Zachary Justus Johnson

This past week my companion and I were eating some chicken and rice, as one does in this country. I had finished my plate so I decided to do what is considered customary in this country--chuck the bones at the dog. I don't think any household here really has a pet dog but there's just a dog that sort of hangs around each house. I threw one bone right at their dog who was preoccupied with scratching, so the bone bounced off of his neck and landed right in front of a chicken. The chicken took it, ran off, and started eating it. Apparently, the cannibal chickens are the most rico. Our area covers the downtown part of Encarnacion or as some people call it Encarnayork, but it has a sliver of some outside areas as well. It's about a 30-40 min bus ride to get there but it's always worth it. Unfortunately, the collectivos drivers are fed up with only charging 3.5 mil per person instead of 4 mil because fewer people are taking collectivos to work because fewer people are working...

  Our transfers this week went a week longer than normal because the new North Americans got delayed a couple of days flying in. I did not think much of it because I doubted that it would affect me in any way. I remember when I found out that I would be delayed for the second time. At that point I didn't think I would ever come. From time to time I wonder what would have happened had I arrived in this mission on time. The Lord commanded Nephi to make two sets of plates in Chapter 9 of 1 Nephi for a "wise purpose" that Nephi at the time didn't know. The Lord’s “wise purpose” in having Nephi create two records became clear centuries later. After Joseph Smith translated the first 116 manuscript pages of the Book of Mormon, he gave the pages to Martin Harris, who lost them. But Nephi’s second set of plates covered the same time period, and the Lord commanded Joseph Smith to translate these plates rather than retranslate what had been lost. There were a lot of loose ends t...

For the first time in my entire life, I actually used an entire can of bug spray. At one point I was breaking off the cap and trying to get the last few drops out. In all my years of Scout Camp and camping with family and friends I never thought I would see myself actually finishing off a can of bug spray. I would always buy a can and then use some of it and then lose it or start spraying it on a fire or something dumb like that. To think of all of that precious bug spray I wasted. It's a shame. Especially lately because in the last 20 lessons or so I have found myself brushing spiders off of my arm. Every single lesson it's a new type of spider. It doesn't even matter if it's inside or outside. It's a miracle I haven't been bitten yet!  In Cambyreta and across the bridge in Rama 2 a lot of the roads are just dirt, so it's pretty easy to spot some interesting stuff. I like playing this game with my comp called "broken glass or crystal." 99% of the ...