An Awesome Week!

In the car

Hello everyone. This week was so awesome! I love Albi so stinking much! It is such a blast here.

FAMILLE YONNET

I'm just going to throw it out there right now. My favorite family in the Branche has to be the Yonnet family. They are just so stinking cool! I'm going to talk about them because we had a really funny experience with them this week. I think I love them so much because they remind me a lot of my crazy family.

We go over to there house to have a spiritual thought and eat dinner with them. They live pretty far away. I would say at least an hour and a half drive. Pretty cool that they come to church every Sunday with such a long ride. Anyway, we start our spiritual thought and we are sharing about how trials can refine us and the mood is good. They are really like the thought when their son, Adam, age 7 farts really loud.

You, all knowing me.... It is impossible for me to not laugh at anything even remotely funny, so I start laughing and Adam thinks it is kind of funny so he is laughing and the Yonnet's are just smiling because they don't want to encourage him to do it again. So we compose ourselves and we start going again when Adam farts again! This time I'm prepared for it so I didn't laugh and the Yonnets get a little annoyed with Adam and tell him that it isn't polite to fart and that if he did it again he would be sent to his room. So... We are finishing up our spiritual thought. Testifying of the blessings that come from enduring faithfully and Adam gets up and runs over to his dad and asks whispers in his ear and his dad nods and then Adam runs out of the room but stops just out of sight in the hallway.

After our run

There is a pause in the discussion. Everyone is reflecting on what had been said when Adam... in the hallway, passes an enormous fart. HUGE. I look at Frere Yonnet and we all just explode in laughter. Adam did the right thing by going into the hallway and farting there but it was just too much for us all to handle... and we broke into loud laughter. Then he runs back in and ask, "Vous m'avez entendu?" (Did you hear me?) And Frere Yonnet just says "Hear what?" ahaha. It was too much. I thought of all the times similar things happened in the Johnson household. Goodness.

Adam also wanted to teach us a song in English that was about the colors but it was like alien language whenever he sang it. He would sing about the colors to the melody of Frere Jacques. Instead of singing  "Black green blue; sing the song together it went more like this..."Back greeen, bloo shing zee zong togezzer."

He is so funny. I love this family. They are so sick.

NOS AMIS

Eda: She is doing great! Really progressing towards her baptism. One of our lessons this week was a little rough because she has this huge dog that loves everyone and loves to get to know everyone by licking them all over and trying to be a lap dog... So the lesson was a little crazy because she kept getting angry at the dog. She couldn’t control the dog so she decided halfway through the lesson the best way to control the dog would to be to get her vacuum cleaner and turn it on every time the dog starting doing something bad. She did this because the dog would run away from the vacuum every time. Hahaha. I would say it wasn’t an environment super conductive to the spirit but oh well.

Axel: We weren't able to see Axel this week because he has been super sick. We are afraid it is because he is trying to stop smoking. Today we are going to go give him a blessing and hopefully things will pick back up again with him.

Brigitte: Brigitte is a super cool ami. She has been taught by the missionaries for a little bit over six months now. We have been struggling to know what her main problem is with getting baptized because every time we talk to her about it or try to set a date she just tells us that she doesn't feel ready. BUT this last week, we went into the lesson with the goal of figuring out what is holding her back and she said it is ONLY because she hasn't stopped smoking yet. No doctrinal problems! So... I think she will have a date soon.

Famille Leroy: Super cool family. The wife was excommunicated but wants to come back and the husband isn't religious but really is interested and wants to learn more. He is like a sponge. I love teaching this family. It is the ideal teaching situation. He has such genuine questions. I love it. We are going to engage them to fix a baptismal date AFTER Sister Leroy has her baby because she is going to have it in like a week or something crazy. But after that, they are going to get baptized. I know it!

Easter candy

LA CONFERENCE DE BRANCHE

The miracle of the week happened this Sunday. This week we had Branch Conference. It was really good. It was nice to have all of the people from the stake in the branch. We had a lot of people at church! We were crammed into our little building. There were so many children! Good gravy.

Last week at church we had 33 people and 3 amis! So, not too shabby. This week there were 59 at church and wait for the miracle of the week, 9 amis at church! NINE! It was so awesome. We prayed all week that we could get a lot of amis at church to show the stake that they should keep the branche in Albi. So much work is going on here right now. I really hope they keep the branche here. If not, I'm going to be really sad.

It really was the cherry on the top of this week to have 9 amis at church. I think the most I've ever had at church was 6 and that was in Lyon with Elder Schneider.

I love Albi so much! Elder Otteson and I are a great team! We literally laugh at everything so I'm having a great time. I couldn’t be happier anywhere else!

Thanks for your prayers and your love!

Elder Johnson