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