Writings from West Virginia: 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