Keaton James Johnston

Elder Keaton James Johnston
Massachusetts Boston Mission
182 West Central Street, Suite 203
Natick, MA 01760

Massachusetts Boston Mission
182 West Central Street, Suite 203
Natick, MA 01760

Love you dad,

I really wish I could've been able to learn more Portuguese from you, because one of our investigators only speaks Portuguese. His name is Jefferson and is from Salvador Brazil. In my little Portuguese that I know, I explained to him that my dad used to live in sao paulo and that my aunt grew up in Recife. If you ever can, I would love to receive Spanish language learning podcasts and Portuguese learning podcasts. My comp is fluent in Spanish and knows a bit of Portuguese because he served with two brasilieros. In the City of Milford Mass, Half the town is from Brazil, A quarter is White, and a quarter is from Columbia. I really feel like I need to learn Spanish as fast as I can, then I need to focus on learning Portuguese as well so I can fully help these people.

Any language learning material would be very helpful dad! If you can send me a cd with language learning materials I could then put them on my mp3. Also tell uncle Eric I would love to receive a CD with some of his Music he was going to send me. Also if you can find "Have I done any good in this world today" by Alex Boye and some other lady.

I have some books to teach me Spanish and Portuguese. I need to Learn fast though! My comp and I practice allot and we talk allot with native speakers as well.
On Saturday we helped volunteer at the Franklin 5K, we passed out water and all that good stuff. The race was in honor of the Boston Marathon and this one lady who ran the marathon pushing her handicap daughter in a wheelchair the whole 26.2 miles. They finished literally seconds before the bombs. They were never able to celebrate their accomplishments, so they held an awards ceremony for them at the 5K. ESPN was there and they recorded the whole thing! Ill probably be on ESPN sometime soon. They recorded her talking to all the missionaries and I also gave her a water cup on her final mile. It was a great event, they had the representative of Mass there, as well as NATE SOLDIER from the New England Patriots. I got a pic with him so it was sweet.

Love you Dad, thanks so much for all that you do!

This week was great! Last pday we play bball, and ate at a members house. Tuesday we went to Milford library and found out that they have an ESL class that we will hopefully be able to help out in. We did other stuff that day, but I cant remember what. Later in the week, we taught Jose and Zoila, And Jose y Maria. Jose and Zoila seem really interested, after we taught them they were asking pedro questions for the next 4 hours straight. They seem to be progressing a bit, but I cant fully understand their Spanish so idk exactly. As for Jose and Maria, they are really uneducated and seem like they don't really understand the basic concepts of our gospel, but we are continually trying to help them build and learn more. On Saturday we went tracting in Norwood, we started out 0 for 12 so we didn't think it would be a productive day, but after that we got 5 or 6 in a row. We talked to some cool people, but most of them were crazy. One, Dave, was a "Buddhist" and kept bringing up some murder that happened a bit ago, Jodi Arias? We couldn't understand everything he was talking about but he seemed really anti Mormon. He then made jokes of Brigham young, and how his nickname was "Bring em Younger" because apparently he had really young wives or something. We eventually were able to turn around the conversation and gave him a card.

This past Thursday, we ran into Michael at subway. He was really interested in our church. We talked to him for about an hour and half about his questions that he had with the church. He asked some questions that went clear over my head, good thing Elder Swasey is a genius and knows everything. Michael was seeking the truth, and was tired of foolish traditions that his family participates in. We are going to talk more to him this week, we left him a Book of Mormon and a card. After that we were on our way home, when we saw smoke coming out of a shrub on the side of the road in downtown Milford. My comp swerved into the parking lot and told me to grab as much water as I can from the back of the Subura. We quickly jumped out of the car and put out a fire! We saved Applebee's! haha or at least that's what I like to think. Everyone outside, starting clapping for us and the manager of apple bees told us that we could come in and get a free beer for putting out the fire. We said no thanks, we don't drink, and then we left. As we drove out back on the road, we felt like superstars, with everyone waving and cheering. It was Awesome!

Yesterday was probably the best day of the week though! We started out by going to stake conference and found out that the YSA twig will be becoming a branch, and a member of our ward will be the president of the branch. After church we studied our Spanish, and then went to dinner at the Sanders. We discussed ways that we can reach out to the Baez Family, a less active Spanish family. We were able to come up with ideas like inviting them to date nights, ask them to join the interfaith choir(were going to join the choir as well), or just stopping by for a FHE. After we ate there, we decided to go visit less actives in Milford. None of them answered, so we decided to go contacting throughout downtoad Milford. Lots of Spanish and Portuguese people live in downtown Milford. We were able to meet some cool people, first we gave a card to a guy named Abner. He is from Ecuador, we scheduled an appt with him to return to teach him next Sunday. We left him with a book of Mormon and a card with our number. Then we walked around some more, and a group of Hispanic 7 year olds mobbed us! ha-ha they saw that we were passing out cards with pics of Jesus on them. After we gave them all cards and told them whenever they see us walking around they can come to us and get more cards. We then met a few more people, but since it was raining so hard and was getting late we decided to head back to the Suburu. While we were walking back, we heard "YOUR AN ANSWER TO MY PRAYERS!!" and we turned around to see this old lady on her bike coming towards us. We then met Gina, she had taken a couple lessons with the missionaries before in north mass, but for some reason had to move down here to Milford. We talked about her situation, she said she has been praying for help in her life allot lately and that she talked to her friend an hr before she talked to us. And her friend told her that she would find an answer to her prayers sometime tonight. Then she found us! We gave her a book of Mormon, and exchanged numbers. It was a crazy experience!

Im glad to hear that you kimi's wedding went well, yesterday on the 'T' going into Boston we met a family and they had a daughter that knew Kimi from stake young womens or something. Thats Awesome that Kev is going to San Diego Spanish speaking, when does he leave? That's too bad about quins grandpa, how old was he? Quin turned 18 back in February.

This past week was really fun, we had Zone conference on tues then we attended a ESL Class in the Milford Library, we will probably go to the class again tonight, but it was fun helping out the Brazilians and Ecuadorians try to learn English. We visited the Velasquez family on Wednesday, they are a less active family from Guatemala. They were once offended at church so they haven't gone in the last 15 years. We shared Matthew 9.10-13 and tried to help them understand that church is like a hospital, and that we are not perfect but that we attend church to get better and come closer to Christ. Then on Thursday, we had the Larsen Family(NFL PLAYER Spencer Larsen) load up their moving bins and helped get ready to move to Denver. We then did our weekly planning and tried to visit some inactives. On Friday, Michael canceled our appointment so we visited Jack Daniels, 87 year old member. We shared a quick message because he had to leave for the temple, but he asked us if we had anywhere to eat that night and we said no. So he walked into another room then came back and handed us a 20 and told us to eat somewhere nice. So we did. We went to a Brazilian Restaurant, Sabor De Minas. It was delicious, we had rice and beans, with fish and beef kind of stuff. We then went tracting and contacting for the rest of the day and met a couple cool Brazilians. Then on Saturday, we taught Pedro's friends Jose and Zoila. We went a bit more about the restoration, and talked about baptism. We left telling Pedro that he should work on possibly inviting them to come to church and explaining more about the importance of going to church. Then we went tracting out in the freezing cold rain(45degrees) we went 0-15 with no one answering and then we found a lost dog walking around. So we tried to find its owners. We tried one more house, and an old lady from Portugal told us that the dog belonged to the house on the corner. So we went to pick up the dog then some big black guy shouted at us and said it was his dog. That was probably the most exciting part of the day, until we visited the Camacho Family and had a Brazilian soup/stew and watched the 62 min restoration video. On Sunday, we went to the Branch in the morning and met Bro Guerero from Argentina. He is going to move to Norfolk sometime in august. Then we went to the ward missionary correlation right before church. Right as we walk out of that meeting, we saw Bro Campbell(1st counselor Bishopric) with the translating equipment. We asked him who that was for, and he said Pedro brought some friends to church that cant speak English. We immediately then realized that Jose and Zoila were there. We were excited, but a little nervous because Elder Swasey had never translated in Sacrament meeting. We walked in and talked to them for a sec, then Elder Swasey had to go to stand and translate into a little mic. And Pedro, Zoila, and Jose listened in on their headphones. He seemed to be doing pretty good. Then at the sacrament, I handed Zoila a Pamphlet that talked about why we partake of the sacrament. They seemed curious on what was going on with the bread and water. After that we had a couple speakers that were all over the place. So Swasey was having a difficult time translating. But overall it went well and they got a bit out of sacrament meeting. Then we went to our Spanish Sunday school class, they were right at home there. They were able to understand the gospel allot more clearly there. After Sunday school, sis camacho took zoila and translated for her in relief society while Elder Swasey translated for Jose in High Priest Quorum. Pedro had to attend aLDSJOBS.ORG orientation, so I needed to go to that and try to translate for him. I had never translated before but I feel like it went well. After Church, we then tried to visit more less actives with no one answering. Then we later went to the Fletchers house for dinner. They are such a great family, and are very active in missionary work. We shared a brief message with them and helped them realize whets next in their process of bringing others to Christ. Then on Monday, Elder Swasey and I went down into Boston for Memorial Day. BOSTON IS AMAZING!! The coolest city I have ever been to, we went all over and even got to spend sometime with Elder Swasey's former Trainer. He went home in August and is engaged already. His name is elder Phillips and seems like a cool guy. We took lots and lots of pics around Boston. We went to the finish line of the Boston Marathon and took pics of where the bombs went off. We also visited the shrine and memorial for those that were injured in the bombings. Walking around in Boston was so fun, everywhere we went we saw people running. It by far looks like it would be the funniest place to run, because of how pretty it is and all the sites there are. We went after Boston to visit The Velasquez family again, they brought their friend cesar and we watched the Restoration video with them and discussed it after. They are such an awesome and interesting family.

Today we don't have as much time to email, and we need to get our groceries still, so till next week

Whets up?!? Im approaching my 3 month mark out on the mission! And Now im almost an experienced pro ha-ha

It sounds like you guys had lots of fun in Alaska! Those pics look really cool! What was your guys favorite part about the trip? That's awesome that the Gannon's house got sold, and hopefully the English's will get sold too. That's exciting about softball! Tell the girls to keep playing hard, and maybe sometime soon Emilee will get a homerun like me, ha-ha we played whiffleball with a group of 13 year olds and I drilled a homer over right field! The little 7th graders never saw it coming!

That's great for Kailey that she can sleep in now on Mondays, but why did they stop doing the paper on Mon? Also how bad is the damage on the van from when she backed it up into something?

When is your first Full marathon this fall? Hopefully you can be back to normal in time. Is your akilis and calf still bothering you? We are going to try to run allot now. Last week before we moved out I was able to run 3 5ks...18:52,19:27, 19:04

We are officially now living in Milford! We are living in an apartment Complex called the Groves. There is so much diversity in culture around here, we have met lets of Arabic, Latino, and European people that are now our neighbors. Now that we live in Milford, we can more effectively find the Hispanic culture

On Wednesday last week, we had our pday. We went to Boston, and we took a 17 year old priest with us as well named Thad Textierra. It was all 9 nine of us walking around Boston visting the sites. If you get a chance, check out a store called Bodegas. It is a really cool store, but is super expensive! They had a leather jacket for 2,000 dollars. The coolest part about it is that when you walk into the store, it looks like a rundown convenience store but when you approach the vending machine and say BODEGA..it opens up into a really classy room selling expensive jackets and shoes.

After Bodegas, we checked out a Christian science store, then left for the Boston Commons. Because that's where the new missionaries will be contacting for the first time. We were in our pday clothes, so when we ran into the new missionaries we would pretend to be random investigators and ask them lots of crazy questions about the church. First off, we ran into the two elders. Elder Calvert(byu ball player) and his comp. But Elder Calvert recognized elder swasey, because of a mutual friend so that didn't work. Next we split up, and it was me and Thad looking for the rest of the missionaries. He was wearing a tank top, so he didn't look like a missionary, and that did the trick. Each time we went up to the missionaries, We would ask the toughest questions we could, and eventually got to the point of asking the most ridiculous questions until one of us laughed. The first time, the sister missionaries noticed my ctr ring and called us out. The Second time, I took off my ctr ring, and we were able to ask some pretty funny questions. We asked about polygamy, and I asked how many husbands do they each have? They then explained that they didn't have any, then Thad said "Oh, I see..so you guys are like Sister Wives then right?" haha, we both were able to keep a straight face and continue to talk. They eventually left us with a Book of Mormon and a phone number to call for the rest of our questions. Haha, it was pretty fun to mess with the new Greenies and another bonus is that Thad has a book of Mormon he can now give to his Girlfriend!

Later that week, we had a zone meeting. And we found out that Elder Calvert is in our zone, and is serving in the Hingham ward with Elder Peterson. With them only an hour away, we definitely want to schedule a bball game with them.

On Saturday, we taught another lesson to Jose y Zoila, and went exploring around Milford. We found a cool little bike statue and took some pics there. Later that night we had a meeting with the Ecuadorian Council in Milford. We attended and negotiated a deal for us to broadcast on to their radio station. We have several choices, either me, elder swasey, and Pedro (LOS 3 AMIGOS) have a talk show every week, or we play general conference talks each week. We are discussing with the bishop all the details but should work out someway. Also there is an Ecuadorian Festival on the 22nd, we are looking to get a booth full of Spanish books of Mormons and pamphlets. We ARE TAKING MILFORD OVER!

Yesterday at church, we had prepared a lesson for the priest quorum but found out that pedro was also teaching a lesson for the high priests at the same time. So elder Swasey went to the high priest to translate, and I went to the Priest quorum and taught the lesson. Then we had an Interfaith Choir Performance at our chapel. It was neat, our chapel was packed with nonmembers. We Performed a song called, Watch the Lillies. And before our song, sis Sander asked me to go up to the pulpit and read a quick scripture about the song...Luke 12-27....After we performed, we met with as many nonmembers as we can..then we went to our lesson with Divino. He is a Brazilian from Minas Brazil. We discussed the restoration, and he seems really interested. We left a book of Mormon and a pamphlet with him. and we are going to meet with him on Friday probly..

Well that's all for this week! Love you guys solo much! Love to keep hearing from you!

Hey Mom!

This past week was really good! Last Monday (pday) we went shopping at the Wrentham Outlets, and elder Bennett and elder Moser bought suits for a couple hundred dollars and I bought a cool little hair trimmer. So then later that night we ate at the McDougals house and heard about their conversion story and we also discussed Joseph smith history as well. Then on Tuesday, in the morning I tried out my little hair trimmer and gave my self my own hair cut...but it didn't turn out very well(ill send a pic). So elder swasey didn't realize how bad it was until after we already left for the day haha! So I went the whole day with an extremely uneven haircut. On Tuesday, we searched around for service opportunities. We found an opportunity with the Portuguese club, we exchanged info and will most likely help out in July. Then we went to the Milford Youth Center and met Sidney, the head guy at the MYC. He is puerto rican so we speak Spanish with him. He showed us around the awesome facility, they have huge bball courts, baseball batting cages, and lots of sick stuff! We are now volunteering there weekly and play bball with all the middle school, high school aged kids. Each time we go there we sing them a song as well. Then after that we went to the Whites and helped them move, we sprayed their house off and helped paint some stuff. Then because it was elder orton's bday we ate cake and sang him a song. After that, they showed us a weight machine that they wanted to get rid off, so Elder Swasey and I volunteered to take it off their hands. Because in our new appt, the gym is being renovated still and we need to lift! They said tomorrow we could swing by and pick it up. Then we went to Esl Class for an hr and met some awesome Brazilians. Then that night, swasey helped fix my hair so it doesn't look to crazy. Then on Wednesday, we went back to the youth center and played ball with the kids. I was able to talk a little to a kid named Bobby, about missionaries and the word of wisdom. Then after, we went to Norwood and visited the less active family Gonzalez's. Thursday, we went tracing and went around Milford and bought some Brazilian food and Ecuadorian wristbands so we could fit in here. We also went on splits with bro butler and visited the Martels, that was fun too. On Friday we had a district meeting and ate at Qdobas in Foxborough. We after went and bought jump ropes for us to work out with. We then tracted Oliver Street, and met jose y carmen. They let us in and we were able to teach the restoration to them. Lots of other good stuff happened as well that night, as well as getting flirted with by 14 yr olds. We then played bball the next morning. We play with Elder Calvert, the byu bball player. He was a solid player, we were on the same team for the first hour or two and never lost, then we got separated and split the last two games. Yesterday was strange having fathers day without being with dad, but was still a great day. We found some cool pictures for our booth this Saturday at plain park. The Ecuadorian festival will be a huge event for us and hope to talk with hundreds of Ecuadorians that day.

I'm sorry I cant go into too much detail, short on time, but I enjoyed reading the letter about Alaska. That must've been really fun! Were you guys ever in Anchorage? Thanks for all your letters, it is always nice to hear how things are going back home. BOSTON is doing good, going strong. Love you guys!

This past week was really really good! We had a lot more success with tracting and street contacting. We were able to enter into an Ecuadorian home on our second house we knocked. Their names our Jose y Carmen. They both know no English, and seem very interested in learning more about the church as well as us helping them with their English. We taught them el Restauracion and got their info and plan on returning this week. We are working with Zoila and trying to commit her to baptism. The only thing that is keeping her away is that she doesn't realize that baptism without the authority from God is meaningless. We have continued to use the analogy of how if an Ice Cream Truck tried to pull you over and give you a ticket would it be legit. But we emphasized that only through proper authority can these covenants be fully made.

Yesterday Night we went tracting at Water st. And there is a apartment complex at 44 water street that has one side all from Brazil and one side all from Ecuador. So when we knocked it, it went back and forth from using Spanish to Portuguese, Portuguese to Spanish. It was lots of fun! We just ran out of BofM in Portuguese after that. But we are going to stock up a lot for this week, we have an Ecuadorian Festival on Saturday. Its going to be all day long, and their is a futbol tournament that is going to on as well. We will have our own little booth with pictures of Christ coming to the Americas, as well as 100s of books of Mormon in all sorts of languages. We are really excited for it, and we are extremely lucky to have such a dedicated ward missionary, Pedro de La Torre. He is the small Ecuadorian that comes with us everywhere. HE is about 4'7 and me and swasey are 6'4ish so wherever we go we look like his Bodyguards! Its awesome though, everyone knows him throughout the community so we really have an in here.