From the trench.: Hi, sorry, I did not wish to kill him.

Welcome back ladies and gentlemen.

A lot happened in the two weeks since my last email but I'll summarize everything and jump all over the place to keep things interesting for ya.

The Dunnstoppable

Elder Dunn caught a frisbee with his face while playing glow in the dark ultimate and punched a hole in his lip with his teeth. Gnarly. Luckily almost everyone on site had earned their first-aid merit badges so we had it all under control and didn't even have to call anymore medical professionals to help.

... But we called the nurse anyway and she razzed us a little but we managed to escape her wrath and keep our frisbee privileges.

The Dunncicle

Elder Dunn also went for a swim when he tried to penguin slide across a frozen pond. I caught the moment in slow-motion for your viewing pleasure.

El Comediante

I spoke in the Spanish ward on Sunday and told a joke which actually landed and got people laughing so that was a huge boost to my language learning self-esteem.

El Comediante part II

I peed my pants and made myself and my companion late for a lesson tho so I think that was the Lord keeping me from getting too prideful over the success I had with my spanish joke. (Long story. I'll be ready to tell it by the time I come home in a couple years.)

The Murderer

I almost killed a man with hand sanitizer. We started volunteering at a local food pantry and there's this one guy there who turns out is deathly allergic to hand sanitizer, which I only found out after I applied it to my hands and he walked into the kitchen with me. He sniffed the air, looked right at me and growled, "What do you have on your hands?"

"Um... hand sanitizer?"

Then his eyes got huge and the man straight up had an asthma sttack right in front of me.

He ran out of the building, and I was frozen in shock for a couple seconds thinking what just happened? Is he going to die? Am I going to jail for second degree manslaughter?

Then I called for help and the lady in charge of the volunteers walked over to see what was up. She said he would be fine, he's just very sensitive to the smell of hand sanitizer. Wild.

Fuego y Fe

My companion and I made a video on Facebook about fire and faith which you should definitely not check out because I can't stand it when video creators engage in self-promotion. If it's really that good I'm sure I'll find it on my own so just chill aight?

Papa Pascual Saves The World

The other night I had the greatest meal of my life.

Now, I have enjoyed a plethora of incredible food in the 18 years I've been on this earth. But the Pascual family changed my life.

With a grill they jerry-rigged themselves out of a couple camp burners and a coke can they changed the very definition of food for me.

The menu? Rice, beans and regular old fajitas. I even got to watch their dad make the whole thing right there in his garage, he didn't do anything special to it. He used only salt and pepper. But man, words can't even describe the sensation of biting into one of the tacos I made at their table out of warm homemade tortillas and fresh salsa from the backyard with cilantro and jalepeños and some funky fruit drink...

I'll spare you anymore details about the food. I just thought it deserved a proper mention in this weekly because it was awesome.

But this family, they love the gospel. Papa Pascual (as I shall call him for the rest of this email) has the most kind face and humble attitude of any man you will ever meet. He told us about his love for the temple and how he missed it more than anything else they had lost during the pandemic.

He told us a story about his rude neighbor who, in Papa Pascual's words, "hated ALL the Mexicans in the world." That included the Pascual family.

Their neighbor was the kind of guy who thought all Mexicans were drug dealers and thieves. He always turned his nose up when Papa Pascual offered to help him with anything (as the Pascuals do because these guys love serving others even more than they love making good food). This neighbor would shoot dirty looks their way anytime someone even got close to his yard and obnoxiously re-lock the car "beep!" with his remote if they walked near it on their way to get to their own car.

He wasn't exactly State Farm material.

Eventually winter rolled around, three feet of snow dumped onto everything and Papa Pascual noticed his neighbor outside trying to shovel the driveway by himself. This man put on his coat, slid on some crocs and shuffled out into the snow with a shovel in hand.

Before his surly neighbor even had time to protest Pascual plowed his shovel into the snow and started working. Too surprised, and probably too tired to put up a fight, the neighbor went back to shoveling his driveway in silence. Side-by-side, the two men worked until the driveway was clear.

After the job was finished, Papa Pascual turned to start walking home when he heard his neighbor utter a barely audible "Thank you."

Today those two men are best friends. What?! How??! After that day in the snow, his neighbor started inviting Papa Pascual to hang out with him and his buddies. He calls Pascual his "amigo" around his friends and then wraps his arm around him. They always wave to each other when they come home from work and help each other out with everything nowadays.

Papa Pascual concluded by saying, "This is how conflict is resolved. Not fighting or trying to prove each other wrong with our words, but with the way we live."

Gosh dangit how awesome would our world be if we all had this guy's attitude? How many best friends are we denying ourselves because we still haven't crossed that boundary, whatever it is, with kindness yet?

In conclusion,

I love you all SO MUCH! Keep your spirits high and rest assured that there will always be good people in the world trying to make life on this hunk of rock a little bit better for all of us. When you choose to be one of those people, you tend to live happier. :)

Your amigo,

Elder Johnson

Los fotos:

1) Elder Dunn's flesh wound