Bonjour de Bordeaux!

Hi everyone! I want to start off this email with a big thank you to all of you that wished me a Happy Birthday in one fashion or another. I know that I am loved and it really made my day yesterday when I was able to read all of the cards you all compiled. It was pretty sweet. It was a reminder too of how many wonderful people I am surrounded by in my life. I truly am immensely blessed. 

Elder Johnson requested skinny ties so he would not stick out.  So I sent him this one.  

Not really sure what he is unhappy about…lol

Reading ALL of his cards.  Thanks everyone.

MON ANNIVERSAIRE 

Well! Elder Karrais and I are lucky enough to have our birthdays super close together so we were able to celebrate at the same time. I didn't really tell too many members that it was my birthday because that is kind of weird and attention driven but when they did find out a lot of RDVs got set to go eat with them either this week or next week :) Woot woot. BUT to celebrate in the mean time, we went out to a nice restaurant with the other elders today... OH and Justine and Sarah made us birthday cakes! 

They were really good. Kind of like a giant brownie. However, we found out that someone had been eating off of them. We were kind of bugged or whatever and we were still talking in the hallway and then this kid walks by with a huge handful AND mouthful of cake. hahaha.. Oh dear. Our mouths just dropped but we weren't mad because the kid who had done it has autism. Just got to laugh things off like that. HAHA

OH! And President and Sister Roney gave me a call to tell me happy birthday, which made my day. President said, "You've done your job." And I asked, “what was my job?” and then he said, "Survive for twenty years!" haha. 

My birthday has been wonderful... so again, thank you!

AMIS

So! We were able to teach more this week than the previous weeks, which is always nice. However, we have had to pass two of our amis. It is kind of a bummer but at least they are still being taught. It is just kind of sad when you get so excited to teach people and then they have to get passed.

We met this SUPER cool Chinese girl named Lisha. She is a student here and is super open and wants to learn more. We had a great lesson with her and she said they she felt good. But then we got a text from her telling us that she prefers the principles of another group and that she can't see us anymore. But se told her to pray and really think about still taking the lessons. I think that it will all work out. Just pray really hard for her. 

OH! And we had a cool miracle this week. We had a woman come up to us and say to us: "Tell me what I need to learn, teach me about Jesus!" haha. Hashtag every missionaries dream eva. She was super cool and funny. We taught her in between two appointments we had and it went really well. When things happen like that I always know that God is preparing people to become closer to Him. He is always preparing people to learn more. 

LES AUTRES CHOSES

We were able to do garden work this week.:D  It took me back to Bergerac ;). It was nice to get to do some service. It kind of feels like therapy sometimes doing service where you can see all the progress you are making, instant progress, the type of progress that you rarely see in missionary work. It was a good service session.

I've been studying patience a lot. And something that I found that is really cool is a scripture in Romans. I think something that I need to work on is seeing how trials and hard things happen and how they can help me. But this scripture reminded me of that. It says: 

Romans 5:3:  And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience ; 

What a cool scripture! We should be glory in tribulations knowing how much we are going to learn from them. Thank Heavenly Father for the difficulties in your life and you will endure them much happier, easier and with a wider perspective!

I love you all! 

Avec Amour,

Elder Johnson