Service and Struggles...Week 12 in Arkansas

This week was a rather busy week, we had lots of service we were assigned to do slowing the missionary work down a little bit but the service days are usually some of my favorite days. Tuesday we helped paint a non members house and had pizza after which a rather nice service project and flew by but wednesday we had another service project that wasnt quite as nice as the first one. we got a call to go help a old lady move and we figured it would probably only take an hour since she was single and lived in a tiny appartment. when we pulled up to the appartment there were five other sets of missionaries sitting outside waiting to start. we were all wondering why we needed so many missionaries to clean such a small appartment but once we opened the door we found out why. the entire appartment was trashed, full of half full boxes, garbage thrown everywhere, cat hair all over the floor, mold on some of the walls, old diapers everywhere, and a old lady asleep on the couch. she was a big cat lover and a hoarder as well. every room in the appartment looked just like the first one we had seen. we had twelve missionaries working for 4 and a half hours to clean and pack all her stuff and we didnt even finish. it was really disgusting. everyone felt pretty sick afterwords, I felt alright until friday I think it caught up to me and I was sick all day. Saturday was a really sad day for me and my companion. one transfer before I got here a guy named mike sykes was baptized into the church. he was the only member of his family that wasnt a member. he had a wife and four kids, one of them just a few months old. they had always been struggling  to pay the rent and make it by but they managed to finally move into a small house they could afford. among all this they have been a less active family so we would go visit them 2 to 3 times a week to talk with them and invite them to read the scriptures and come to church. over this time we had become really good friends with mike. we were going to visit them this saturday but on the way to his house we got a call from sister beavers, mikes step mom and a member of our ward telling us that mike had just committed suicide. it was really hard to see something like that happen to that family. leslie, mikes wife, has been left without a job, 3 teenagers, and a new baby to take care of by herself. keep there family in your prayers! other than that not much happened last week. this upcoming week is transfers but me and my companion will be staying here unless they pull a fast one on us. miss you all! hope all is going well for yall!

Love elder Johnson