From the trench.: The one with the baby goat in it

Brock For the Last 3 Weeks: SparkNotes Edition

The Lord showed us a lot of miracles. Many videos were made. My comp and I got roasted pretty hard by a 16yr old girl in our spanish ward and learned a valuable lesson in taking criticism from other people. A little 4 yr old girl made me cry. A Honduran puppy shaped like a potato made me cry. A guy from church took us for a much needed bike ride. We visited a cave and we almost believed Elder Beck died for a minute (story for another day). We made a new friend, Rosa Dominguez, who has 330 thousand followers on TikTok and she invited us over to make videos with her. We accepted, of course, and are now featured in ten videos on her account.

**Scroll to the bottom for some good pictures**

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Now here's a small book I wrote about my experience editing the worst video I've ever made in my life. Enjoy!

We have been video-making MACHINES the past three weeks, my companion and I have been pumping out a new video every week on our spanish and english missionary pages on top of our regular work. A couple weeks ago our mission president contacted us and asked if we would make a video for the entire mission, he said he would give us free reign to travel anywhere in the Boise, Idaho mission (which is like, half of Idaho plus a little slice of Oregon) just to record all the different missionaries singing a hymn so we could splice it all together to be played during zone conference (zone conference is just a super big meeting for missionaries, but I've never been to one yet so couldn't tell you exactly what we do at those).

So coordinating, shooting and editing that sucker took any sliver of free time I had left which is partly why I haven't written to anybody in 3 weeks so sorry about that haha but HEY. That entire process of making the video is a whole other story on its own full of stressful moments and insane miracles so I think I'll just talk about that this week.

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Our whiteboard is illegible now, due to the amount of notes and tally-marks it took just to count out all the different languages in every area of the mission – since we want people singing in their mission language we had to take that into account while we planned each shoot. For example: all our Portuguese missionaries met us at Fuller Park in Meridian, all our Tagalog speakers met us at Freedom Park in Nampa, etc. So that was possibly the BIGGEST headache figuring out the logistics for and finding a time that worked for most people in each individual area. But after many prayers, and several phone calls, we figured out a system that kept us organized and on-track to finish shooting the video in time to give us just THREE DAYS to edit the entire project before it was to be premiered for the entire mission before zone conferences start. (At the time I write this we plan to finish editing tonight, our last chance to finish the whole project!!)

But I, being the self-proclaimed master of videography that I was in my mind and wanting to feed my pride and prove myself the best missionary filmmaker the world has ever seen, decided to film the entire video in literally the most complicated way I could have possibly done it. Instead of setting up a tripod and getting the same three angles from each group like any competent person would, I invested in a Glidecam HD-2000 (a fancy stick to mount your camera to which when used correctly makes your footage steady) and decided to shoot everything from that – a piece of equipment which I had never used before, and despite having a ten minute YouTube video's worth of experience under my belt still didn't actually know how to use.

So there I was, waving my camera all over the place getting swoops and zooms and running behind trees and stuff so I could make some fancy transitions in post. I did anything BUT slowly walk or, heaven forbid, let the camera stop moving for more than two seconds because I had a glidecam and I was about to make a missionary video that would put all other videos to shame.

After two weeks of shooting, we wrapped things up and took the footage over to a computer to edit the beast. The place we go to edit has six computers in the room, and five of them had other missionaries editing their own projects. I slid my SD card into the last one, and started whipping up footage for assembly.

When I saw the footage for the first time on a screen larger than my little camera monitor, I got so sick that I ran to the bathroom because I thought I was going to throw up. That's not an exaggeration, two days ago at a little desk with 11 other Elders staring at me I almost lost my lunch because after two weeks of planning and executing this mission-wide project the actual footage I captured was so shaky and skewed that it was practically unusable.

For every. Single. Location.

I was too good to use a tripod, remember?

I wanted to give up then. I turned to my companion and said, "Hey, can we tell them that we just lost the footage? What if we say that you made the whole thing?" He said sure except everyone in the entire mission already saw me prance around with my glidecam. I shuddered at the thought of all those missionaries and their families watching the final video. Nobody would ever trust me with a project again because this monstrosity would forever taint my reputation. I was ruined. (Aight maybe that's a little dramatic but still for the amount of WORK this took it shouldn't have looked like it was filmed by a potato)

I wrestled with the project for a few hours, but it came to a point where I started doing random stuff just to hide the fact from everyone else watching me work that this video was, in reality, hopelessly ruined. I wasn't actually accomplishing anything, I was only pretending to know what I was doing like, Yeah that's a style choice, yanno? I like throwing my camera everywhere to get that seasick look, all the pros do it.

All the while I was screaming at myself and just kinda dying on the inside.

That night, I couldn't sleep. My stomach was in knots and I dreaded editing the next day in front of everyone. I got down on my knees in our closet and poured out all the frustration I felt with myself to God and then said something like:

"Lord, I screwed this up so bad. This was supposed to be your project, it's a video that is meant to invite the Holy Spirit through music performed by your missionaries. It's not a pedestal for my abilities. I do not have the ability to fix this on my own. Please help me to make it whatever you wanted it to be."

When I finished I just curled up on the floor and laid there. I listened to my own breathing, and tried my best to clear my mind.

And then I felt it, guys. That feeling of the sunshine coming through a window in your house on a chilly morning, and it's just barely warm enough that if you sit in front of the window long enough you begin to feel like the frost gets melted off of you.

I felt light enter my mind, and I saw in detail a way that I could salvage this impossibly botched project with a sheet of notebook paper and a system of time-stamps and labels to pick out the least shaky footage from each location and organize them.

But the best part was that the knot in my stomach was gone. I could breathe easier because I knew exactly what I had to do.

Needless to say, I went back to editing the next day with a grin on my face and had so much fun that I didn't even take a break to eat lunch. I completed about 90% of the project yesterday, we will finish it tonight.

GOD HEARS OUR PRAYERS y'all, and not just when your life is on the line or the big things yanno but in all things even little stuff like a video that's important to you or help with an assignment you've been working on for a class or even if you need just a little bit more strength to go to work today with a smile on your face. We are closest to our Heavenly Father when we recognize that we need Him most.

Have a wonderful week you guys. :)

Mucho amor,

Elder Johnson

1. The stupid glidecam