Ok so I've been sitting here for like 10mins trying to think of what to write about this week. A ton has happened over the last few days but nothing that exciting. We've been apartment hunting for some other elders in preparation for transfers, we've been meeting with President talking about some changes in mission rules, I played M's (President's son) saxophone and it took me back to the good old days playing in band with Casey Spilker haha. We had lots of dinners with members- we actually had every day signed up for this whole transfer. How legit is that! Just FYI that is not normal but I like it :) 

 The members in the Cambridge 2nd Ward are mostly all young couples going to Havard Business school and they are super cool. I think by the end of my time here, which will be till the end of my mission, I will really want to come back here after going to BYU and go to HBS. That'd be sweet, right? And its not a dubious (word of the week ha) ambition, I am really liking it here and could totally see myself back here. Pretty much following suit with Blake with going back to his mission to go to graduate school.

We taught the L family again and had a really solid lesson. The mother sat in and listened quietly and at one point you could feel the spirit so strong as one of our members testified and you knew that she was feeling the spirit. It will take time but im sure her heart will soften. We are moving the baptism date back into mid october to give us more time to get the whole family active. Jr came to church with one other sister but the rest of the family did not, unfortunately. :(

Also at church, some random lady from Beijing China came walking in and said she her school class was told by one of her professors to go study about a different religion. She loved our church meeting and now wants to meet with us this week. Her name is Yan and she has only been in the US for 2 months but speaks fairly decent english. How cool is that?! And to top it all off, a member came up to us at the end of church and said the best thing, "Elders! I have someone ready for you to teach in our home thursday night at 8pm. Can you come?" uh, heck ya we can come :) So this week should be legit. Plus this week we will be working on transfers with President and Sister Packard so I am equally excited for that.

So there is this subway stop here called Porter Square. And it has the hugest stair case ever! like more than 100 stairs. Some of the less informed sister missionaries thoguht it would be fun to challenged Elder M and me to race up them. They went about training for like 3 weeks and we did our usual workouts and met up last saturday morning to race. The whole zone showed up to watch. It was my first time seeing the stairs and I was a little intimidated but we raced and obviously we won :) By a long shot. Moral of the story, don't buy mission vehicles. jk, But really tho, don't buy them. the real moral of the story is not important. well thats it love yall!

Oh also need to thank everyone who has written me lately that I haven't had the time to respond to. I have been receiving some mail every day this last week and its so great so thank you one and all.

<('.'<) <( '.' )> (>'.')> -check it out, its Kirby dancing!

Love,

Elder Brady Johnson

To answer some questions:

We take the departing missionaries to the airport each transfer-we are always the ones to drop them off and to pick them up-which I will be able to do in a few weeks!(president comes with us too).  I keep up on my language by mainly reading the Book of Mormon in Khmae every day and also all of my personal prayers are in khmae. There is just not a lot of spare time to do language study especially because my companion doesnt' speak another language so i feel bad making him sit around while i study a language. No i don't speak khmae with hardly anyone except for other missionaries at meetings cuz I have yet to find a Cambodian in my area.

Yes I am still somewhat learning spanish but only passively. I speak it with other missionaries and when i can even tho its not soo good and I ask others who speak spanish to talk to me in spanish so i can practice.

W the 12yr old I mentioned last time and Jr, her little 9yr old brother are both set to get baptized in october! When we went over there to teach them we straight up asked them if they wanted to be baptized like their older siblings right at first and they both excitedly said YES! So we have been teaching them and things are going really well. Their mom isn't too sure if she is going to let them be baptized tho. The other 3 older sisters and very active and love young womens. So we will have to see. But keep them in your prayers and pray that the mother's heart is softened.

We haven't had a whole lot of time with President lately because we've all been busy preparing for a general Authority coming...and that happened these past few days. Elder O. Vincent Haleck and his wife came and toured our mission. He is brand new as a GA and it was great getting to be with him. We had 4 zone conferences in 2 days that Elder M and I had to set up all the technical equipment and get the buildings open and pretty much make everything happen so He and President Packard could just show up, speak, bring the spirit in great abundance, and then leave. So we really didn't get any one on one time with Elder Haleck but we got to hear him speak 4 times and each time was a little bit different. He shared a lot of experiences from his mission in Samoa and also his experiences as a mission president 40yrs later in the same place! Cool huh? So it was a bit of a stressful and tiring 2 days-feels like 2 weeks should've passed in that time haha. But its done and things are settling for this week and then next week we start doing transfers with President. That should be really fun.

Our ward is awesome and we are bound to see alot of amazing things here in the next few months so I'm stoked. Loving life, thats for sure! Loveya bye!

Love, 

Elder Brady Johnson

99

Now i don't want this to sound Trunkie but in our mission, it is tradition to go the the 99 Restaurant when we have 99 days til we go home.... So yup today is my 99. Its unreal i know.

Every week/every day just blends together in my head at this point. But it was a really good week. Wednesday we had Zone Leader Council and it was powerful. President loves teaching us these deep/intense lessons from the Book of Mormon whenever a group is assembled with him. He talked about prayer this time and counseled us to not do prayers like we are doctors giving a diagnosis and telling Heavenly Father what we need him to do for us, but rather to have "what would thou have me do?" prayers. Its exactly what i needed to hear. So every night before bed I say a prayer and say the usuals like bless my family and friends and what not but then I just ask, "what can i do?" "what would thou have me do" for such and such case. And then I wait. I keep a notebook close by so i can write down the promptings that i get and it is amazing the inspiration i receive and the specific action items i need to do. Or I will remember something that i need to do tomorrow or whatever it may be. My prayers now are alot more meaningful and fulfilling and its more like a two way conversation. I encourage you all to try doing the same.

Thursday we went to Springfield MA for a zone meeting and it is way out in western mass. And i bet dad knows this, but That is the birthplace of Basketball. We drove by the Basketball Hall of Fame but thats all we did- drive by, cuz we had no time. We also took an elder to the airport who is flying home to Brazil. Its so weird doing that ha. I don't think i will ever get used to it.

Friday we went to Revere to a different Zone meeting and it was so fun being "home" ha. I got to talk to the Khmae elders there and it let me know that i have made progress in the language on my mission thus far, so that was comforting. Saturday we were in the office from 10-5pm like usual reporting with all the zone leaders on the people who were baptized or are preparing for baptism plus the majority being talking with the ZL's about each missionary and how they are doing. Its crazy how much changes in just one week. Things can be going just fine and then BAM there's a problem (but nothing too big).

Sunday was the best day by far. As church was starting i was half thinking to myself half praying and I said, "you know, we haven't had alot of time this week to do anything in our area to find people to teach and i really want to start teaching someone. If it be thy will, can we please have someone come to church or get someone to teach by the end of today?" I didn't really think much of it because I wasn't desparate or anything, just thought it would be nice to have an investigator. (cuz currently we don't have any.) After church, we had ward council and towards the end, a 12 yr old girl was brought up whose sisters have been baptized and all 3 of them come to church regularly but the 12 yr old just never got baptized because the parents aren't members and arent' on top of things like that. So the Young Women's pres asked if the missionaries had to teach her first before she can get baptized we answered yes (cuz that is the answer :)) and so now we are going to go meet her tomorrow and most likely she will be baptized at the end of this month! How awesome is that? God answers prayers. He hears each one of us. Plus i also learned that it NEVER hurts to ask. God wants us to pray to him. Don't forget that.

Besides that, most of our work done in our area is going to dinner appointments with members. And our members are sooooo awesome! I love them all and we are working with them in their missionary efforts they already are doing/want to do. All we do is encourage and support them in their efforts and then be the accountability factor and follow up with them to keep em honest, you know. And they love it. The members here are very missionary minded so within the next 2 months, I have a feeling that we will have alot of people to teach. I feel like this area is so under-utilized because we are the only elders that cover this ward and we are super busy and gone most of the time. But Elder M and I have alot of plans to really take advantage of this area and the solid members that we have. There hasn't been a baptism in this ward in over a year and a half i believe and we are going to change that. Things are great, life is so wonderful, fall is here and God is good.

I love you all! Thanks for everything! Yes, a package sounds really good right now mom and anyone else who feels so inclined :) haha you guys are the BEST!

ps i just have to give a shout out to my cuz's Amber and Emilee Johnson for their letters they wrote me forever ago that i never responded to. but just know, I love getting your letters. and Emilee, i think you are my best writer/most consistent for my whole mission So thanks a bunch! Sorry I can't write back but feel free to keep writing me and i promise i will write back a few more times before I go home.

Love,

Elder Brady Johnson

Hello from Yale!

Yup you heard that right, i am currently writing to you as I am on exchanges for the day with my good friend from Richfield, Elder M in the lovely city of New Haven, CT Home of Yale University. Man, New England has a lot of prestigious schools Like Yale, Harvard, MIT and Brown and I've now been to them all. The picture I sent is of me on a big hill overlooking New Haven. Pretty epic, huh?

This week has been pretty busy like the last one. I think this is how its going to be for the rest of my mission which is awesome! I love being on the go a hundred percent of the time. Last week I went to a district meeting in Hartford, CT and one in Keene, New Hampshire (that place is forever away! And we saw a mountain while we were up there and that is my first time seeing one in 20 months!) I love traveling all over the mission and meeting all of the missionaries. I think i have most of the missionaries names memorized from looking at their cards in the mission office or at the mission home but it helps alot to actually meet the missionaries for me to remember them. Oh and we went to Revere, MA to drop something off the the Cam elders there and I was driving and it was like I was coming home! I definitely went on a trip down memory lane when i went in that apartment again. I can't believe its already been 9 months since i was last there. Good times.

Things are going great with Elder M as a companion. We go running at Harvard Stadium almost every morning- well, how we decide is if we are home and in bed before 11pm we will wake up at 6am to go running, cuz its just 5 mins away. The times we are out past 10:30 is when we are with President doing something or other or traveling to do exchanges with the zone leaders in Hartford or something. But its awesome because Elder M is super athletic so he is going to help me get in really good shape and get me ready for soccer tryouts in a couple months.

We currently have no investigators but we are working on that. We only get a few hours a day in our area and maybe one or two whole days and with that time we are mostly focusing on the Less Actives that the bishop wants us to be visiting or finding. But we did have an incredible experience while at dinner at the Packard's home. We had been at the office all saturday long because we were reporting with all the zone leaders (9 of them. I report with 5 one week and then 4 the next) President randomly called us and invited to dinner. Ha I love being at the mission home because it is just that, a home. Its so cool having kids there. Its different tho, coming over and seeing one watching tv, one dancing around singing some song, and one telling us all about their adventures of that day. Its like being at home. Dinner was delicious and as we were finishing up, a salesman came to the door and President welcomed him in and let him give us all his spiel and it turns out that he is a 21yr old father with a 1yr old boy and a girlfriend who has lived on the streets his whole life but he finally decided he wanted to make something of himself and had to start somewhere so now he is selling magazines. Pres said, 'Im not going to buy your magazines but i will feed you." so we fed him a giant meal. N played a song on the piano for us all and then we taught a lesson about happiness and purpose that is found through the gospel and the book of Mormon. The spirit touched all of our hearts that night and the guy left with a book of mormon in hand and my phone number. I hope he calls. The kids LOVED it! they kept saying, "that was soo cool! I could totally feel the spirit." Lesson that i learned was, have the missionaries in your home no matter how "righteous or spiritual or all-set" you think you might be.

I love being on a mission! I love you all! Just know that, as President often says, "I'm finer than frog's hair." so don't worry about me :) (you gotta love those texans)


So cool that Adam is home! Thanks for taking "me" down to see him.

Love,
Elder Brady Johnson