Week 19 ~ September 23,2013

Well i am feeling lazy today so just a fair warning this is going to be a short email. its cloudy and rainy here in spokane! beautiful weather but it is getting a little bit chilly and i am a little worried because everyone says that the last few winters have been mild winters and that they are all due for a doozy :/ i am definitely terrified for my life!! So this email i thought i would give you a little idea of what my days are like. So I wake up every morning at 6:30 on the dot! I usually mosey out of bed say a prayer then try and exercise. Ask my mom I hate exercising that early in the morning so it usually isnt the greatest work out then at 7:00 I shower and i get ready. i have learned to be ready within 45 minutes. most the time i am too lazy to get too ready so i end up looking like a scrub everyday. i dont care though. my hair has gotten a lot more curl to it since i have been up here though. thats a bonus of the humidity. then i cook breakfast and get dressed and then starting at 8:00 i have a whole hour to do my personal study time. right now i am trying to power through the book of mormon and i have been marking it up like crazy. a month ago i ordered these miniature book of mormons so i have been working on marking it up before Christmas so I can send it to someone for christmas. I am at the end of 2 Nephi so I should easily be able to get it done before the holidays. Then me and sister statton do an hour of companionship study (not my favorite thing to do in the world) we plan lessons that we are going to have later on that day and then if we have extra time we usually read a talk on the atonement or something like that. im the boss so i tell her whats up. haha okay im not really that tough. then depending on the day we go out and start talking to people at 10:00 in the morning or we have lunch or we go to the library to get on the church websites and do some studying that way. i like getting on the computers because the internet videos are so great!!! my favorite one right now is http://www.mormonchannel.org/our-heavenly-fathers-plan?v=1834798902001 its a good one :) then we are out knocking on doors until 9:00 at night. its hard going over to peoples houses at 8:30 especially when they have little kids. so thats been our biggest struggle lately but its all good :) then at 9:00 we plan for tomorrow where we write down people that we want to see the next day and then we usually get done with that at 9:30 and so the rest of the night we have to unwind and write in our journals everyday is different between 10 am to 9 at night because we are able to talk to so many different people. i love being able to share my testimony with them and maybe they will feel the spirit telling them something and maybe they wont take a second thought on it . but i love being out here! tomorrow is my official 5 month mark!! CRAZY!!!!! seems like i just got out here in the field like 2 weeks ago. i have learned so much and i cant believe how much closer i am to my savior!! i love it and i love all of you! hope all is going well. you are all in my prayers! 

Love Sister Tori Johnson

Week 18 ~ September 16, 2013

So this week we were able to do a lot. Me and Sister Stratton are getting along much better now. we had a little hiccup but we are back in business! I dont know if I mentioned this before but for the last 1.5 months and the next 1.5 months we are studying the atonement of Jesus Christ. Such an amazing blessing the atonement is!! By studying it I have been able to change my whole perspective on life and who God is and who Jesus Christ is. Literally changed my whole life. If anyone wants the materials I have found just ask and its yours! But anyway to get to the point we have an investigator who is so great. She has been taught for 2.5 years off and on. She has heard everything but its never really sunk in so we started teaching her about 2 months ago and so we had to figure out what was holding her back from becoming a member. She didnt understand the Atonement and she didnt understand why she needed Jesus Christ. Perfect because we have been studying that very topic like crazy for the past month and a half! we have loaded information on her and she has been taking it well. She is such a special person in my eyes and Heavenly Fathers. I love her so much and so tonight we are going to invite her to be baptized and set a date for her to work for. I truely believe that she is ready and that heavenly father is so excited. She had dinner at a friends house on saturday with a member in a different ward but she was able to get a blessing because she has had a lot of health problems and the elders that were there having dinner with them said that she was crying by the end and just had such a strong spiritual experience. I am so grateful to have access to the priesthood of God anytime i need it. At home and out here. There is such a powerful thing about getting a blessing. Its directly from Heavenly Father, how could it not be amazing! Umm I dont know what else happened this week. I forget everything that happens. I write in my Journal every night though so I can look back later on it. Too much to remember. I love you guys so much and pray for you all everyday! Have fun and be Safe!

Love, Sister Tori Johnson

Kellogg Family

Hi Tami

We just spent an hour with these two beautiful sisters.  It is a joy to have Sister Johnson in our home and we tried to remind her of you tonight with breakfast for dinner.  She is a beautiful young lady and you have much to be proud of.  Thank you for sharing her with the north Spokane stake, she is doing a fabulous job. 

Julie Kellogg and family

Week 17 ~ September 9, 2013

Another Transfer come and gone! only 9 more to go! Time seems to be flying by! it is pretty crazy how fast everything is going! Things here are going great I have one more transfer with my companion Sister Stratton. Heavenly Father is trying to teach me to love people from Utah. Its taking more than 6 weeks i guess haha but yeah we are having too much success together to separate us now. But our area has been blowing up and i am looking forward to staying to serve with these people another 6 weeks at least! So this past weekend we had stake conference and we were able to attend the priesthood session, the adult session, and the regular session a broadcast for that. Our stake president here is very dedicated and he asked the question why is Heavenly Father hastening his work so much now? and that has been my question for a while now and his answer for it has really stuck with me and has taken a lot of my thoughts. He said maybe he isnt just hastening it for other people but for ourselves now too. Satan is working so much harder to destroy our families and tear them apart and will do anything to get one person at a time in our families, so maybe he is sending more and more missionaries out to help strengthen us as individuals as well. He stressed that our testimonies of His gospel are not set in stone that they can slowly deteriorate. Pretty scary I know!!! But he said that praying to our Heavenly Father every single day and night will help us to keep our testimonies strong. Satan is doing everything he possibly can to drag us down. I hate the thought of that but its true. He is working twice as hard to get us! So another thing the people here were counseled to do as families here is to ALWAYS have family prayer, family home evening, and family council to help strengthen the bond of the kids and their parents. I love those three things and know that those three things can help our families stay stronger and more united to help protect us from the fiery darts of Satan. It literally breaks my heart to think of the people who are struggling to stay strong in their faith and are sinking into satan's grasp. Satan does have so much power but I can promise each of you that you can over come anything that satan throws at you especially with the help and the strength of our Savior Jesus Christ. Sometimes its hard to read and pray everyday, there seems to be better things to do but not doing them is way too risky to fall into Satan. I hate Satan so much but I know it is part of Heavenly Fathers plan for us to show how strong we really are and how we can resist him. He is there to help us and won't ever leave us alone. Sooooo thats what I learned at stake conference. I loved it! I can honestly say that the hastening of the work of the Lord has saved me. I dont think I would have ever been able to come this close to my Heavenly Father and Savior if it weren't for coming out on my mission. I feel so blessed and think i am getting more out of this than anyone i have come in contact with! I beg all of you to continually do the things that will bring you closer to God. This world is too wicked to trust anything other than God and His gospel. I love all of you so much! and pray for you all continually. 

Love Sister Tori Johnson

This is my family away from you guys! This is the Bastians the three little girls are all triplets and i love them so much they are the cutest things i love them! and the mom is so great!!

Week 16 ~ September 4, 2013

This week has been CRAZY!!!! well sorry its so late in the week but P-Day was switched to wednesday this week so yeah. Not my fault! anyway we have been so busy this week! we picked up a new investigator this week and we have been eating with a bunch of members and they are giving us people to go knock on their doors and its just been so awesome!  So one house that some members told us to knock on i guess his daughter has gone to girls camp a few times and so we knocked on his door and he talked to us a while and we gave him a book of mormon and it was awesome! he was curious about what our church teaches his daughter at girls camp! but i guess everyone at his church got mad that he let his daughter come to a camp with the mormons and he told them to all mind their own business and that he can do whatever he wants with his family haha i was impressed :) but he was super kind! its nice to have some support from the members! they have started working with us quite well!! makes it much easier! okay so we use to have a rule where we could only eat with members on weekends and they changed the rules so we could eat with them every night now. (not so good on my waist! i cant pick what i eat and what i dont eat now so i have started gaining weight and it sucks) thats besides the point so it all goes through our ward mission leader but we have to keep telling him not to schedule us dinners this week because we have dinner appointments with investigators!! they are all offering to feed us and so we tell our wml that we have better plans we have only eaten with a member once this week because of the holiday it was hard to get a non member to feed us :) this area is starting to explode its almost stressful cause we cant see everyone we want to. but it has been so good. i have a family here that i absolutely love! they are the bastians they have triplet girls they are the cutest things in the whole entire world!! they are 8 years old and they just love us and we just love them i promised them when i get off my mission that i will come up here and take them snowboarding they will be 9 years old so we can get them started off early. i am so excited for that. its starting to get cooler and cooler here at night and the days are getting shorter and shorter. they say that in the winter at 4:00PM it will be dark already i am not looking forward to that at all! thats going to be so hard visiting people up until 9:00/ but its going to be all alright. im not too worried about it but it will be an inconvenience. other than the fact that we have no time spare time to breath anymore its going great! i love being busy. Transfer calls are on sunday though!! so i am getting scared i will tell you on monday whether i am staying in colbert another transfer or if i am on my way to another area its exciting but scary at the same time. Transfers are always the most stressful things out here! i love being a missionary! Heavenly Father is helping me out in every way and I feel his love and support constantly every day!! Jesus Christ is my best friend is with me every second of the day. I am so blessed to have this opportunity to serve my Father in Heaven at this time and I am even more blessed to have the support from all of you!

I Love you all!

Love, Sister Tori Johnson

P.S. if any of you send me mail send it to 

820 S Pines Rd St 101

Spokane Valley, WA 99206 

(Be sure to put my first name on the envelope there are like 5 sister Johnson's)