice house. We had a really good meeting, learned a TON (as usual), and drove back home, stopping at a Mexican Buffet on the way, haha.

Wednesday morning we got haircuts from Sister C. and talked to her husband N. for a little bit. They are an awesome family! I know Mom really likes them because Sister C. sent her a picture of Elder Brenchley and I. :P Not a whole lot happened until that night! We tried a potential investigator that we had set up an appointment with last week, and there he was! We grabbed his correct phone number this time (we wrote it down wrong, haha). We taught him, J., and his girlfriend, A., the Restoration and committed them to read the Restoration Pamphlet! We have another appointment with them tonight. Woo hoo!

TURKEY DAY! Thanksgiving was great! We got to participate in the Ward/Elders Quorum Turkey Bowl that morning, and we played with a non-member foreign exchange student from Slovakia who was there. He was guarding me the whole time, so we had a lot of time to talk! He's a cool guy. We ate Thanksgiving dinner with the S's! We ate WAAAAAYYY too much, but it was delicious. They are a good family.

Friday we had exchanges and Zone Meeting! Zone Meeting was alright, could've been better, but oh well! I had the opportunity to go to Clifton Forge with Elder Higgins this time around! He is a great Elder that I knew from the beginning of my time in Wytheville! He was in Radford, which isn't too far away. We did some awesome work and were able to teach a New Investigator, B., and saw a Part-Member Family, H. and N. It was great! Back in BV I heard that Elder Brenchley and Elder Rasmussen were able to teach J. and M.! They had a really good lesson with them on Prayer, and J. said the closing prayer while kneeling! They are going to be amazing members someday.

All we really got done on Sunday was going to church (which was awesome) and eating dinner with the A.'s! They made really big taco salads. They were delicious. Mmmmm. Sacrament Meeting was excellent though! A. and K., two of our Ward Missionaries, spoke this time, and they did a great job. All four of the talks were on getting answers to gospel questions. I just love Sacrament Meeting and Church in general. What a blessing it is to be able to take the Sacrament every single week. We also had a great 3rd hour combined lesson taught by our Ward Clerk, Brother P., about Social Media - the dangers as well as the possibilities. J. and M. a weren't able to come because their little 6 week old baby was in the ER that morning, but they really want to come next week! We are excited for them.

Also! #ASaviorIsBorn, the new church initiative, went live yesterday! It can be found at Christmas.mormon.org (https://www.mormon.org/christmas). I encourage EVERYONE who has access to Social Media to post it/tweet it/Pin it/WHATEVER it and share it with the world! Follow Elder Bednar's advice to "Sweep the Earth as with a flood." Post it with the hashtag #ASaviorIsBorn and let the world see what you stand for!

Thank you all for reading this email. I love each of you! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Brax Johnson

3 Exchanges and 2 On Date!

Hello hello! I have 12 minutes. Let's see how fast I can pump this puppy out!

So yeah, by the title you can tell that we had an awesome week this week! Lets jump into Monday! Basically for the whole day we cleaned, haha. We had inspections the next day (which didn't go so well, but that's okay, everything is taken care of now) so we spent the whole day trying to make sure everything was good. We did get to go to a delicious Country Buffet with a wonderful member of ours for lunch! That was awesome. We also had dinner that night with the T's, and Correlation with Brother Tu., the Ward Mission Leader, after that. We've come up with a great new idea for communicating among the Ward Mission Leader and Ward Missionaries. It's a Google Spreadsheet on Google Drive that everyone in the Ward Missionary Force has access to (except for us, dang myldsmail) and it has all the members that we visit on there during the week, the commitment we left with them, and the friends they want to share the gospel with. How awesome is that? So awesome! It makes communication and knowing when to follow-up a lot easier.

7 minutes!

Tuesday started our exchanges! I was with Elder Gerke (currently serving in Gretna, VA) up here in Buena Vista! He is an awesome younger elder who has a lot of fire! It was a lot of fun serving with him. We rode our bikes HARD. We had like 3 different back to back appointments with members (the A.'s (dinner!), the G.'s, and the B.'s), all freaking as far away as possible from each other, so we were going hard. It was a lot of fun though!

Wednesday we (Elder Gerke and I) were able to teach a new investigator named M.! He's a self-described "truth-seeker" and is a very open and humble guy. He does NOT want to be deceived and end up in hell. I think his skepticism though was removed his faith in Jesus Christ, so we'll have to start there when we have our next appointment with him.

Thursday I was on exchanges with Elder Kelly in Rockbridge! That was fun. For those of you who don't know, I went to Elementary, Junior High and High School with Elder Kelly! He's a great elder. I think the highlight of that exchange was eating a true country meal with their investigator L., Venison, Taters, and Turnips! Also having a preacher subtly call us out for believing in something other than the Bible during our Bible Study (darn Rev. 22:18)

Friday we picked up a new investigator named J.! He was very interested to hear about the Atonement, because he's messed up a lot in his life, and kind of poured his soul out to us in our lesson. He is a humble guy that really wants to change.

Saturday we saw J. and his girlfriend M., who we picked up last week! This time I was on exchanges with Elder Vai from Amherst up in BV. We had a GREAT lesson with them and set them on date for December 19th! WOOOOOO! I think they'll make it too. They were very sorry that they didn't come to church yesterday, and committed themselves to come next week! Pray for them. They are awesome. They have these two adorable little kids, S., and C. Good things are happening!

We also picked up a girl named T. on Saturday! She is G.'s wife, so now hopefully we are going to be able to teach both of them! That will be great. The progression goes so much faster when the whole family is on board. We taught her about the Book of Mormon, gave one to her, and she was interested!

Lastly, we had an awesome Sacrament Meeting! It was all hymns. People would go up to the pulpit and suggest hymn to sing and why they are important. That was exciting.

Out of time! I love you all! Thank you for your support! Have a GREAT WEEK!

Love,

Elder Brax Johnson

Me on the bike!

Dinner with the T. Family!

Serving in Three Ways!

Hello everyone! 

Not a whole lot happened this week seeing people wise. Not really sure why. We have a ton of appointments set up for this week though and it is going to be awesome! We found a lot of potential investigators last week that we talked to on the street/any other opportunity we had, and we have a lot of appointments set up for this week! 

That being said, this week was still AMAZING! We had a member of the Seventy, Elder Erich W. Kopishke, come to the mission and teach us in a three day mission tour! What an amazing experience that was! The spiritual power that you can feel from these brethren is just amazing. He was a very energetic, very German man. He wasn't afraid to say anything that he felt needed to be said. No beating around the bush or going through the back door with him. He was bold, and it was awesome. It was also really funny, when he'd get excited, he'd start rattling off in German to his wife, who is also German. It was great. Here's a funny quote from the Wednesday conference:

"So you are almost in the south, almost in the bible belt...." - Elder Kopishke

"This is the south." - Quiet voice from the Stake President's pew

"Wait. This is the South?" - Elder Kopsishke

"Yeah..."

"ITS THE NORTHEAST!"

That was really super funny. He taught us a really good teaching model of teaching, asking, and testifying when we talk to people. That's what Elder Brenchley and I did for the potential investigators we found, and that's why they were interested! I can testify that these men are definitely inspired. There is no other way! Follow them and study their words, they are the words of God.

On Friday we had the opportunity to head up to Charleston for a special Mission Leadership Council (MLC) with Elder and Sister Kopishke, and President and Sister Salisbury. We learned a TON and are really excited to share it with everyone that we work with! Especially the missionaries we are with. We have 3 exchanges this week (Elder Brenchley and I are hardly going to see each other), so that we can share everything we learned. I think the number 1 thing was just helping them (the missionaries) with the things they want help with. Something else he taught us was that "they cannot receive anything they are not ready to receive." What great words of wisdom. They have to want to receive it before they can receive it!

This Sunday, yesterday, we had the opportunity to stand in the circle as Sister B. was confirmed! That was an amazing blessing. She is an official member!

Alrighty, funny story! So a couple weeks ago the Assistants called us wondering what the possibility of taking our car would be. We talked about it and unconditionally offered our car, because here in BV you don't need a car. Just really strong legs (these hills were NOT that hilly last week, I swear). So on Friday we get a call from Elder Rueda, one of our Assistants, wondering the possibilities of taking the car TOMORROW. I said sure, and the next day, it happened! Some missionaries drove up here from Roanoke to take the car, drove it up to where it needed to go, then later the Assistants brought them back down and they took their own car back to Roanoke. The Assistants also brought bikes with them! So officially I am a bike elder now. Crazy stuff! So for the 8ish hours that the Roanoke elders took our car, I was in a walking area, and now that we have the bikes, I'm in a bike area. 3 areas in two days! Riding bikes is a lot of fun, even if I now see how out of shape I am, haha.

Thank you for reading this everyone! I love you all and hope you have the best week ever! I'll talk to you next week!

Love,

Elder Brax Johnson

D&C 6:36

Elder Millard (and Sister Kirkby photobombing)!

Elder Wheeler!

Elder Young (who I came out with)

A really hilarious sign we saw in Princeton. - #sodumb

Goodbye dear car. We love you. :)

Trying on a new suit - hey mom--Christmas??? :) #suave

Ready to bike. #bringiton