Dear Mom,

Hey!!! They didn’t change me! Or my companion! Or any Elder in my district! The only change that happened was now our Zone Leader (the guy I report to) is Elder Trejo, who just finished his turn as assistant. So I’m hoping he whips me into shape. He’s pretty much a boss, from what I’ve heard, so I’m pretty excited. It’s always nice to have somebody pushing you. Honestly. I would not have said that, I think, a year ago. Gosh I love the mission. It’s such a special time of life.

Well, a pretty cool thing happened this week. First of all, it was one of those weeks where we lost like two complete days to travel (first, we had a zone conference on Wednesday and had to go to Oaxaca. Second, we had a baptismal interview on Friday and had to go to Tlaxiaco). So we were kind of crunched in our time to meet our goals and whatnot, especial since we wanted to increase the number of baptismal dates we had. But then, God sent us a tiny miracle.

See, there’s this girl named Andrea. She’s the granddaughter of the Relief Society President.  Andrea has wanted to get baptized for a long time now (she’s 21, by the way). She’s heard all of the missionary lessons a couple of times and has been to Church plenty of times. She’s studying in Puebla, and so when she’s out there, she actively goes to Institute. Problem is, she’s here every weekend and so has to get baptized here, which means dealing with her not so supportive family. We’ve actually only taught her once in my entire time here in Huajuapan. My comp had already explained to me the situation. So we showed up and just read chapter 24 of Mosiah, which is the chapter where the people of Alma have to use their patience in order to overcome their lamanite taskmasters. We talked about what she could do to overcome the person who was telling her that she couldn’t obey the commandments of God and how in the end, the right thing to do will always be the right thing to do, even if somebody gets upset at us for doing it. We taught this lesson a couple of weeks ago.

This last week, however, Andrea calls us to tell us that she’s decided to get baptized, no matter what others say.  She wants to get baptized in like two weeks. I’m excited. I hope she stays firm in her decision. Because, honestly, it’s true. Sometimes, it’s not going to be convenient to  keep the commandments. Sometimes, somebody is going to get upset if we do keep the commandments. That’s how good Satan is. He incites the hearts of the children of men to wrath against the good things of God. But all that wrath doesn’t change the fact that we have to keep the commandments. At least God won’t be mad at us. He will bless us during and after our periods of trial. We’ve just got to trust in Him. I love how God works. It’s so perfect.

I'll be praying for Tyrel this week. I hope everything continues to do well up there. I'm perfectly happy down here. See you in 2 years!

Love,

Elder Johnson