Olá!

I got a new companion this week. His name is Elder Orr. He is American also. It has been a lot different with two Americans. Haha. He went to High School in Utah, but before he lived in Colorado and then in Washington. His family moved to Texas after he came to the mission so he is kind of from 4 different states. Haha. He has about 3 months more than me so we can speak decently well with people, but it is a lot different than having a fluent Portuguese speaker. There are different challenges, but it was a good week. It is hard to talk about what happened because I feel like nothing happened. Haha. We have just been looking for new people to teach. We walk almost all day, but a lot of people are not interested or traveling right now. The days have been extremely long.

To explain a little bit about what the days are like here. We get up in the morning at 6:30, exercise, get ready for the day, and then have an hour of personal study, and hour of companion study, and an hour of language study. After we usually contact on the street for an hour until lunch. Sometimes we have lunch with a member, or they give us money and we go to a restaurant nearby. After lunch, we usually use the contacts that we have to find new people to teach. We plan out all of the streets and then go to every house we have. Here, you usually clap and yell their name because most places don't have doors or doorbells. I don't like trying to find new people. It is long and hard. I really enjoy when we find someone, though! They usually invite us in and give us water and then we talk and teach for a while. The time passes a lot faster when we are teaching. It is nice when we have more appointments with people. Usually, at night we have more appointments which is nice that we don't have to walk through new places at night. It makes it a lot safer. We work all the way until 9 and then go back to our apartment, plan, and go to bed. The night usually passes super fast and we are back at it again. Haha.

Our investigators have been doing well. A little hard to teach them because everyone travels this time of year, but we have some great people that we are teaching. Sabrina is super excited for her baptism. We are planning on the baptism this week if we can find a new job for her. She works on Sundays but really wants to be able to go to Church and be baptized so that is our goal this week. Raulino's family was traveling and then his daughter was sick on Sunday so they weren't able to come, but they are doing super well also. We found a new young married couple who are super excited but were traveling last week. We will teach them more this week. Those are the main people we are working with. There are others that are great also, and we are working on finding more!

This week is my best friend Jasen Snyder's birthday (January 13). I don't know where to begin talking about him. He literally is a brother to me. I could always trust him and count on him for anything. I miss our all night movie marathons and our classic rock car rides. He is only 3 days older than me, but he is such a great example to me of a hard worker and a great missionary. I want to thank him for everything he has done for me. I can't wait to see him again and have many more legendary adventures together.

I love you all. As always, I want to thank you for your love and support!

Elder Johnson