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...

  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...