Planting Seeds

Alright familia mia (dear family), this will be my last email sent from my home country of Peru! The next time I'll be able to write will be in about two weeks since I fly out to Ecuador this next Tuesday and will miss the P day. That's okay though, it will give me some time to get some experiences to write you about. It is so amazing the hand of the Lord in this work. And I am learning how to feel and respond to spritual promptings even better.

This last Saturday we went proselyting and we were focused on menos activos (less active members). Me and my new companion, Elder Christian Lorenzo, were tagged with a local member. He was about 65 years old and really cool. It was cool because he was originally from Trujillo, where my companion is going next week and his son is serving right now in my mission in Ecuador! He was so happy to find out I was going there and gave me a hug. His enthusiasm and love reminded me of my Tios (Alex, Freddy, and Coco) that I love so much.

Pero más sobre mi sábado pasado (But back to last Saturday). We were talking to this little 9 year old girl while looking for her neighbor who was a menos activo (less active member) of 8 years, a guy who is 28 and his brother who is 23. His brother reminded me of Mario Zacarias. Anyway, as I was sharing a scripture in the LdM (Libro de Mormon) with them in Jacob 2:18-19 and testifying about the blessings we can get from not working on sunday and going to church, the little girl was listening in and poking her head from around the member we were with. It was so cute and her mannerisms were like Jenna. We started talking to her and I asked her if she wanted to go to our church. She said yeah. The member we were with knew her mom but she was at work. I asked this little girl, Ayaneli is her name, if she knew how to read. She said yes and nodded her head. I then asked if she would want to have a Libro de Mormon for herself. She got excited and said yes again. I decided to carry around a blue study LdM (BoM) for my own personal use in this cool case I bought. That's what I was holding as I was explaining the book to her and other people tambien (also). Well, I felt such a sweet spirit in her, that I asked her if she wanted my Libro. She smiled and said yes looking just like Jenna. I told her about Jenna and that she had just been baptized and how she likes church and has fun and friends there. I took my BoM out of the case and handed it to her with all my little markings and showed her the pictures and told her to share them with her little sister. I'll never know if they go to church but she was so happy to get it and I felt good about giving it to her. It has my full name in it, haha. After that we had a good rest of the day.

We talked to a younger lady outside a store who thought we were Testigos de Jehova (Jehova's Witnesses). We told her we were not and explained part of The Restoration. She didn't believe that I was from the United States! I told her my mom was from Arequipa and that opened her up even more to the message because she said she was from there too. So maybe there's a chance she attended church aswell, haha.

I love the work. I gave my email to that member we were tracting with and he's already emailed me wishing me luck on my mission so that was nice. It was a really good day and I was able to see how people open up when you testify with sincerity and love. It was sad when one lady kicked us out because she decided she was too Catholic. I was about to share 2 Nephi 29, haha.

I love the LdM in Spanish, I can read it without a dictionary now!

Love you all, I'm out of time.
Elder Johnson