Welcome to Baghdad

Me and Elder Rutledge (my friend from back home) meet up at Zone Conference.

Or at least that's what it feels like now that Festas Juninas has begun.  The other day we were walking down the road at night and you could just hear the explosions of the IEDs (AKA fireworks) going off in the distance, with the smaller ones sounding like gunshots.  Man I love June.

Hello family!  How are you?  I am well.  This week we got some weird health advice from the people down here.  People here have some pretty different ideas about health, like if you go into an air-conditioned room while you have a cold, you will get even sicker.  My personal favorite however is the theory of the hot shower and the freezer.  The theory is that after you finish taking a hot shower and then open the fridge the cold air from the fridge against your warm body will make you dizzy, give you a headache, or my personal favorite, a stroke.  Some people have told me a bunch of legends about people getting strokes and dying from opening the freezer.  We were teaching this one lady when her daughter walked in and told us she had a headache because she opened up the fridge 20 minutes after taking a shower.  I decided to put the old wives’ tale to the test, I took a shower, opened the fridge, stuck my head in the freezer AND....

nothing.....

I told this lady that I did that and she looked at my like I was crazy.  Needless to say, I have not died from a freezer stroke.

So I had a baptism this week!!!  Well in reality no, the sisters had two baptisms this week and their investigators asked me if I would baptize them.  I, of course, was honored and the baptism went over pretty well.  We had a little organizational error, but besides that all went well.

This week was Zone Conference, our last with President Gonzaga.  It was really cool; they talked a lot about true repentance and showed some videos of a talk by Elder Bednar that he gave to employees of the church. It was really great; it talked a lot about reaching your full potential and using the Holy Ghost to build yourself, which I found to be very interesting.  I also got to see a lot of my friends I've made on the mission and I got to catch up with Elder Rutledge!

The under 200 club.

I also met up with Elder Robinson at Zone Conference.

So we have a few investigators that we are teaching and they're going pretty well.  We should have a baptism this week and a few more to end the transfer.  Anyways, that's all I've got for this week.  Remember to not stick your head in the freezer after you've taken a shower, or you might die!

-Élder Johnson

Zone shirts for all the missionaries in Sergipe.

What everyone calls me.