French, Anyone?

Hey Everyone,

This was a good week, not too exciting but good. On Saturday, we had a couple of hours free without any appointments, so we decided to walk our entire area, because we have never done that before, and try to find a good family to teach. in the non-city party of our area we found this little dirt road that led into the forest so we decided to walk down it to see what was there. after a couple of minutes we found a ranch so we talked to the guys for a little while and then kept walking. After about 25 more minutes on this road without seeing anyone, we found a little clearing with about 5 houses in it. we walked in the middle and started looking around to see if anyone was there. we saw this little Haitian boy about 8 years old, so we waved to him and smiled. he immediately ran for his house and said something in french. we then started to see more heads poke out from behind some bushes. i think they thought two white men from the government had come to take away their houses. we walked closer to show them that we were friendly. we saw this old lady who had a really deformed left arm, one of the worst i have ever seen. we talked with her because she knew spanish and then one by one the other people started coming over to see what we had to say. the other family members just spoke french so we used the little french we know and then just talked to the old lady in spanish. it was just one big Haitian family that lived there. we talked for a few minutes and told them who we were, but we had to leave because the sun was setting and we wanted to see where we were going to get back home. while walking back, my comp and i had an idea to do something for them for christmas. we have been looking for a family to do something for and that was them. we are going to go back Christmas eve with candy and toys for all of the kids in our santa hats and bring a book of mormon in french and something else for the adults. i know it wont be much but we are excited to do it because we are pretty sure they havent ever had a christmas before seeing as how poor they were.

Yesterday, we had a big zone conference with 3 zones together. it was a great talk about the importance of Christmas and Christ and His Atonement. it lasted about 4 hours but it was good to bring the true spirit of christmas. after the conference, they gave all of us lunch and then our district put on a special musical number for everyone. the presidents wife asked us to do it just two days before so we didn´t have too much time to practice but it turned out really well. me and another guy played the guitar, another played the piano, and the others sang. Of course the last song we played was feliz navidad. i think one of the senior couples sent mom the pictures so ask her for them. we also had our interviews with the president this week which went really well as always. he always has a smile and advise to give us. it was a good spiritually boosting week for us.

besides that we just did a lot of teaching this week. Joan is still progressing really good and still has his baptismal date for the 26th. No one else really seems to be progressing, but we found a couple of new investigators this week that seem like they have potential.

well thats about it for this week. my first call home is just 9 days away. have a great week.

Love Elder Johnson