Week 36 ~ January 21, 2014

Welll I would have you know that Moscow, ID is a lot different than Colbert Washington. Haha they are like polar opposites and i love it. so this is my new area and it is a mostly walking partly car area. I love it here because it is a college town and so people are just walking around everywhere so there are always people to talk to. I love street contacting people. Sometimes they are rude. well rude is an understatement but yes you get the picture and sometimes you get some very unique people. and sometimes you get some good gospel conversations with people. I love it. you never know what you are going to get. So my new companion is Sister Hoffman. She is waiting for her Visa to Brazil but she has been waiting a while. like almost 9 months since she put in her Visa information. poor soul that would stink to never get sent to your assigned mission. Its the Lord's will though it will all work out. anyway she is awesome. We are always walking down the road laughing our heads off over something. She has learned that my greatest comfort is my retainer and that i cannot sleep with out it. she thinks that is funny. haha shes weird. anyway she is learning Portuguese and some missionaries were talking to people from Brazil so we just picked up a couple new investigators from Brazil and she is suppose to talk to them in Portuguese but she doesnt know it very well so we are going to start talking it a lot more. who knows, maybe i will come back home knowing Portuguese. that would be cool but it probably wont happen. She is so cute and we are always laughing. its nice to have companions you can laugh with. This week has been one of the weirdest weeks of my life. Sister Hoffman said that she hasnt had this many weird or awkward experiences her whole mission until she became companions with me. I think it might be just me. I feel like awkward and weird just follow me around every where I go. I love my new area right new especially because of the fact that these people here are so humble. the rich part of this area are like the poorest in Colbert. It has been way humbling to be eating dinner with the people in this ward compared to my last. Most of the people here are going to school at the University of Idaho or they work at the college or the are doing something that has to do with the school system. so they are just living happy humble lives. It put things in my life into a little more perspective. The reason i titled this email Break through week is because i finally made a change in my life. previously i DREADED eating left over food. But i have now had a change of heart. Left overs arent half bad. i actually like having them because that means that you dont have to make new food. you just have to throw it in the microwave and then you are good to go. fast, easy, not as delicious but still okay, food!! so yes mom i now eat left overs. I will admit that i probably wont want them after my mission because i have decided that i am going to be living at home for a while so i can get back into the swing of things of my mother making me dinner and breakfast every morning and often times lunch too. thats what i prefer. so mom... i love you and i miss your food but i have learned to eat left overs for the  time being :) <3 other than that it was a great week. i have had some crazy fun, funny experiences but you will just have to read my journal after the mission for these ones :) I love you all so much! thanks for all you do for me! 

Love Sister Johnson

Email from Ward Mission Leader (Talk about some PROUD parents!)

Brother and Sister Johnson,

I’m the Ward Mission Leader in the Colbert Ward – where your daughter, Sister Johnson, is currently serving.

I’ve been the Ward Mission Leader for just about two years now, worked with a large number of missionaries, and just wanted to let you know how grateful I am that your daughter is serving in our ward.

She’s amazing. Her love for the people she teaches and her ability to communicate that love – along with her testimony – make her a great missionary. As I’ve worked with her for a few months now I’ve been able to see how eager she is to be obedient as a missionary and how zealous she is to share the Gospel. Those she teaches find her very kind, personable, sincere, and very easy to relate to.

She (and her companion) have been able to truly work miracles in our ward as they have worked hard and sought to do the will of the Lord.

I have no doubt that she is literally helping the Lord Hasten his work, and she has been a great asset to our ward. It has also been my (and my family’s) privilege to get to know her a bit while she has been serving here.

Thank you so much for having such an awesome daughter and sharing her with us.

Regards,

--Mike

I can't tell you how much I love receiving emails like this.  thank you for being so good to Sister Johnson.  it makes it a lot easier to have her out there serving the Lord knowing there are people like you there to help her.

Tami

Sister Johnson,

Sending the email was really my pleasure. Sister Johnson is getting transferred out of our ward today – I’ve already heard from a number of families how sad they are. She really has blest the lives of SO MANY people here. She’s hands-down one of the best missionaries I’ve had the privilege of working with.

Regards,

--Mike

Week 35 ~ January 13, 2014

Well This is about almost my half way mark of my mission. i have 13 transfers and i have made it through 6. so time is just flying on by. I am finally getting out of Colbert. It was a great ward and i loved it there but it was time to leave. Like SO beyond time to leave. I had served there and done all i could do and now i am ready to leave. The ward is going to miss me though :) i already know it!! 

So this week has been definitely one for the books. I was told that i was part of a cult about 5 days in a row which is weird because i havent been told that for my whole mission. i dont know why but i think it is strange because the actual definition of a cult is any organization so i guess the true definition is yes we are a cult but well... everything is a cult. but i know thats not what they meant. i am part of some crazy religion that forces people to leave their homes and try and make people get baptized!!! haha just kidding thats not true either. i love being a missionary. if i didnt like it i would have been home a long time ago!  Then the funny things started happening. No one knew when transfers were coming up but everyone started giving me stuff. not Sister Stratton just me. like I got a home made rug. i got some Horchata its the best! and jsut little things here and there that they didnt give to sister stratton. i was laughing so hard. i think that was Heavenly Father telling me that i was for sure going to get transferred. My new area is going to be in the Palouse River ward. I heard it is a very rural area with a few small towns all together. i am not really sure much more about it. i dont know if it is in Idaho or if it is in Washington still but its some where around there. My new companion's name is Sister Hoffman. I dont know anything about her either. anyway then on friday i show up to a zone training meeting and we only have one zone leader. come to find out my zone leader got called to be the new assistant to the president. so now both of the AP's are my old zone leaders. i have been trained well! its exciting. i love all the changes that are going on around here. The most exciting thing that happened this last week was on saturday. Elder Anderson of the quorum of the 12 apostles was around spokane somewhere and he wanted to meet with us. so we gathered our whole mission together (which is the first time that has happend) and he came and spoke with us for 3 hours I am sure my dad has already creeped the picture of it on our missionary blog :) He was so funny. i love being able to meet the apostles like that because at conference they are all on their best behavior and then with us they kind of  show us who they really are and they are a lot more fun to be around. but He taught us about repentance and how it is a process not just an action. which really stuck with me. i like that because if you just repented then you would be perfect instantly but we are just humans. we are a little bit slower than that. so we need to repent. change a little bit. repent again change a little bit more and just make it  a whole process not just poof your done. and then he talked about the atonement. which is exactly what i needed. he said that if you think you understand the atonement even a little bit then you need to be humbled and you need to realize that you dont know anything. he said that the atonement can never be understood. ever. until we are dead maybe. but still that brings me a lot of comfort to know that even an apostle of the Lord doesnt even understand the atonement and how it works. i have been thinking about that a lot lately. everyone says that the atonement can help you out just use the atonement. and i am like what you think i am stupid i am trying but it doesnt make sense so i have figured out that it will never make sense i just have to try my best :) one last thing that i learned while i was there is how real the savior is. He is literally the head of this church. he is telling the apostles and prophet what to do and how to run this church. i love knowing that. i love being a missionary for the lord and i love doing this work. and work it is!!! i love you all have a good week!Sister Tori Johnson

Week 34 ~ January 6, 2014

So its a new year! Cant believe it!! I am super excited for what 2014 has in store for us. We had such a great week. it started out with a new investigator and ended just as exciting. we have a new investigator her name is Renee. She is so great. She has had a few trials just recently in her life that i feel like set her up perfect for the gospel. she got laid off and she had a daughter pass away and she is just at a point in her life where she is making a lot of changes and so what better time to make a change than to be baptized :) she has a lot of potential but we have only met with her once so i will keep you guys updated on her progress :) People were pretty busy this week cause of the holidays. luckily school is back in session and life will start to slow down again for our investigators and we will be able to meet with them again. New years was great. we got to come home at 7:00 and then we fell asleep early that night. if you dont know already, any extra sleep a missionary gets is like the best thing in the world. i sleep any opportunity i get. which is not very often. i love sleeping as you may have known before my mission i would sleep about 12 to 13 hours a day/ night so since i have been deprived of that, my body has gone through withdraws. i can still sleep whenever nad where ever though so dont you worry about that. the ping pong table came in my room came in handy this past new years day too. we went over to a memebrs house and we were playing ping pong against each other. i totally trashed everyone in the house so that was a lot of fun. well miracles are happening every single day. i love being here in the work. i dont know what i would be with out my testimony of the book of mormon and with out my family who loves and supports me in everything i do. you are all so great!!! 

Love Sister Johnson

Week 33 ~ December 30, 2013

Well a new year is just around the corner. I cant believe I graduated almost two years ago i still feel like a little kid. Sorry! So this past week rocked! the people here are so great!!! We just went house hopping both christmas eve and christmas day. I fell pretty hard on Christmas eve i already told my family this but it was pretty funny it needs to be said again. So we were leaving this house and they have a really long drive way and we parked at the end of it since we knew there were going to be tons of people there and i didnt want to back sister stratton up so we were walking down it and there was another car who left right after us and they were following behind us with their head lights. well one important detail is that there was TONS of ice EVERYWHERE and so we were trying to walk fast and the whole time we were trying to walk a little fast to get out of their way as fast as possible. so right before we get to the car i am trying to rush out of the way and get to our car anyway i slip and land flat on my back it knocked the air out of me and i wacked my head pretty good too and the people behind us jumped out of the car and i am like SO embarrassed and hop up as fast as i can and am dying laughing it was so funny. sister stratton almost fell from laughing so hard. it was so slippery so now i walk like two miles an hour everywhere i go. not going to risk that again. and so now we are just havning the after effects of chirstmas at our house we are not about to take down our christmas decorations any time soon we have snowflakes and paper chains everywhere!! its awesome!! then it snowed again yesterday and sister stratton is about as experienced in driving in the snow as i am. and she tried to climb a mountain that was completely covered in ice haha it was so funny i got out of the car and said welp good luck!! anyway i literally pushed the car to flip it around to go down the hill facing the right direction. its a good thing i am buff. well... use to be. not so much anymore. but we picked up another investigator this week. he is a nine year old little guy it is so cute! I LOVE teaching children way better than adults. they are way more humble that the old farts ;) haha well this week has been great thanks for all the Chirstmas Packages you all sent! i love them all especially the scarfs and the warm gear!! they are much appreciated! hope you have a good week!

Love,

Sister Johnson

Week 32 ~ December 23, 2013

Well well well. its the Eve of Christmas Eve!! I Love the Christmas season so much!!! Seems like everyone is in the right mind frame of coming to church!! I love the Christmas excitement too. all the children have been on pins and needles waiting for Christmas day. I love it so much!! But as a pre Christmas Present Heavenly Father sent some snow our way. It was such a blast. Sadly it is starting to melt away i hope it sticks around long enough to still have a "white" Christmas or like a nasty brownish white Christmas will work for me too. This week has been fun though. we got a few gifts for some of our ward members and for our ward mission leader we got him a kit kat cause i guess those are his favorites. anyway sister Stratton said that we should ding dong ditch it and so we dropped it off and took off running and there was tons of snow on the ground and as we turned the corner my feet decided they didnt want to stay underneath me and i landed flat on my back. We were laughing so hard!! For those of you who dont know me very well it always turns out to be when i do anything exciting I usually end up on my face or my back at least once before the night is over. It didnt hurt at all though. It was nice fresh powder so I was still good. Then the lessons have been a little snow because of the crazy busyness of everyone with Christmas so close but we have just been walking the streets and talking to people plowing their driveways. I love talking to people. Everyone has their faith and the things that they put all their trust in and its cool when you can tell that they are looking for something and we are there to offer a tid bit of how much God loves them and how he has shown us through a living prophet that we can live together with our families not just here but for ETERNITY! I love thinking about that. I feel so blessed to have the knowledge that i can be with my family for forever. Makes the trials in life not so stinky cause i know that it is just a small fraction in Heavenly Fathers time. It also helps encourage me to do all i can here so that when i do die i wont regret anything!! Its been great. Well i Love you all so much!! i keep you in my prayers and hope that all is going swell in your lives. Dont forget about your savior this Christmas the gifts dont matter just the birth of our savior. I Love you!!

Sister Johnson

Week 31 ~ December 16, 2013

Good afternoon everyone! Hope the warm weather is hitting you too! it Rained this week instead of snowed!! Tender Mercy of the Lord. He knows me very well! Well this week has been incredible!! It started off with a lesson with one of our most awesome part member families. The Boyd's are like my all time favorite. There is the mom who is a less active member coming back to activity with a non-member husband and then they have 3 daughters who are the most adorable things in the world. We love them so much! We taught them the plan of Salvation. The dad hasn't shown too much interest but he just wants to know what we are teaching his children so he has been sitting in but in the Plan of Salvation he was trying not to act too interested but we had a map laid out all over the floor and he was moving trying to get a good view of the map. When we caught him looking he had to pull his phone out so that he could act not interested :) It was good. Then they came to our ward Party on Friday and I think they enjoyed it. The dad hasnt come to church yet but his girls are loving it! Then there has been this girl coming to church the past couple of weeks and the friends of the girl said that she was ready to take the missionary discussions and get baptized!!!! MIRACLE!! I have never seen something like that in my life! So we are going to start teaching her soon :) she is so great! i am so stoked. It just strengthens my testimony that this is the Lord's work. I can Work and work and work and work and nothing will happen. but as soon as i turn my success over to the Lord is when he starts blessing me with people to share the gospel with. so there are always super prepared people and then there are also those people who just want to bash with us... we had one of those this week too it was so funny :) there was this guy who was a youth pasture for some religion. and he had a paper full of quotes and book of mormon scriptures to try to prove that we dont believe that it is by grace that we are saved and idk all of this crap it was quite funny he was bound and determined to stump us. needless to say he just looked stupid. we had brought this young man with us that just got back from his mission a couple weeks before and so we had to leave and the lesson wasnt really done yet so the kid that just got back from his mission stayed there and didnt argue with him but argued with him for another hour and a half. haha i thought it was so funny. its been good to have people who will go with us to lessons. like that. Well i am almost out of time but i love you all thank you so much for all that you do for me! Merry CHRISTmas! and a happy new year! :)

Love Sister Johnson