June 14th, 2010

Hello everybody. It has been another week out here in the Garden State...and oddly enough it has been raining. Raining and warm...I am not the biggest fan. But all is well.

 

Well yesterday was some sort of show your Puerto Rican pride day...and it was insane! Normally PR's have their "tricked out" honda civics blasting some good ole "Hasta Bajo" by Don Omar (worth checking out if you like hip hop) with all the windows down as they roll around North Newark....but it was soooooo much worse yesterday. So many mufflers and hispanic rap and horns and puerto rican flags and spanglish. Really crazy and quite the show.

 

Cool lil story... we knocked into a WWII vet the other day! How intense is that? Like there cant be that many left. He was an awesome guy and was willing to just talk--gotta love old people right?  I guess there is the off chance that he was just a 'lil senile and he didn't serve in WWII, but he knew his stuff about the war and I totally trusted him. What an opportunity though-- sit back and talk with someone who fought for our freedom from the Nazi Regime. He had a lot of trouble hearing me though so we didn't exactly get to teach him much...*shrug*

 

Also, ran into another crazy guy the other day. He contacted us to say that he respects what we do and we got to talking a bit. Turns out that he is the son of an old mob boss. ...like his dad gave him a gun when he was 12 and told him to shoot anyone who came up the stairs-- "just pull the trigger till no more bullets come out" status...whoa.  He said his 1st "job" was when he was 17 and he made millions, was provided a house, 2 Cadillacs, a gas account (never had to pay for gas) and accounts with a few restaurants (never had to pay to eat). ...and when he did "jobs" and got arrested "they" made the evidence disappear. Yeah, crazy stuff. He goes on to say how he got out of that lifestyle after doing time in prison.  And because of that, hitmen have tried to kill him 3 times...shotgun, short-range pistol and running him over with a car. He showed us the bullet scars. It was just crazy...but he feels like hitmen dont just mess up and thinks it was divine intervention that saved him each of the three times.  He said he'd take a free Book of Mormon =D

 

    .....oh the crazy people we meet here in north newark.

 

I'm super pumped for this week...mainly cuz of the fact that 1 of our 2x a year New York trips is going to happen this wednesday. I'm really excited just cuz its fun to go and rejuvinating to go to the temple. And I must admit we feel super cool rollin around NYC in suits and ties...and minus the name tag, we are up and coming businessmen lol. hey I can dream.... Also we have a sweet all mission conference which should be fun.  Last time we had one of those was around Christmas time. This one is to prepare us for absorbing half of the Cherry Hill mission. It should be some good stuff :) And transfers are again coming up...it is always an interesting and exciting thing to have transfers.

 

As for investigators... things are going pretty well but progression has been kinda hindered for some. One of them were going to get married this Saturday and baptized on the 27th, but now they got in an argument and she doesn't even know where he is. We were planning on going to city hall to get the marriage license tomorrow =s ...but Jose (our x-drunkard came to church and is just super exciting as an investigator) we just need to help him see that there is no need to wait a year to get baptized...its simply the door to the path of eternal happiness.

 

How crazy is it that I have almost been gone for 1 year? ...July 1st is the official date that I went into the MTC and June 29th is the morning that I left Cali. ...and I swear it still feels like just the other day that I was talking with Alec out in front of my house the night before I left... So weird.

 

Anyways, hope you are all doing great and planning on a great summer!

Love,

Elder Johnson