Hey familia,

First, my favorite news of the week: DAVID SENT IN HIS MISSION PAPERS!!!! David was my ward mission leader in Fortin and he is one of my best friends here in the mission. He had a lot of problems trying to get his papers in and I tried to help him and be a good example. He finally turned them in and called me to tell me about it. I'm so happy he could overcome girlfriend woes, obstinate parents, personal struggles, and other problems to get those papers finally sent in. He's gonna come here to la Hacienda tomorrow in order to help us out with the work all day. I'm excited for that. We've got some good citas tomorrow.

In other news, we also had a zone conference on Friday. It was about time. We hadn't had a multi-zone conference for like six months before this recent one.  It shaped Elder Piña and I up. We got to obeying a little more and working in faith a little bit more. This last part has really been a problem recently. See, we've had this goal of 10 new investigators for a long time now. I've never achieved. The majority of the time that I haven't achieved it, I've been with Elder Piña. I know it's possible to achieve and I know that contacting is a big part of achieving it. How do I know? First, because everybody else who achieves it (quite a few) achieves most of it by contacting. Two, contacting is an act of faith and the Lord requires faith in order to receive any blessing and especially a blessing like the one of the goal for new investigators. And all this has been a problem for us.

When Elder Piña first showed up, we contacted a little bit until one day, after about twenty minutes of contacting, we came to a crossroads. We had scheduled a backup plan to go visit a less active. I, as the senior companion, felt the need to continue to look for new investigators instead of going to visit this lady who we hadn't even told that we were going to go visit her. I wasn't aware of Elder Piña's views on the situation (we only had one and a half weeks together at this point) and we decided to keep contacting. That's about when the Spirit left us and Elder Piña got angry at me. There I was, contacting, oblivious to the fact that Elder Piña was inwardly fuming, Eventually, after I realized that he wasn't helping me at all and that after every door he would walk as fast as he could around the block without knocking any doors, I decided to ask him about it. In the end, he essentially told me that after like 4 rejections he gets sick of contacting and he likes to follow the plans that we put instead of changing them last moment.

Point is, ever since then, we haven't really contacting. For fear of inviting contention to the group, we haven't contacted. And we haven't found 10 new investigators. We've done everything else, but we haven't contacted. We haven't had the faith to knock doors until we find that family of five who is just waiting for us to visit them. It's been a thorn in our side and part of the motivation behind our deteriorating relation with our zone leaders. After the conference, where we heard countless stories of companionships successfully finding 10 new people by contacting, we got our act in gear and contacted the rest of the night. We actually found some pretty promising looking people. And, at the very end of the night, when we went to go buy some hamburgers to take back to the house (those pizzas did not fill me up), the lady making the hamburgers told us she wanted to talk with us. Turned out to be a family of four. Can you say blessing for contacting in faith? I certainly think so. I want to be a faithful missionary all this next week in order to finally, finally achieve the goal. It would be like a dream come true for me.

We did have a good day on Sunday too. Six people came to Sacrament meeting, a pretty high number. Three should be accepting baptismal dates this week and one of those three might get baptised before the week is over. It's looking pretty hopeful in La Hacienda again. I'm very happy about that.

Anyways, got to go. I love you all. See you in a year!

Love, Elder Johnson