Zachary Justus Johnson

  I just found out yesterday that I am staying in this area for another transfer. That may not be a surprise to a lot of you because you normally stay in your first area for at least 3 transfers. But it is a surprise for me because our mission president really likes moving people around, even trainees. One second you're in Reno and the next you are out east, in the middle of the desert. That's just how it is in this mission. Although Reno is one of the largest missions in the continental US land-wise, it's one of the smallest in population. It's really the biggest little mission in the world-- just like how Reno is the biggest little city in the world. Last P-day our district went on this really cool hike to a waterfall up in the mountains. The first 2 miles was all desert but as soon as we hit the treeline, it was just gorgeous. Some of the braver elders in our district stuck our head under the waterfall. It was freezing and it honestly made my head hurt for a little w...

  We got another 20 pound box of apples this week from Uncle Bob. I honestly do not have any idea what to do with all of these apples. If you know anyone in the western Reno Sparks area that needs a ton of apples just let me know. It's a really cool story with Uncle Bob. The city named the street he lives on after him, Robert Quilici. He's been fighting tooth and nail to get it paved so,"his family can come visit him more often". He finally got approval from the city so pretty soon I'm going to be rolling into Verdi and hitting Quilici Street in style. Well actually not because we had to exchange our Rav4 for a piece of garbage. We have a rental car from Enterprise, so whenever something is wrong with our car we have to change it in for something else. Our tire was flat, we turned it in, and now we have a Nissan Rogue that smells like smoke. I'm also really bummed because they offered us a Camaro but the APs said we couldn't get it. I don't even have m...

  One of our investigators has been notoriously hard to track down, but on Monday we finally got to see her in person. Over the phone she sounded like she was a teenager, but she's actually in her thirties. She's got a really bubbly personality and is crazy energetic all of the time. When we found her she was putting up more Halloween decorations for the "tenth time". We started talking about the Book of Mormon and she immediately wanted to start reading it. She asked us after reading, "hey where is Nephi so I can live there?" One thing that was really hard for her to grasp was that the God of Jerusalem and the God of America are the same. It's been kind of fun starting from scratch because she said that there was a time in her life where she was "anti-Christ". She's come a long way, and whenever we text her she just goes insane with the emojis-- it's so funny. Normally even the idea of District Council Meeting would put me to sleep bec...

  In the mission, a transfer is every 6 weeks. It seems so crazy that I am already halfway through this first transfer!  Days feel super long, but then, when I am in my bed at night,  I always feel like the day flew by. I got to go on two exchanges this week--meaning I got to work with a different Elder than my companion. The first was on Tuesday with Elder Fuller. He is one of the Elders that I share my apartment with so it was not a huge difference, but it is always weird not being with my companion, Elder Dalton. I am considered 'in training' and technically Elder Dalton is too because he has only been here one transfer ahead of me. He had been serving in the Philippines before Covid though, so he has more missionary experience. We are both new to Reno.  Elder Fuller and I got a lot of work done. We had to bike some because the other elders needed the car. I can't really explain this, but the whole month of October has always felt like a Thursday night to me. It's...