Looking Forward to Conference

Malo e lelei fam!

Great to hear from all of yous, wow, the past couple days have been straight chaos!  The power has been out for 48 hours so we're in another area doing us our emails.  Of course this place is expensive and doesn't have anywhere to plug in my camera so I'm sorry about not having any photos today.  It sounds like everyone is doing well--that is great.  I can't wait for Conference this weekend!  I bet it was good.  I saw all of the talks online, but I'm just going to wait this time!  I'm really excited to hear from Jeffrey R. Holland.

This was a really good week though.  We were able to get some good missionary work done.  So starting from Tuesday, me and Elder L'Heureux went on trade offs.  It was a really good time.  He is very outgoing and has a fun personality so we were able to have some good lessons with people just by talking with them on the street.  We met a Tongan lady who was out doing her garden.  It was a wonderful day so we approached her and asked her if there was anything that we could help them with while they were outside.  We just started talking with her and it turns out that she had her baby pass away just a month ago.  It was really sad to hear.  I told her that it was the plan that God had for her child and that it would be okay.  She started to cry outside and she invited us to come back to meet with the rest of the family so that's what we plan on doing this week--contacting and seeing the family.  It was a good experience though for just a street contact.  I haven't had very many experiences like that on my mission so it was pretty cool!

Another thing that happened this week, well just yesterday actually.  There is a less active family that we have been working with.  The father is just a loud guy who knows what he is doing wrong (drinking, smoking, etc) but he is a little arrogant about it so I get a little annoyed when I'm there normally!  Yesterday was different, we went there after church and we knew they would be home because the power has been out!  We actually had a really good lesson with him and the rest of the family.  The kids want to come back to church.  The wife bore her testimony and he said a really good prayer.  The spirit was in their home yesterday so we were really happy about that!

Things are going good.  I'm liking working with Elder Hopoate.  The only thing is that the area is really small so sometimes there is not a lot to do!  This week, we just went out and talked with all the people at the bus stop!  We met this Tongan man named Saimone.  He is the man!  He had us over on Thursday and made us food and we had  a lesson with him.  It was fun teaching him.  None of it was in English--he didn't know any English so it was good that Elder Hopoate is fluent or else we wouldn't have been able to go very far! 

Things are going great.  I'm really happy about the area and the ward is really good.  There are some pretty fun families so that's good!  Oh--next week when I send photos home, there is a picture of a little baby decked out in Kings gear!  I had to get a photo of that!  Things are good, testimony is strong, loving the work and I love New Zealand!  I love you guys and hope all is well! 

Have a good week!

Love,
Elder Johnson