Culture Shock and Machetes

Hey family,
This has probably been the most crazy week of my life. i don't even know where to start. first of all, im in La Cienaga (i spelled it wrong the other time). also, the address for packages is:

Elder Mark Johnson
8013
11010 N. W. 30th street STE 104
Miami, FL 33172-5032

and my address for letters is (you can send letters and pictures in envelopes with this one):

Elder Mark Johnson
8013
PO Box 025725
Miami, FL 33102-5725

Anyways, i experienced a lot of firsts this week. last week during my very first lesson in the field, the lady we were teaching started breast feeding her 3 year old in the middle of it without covering up. i guess thats not that uncommon of a thing here. i guess i just have to get used to that. Also, this week was the first time i woke up to roosters which is not as exciting as it seems. we have electricity in our house about once every 2 or 3 days so most of the time we are studying and cooking by candle or my lantern. also, we have water sometimes and sometime we don't, but it is all cold so for showers we fill up a bucket with the water when we have it and then use a cup to scoop it out and pour it on us every morning. it is definitely a little different living standards than in the states. for food, we make breakfast and dinner and then we pay a lady in the ward to make us lunches. most of the time it is cereal and peanut butter and jelly but the milk here isn't really milk so the cereal tastes a little funny. the people in our area are really poor. most of them live in a little 2 or 3 room house made of cement or 2x4's with a tin roof. they are so kind here though and humble. they make the best of what they have and move on. one of the lessons we taught this week was under a little covering made of palm tree leaves and trees. there were chickens and dogs running around our feet and a mule and goat behind us making noises. during that lesson i wondered how in the world did i get here... The spanish is still really hard to understand here since they only say just the first half of the words pretty much but i do understand when they call me a white giant (which happens a lot). Yesterday was a big day in my life. it was the day that i bought by first machete! they sell them everywhere here and they are only like 4 US dollars. we only had about 17 lessons this first week because our area is so big and we only walk so if we go to someones house and they aren't there its about a 10-20 minute walk to our next appointments house. the two people we are baptizing this week are 2 girls (12 and 13 years old) they family used to be inactive and then they all became active again so i am excited for that. i don't know what more to tell you, just a whole bunch of walking and teaching. oh and by the way, my old email account that you sent me emails to won't allow me to delete the emails (i am not that stupid Ang) so just keep sending them to this one.
i also really like my trainer. at first i wasn't to sure about him but he's a good worker and knows how to relate to the people and teach them. i don't think i am going to write individaul emails this week because i don't have time but i will try to do that next week. i think i am ok for now with food and stuff so you don't really have to send me anything. I hope you have finally stopped crying in public since i have left but if you haven't then i don't know what to tell you. just a short 22 months until i am home again. love all of you and hope you are doing well.

Love, Elder Johnson

Welcome to La Cienaga!!

Hey family, i am finally here. there are so many things to say i don't know where to start. we took a 2 hour bus ride to Santiago and the mission president and a bunch of the other missionaries met us there. i love President Lee. he was so excited for us and the work that we are going to do. after we got there, he took us to our house and we ate pizza! even though is was budget pizza and some just had corn on it, it was amazing. then we had a little meeting where he gave us all of the rules and then we did interviews. i think the best thing about yesterday was dinner. we grilled steaks, hot dogs, hamburgers, and pork chops. i had one of each. i knew we would not eat this good for the next 22 months so i took advantage of it.

It is so pretty here. it is way more greener , has mountains, and is cooler than santo domingo. My first area is la cienega in the north part of santiago. it is this little town practically in the middle of the forest. if you look out my back window, all you see is green, mountains, and cows. i love it though. i think today i have finally grasped the fact that i am on a mission. i like my trainer so far, he has been out a year and five months but he seems like he is a hard worker but i will find out more when we start teaching. he also said that he has two baptisms scheduled for next week so i am really excited about that.

I accidentally left my packet with my address at our house so i can't give it to you yet but i will definitely give it to you next week. i also sent you a letter in the mail yesterday with a picture of me with my mission president and his wife and one with all of the missionaries that came with us to Santiago. It has also rained here for the past couple of days which i have really enjoyed. it makes it just a little bit cooler.

I don't have too much more to say about Santiago, but i did have a really cool experience this last Sunday. for the past couple of sundays, the elders in our district would go to the temple and read on the steps for an hour or two. usually i just bring Jesus the Christ, my english scriptures or my Preach my Gospel, but this time i felt i should bring my soft copy of a spanish book of mormon that we give to investigators. i really didn't know why i should bring it i guess i thought i could just read in it for a little bit and practice my spanish. about a half an hour of reading, a car pulled up and a family came out. i talked to the dad and could tell that he wasn't mormon but he wanted to bring his family to the temple and walk around. i told him that that was fine . once he started walking around the temple i had a strong impression to give him that book of mormon i brought. i waited until he came back around and talked to him a little about our church, gave him the book and asked him to read 3 Nefi 11, and then testified about how it has helped me and my family to be closer together and how it could help his family too. i don't know if anything will happen with him or even if he will read but i am really glad that i got to have that experience.

I love you all and hope you are having a good week.

Love, Elder Johnson

Last Week in the DR MTC!

Hey family, the next time i email you i will be in the field. i can't believe the time is already here for me to leave. i can't wait to leave and at the same time i am not prepared at all (mainly because i can't speak spanish). I am not gonna lie i am a little disappointed in all of you. i leave for a couple of months and you have already replaced me with one and a half babies (it will be 2 babies in march). and also this cruise to alaska?... you are taking all of the good trips when i am gone. i am not complaining though because i get to eat rice and beans everyday. i really like it here though don't think that i want to come home at all.

There really isn't too much that happened to me this week to talk about. i finally got rejected at the university. i went up to a group of guys and one asked us if we had any money or food. i said no and then he told us to leave and wouldn't listen to us. i was a little disappointed but i need to get used to being rejected. Also when we went to the university, we talked to some guy doing his homework. we gave him a reference sheet to fill out and when he put his head down to write on it, there was a little lizard about an inch long just hanging out on his head. there are lizards everywhere here if i haven't told you already. we didn't tell him about it because we didn't know how to say lizard in spanish and we thought if we did he might get occupied with it and forget about the reference sheet so we thought he could just find out for himself after we left.
Also, every sunday we watch an apostle devotional that was given at the provo mtc. the one they showed was 2 weeks after we left. There were 8 apostles and a big number of 70 there as well because they were training all of the new mission presidents. i was a little disappointed i wasn't there when it happened but it was still really cool to watch. Elder Holland gave the talk which was amazing. it was a serious talk rather than a funny one but i still really enjoyed it. He talked about teaching with the Spirit and basically forbid us to teach if we didn't have the Spirit. at the end of the devotional, he quoted the story of the angels coming down and ministering unto the people of the Americas (i think it is Helamen 5: 45-48 but i am not sure because i don't have my notes with me right now). He then told us welcome to the work of angels because those angels were us. it was really cool to be called an angel by an apostle of the Lord.

To answer some of you question:
no i didn't do anything for the 4th of July. it was just a regular day of studying and class, but we did get 2 chocolate chip cookies at lunch (even though we get them once a week anyways it was still a good surprise).
I haven't really had any problems with mosquitoes here yet but i am sure it will be a little different when i get out into the field.
i got a little sick from the food for about a day but everyone does when they come here because it is a completely different diet than what we have in the states. some of the stuff is pretty weird tasting but overall it is not too bad.
we do our laundry just like you do in the states. we have washers and driers but again i don't know if that will change when i get to Santiago.\
i really don't know any of the details about tuesday when i leave except that i am leaving by bus. i don't know where i will stay the first night or if i will get right to work when i arrive. i think my p-day is on wednesday though but i am not entirely sure.
i am about out of time so i have to go but i will tell you all about the rest when i can email you again next week. take care i love all of you!

Love, Elder Johnson

Just Another Week on a Spanish Keyboard...

Hey family, sorry if i haven't been responding personally to all of you, there are about 60 missionaries here and only about 15 computers so we can't go over the time too much. anyways, i had another great week like always. teaching at the university was good again, not any really good stories this time, just talked to a bunch of people, handed out a book of Mormon, and testified. I can't believe i am going to the field a week from tuesday. i am super nervous but also really excited to do the Lord's work everyday. there was one guy that we talked to at the university for about 15-20 minutes. i probably understood about a dozen words which kinda killed my confidence, but i am getting a little better. i didn't know what to say because i couldn't understand him so every time there was a little break i just testified again because that is pretty much the only thing i really know how to say in spanish.
This sunday, we watching a devotional from the mtc in Provo with president Uchdorf. it was an amazing talk. Even though all of it was really good, there was one part that was really cool. He read D&C 90:11 and told us that we, as missionaries, were fulfilling that prophecy that it talks about. read that scripture and think of missionary work when you do. he also talked about how were basically had the same responsibility as him, to be a disciple of Christ and preach the Gospel to everyone. I have heard that before but it was a little different hearing it from a member of the first Presidency. i absolutely love this work. i haven't had it too hard lately but i am sure the hard times will come, but i know the Lord will be with us.
Anyways, i hope everything is going well for everyone, keep me posted on the family. FYI, my punctuation is so bad in these emails because i am using a spanish keyboard and its a little harder to type with. Love Ya!

Love, Elder Johnson

These Beds Are Made For Midgets!

Hello again. This has been a very good week. probably the fastest week so far on my mission. i don´t have too much time to write this email so sorry if it isn´t that long. just a little about my week, sunday we have about a three hour break to do whatever we want. my companion and i went to the temple and just sat there and studied for about an hour and a half. then some missionaries in the field came and brought some investigators with them to show them the temple. they then had a little spiritual tesitmony meeting about the temple which i was able to be a part of. even though i couldn´t understand the words they were saying, i could understand the Spirit that they were teaching with. i could feel all of the missionary´s love for those investigators as well as for the temple. by the time it was over, it was 30 min past our dinner time so the president was a little worried but he was ok with it since we were with investigators. also, i had a cool experience on Tuesday when i went to the University. my companion and i had talked to two people and then were just walking around, then a group of about 10 guys called us over. we were expecting them to ask what we were doing but instead they asked how we felt about the death of Michael Jackson. we said we didn´t really care about it because we are here to do the Lords work. (they love Michael Jackson here by the way). they then asked to here our message which was really cool, we didn´t even have to ask if we could share it. we started sharing our message, but every couple of minutes more of their friends would show up and start talking to them. everytime, they hushed them and said to be quiet because we are listening to Mormons. by the time we were finished (which was a half an hour later), there were about 18 or so of them. we handed out a couple pamphlets and gave them a book of mormon. some said they would call but i don´t have too high of hopes that they will. it was just fun to teach with a crowd of guys in their mid 20´s. We also went to the store on Tuesday to buy anything we needed. it was like a Wallmart imposer store but it was still really nice to get out. Also, this week the Haitians left and we got 30 Latinos today so its pretty crowded. this will only help with our spanish though. I also forgot to tell you how small the bed that i sleep in is. it is about 6ft. if you remember, i am 6´6¨and with my pillow, that gives me even less room. they are bunk beds with a head and foot board so i can´t hand my feet off of the edge. i either have to curl up in a ball or sleep sideways with my fell hangin off of the side. its really fun you should try it sometime! Now to answer some of your questions you have asked me...i have my hour of personal study and an hour of comp study in the morning and then usually during MDT (missionary directed time) i have another hour of so when i am not teaching. No we don´t go hit the streets everyday. just the one time a week at the university. we get to talk to some people when we do our service once a week but not to many.for the past 3 weeks we have had two to a room but now that there are more missionaries we have 4 to a room.we have AC in the mtc here and i haven´t really been anywhere else so i don´t know.we play basketball outside in the parking lot. they have 3 run down hoops that we play on.i hope i will have an opportunity to play a little baseball. it might just be 30 min or so on P day but we´ll see. They don´t give us any money here. everything is really provided right now but i don´t know how much i will get when i am out in the field.there are a couple of natives that i have talked to here that speak a little bit of english and a couple who are fluent in it. a lot of them want to learn so they like to try to talk with us sometimes in english but 90 percent of the time it is spanish. the water at the mtc here has a filter so we can drink out of the focet but it is really gross. there is a water cooler in our hall that we just fill up water bottles with. my spanish is coming along, it is still really hard though. i think right now i can talk better than i can hear it because it is all jumbled together.Hope that answers all your questions. let me know if you have anymore.

Love, Elder Johnson

P.S. mom, i spent 2,331.15 at the store the other day hope that´s ok. (that would be about 66 dollars in america. the exchange rate is 35 pesos to 1 dollar). love ya!

Second Week in the DR

So i survived another week here, there really isn´t anything new this week from last week. i am still eating the same food and it is still rediculously hot here. The only emails i have gotten are from mom and dad so if any of you others sent me something i didn´t get. as far as dearelders go, we get them every wednesday so it would probably be best just to email me because i can print the emails off and read them and then get on the computer and reply. if you do want to send me a dear elder though, you can just address to the Dominican Republic MTC and i will get that. The address i sent you last week is the best for pouch, and for packages they gave me this address

Elder Johnson
Dominican Republic
Centro Capacitacion Misional
Av Bolivar 825
Los Roblesç
Santo Domingo, DR

(they also said it might be better to send it to the mission in case i am gone when they get here but that is up to you) On tuesday, we went to the university again to do some proselyting. My companion and i were really excited because we were hoping that Manuel (the investigator from last week) would be there. we prepared a good lesson and had a book of mormon with some highlighted parts that we wanted him to read, but unfortunately he didn´t show up. We just had to go around and contact as many people as we could in about an hour. we talked to about 7 people and gave out a book of Mormon. My favorite is when we walk up to someone and they say they are Christian or Catholic and aren´t interested but we still talk to them and after a while they get really into it and have a lot of questions. We also got rejected a couple times but they were really nice about it. i need to get used to it because i am sure i will be rejected a lot on my mission so it´s good to start now. Earlier this week, we had the Area President of the Carribbean come and give a devotional. It was a really great talk. my favorite part was at the end when he gave us the opportunity to ask some question. someone asked how can we invite the Spirit more strongly. He did an experiment with us that he did when he was a mission president. He had someone give a prayer, he had another person (who was a recent convert) tell about their conversion, he had another person bear their testimony about Joseph Smith, and another person talk about their love for their companion. After this he asked if the Spirit was any stronger. There was a huge difference that everone could feel.On Monday, for one of our classes our teacher was about 20 minutes late. when we asked him why he was so late, he told us that some gut cut another guys head off with a machete and he wanted to see. he was on his way to work but he wanted to see so he got out of the car and walked over. he said he was only about 10 feet away from the body. The funny thing is that he was totally cool about it like it was an everyday thing. We thought this was the craziest thing but he told us not to worry because the people hear know that we are people from God and don´t mess with us. i´m not worried though, i know the Lord will protect us. I really don´t know what more i can say. My companion and i get along really well, even more so than my old companion in Provo. We are starting to teach with unity which is good because we are taught that, along with the Spirit, is one of the most important things. My Spanish is improving everyday but it is still no where close to being really good. Tomorrow we teach the entire 2nd lession about the Plan of Salvation in Spanish which i am really excited about because it is my favorite lesson. The only other thing that is worth mentioning is the soup we had today. It was a chicken soup with potatoes that looked like sewage, but it was actually not too bad. it looked like they threw a whole chicken in there with a couple of big potatoes. its not even worth picking around all of the bones and extra stuff. you just have to put a big spoon ful in your mouth and spit out all of the ¨unnecessaries¨. This last week has flown by, i can´t believe i have already been here for two weeks. it still hasn´t hit me yet that i am on an island in the middle of the ocean. i hope the 4 weeks left here go by as fast as this one did. i get more and more anxious to go out into the field everyday. oh yeah, i was talking with one of my teachers about baseball because he used to play before his mission and he was telling me that he used to go to the field and watch Vladamir Guerro (i´m not sure how to spell his name but you know who i´m talking about) practice when he was about 18 and just about to get signed. He talked about a couple of other players were lived really close to him that got drafted as well. I am so excited to go out and play some ball with all of these future mlb players. Anyways, my time is up but i would love to hear from you all.

Love, Elder Johnson aka Marky Mark

I'm In The DR!

Hey family, the D.R. is crazy i don´t even know where to begin. The plane ride from miami was really good even though it got a little delayed, we rode first class on that flight too. we arrived around 1 in the morning and we had two natives pick us up from the airport. they didn´t speak much english besides ¨hello and goodbye¨ but we were able to communicate if we put all of our spanish together. when we got there the president and his wife met us. they are really nice people. they gave us a little tour that night and then sent us to bed. they do it a little different here than at the provo mtc. instead of having missionaries come at different times than other missionaries like in provo, they will have one group of missionaries come, study together and then leave together and then a knew batch will come. we were the first of our group to get there because everyone else got delayed so for the first day, on friday, us six were the only missionaries in the mtc. there are 24 of us from provo, 3 Haitians came a couple days after us but they are only here for 3 weeks, and a group of latinos are coming in about 2 weeks. the Haitians only speak French so it is a little hard to communicate with them. its more of like a sharaids, i have no idea how to spell that, game all the time but we are still able to communicate and they have interpreters here if we need them. i am starting to learn just a couple of greeting words in French and they know a couple of words in english. you could tell they were really scared at first because they didn´t speak our language but we all get along and are friends now. Spanish wise, it is rIdiculous. all of our teachers are natives and only speak spanish to us. some of them know a little english, if any, but we aren´t allowed to speak english at all. the first couple days were really rough because i couldn´t understand anything but now i can understand most of what they are saying which is a real blessing. we are also teaching in spanish already. my companion and i have taught 6 parts of lesson one in spanish and tomorrow we teach the whole lesson to a member. i can understand the spanish when they speak slow and pronunciate well but when they talk like they normally do i don´t understand a single word, it is crazy. it´s just like they are mumbling the whole time. The temple is right next door to us and it is beautiful. its weird because before i came i was looking at pictures of the temple, and when i got here i found the temple is like a tannish brown. i heard the humidity changed it from white to brown but it is still a really pretty marble brown. since today was our p day we went to a session and it is amazing inside. it is probably my favorite temple so far. Also, if you walk around the outside of it, you are able to see the ocean.It is so incredibly hot here though. the humidity is killing me, but hopefully i get used to is really soon. The food here is really good too. when we first got here they said we would have rice and beans everyday. i didn´t believe them but they were telling the truth. Every morning we have a choice of 3 cereals, froot loops, raisen bran, and corn flakes. the chef also makes a really good cinnamon oatmeal. For lunch, we have rice and beans and usually some sort of meat which is usually chicken. For dinner, it is usually a little more american with tacos, sandwiches, or mashed potatoes and meat or something. Also, for every meal we have fresh bananas, pinnaple, and papaya which are all delicious. we also have a loaf of bread, about the size of a hot dog bun, with butter, and some fruit juice. It is all really good but i´m sure i will get a little tired of it after a while. On Tuesday, i had an amazing experience. they took us to the university down the street and gave us an hour to contact as many people as we could in spanish. my companion and i only talked to 2 people. the first was just some guy sitting on a wall who spoke really fast spanish. i only understood about 5 words he said. even though he really wasn´t interested in the church he was still very nice and let us give him a short message. after that, we went inside the library, even though we weren´t supposed to go inside but we didn´t know that because our teacher told us in spanish and we didn´t understand. right when we walked inside, some guy started waving at us so we went over and talked to him. he was a native, but he spoke pretty good english which was nice. he was very intersted in everything we had to say. we talked with him for about 40 minutes and we set up a time to talk to him next week. He was definitely ready to receive the gospel. we told him we would bring him a book of mormon next week and he was excited about that. i really hope he is as good of an investigator as we think he is-The people here are so nice here. they are all very pleasant to talk to even if they don´t want anything to do with the gospel. Americans can definitely learn a lesson or two from these people. an older couple told us that the people in santiago are even nicer than the people in santo domingo.Today we were cleaning up part of the university and we had a bunch of people come up to us and ask us why we cleaning up the place. we just said we are missionaries and we like to help them. they thought that was awesome that we would help clean up the place just because.My companion is really nice, he is a little shy so i do most of the talking when we go out but we get along really well.We are both going to Santiago so hopefully we will be comps later on in the mission. We got different companions when we got here just in case you were wondering...For gym everyday, we usually go out in play basketball but since it is outside, it is hard to play for more than 30 minutes. after about 10 minutes, our clothes are dripping wet. it feels like we jumped in a warm pool with all of our clothes and then got out and played basketball. Also, the day after we got here, it rained a couple of times. when it rains, it just starts to poor all at once. you don´t get a couple of warning drops that it is going to start raining, it just poors hard for a couple of minutes and then stops.I absolutely love walking to the university because we get to be out in the real world and see how it really is. it is really poor here but it is exactly what i wanted for my mission. Also, the people will give us weird looks, especially me being tall, but once you wave and say buenos dias, they will smile and wave back. My favorite teacher, hermano gomez, was telling us that they don´t have speed limits here. He said if a cop sees a car going really fast he just says, ¨wow look at that car¨. The cop cars here are junkers so if a car goes fast a cop won´t be able to catch it so they just let them go. There are also a lot of motorcyles and mopeds here. Just today i saw two grown adult men and one had a little 2 or 3 year old girl on his lap on one motorcyle just cruising around the city. I can´t wait to go out in the field and be able to walk around and talk to people. That has been my favorite part here but we only get to do it once or twice a week.I am pretty sure you can just use that address in the mission packet at home to send me dearelders, but they don´t check the computers everyday here so i will get them a couple days later. Also, the pouch address is(missionary´s name)(MTC name or Mission Name)P.O. Box 30150Salt Lake City, Ut 84130 0150I´m guessing you just send it to salt lake and they send it to me. you can also send me stuff through dearelder, but they say to not send beef jerky becuase they won´t allow it in the country. I think i have said everything i can in 30 minutes so i am going to go but i hope everything is going well and i will email you again next week. I love you all.love, Elder Johnson