6/15/15 First Week in Eureka!

Hey everybody.

It has been an interesting week to say the least. Up here in the
boonies there are some interesting people. We taught a man named Byron
who randomly came to church and wants to be baptized. The only twist
he is a bit crazy he told us many things I can not publicly say, and
he desperately wants to confront Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan in Beverly
Hills because they hurt him and his family. He wants us to go with
him... Welcome to Eureka I guess. It was quite the interesting lesson.

We don't have a car... In Eureka 2nd ward! Which happen to be the
smallest up here in the stake, but it is still too big! So we got
permission from president to ride with the sisters in our zone, we
have Hermanas (Spanish sister missionaries) in our ward so they drive
us to dinner a lot :). It feels kinda funny riding with two girls
around town, but I ain't complaining I guess. Hahaha. It's interesting
being a district leader as well, especially when my district is me and
my companion, and 4 sisters... Hahah. I call them every night and see
how they're doing. It's pretty funny sometimes. I taught my first
district meeting on Friday and boy was I scared to teach a bunch of
missionaries about missionary work that have almost all been out
longer than me! But it's fun at the same time. I have to teach a gain
tomorrow... It's a constant struggle. But I'm doing good :).

We went to this community event up in Arcata called "Arts Alive." It
was just a bunch of people walking around and looking at art and music
and dancing that we couldn't partake of. We had a little table with a
board with a picture of a tree on it. Then we had sticky notes. We
called it our "gratitude tree!" They could put whatever they are
thankful for on it! I met a guy from Gainesville, FL and we talked for
a bit as well. All I've been wondering for a week is "why do people
live here!?" Haha it's such a random place and we've met like 10
members when we were just out contacting, they were on vacation! We're
like, "wow that's cool I guess!" It's such a weird little town and
they still have movie rental places, NO REDBOX. Like really! I'm
living in the 70s it feels like because it just has that vibe. It's a
cool little town though. Lots of one way roads... But there's like not
enough traffic to justify it. It's quite funny actually.

We've taught this guy named Sean who is super cool and he knows a lot
about the church and has talked to multiple missionaries. He is super
funny and makes a joke about everything. Hopefully we see him at
church pretty soon.

Well I hope you all are doing amazing! I miss and love you all a bunch!

Elder Janson

The Bozeman's, staunch Warriors fans :)

Me and Achal

Sister Majors and me at transfers! Best sister ever! Gonna miss her.

The Williams!

The doers of our laundry for 4.5 months! The VanWeerd's the best

people in the world.

Sisters, well Hermanas technically, givin us rides cause we lame

and don't have a car...

 Us being amazing

6/8/15 District Leader in Eureka!

Family!

So it has been the craziest and best week in the mission! I've never
been closer to a zone, and we had so much fun together. There's so
many members I don't want to leave and missionaries and everybody! But
I am moving on to go to better things. As you can see I'm going up to
Eureka, the northernmost zone in the mission. It's 4 hours from Santa
Rosa. Fun stuff! But I am also going to be a district leader, so I
can't act like I don't know what I'm doing anymore hahaha. 

It's pretty funny because my district consists of me and my companion and 4
sisters... People call it being relief society president. So that will
be full of awesomeness! I'm going to be companions with Elder
McKinley, and we went into the MTC together! He's super cool, and also
Sister Aguilar from my MTC district is in my district up there. I'm so
excited! They are the coolest people ever. I'm pretty nervous to be
district leader. On Thursday you get a call from president if you are
getting a leadership assignment, and our phone rang and president was
on it... We all freaked out haha. But I'm excited at the same time.
Definitely a new experience.

It's been another week full of sirens in the wonderful city of
Fairfield, and hearing of robberies and theft and all that fun stuff.
I've noticed while ice been here as well... I've never seen so many
ice cream trucks (or heard so many) in my life! It is really quite
creepy when we're walking around and you just hear eerie music
everywhere and creepy white vans drive by. Definitely makes it fun :).

We went to dinner at a Hmong members home, and they make way more food
than is needed. Luckily they don't get too offended if you don't eat a
bunch, or I would offend all of the Hmong people in the world. Me and
Elder Young were together on exchanges and Sister Clawson and Thomson
came as well. After dinner the sisters found a girl and talked to her
for a bit, then they wanted to say a prayer. They called us over, and
this girl wanted everybody to hold hands, and of course I ended up
next to Sister Thomson. I haven't ever held a sisters hand for so long
hahaha. It was pretty funny. Then after that, a poor little boy was in
a corner with his mother blocking our view of him. Sister Clawson,
trying to be all friendly, says in her loud voice, "Are you playing
Hide and Seek!?" The mom turns around and freaks out. It turns out the
kid has his pants down to his knees and was peeing in the corner. Oh
my gosh we lost it and we still haven't let Sister Clawson forget
that.

Because of transfers, we like to write in missionaries journals and
sign it and stuff. So I ended up with the privilege to have 4 sisters
journals on my desk one night and they all literally said, "it better
be heartfelt!" So I sat and wrote a bunch of heartfelt journal
entries. It was loads of fun.

The other night a representative form salt lake came to do some new
pamphlet training in our stake center. He also ended up coming to
watch us as we nightly planned at 9. So that was interesting! He just
watched and took notes as we did our thing. We usually just plan for
what we do the next day and what we will teach. Then he asked us
questions. He works at the MTC as well. It was cool having the big guy
in our apartment :). We planned very well that night needless to say.

I watched a video I've seen many times before, called "The Savior Want
to Forgive." I loved the message of the man who was involved in crime
and drugs, and felt like he had no right to Christ's grace. It was
really needed for me because recently people have been challenging our
idea of grace and the enabling power available to us from it. I know
that Christ love us and simply want s us to just acknowledge him and
accept his sacrifice, and he will make up the rest. We can't sit and
do nothing. We must do our part. But that doesn't change the fact that
without him, we would be lost. I know Jesus Christ lives. I know the
atonement is there for us if we only turn to him, and don't reserve
anything. I still need to read the full talk, but I recommend it for
sure.

I love all of you guys!

Elder Joseph Janson

 Had fun at the food bank...

You know what that is ...

 WML Ben Nelson and his wife!

 He's helping us watch our preach my gospel DVDs.

The Fairfield Zone

Saying bye to Dominique!

Me, My "sister" elder Huff, and my "dad" elder roper

06/01/15 Its better than you think

Dear Family,

We had a sweet week! Taught like 21 lessons is week, so that was
rather surprising! Most of the lessons were not even planned by us.
The lord pretty much just put people into our path that would listen
to us. We had so many lessons yesterday and we were fasting, so it was
quite the grind.

We had an interesting experience on Friday I believe. We met a guy who
used to go to church in the past, but has now gone to a different
faith. The conversation turned into him condemning church history and
saying that Joseph Smith was dishonest, we are a cult, and all kinds
of ridiculous things. He even went so far to say he got something from
You-Tube. I was trying to be respectful, but at that point I said, "oh
wow, YouTube is a great source definitely." He completely ignored me.
We ended up just bearing our testimony and leaving, but something cool
about this was I felt the spirit even through the contention while I
bore testimony. When we got in the car, the song that happened to be
playing in our car, was "Praise To The Man." It was so cool! Then
later that day we taught a new family, and the guy was arguing saying
that we believe grace is only achieved after denying all ungodliness,
so he thought it sounded impossible to achieve grace. We finished the
lesson and testified, and got in the car. The song playing was none
other but "Amazing Grace." We freaked out! It was the coolest thing
ever. God was saying basically, "it is all true what you are teaching
and testifying of.

So living in Fairfield is interesting. If you don't know, our car
window got smashed in while we weren't using it and were with Elder
Young for about 9 days. Luckily nothing was taken, but you can't
really go one day without hearing sirens in this beautiful place haha.
It's definitely fun.

We saw a young woman from our ward sitting in our car in this one
neighborhood we were in on Saturday. We went and talked to her and
she's super cool and we asked where her friend was she had talked
about that had seen us walking a lot. She was about to meet her! So
her friend came out and we introduced ourselves and talked for a
second. They were both like 17. It was super funny to see them and
then their other friend named Joseph was dropped off, and we had been
trying to see him for weeks! We set up a lesson with him and got to
know him better. Members helping out definitely is a plus :). You
never know who the lord will send you too.

Overall it was an amazing week and I'm sad I will probably get
transferred next week. i love this ward! It's huge and has a bunch of
awesome people who are all about helping us. Dominique is doing great
and we have almost finished her new member lessons she still has top
notch questions for us and texts us whenever she does.

I'm grateful for all of your prayers and support, and good luck to
everyone like Jake and Corey going on missions soon! It's closer than
you think, but better than you think as well.

Love all of you.
Elder Janson

More Chalking ...

Yo Sushi!

5/25/15 Chalking ...

Family,

It was a pretty awesome week! We did a lot of cool district activities, we went chalking twice. (Chalking is when we all get together like little kids and draw with sidewalk chalk gospel related things until someone thinks we are weird and ask a question!) It was so fun!! I hope you saw the pictures of my amazing art. It was impressive :). It's good for doing something out of the ordinary missionary work.

For our district meeting we went to the park next to our stake center and had the meeting. It was the best district meeting ever! For one of our practices, we literally just did a real life practice! Some lady was walking by and we joked about role playing with her instead of each other. Then Elder Young just gets up and goes and talks to her. It turns out being a small little lesson with her where we showed her a video and passed her on the the 3rd ward elders to teach. All in district meeting! Just so you know, that is not normal haha.

It was sad but not sad again as Elder Young left our companionship and we were reduced to just a duo again. An Elder who had gone home and came back was out with a Elder Young. His name is Elder Alcivar. He is super cool and is from New York. Still no Utah :)

We had a funny experience when we were going to visit a member. We drove up to the address and were confused for a second as it said, it was a Buddhist temple. We're just like, "well let's knock anyways!!" Hahaha so we did! And some monk answered and said the lady we were looking for wasn't there (obviously). He let us in though and we saw their evening chant/meditation. It was pretty cool!

We had an amazing lesson his week! His name is Lyndon, and he's about 24ish and is in ROTC at Sac State. His friend from BYU referred him and he is so willing to learn! The lesson felt like we were doing some MTC practice and it we actually knew what we were doing! He accepted the baptismal invite and I'm sure he will read. He just barely started reading the bible we gave him as well. He's the coolest guy ever! Keep him in your prayers.

Well I'm burnt out on writing, but I just want to say it was a super fun week! We got to go mini golfing today and go karting for free! Thank goodness a member owns Scandia, a small amusement park place like skate station. It was a blast!

I love you all,

Elder Janson

District chalking!

 I drew Moses

 Hmong food!!

Us imitating a crawdad we found..

05/18/15 Visiting the Jelly Belly Factory (and other stuff)

Family,

So first order of crazy business. Elder Vang who was going home this transfer anyways, went home a couple weeks early for family reasons. So Elder Young, the tall guy in my pics is now in our tiny studio apartment, and now we are a trio! And instead of just covering Fairfield 2nd ward we now also cover 1st for a little. So needless to say we have no free time, which is not bad, but it's hectic! Elder Young is one of the funniest guys I've ever met, and is an amazing worker and loves talking to people. He's in the Army so that helps too. It's funny because he's driving now and he drives so slow it's comical. The thing is as missionaries we usually don't need to drive fast, because we got all day! Anyways, we spend a lot of our last night hours of the day laughing at all of the random things we found hilarious. If any of you are familiar with the "secret knock" from the Lego Movie, it is simply one loud knock. So we've tried it at some doors, loudly proclaiming it is the secret knock! Some people don't really appreciate it too much :) one lady yelled at us, "I don't like the way your knockin! Go away!" Hahaha we didn't let that one go for awhile. Elder Young calls the sisters in our district every night, and that call consists of us telling them all of our crazy funny experiences. I'm sure we bug them.

So besides that, it's been such a good week. One day at studies Elder Huff showed us a good talk by Stephen R. Covey. It is called "Teaching our children to pray." It comments on the fact that sometimes we have the conflict in our minds on the difference between conscience and the spirit. He explains that most often when we feel the spirit, it speaks through our conscience! If it inspires us to do good, it is of God and it is inspiration of the Holy Ghost. That is the way he works. So we don't need to think super hard about whether it comes form God or us. God works through our thoughts, as well as through others. I definitely know that is true. Recently I've tried to write impressions right after I pray at night. I just write simple feelings or things I think I need to do for me, my companions, and investigators. It works wonders! You all should try it, because as we show our willingness to write and put forth effort to listen to God, he will speak to us. We are promised all over the scriptures with that blessing.

I know the gospel is true, and the Book of Mormon is true! It is invigorating to testify of that truth to so many each day. It brings peace to my life and I know it can bring peace to you as well. Hopefully we have a baptism in 1st ward soon, a girl named Alanna who is about 12 I think. She is in a part member family, and clearly has made this choice for herself. Her testimony is amazing! One with a testimony can influence others more than they think.

I love you all!

Elder Janson

 Three guys holding three male birds

We did just a little karaoke hahaha

A nice roast pig we had fun with

Jelly Belly Factory!

 Portrait out of jelly beans

 Me and Elder Huff!

05/12/15 Temple Day

Hello!

It was a pretty. Crazy week full of things that could be super
annoying. I have found out that I'm getting a little better at dealing
with stress, because if all of this happened at home, I would be
exploding inside!

Our car has to be fixed, a little scratch on the back that no elders
have ever taken care of. And our little key remote thing is broken.
And our phone is dead as of Saturday. So we have trouble doing much at
all. Now Elder Vang from Fairfield 1st ward is leaving, so his
companion Elder Young is going to live with us, so we have to merge
areas for a little. It's not going to be easy! Needless to say, it's
been a mentally hard week. It's the worst.

We also got a device called a Tiwi in every mission car. It is a
little box that basically yells at you if you speed, or turn to fast,
or go over a bump too fast, or brake too fast, or do ANYTHING too
fast. But it's not too bad. I guess it's for good. You know exactly who
is driving what car, and where the car is at all times! It's crazy.

So the other night three girls asked to take a picture with us! It was
super weird but we figured, why not!? So we took a picture with them.
They probably know kids in our ward.

If you don't know the song called Fragile on the lds.org website,
check it out! It is SO GOOD!!! I'm kind of obsessed with it haha but
the girl has such a good voice! We play it over and over in the
apartment :)

All I have to say is that prayer is for real! Last night we got out of
the car and we usually pray in the car but I forgot. So I about
shrugged it off, but then I got a super strong prompting to pray right
there on the street to help us find. What happens? The next two doors
who we have tried to see all transfer, both answer! We have a return
lesson for a guy and his wife, and left a blessing with them. Then we
prayed again and saw our super cool potential who has a friend at BYU
and he wants to learn and see us next week. It was all in like 15
minutes! Prayer is for real everyone. Heavenly Father will answer, but
it requires effort on our part. It is amazing how he cares for all of
us. I know it's true!

Love all of you

Elder Janson

 Me and Achal

Picture of temple with Elder Kesler awkwardly there.

Oakland, then San Francisco in background.

Sis Majors, Me, Sis Harper. Coolest Sisters ever!!

Fairfield Zone

Big boy Elder Young

Me. 

Me posing at Oakland temple

5/4/15 Doing Work

Dear Family and friends,

It's been a new week and of driving a car in our area and being
rejected a lot! Hahaha But Elder Achal is pretty cool. He's from
Calgary, Alberta, and he still has sufficient greenie fire as we call
it. He's not afraid to work! We started the week with 0 investigators
and now have 1 progressing investigator and 2 new ones! We've just
gone out and worked and knocked doors even though sometimes it felt
worthless. I think Saturday night we were knocking and no one was
answering and it seemed like a waste of time. But we knocked one more
door, and this guy let us in and talked for an hour about his daughter
and son and how he coached his daughter in soccer for years and talked
about his dog and anything else you can think of that would make me
tired to listen to. But it was so cool once we said a blessing on his
home. We both said some of the prayer, (according to his request) and
it was so powerful. He said he truly believes when one or two are
gathered in Christ's name the spirit is there. He said he had
goosebumps in our prayer, and committed to church in a very solid way!
Sadly he did not come, but we are going to see him tomorrow. It was a
reward for our whole day of absolutely no one listening to us! Haha
one guy who said come back earlier we went to go visit. At first we
thougt they would let us in, but then his friend comes out and says,
"are they still here?? Oh guys you gotta leave, were Christian!" SLAM.
haha oh my gosh the struggle was real. But it was all worth it when we
met Bruce who I spoke of before.

We were able to do service for a guy with one leg who was moving from
one apartment in town to another. Fairfield 1st Ward elders asked us
to help, and we got there and didn't know quite what to do! He thought
we would have a truck. Elder Vang explained that we are pretty much
worthless accept for providing labor. :). But we were able to help
anyways and it was awesome.

So good news is that we have been solid running every morning, not
lazy walking like I have been for months. So I might not get too fat
now, don't worry. We also contacted a couple teenagers who were out
playing ball in the neighborhood, and ended up talking to them for
like an hour and shooting a couple shots. They knew a couple kids from
our ward and one black half Asian guy who's name was Joseph (so he was
cool) said he had read some of the Book of Mormon. They were so open
to us and said we looked good in our "suits."

Overall, it was such a busy and good week. And you all for your
prayers and support as we are out here. We have it pretty comfortable
when it comes to lifestyle, but it's still hard when absolutely no one
wants to hear you speak haha. It's not quite that bad but we are
working hard. I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Elder Janson

 Me and Elder Achal's wearing Abel's old jackets!

Elder Achal looking out towards the castle on the hill!

Me pondering on the hill with a castle on it.