3/30/15

Dear Family and friends,

It's been a pretty dang good week. Elder Hastings was sick for a
little though, so let's just say the book Jesus the Christ, I'm almost
done with it. Haha it's not too fun being sick on the mission.

Anyways, we are excited for Domonique, who has a baptismal date for
the 18th of April. She is going so well and even texts us questions
about the Book of Mormon! Haha not something too common. She is so
comfortable with the ward and her kids go to nursery and everythting!
Anyways, she's the one that brought up being baptized too. It was
pretty funny but cool.

We had a pretty interesting experience when a lady called us over to
talk to her. That is usually exciting but too good to be true. The
latter is true in this case because this lady was so drunk we couldn't
get away! Haha she said repeatedly I had a beautiful smile that "she
could see her reflection" in. Whatever that means! We thought she was
going to slap Elder Hastings too. Sometimes you talk to the most
peculiar people on a mission, but that's what brings excitement to our
life!

We've been doing good though and General Conference is coming soon!
Y'all better be stoked! Hopefully Domonique will come to that too,
which I'm sure she will.

We've showed the Because He Lives video a lot and it is the coolest!
Nothing brings the spirit more than Jesus Christ and what he did for
us. I know that is true. Our message as missionaries has multiple
facets, but it really is e pure and simple doctrine of Christ. When
you don't know what to say, speak of Christ!

I love all you guys and hope you can "Find Him" this Easter. Keep being awesome!

Elder Janson

Us focusing on the Easter season!

#BecauseHeLives

3/23/15 Because He Lives

Hey people,

This week is momentous!! The church is coming out with a new video
called "Because He Lives." It will be on the gospel library on March
28th I believe. Us missionaries have already seen it, because we're
awesome! Haha but it is for Easter of course. It is going to be all
over YouTube on April 5th. The church is literally buying YouTube for
that day. Let everyone know! The site is HeLives.mormon.org.

So soon we will be passing out hundreds of cards for this. It's gonna
be amazing, better than that "He is the Gift" video. Trust me!

So we have sisters in our district now! It's pretty cool. They are
super chill and help keep us sane and make us work harder. We
sometimes need that if you aren't aware.

This Sunday yesterday we had a guy give his farewell talk for his
mission. He's going to Anchorage, Alaska Spanish speaking. Pretty
crazy! He had a bunch of family there so it was full, and our ward is
already big. It's weird because he's like 22 and I'm still 18 on my
mission... I'm such a baby! But it was cool to see him and his
excitement for that.

Nothing really exciting has happened to be 100% honest! It's been just
a lot of walking and talking to people about sometimes random stuff.
One guy kept saying over and over that temptation is only a
"battlefield in yo mind!" We were like, alright then! A girl in the
passenger seat of a car we thought was twitching, but she was legit
winking at us. It was pretty hilarious. We've recently been getting a
lot of friendly honks and I don't know why, but also not so friendly
honks! But that's what we live for sometimes. It's fun.

Domonique is still on track for sure! We will set a date for her in
the next couple days and she has already been to church 8 times in a
row! That should make some kind of record for a nonmember who has no
large ties to anyone in the ward. She is so solid! Looking forward to
seeing her progress.

I just hope you all know the church is true! And get geared up for
general conference because it's gonna be amazing. I would invite you
guys to have questions going into it, just as we have been challenged
as missionaries.

Thanks for everything!

Elder Janson

My beautiful St. Patrick's Day tie!

A panorama of our amazing apartment.

3/16/15

Hey everybody,

So it's been a hectic week. I feel like I say that a lot, but I mean
it! It's transfers tomorrow and me and Elder Hastings are the only
companionship that isn't changing in our zone. And we didn't get a car
so life is pretty difficult! We thought we would get one but
apparently the mission is losing cars and missionaries. We gotta carry
the load now.

It was pretty cool this past Wednesday. We had the all mission
conference and Elder Nielsen was there, who spoke at an earlier
conference we had. He is so awesome!!!!! He knows doctrine for sure.
But he said he's speaking at general conference! So look for him! I
believe he said he would speak in one of the Sunday sessions. His name
is Brent H. Nielsen and he's the bomb. He is the one going around and
helping rollout iPads to missions all over the world. Our old iPads
are going to Europe which is funny. They get the old ones and we get
the new iPad 2s. These new iPads have the best screen and work so much
better. We are quite blessed to have them.

So we taught Dominique this week and she said she had read 4
things.cshe didn't know what they were called. So we were like oh 4
verses? Awesome! But we found out she had read 4 chapters in 1 Nephi!
She understood them so well and we were stoked! She is going really
well and is always at church. Just pray for her that she keeps going!

Thank all you guys for supporting me and happy st. Patrick's day! I
wish I had an adequate green tie but that's alright :)

Love you all!

Elder Janson

Abel, who we have been teaching, one of the most sarcastic, hilarious people I have ever been in the presence of!

A spider we found.

A beautiful bunny we walk by that sits in its owners yard.

3/9/15 New ipads

Hello family,

It's a hectic week coming up seeing as we have an All-Mission
Conference on Wednesday where we get our new iPads. So we gotta like
save and email all our pictures and notes so that we have them for our
new ones. And the whole mission in one building is pretty exciting!
I'm excited to see my MTC peeps again!

We had a pretty sweet day the other night! I believe it was on

Thursday that we got 30 contacts, 6 lessons, and 2 baptismal invites.

Like DANG! That is incredible, and I've never had that many lessons on
the mission yet. We were just rolling and teaching everyone and being
bosses! And on Wednesday we taught Domonique, who is a super cool lady
with two kids and she's been coming to church for awhile now. We
invited her to be baptized and she said if she keeps figuring out that
it is true. She said she was baptized of course which always happens
haha. But we had an awesome lesson with her and a member in our Ward
who met her at Walmart. Who woulda though Walmart would be the
missionary work place!? That's the way to do it.

Last night we went to dinner with the McCorkle's in our Ward and they
are pretty awesome! After we ate and talked for awhile I saw that they
had some Lego books and I was no way!! They had some sweet Lego books
that had every kind of Lego and I kind of geeked out and the mom was
talking to me about a huge Lego x-wing. Haha it was funny! And then
they showed us some Lego books, one for the Old Testament and one for
the New Testament! It had a bunch of scenes in the bible like showed
in Lego form, like a Lego comic book. It was pretty hilarious, but
also slightly disturbing! Haha what I want to see is a Lego Book of
Mormon book. That's my new goal in life :).

I'm excited for some new stuff to be happening and we might get a car
at transfers next week, which would be wonderful. With new iPads we
are expected to be responsible, which can be hard for a bunch of 18
year olds, but I think we can do it.

Anyways, have a good week, and I'm glad to be out here doing work,
even though it gets pretty hard sometimes. But I know it's worth it to
find those that are ready. You all are awesome!

Elder Janson

Our Zone

Our Zone being hilarious

Elder Janson and Elder Hastings chillin'

A great commercial for 7UP!

3/2/15 Digital Age

Family and Friends!

So it's been real exciting lately! Haha not really though. We are
getting new iPads soon and hopefully they are sweet! We are getting a
bunch of "digital age training" in our next zone meeting, because I
guess we need it but not really haha. I know it's because they want us
to be safe in our use of the devices but that's just kind of a given.
Apparently someone needs it.

So we walked by a former investigator's house and started talking to
him. Turned out he had a baptismal date back in the day but he just
never did it and he is super cool! He is the guy we picked oranges
for. Jerry the Orange guy haha. Those were some hard oranges to pick
considering they were way too high and we broke one of his old tools!
Well I did... But he wasn't mad luckily! Haha it was cool to see
someone so open to us and he said he has a lot of respect for
missionaries and the church. We are still trying to do more service
for him. We will see how that goes!

So recently I have been having very vivid dreams that mesh everything
from missionary work, to family, being home, and some weird action
movie type stuff. I wake up and am relieved I'm still on a mission and
I didn't go home with no memory past 6 months in my mission! Haha it
happens to every missionary I hear. Missionaries are weird.

So we are probably going to go golfing a little bit today later for
p-day. I hope I don't swing super hard and kill someone... Haha I'm
pretty bad as far as I know! And I'm playing with Elder Hastings who
has a golfing scholarship for Washington State.... I hope I don't make
a fool of myself! But we're just going to the driving range, not doing
all the holes. But it should be awesome!

Well I hope you all are doing well. It's been a little hard with the
work lately and it's hard to find people to teach when everyone is
rich and doesn't want to talk to us haha. But I know our work will
help at least one person and we need to keep our motivation up, as
well as having the spirit with us. It can be hard to keep it
constantly, but it is vital! I love you all!

Elder Janson

Amazing pictures from the Paradise Valley Golf Course area.  Its one of the nicest parts of Fairfield. 

 Yes, we climbed this hill because it looked awesome!

Here's some sweet service pictures for this guy who used to be an

investigator and actually took up our offer for service! We picked

some insanely hard-to-get-to oranges and trimmed branches and such.

2/23/15 I'm sick.

Hey everybody!!!!

So me and Elder Hastings have been kind of sick and coughing and
contaminating Fairfield. Haha jk but we are sick and it's tough!
There's also no Netflix out on the Mish so it's a little harder to be
in a lot. Hahaha good one right?

It was pretty cool earlier this week though. When I first got really
sick Elder Williams and Grange from 1st ward came in our apartment and
Elder Hastings and them gave me a blessing. It's pretty cool that they
are able to do that and us missionaries can so readily use our
priesthood to bless each other. It's a good support system!

So this is a pretty funny story from church yesterday. We were sitting
in the back and the Millers who are a young couple were right in front
of us. Sis Miller still had her tag on her dress hanging back from her
neck! Elder Hastings was so annoyed he was trying to get her husband's
attention during church and had written out on the program, "your
wife's shirt tag!" Oh my gosh it was so funny. We then had them for
dinner that night, last night. It was a funny awkward situation to say
the least. Luckily they are the coolest family ever!

So it's been like 65 degrees everyday out here. It's a hard life here
in the California Santa Rosa mission. We sometimes have to wear long
sleeved shirts because it is such arctic weather. I'm totally messing
with all of you excuse my sarcasm. But the weather is beautiful!
Sometimes we just want to chill at the park forever because the
weather is so gorgeous. I hear it's pretty cold everywhere else, is
Florida cold?

Anyways, if I had any really cool news I would tell it. Nothing much
has happened. We had a sweet lesson with Dominique, one of our most
solid investigators. It was at a members home, which is the best
environment where the spirit is so strong. That's where miracles
happen! Members and missionaries working together! It's real stuff
folks! I encourage all of you to help your missionaries, because I can
bet they probably don't know what to do with their time half of the
time. They need you!

I just hope you all are doing wonderful and know that I know God
lives! This past week I've just had a goal to listen to every
prompting I receive from the spirit. The spirit is our direct
connection to heaven. That is amazing! We shouldn't take that for
granted. I hope you all can feel the influence of the Holy Ghost in
your life, because that is the thing that sets us apart as a people in
the world.

I love you all!

Elder Janson

Hey guys!!  Here's a picture of people in our interesting zone ...

2/17/15 Temple Trip!

Hey family and friends,

It was a crazy week. Again it's weird being in a new area and
everything and I still feel a little dumb. I'm not sure about it yet
and we better get a car soon because it sucks being us right now! But
my first week here we had about the worst week of the mission and then
we just had the sickest week of the mission! Our mission is being
challenged to get 20 contacts a day and 3 lessons a day. Not only as a
companionship, but as a companionship for 7 days straight, along with
your whole zone getting those numbers for 7 days. All at the same
time! It can be hard because one companionship can mess it up for the
rest in the zone. It's super hard and we still haven't done it. We are
trying to do it during February. So wish us some luck! But because of
this challenge we had nearly the best teaching week of the mission
this past week. We taught like 15 lessons at least, I can't remember
exactly. It was a lot, especially for our area which is pretty
difficult to teach in.

Recently Elder Hastings really wanted to go to this girls house who's
parents are in our Ward, and she goes to the singles ward here. She
apparently was cute haha. So we go one night and her and her friend
are there! So we just talk for awhile and have a pretty sweet lesson
with the girl Ashlee, her friend Jenina, and Ashlee's sister Jenny. A
lot of girls for us missionaries! Haha it was pretty cool though.

Speaking of girls, we had some 12 year old girls or something like
that yelling at us asking how old we were... We just yelled random
ages and they were like "no you're not!!" Haha it was at the Vacaville
Junction park, and we were just going around trying to see some
people. We were about to go to these girls and invite them to repent
of their language haha. It was interesting.

So it was Valentine's Day this weekend, a missionary's favorite
holiday! Jk. But Elder Hastings got a dancing hippo from his mom that
sang, "I like big hugs and I cannot lie!" I was losing it over that
for awhile. And also, no family invited us over for valentines night
dinner....

We went to the temple this morning and it was so cool. I felt so close
to Heavenly Father and I really felt blessed we were able to go this
transfer. The temple is a sweet place, especially when there are 72
missionaries in your session! A bunch from different missions like San
Francisco and Oakland. I hope everything pulls together in our area
and we have some new people to teach recently. Thank you all for your
support and send me stuff! Haha my new address is
2751 Peppertree Dr Apt #115 Fairfield, CA 94533.

I love you guys!

Elder Janson

Beautiful parts of Fairfield.  I love it!!

North edge of our area.  Should we knock on that guys door way up there?

Me being a boss at the Oakland Temple

Me and Elder Hastings being beautiful

Me and Elder Hastings being bosses