Missionary update/news

Here is just a little excerpt from Johnny's letter today. He is an AP and has been traveling to different parts of the mission lately. He comes home December 21. For Christmas we are giving Johnny a trip back to Greece with us so he can show us the sites he been to and people he has met while over there. His mission president's wife has a blog about the mission, it is greeceathensmission.blogspot.com.

"Well this week went well. First off we went to Cyprus, and it was amazing there. Very hot, but amazing. There was a different spirit there. The zone conference went great, and then we had the opportunity to do exchanges with the missionaries. In Cyprus they teach a lot of foreigners who come there to study at foreign colleges. Most of them are from Nepal, India, and China. They are really humble, and about seventy percent of the members whom are in Nicosia are foreigners, there is not a single Cypriot member in the branch (similar stories in the other cities of Cyprus).

The first exchange was with the zone leaders there, and we taught a few lessons, one to a nepalese man, who was really humble, they had taught him the word of wisdom from before, and asked if he had started following this, and he said, “We must follow.”, and then we continued to teach him the law of chastity and tithing, and when we asked him if he would follow, it was the same answer, “Of course. We must follow.” It was amazing to teach someone so humble and so ready. Also, a Chinese girl, and she was very accepting, but also in a different way –so very childlike, but not childish if you understand what I mean. these people are so different than anything that I have encountered in my mission, it was amazing to teach, and really easy to talk to them. I loved it.

The next exchange I did with a german elder who is struggling because his companion is not wanting to work so much, and so we did a lot of contacting on our exchange. It was good for me too. We did street contacting during the night and our goal was to get ten names. We ended up with nine names in one night, and gave out a Book of Mormon. I almost beat my record for amount of names. Also, while contacting I talked to a few young Cypriot young people. And the language Cypriot is so different from Greek it is absolutely amazing. Sure I could understand a little, but I had to have him repeat it a few times, because they use different accent, words, and word order. It was fun though, I learned a few phrases while I was there."