Zachary Justus Johnson

  I'll start with the good stuff. Tuesday afternoon I was eating dinner, and I got an email from my mom that said OPEN NOW. Normally you are only really allowed to open emails at night but since it said urgent I made an exception. My mom said she had gotten a call from our Stake President in NC and he said he had gotten an email from Salt Lake with a "Mission Change Form." My mom said she wondered, "Is this for real?" The next morning I got a call from President Dunn. He said he had just gotten some really exciting news, and I was the first person in his mission re-assigned to South America! He said  he is excited that he gets to send me "back" to my original mission. So I am going to Paraguay!   President Dunn also said that after I had taken care of all of my Covid-19 precautions I would be leaving on December 18th! There is another Elder in this mission who is going with me so at least I won't be completely alone. It was a huge rush of emotions....

  This week FLEW by. I honestly got the days mixed up soooo many times. Other missionaries always told me that time would move by really fast, and I had never really felt that until now. This week I did a little creative budgeting. Every 2 weeks we get about 30 dollars for groceries. I normally buy pretty basic stuff for cheap like eggs, almond milk, cereal etc. Well this week I had to sacrifice all of those things because I needed one really important, yet really expensive thing. Protein powder. Don't get me wrong I still had enough, but let's just say it was a lot of oatmeal and leftovers this week to suffice. The important thing now is that I can get swol. It's tough though because those morning insanity workouts take a lot out of me. The only thing that gets me through the morning is Shaun T and his inspiring voice. Last week was recovery week which meant this week we went HARD. There is a video named "cardio power and plyometric force." You literally cannot b...

  The first highlight of the week happened on Tuesday. Since this was the first Tuesday of the transfer, we had Zone Council and then District Council. Elder Dalton and I were asked to conduct a training on how the term Myopic (from President Nelson's talk "Let God Prevail") relates to missionary work. It was no sweat until we found out the night before that President Dunn and Sister Dunn were going to drop in and listen. I was actually sort of nervous because this was like the 3rd time I had been in the same room as President Dunn. It ended up being really cool having him there. I'm pretty sure it's because they're planning on making Elder Dalton assistant to the president next transfer--that's just my theory. Or me, who knows. Haha! Right, the re-assigned missionary who just got here a transfer and a half ago becomes AP...yeah I would just leave lol. What was really cool though is that after Zone Council we split up into districts for District Council. ...

  Halloween came and went this year and I hardly even got a sniff of it. Crazy to think that just a year ago I went to work lifeguarding at the YMCA and then went straight to a Halloween party. You will never guess what I decided to go as. I remember thinking that it was my last Halloween as a teenager, and it kind of was. The good news is I only have one more Halloween on my mission. I didn't see one kid in a costume. I did  see an adult in a costume whose dogs started running after me while I was catching a frisbee at a park (not just any frisbee, a   discstore.com   professional ultimate frisbee owned by Elder Hustead). I must have looked like a deer in headlights because the dogs were coming for my neck but then got distracted and went for the frisbee instead. The poor plastic disc was torn to shreds and we laid it to rest. [F to pay respects]. The funny thing was Elder Fuller had thrown it over the fence and we had to go to this random lady's backyard (also foun...