Week 43 ~ March 11, 2014

Well this week i have been learning a lot about faith and what faith is. Faith is really hard. Its a hard thing to have sometimes. It takes faith to get on your knees and pray to God and ask him for things believing that he really is there and really will answer your prayers. it takes faith to walk out the door sometimes. it takes faith to do pretty much anything in this world because you are having to trust in God and what he has planned for you! Just a simple scripture I read the other day was Alma 32:21 "Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things, therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen which are true." When something comes up in life. it is okay to not know for certain what you are doing. As long as you have faith in the lord and trust in what you know to be true, you are exercising your faith and it will be strengthened.

Well my week was incredible! so much happened spiritually and physically i dont think i can tell it all in one email!
So we had a baptism this week on Friday and so we met with Nigel everyday this week. I will tell you what the gospel changes lives every single day. i am so grateful for that. so on monday we asked nigel how school was and for the very first time he said it was good! Then on tuesday we asked him again and he said it was a great day. and every single day his countenance just got brighter and brighter and all the way up until his baptism it has just been sky rocketing. Friday night as he was waiting to be baptized he couldnt sit still! Him and his friend Nevar were just running around in their white jump suits and couldnt sit still because they were both so excited. Navar is his 17 year old friend that baptized him :) I was just so excited for them! i couldnt believe how happy they were to be there. Nigel was just smiling from ear to ear and that was the first time i had ever seen him do that!  Then on Sunday when he went to get confirmed in churhc when the bishop said his name to go up to the front he jumped up and basically ran to the front! he is one special dude. i love him so much! 

Then on Wednesday we went over to our other Investigators house Emily. She is the one that is on date for baptism on March 29th She is such a sweet girl! we asked her if March 29th was still on her mind and she said "Thats the plan!!" I cant wait for that day. not only cause it is my birthday but because she wants to get baptized on that day!
So There is this lady in our ward who is planning on moving. who knows if it has actually happened yet. she has a LOT of stuff! Like she is a hoarder! BUT she is moving and said that she is only taking what can fit in her car. which is really a bid deal! then so we have been going over a couple times a week to help her throw away all of her stuff. i think her moldy muggy basement makes me sick tho. i am not necessarily a fan of that... 

Then okay sunday was like the funniest thing. so we wake up and we had to switch our clocks becuase of day light savings time (still doesnt make sense to me but what ever) so we get jipped an hour of sleep then at 7:00 in the morning we get a knock on our door and sister burk is in the shower but i figured it was just other missionaries and so i open up the door and see the missionareis and they ask us for a ride i am like well we will have to wait for sister burk but sure we can give you a ride. So we wait for sister burk and i still hadnt showered yet i was just a crust ball and then we give them a ride and then come back home. then when we get back to our apartment pulling up sister burk is like oh no i forgot the key to our apartment. i was like crap so we check and yep locked! haha so we call our land lord and beg him to get a key for us and so we are just hanging out in the other missionaries apartement until we can go an dget another key when we finally do its like almost 8:00 and so i go home and i get in the shower and am late for studies... i was so sad i missed 30 minutes of my study time. thats my favorite part of the day. anyway so church was great and then we went and taught Brother Pupunu. he is so great!! we taught him that it wasnt the church of Joseph Smith but that is was the Church of Jesus Christ. So hopefully he can figure taht out but the last exciting thing that happened this week was that on  sunday i guess our ZL has something go wrong and then he went to the ER and so me and sister burk asked his companion if he wanted us to go and bring them snacks because the hospital is in our area and it was like 8:40 at night so we rush home grab up whatever we can and then we rush back to the hopital and then we went and visited the sick and afflicted on the Sabbath so it was so great! this week was so! Miracles happen every day when you have faith and trust in God. 

Week 42 ~ March 3, 2014

This week i have been learning a lot about the atonement of the Savior. I have learned that we must trust in Him and trust that everything will be okay. So we have our investigator Nigel and he is getting baptized this Friday!! he is so awesome. he has had so many trials in his life tho. the poor kid my heart just goes out to him every time another curve ball comes. So Heavenly Father is helping me learn that its okay to have trials in our lives thats where we gain the most faith and learn the most. and so i have to just trust that the saviors atonement is going to be there to lift him up and carry him through all the hard things that are in his life. its hard to watch some one suffer though. its okay tho the Lord loves him and the Lord loves me so it will all be okay! 

This week it was so hard to say goodbye to sister Hoffman! we went and had lunch and took pictures on Tuesday morning and then we had to say good bye at 1:00 and i was just balling. she really has become one of my best friends and she will forever be my friend. Then I got to meet my new companion. She is definitely a lot different than Sister Hoffman but she is the sweetest thing. I have really enjoyed being with her. We are very different but we seem to work very well together and we never argue or anything we just do missionary work and everything works out good! So remember when i had told you about those people that invited us over for dinner and they just told us how much of a lie our religion is and how we are just brainwashed. so we got a referral from the elders the other day and so we go and knock on the door and you would never believe it.... Trisha and James!! the FRIENDS of the people that invited us over!!! CRAZY huh! yeah so when they opened the door i saw him and panicked big time and almost ran away but i played it cool and we talked about anything other than religion and then i asked to say a prayer and then we bailed as soon as possible! haha it was stressful! she still wants us to change our religion she text us and stuff after we left. Then we had one of our members kimber invite another friend on a church tour and it was so cool we got another investigator but we have to send that one to the ysa missionaries. he is so legit tho he is going to be baptized some day! but anyway things are going great thanks for all your love and support!! 

Love sister Johnson

Week 41 ~ February 24, 2014

So I have been thinking about how much I have changed since i have gotten out here on my mission. The whole point of this earth life is for change. We are suppose to evolve from our natural, carnal state into a saint. Easy right? NO!! Not even close. I read today in Mosiah 27 and this is the story of Alma the Younger and how he got converted to the Lord. He went about trying to destroy the church of God but with the prayers and faith of the righteous, The Lord was able to send and angel down to visit him and the sons of Mosiah and convince them of their wicked ways. I love the way that Alma the Younger compares his life before and his life before. He thought he was having fun while doing wicked things but after he gets converted he says "My soul hath been redeemed from the gall of bitterness and from the bonds of iniquity. i was in the darkest abyss; but now i behold the marvelous light of God. My soul was racked with eternal torment; but i am snatched, and my soul is pained no more." When we are making bad choices it draws us away from our Father. and our SOUL longs to return to our Father in Heaven. its our natural man that draws us away from him. The thing from that story that stands out to me is in verse 31 it says "Yea, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess before him. Yea, even at the last day, when all shall stand to be judged of him, then shall they confess that he is God; then shall they confess, who live without God in the world, that the judgement of everlasting punishment is just upon them; and they shall quake, and tremble, and shrink beneath the glance of his all-searching eye." If we dont try our best here on earth and change while we are here, its not that God is going to be mad at us and Damn us to Hell. WE are going to CHOOSE to not be with Him. Does that mean that we ahve to be perfect? No! We just have to try our best and not waste this time here on earth and make changes that are for the best. So you know in your year book everyone says "dont Change" well that a load of bologna, CHANGE PLEASE!!! Jesus Christ is there to forgive you when you fall short he will ALWAYS be there you just have to accept his forgiveness and change! :)

 Well i have seen a lot of change this week. some of it good, some of it a little sad but necessary. So we have our investigator Nigel who is getting baptized in about 2 weeks. He is so solid. He is just ready for the change in his life. we met with him 2 times last week and then we went to this horse orphanage outside of town and did service and brought him along with us. I think that was good for him. He is a rancher boy and hasnt done manual labor for a while and so i think he really enjoyed it. it was so funny because it has been snowing then raining then snowing then raining all week so everything is slushy muddy gross. So when we got to the horse orphanage we were walking in Slushy muddy gross POOP! haha it was so funny we were just shoveling the horse poop but it weighed so much because it was wet and it smelled so bad. it was a lot of fun tho we had lots of missionaries there and so that is always my favorite moments when there are lots of missionaries around. 

our other investigators name is Emily. She is the sweetest thing i have ever met but lately she has been really busy and so we havent really been able to meet with her at all for two weeks. :( so sad. she is in key west right now too so we cant meet with her this week either. she is on date for march 29th but if things keep going like this we might have to move it back and that would make me so sad! 

so earlier this week it was like a tornado! with rain and everything blowing you over! i dont know what the heck was up with that it was pretty funny though. it hurt so bad with the rain on your face and we were just sopping wet freezing and walking on the side of the road. anyway while we were walking some random lady pulls up and says "i see you in the neighborhood all the time do you guys want of ride?" of course we said yes!!! haha but she wasnt a member and so it just made me realize that there are truely some incredible people out there and i was SO grateful for her. well i forgot my journal at home so i cant really remember much else than that. sorry!!! but i hope that you all have a really good week this week! The church is true the book of mormon is true and Jesus is the Christ!! 

Love Sister Johnson

Week 40 ~ February 18, 2014

We had lunch with some of the sisters in Moscow. It was so much fun! we went to applebees

Hi Everyone!!! So This week was great!!! We started out by teaching the crazy hoarders again. we probably wont be going back there as often anymore. it is scary. they are starting to pick it up a little bit though. Then we taught our investigator Nigel. He is so great. He is on date for March 8th and so no problems have come up to where it would hinder him being baptized yet.  We taught him the word of wisdom on saturday and he hasn't had a cup of coffee for 3 months! so I think all is well in that category!! Then awe man tuesday night we got invited to go over to someone random persons house on the road to have dinner and me and sister hoffman have been stressing that dinner appointment for a while and we were not stressing it in vain!!!! they are like these young couple who just got married and they are preggo with their first baby and they had some friends that had a little infant and they joined us at dinner too but before dinner they were so nice and they were so sweet. during dinner it started getting a little contentious but mainly because they just didn't understand. They believe in predestination and i said that we believe in foreordination and they think that thats the same thing... and they think that christ only suffered for some people that were already predestined to go back to heaven with God... :( sad day. but anyway me and sister hoffman did not want to argue AT ALL so with our lessons we watched a video called Mt To Climb and then we read a scripture out of the Bible Isaiah 53:3-5 and then Alma 7:11-13 in the Book of Mormon to show that they dont contradict each other. but then the man of the house starts to say that the Book of Mormon is full of lies. then he says well those verses were truth but the rest of it is lies. then we asked if has read it but he said no. haha but he like gets all intense and says that our church is full of lies and that we are being manipulated into a bunch of lies... it was dumb because he says the book of mormon is full of lies except for that verse that we read with him and that we are a just brainwashed but then he believes that nothing we can do can change whether we make it to Gods kingdom or not and that all you need to do is have faith in Jesus Christ. Last i checked I have faith in Christ so i dont know why he is so worried about us. haha so yeah that was fun and a good experience. 

Then on Wednesday we had a zone conference (dad there should be new pictures up :)) but anyway that was really fun. we were all gathered together as  3 zones so there is about 60 or 70 missionaries together and we do some "recreational activity" while we are there to split it up and its just were we have a scripture chase. they split us up from how long we are out so its like 0-6 months 6-9 months (there are lots in that group) 9-12 months (thats me :D) then 12-1 year. anyway we do a chase with those missionaries and then the winner of that group goes to the final round with only 4 missionaries and then we have a competition in front of everyone. Needless to say you are reading the Email from the winner of the scripture chase.... not to be boastful or anything but i was pretty awesome!! I love the knowledge Heavenly Father has blessed me with with the gospel and the book of Mromon it has been such a blessing in my life. i love it so mcuh! Friday for valentines day we wanted an excuse to get into the houses of members that we typavcally dont get into so we had some of the moms in our ward bake cookies and so we separated the cookies down to like 5 in a bag and took them to our less active members and some of our investigators. he was quite successful! we got lots fo referrals and lots of softened hearts. Saturday we were driving around and it was raining and we drive past his basketball court in a park and these two old guys are playing and so sister hoffman said that we shoudl go talk to them so i pull over and we go talk and they were possibly pretty drunk and it was just so funny. on of them forced us into a prayer circle and we prayed right there in the rain and then we gave them mormon.org cards with our church building address on it and believe it or not one of the guys came to church on sunday!!!! That is what is up!! we have an appointment with them for tomorrow morning :) haha MIRACLES HAPPEN EVERYDAY!!! last but not least we got a new investigator!! He is a retired NFL player and is the football coach for the U of I football team! his family is all members and he comes to church every week but he just said that it is hard for him to believe that Joseph Smith really did see God and so we have what he needs. who knows maybe he will be prepared to be baptized soon. We asked if he has ever read the Book of Mormon and he said no and i am like you silly goose! thats how you are going to know if Joseph Smith really Did see Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. haha its stressful when they wont read the book of Mormon. THat is the proof that we have that he really was a prophet. we will get him :) anyway i thank all of you for all that you do for me everyday. Just so you know if you ever want to send me mail send it to 

820 S Pines rd st 101

Spokane Valley, WA 99206 

dont send it to my actual adress. things get mixed up when you do that! Thank you so much i love you all!

Sister Johnson

Week 39 ~ February 10, 2014

This week went so great!! we had some awesome miracles. So we have this girl in our ward who is just loving doing missionary work everyday she like begs to come out with us and she like invites all of her friends so last saturday she invited this new kid at school on a church tour and he said yes he would come! so apparently he had been taking the missionary lessons in Kansas where he is from and he was about to get baptized but then something came up and he wasnt able to get baptized! So when he got here and she invited him we were so excited!! like so excited! So yeah he is on date for baptism on March 8th. The poor kid has had a lot of trials tho :( on Saturday he told us that his mom had over dosed on drugs again that he was really worried about that. It makes me so sad to hear those kinds of things cause its not fair to have those kinds of things happen to innocent kids. I just have to remind myself that God is aware of them and He loves them. He knows what they are going through and even though its not fair, that Jesus Christ suffered the Atonement so that those kids will be able to taken care of and loved and Christ knows exactly what they are going through so he knows how to help them. I love Alma 7:11-13 those are like the best scriptures that have helped me get through little things like that. but another miracle is the next day we went and we taught Emily again and we taught her the restoration and she is now on date for baptism on March 29th! Me and sister Hoffman were so scared to put her on date. the lesson went really good and then when it came down to the end where we invite them to be baptized and sister hoffman invited her to be baptized and usually we ask them a date right afterward and we both kind of paniced and looked at each other but she asked her to be baptized so i was like okay looks like its on me and everytime i invite someone to be baptized i always mess it up! like evertime! so i start talking and i asked her if she wanted to be baptized on march 29th and it actually turned out not too terribly bad! haha it was good. she accepted thank goodness and I am so excited especially since that is my birthday! i cant believe i will be 20 years old. Thats way weird i am still just a kid anyway Friday was fun we went out to lunch with our District Elder Rose and Elder Cox are the goofiest elders ever! its my favorite. They call us every night because we have to account for how we did for our day anyway that takes like 2 minutes and we end up talking to them for like 30 minutes everynight cause they are so funny and they just make us laugh the whole time. They are so goofy but yeah we went to this place called mongolian bbq and it was so good! then saturday we went on exchanges. our Sister Training Leader is sister Rasmussen she is really fun but i was grateful when Sister Hoffman came back. she is like my favorite companion ever I will be sad when she gets her visa to Brazil. so yeah this week has been good thanks for all your love and support! 

Love Sister Johnson

Week 38 ~ February 3, 2014

Hello Family. Well last weeks email stunk so this time before I even Tell my Mom that i am on i am going to write everyone an email. So this last week has honestly been one of the best weeks on my mission. It started out with a fun game of Marshmallow Dodge ball. Honestly the most fun game i have ever played in my life!! I have our whole zone hooked on to it now! :) Then after all the fun and games were over we went and we taught a lesson to a recent convert who is preparing to receive the Melchizedek priesthood and is planning on going through the temple in March. He started out with a rough life and he was literally left with nothing and was homeless and he prayed to God and asked for help and immediately God was there for him and so he said the rest just brought him to the Gospel. He is so awesome and has such a strong testimony of Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. Anyway... we taught him about Priesthood and Auxiliaries. I love sharing messages about the priesthood because of the experiences in my life where i KNOW that the priesthood power is real. I have seen way too many miracles to deny the power of the Priesthood so it was great to be able to bare testimony of how he is going to be able to bless the lives of his family and of many people when he gets the priesthood. The next lesson we had was with one of our investigators who is on date for baptism on March 15. I am not super confident that she has very much real intent to know if it is true. She has taken the missionary discussions a lot and she knows what we believe in and she doesnt want to stop drinking coffee or wine. or change really any part of her lifestyle. there is something bigger holding her up we just havent really found it yet. 

Okay so Wednesday is like a day for the books oh my gosh!!! Haha it started off TERRIBLE!!! We got a new apartment so on wednesday we went to our old one to kind of clean it up a bit before we turned in the keys for good. well we were cleaning out the refrigerator and we pull out the drawers at the bottom of it to clean underneath them and we look at it and almost want to cry.... there was SO MUCH CRAP plastered onto the bottom of the fridge. We were so mad! haha why dont people clean up messes in the fridge as soon as they happen!? haha we were so frustrated. but cleaning the fridge made us late to our next appointment. which we walk to because we only have a car on Friday saturday and sunday. So we were like sprinting but we were not making it anywhere near on time so we show up late. the member made us hot chocolate and brownies and so those were good. but then us being late to that appointment domino effected the next appointment. so we were walking to this members house because i forgot my planner in their car and we are lost without those things and we were already late for out appointment with this really old couple who we didnt think they would even remember our appointment but anyway we were walking and sister hoffman looks at me and she tells me that her stomach hurts so bad. i was like oh crap she starts power walking to the members house and she keeps saying how bad her stomach hurts and i am like oh crap. haha and it was like a 2 mile walk from the lady that gave us the hot chocolate to the members house and she is in like panic mode. anyway we finally get to the members house and the member is out on her driveway scraping the snow off from the night before and the first thing sister hoffman asks is if she can use her bathroom. haha she was in there for a little while and i was like oh you poor soul. haha i felt so bad. anyway she finishes up there and graciously the member we went to to get my planner gave us a ride to the appointment that we were an hour late for. so we walk into this old coupleshouse. they are like these crazy hoarders like on the tv show on TLC. but it was real life.... plus they have this nasty cat that has like a million tumors on its back. anyway we sit down and sister hoffman asks to use their bathroom too!!!! My eyes get really big and i am thinking oh my gosh this has to be bad!!!!!! So I awekwardly sit in my small corner of the couch that doesnt have junk on it and wait for sister Hoffman. it was the longest bathroom time of my life. haha so we have that lesson and then we are walking down the sidewalk on this pretty busy road and a semi drives by and a mist of black gunky melted snow comes spraying on us and it was so gross!! but we keep walking and we go to our next appointment when we walk out of that appointment we look out and its raining. I know you guys would never understand this because i didnt use to until wednesday but when it is snowing and then it switches to rain... that is like the worst thing in the world because the rain like collects with the snow already on the ground and so instead of just running of into the drains it lingers with the snow and makes it super slushy and so its pooring rain and we are walking in slush puddles and we are inevitably soaking wet. we are like okay lets have dinner. we walk into this place called Mongolian BBQ it was SOOO good. (thanks dad) but we were sopping wet sitting there eating our food. so have to go back out into the raining snow and there were just huge puddles everywhere it was terrible haha but anyway we go to our last appointment of the day and BAM!!! Golden Investigator!!! She is the wife of one of our members who is less activeish. but the sisters before me were tracting and ran into them and so we started teaching her and we have a return appointment and the spirit was so strong and we are going to put her on date this wednesday for March 29th :D SO AWESOME!!! so even when you have a crummy day, dont get Discouraged! Heavenly Father is just keeping you humble enough to be prepared for a miracle! Me and sister hoffman were just laughing all day in the snowing rain though it was funny casue we werent getting discouraged at all we were just saying how much worse could it get. and then it got worse haha but it was a lot of fun. no matter what we are able to keep our spirits up and keep working hard. She is like the best companion ever! 

The next day we went over to this creepy guys house Dennis who is usually drunk and we run away from him on a typical day but another set of sisters ran into him and offered to do service for him and so they got us to go with them to help clean and then we didnt want to be in there with him so we got some elders to go with us to keep us safe. haha so 6 missionaries in a tiny 2 bedroom apartment. haha so we go in there and start picking up and one of the elders looks down and underneath Dennis's refrigerator there is a Book of Mormon holding his fridge level... haha i about lost it!! i was laughing so hard. and he had like 5 Mormon.org cards and a pass along card taped to his front door. haha oh dennis. so we cleaned his house pulled to book of mormon out from underneath his fridge and read the introduction with him. it was awesome and we invited him to say the closing prayer and the open his prayer he says "Hey Dude." and goes on to say that he thought that we were coming at 6 (but we really were suppose to be there at 1 but didnt show up until 2) and that if he knew there were going to be so many of us he would have left a bigger mess to clean and he said that he was grateful for the kind people that are still out there like us and how he has grateful for us. haha it was so funny how he started out with hey dude haha that was the best. hahahaha

as if our week couldnt have gotten any better on friday night we get a call from the vehicle coordinator in the mission and he calls and wants to give us a new car.... SCORE!!! we got a brand new subaru legacy and it is a CHAMP in the snow!! it has all wheel drive and so we were mobbing up these icy snow covered mountains like it was flat ground.
So the week consisted of a new car and a new house.. whats next.... IPADS?!?!? oh how i hope so!! hahaha but yes it was the best week of my mission i love being with sister hoffman. she is like my best friend. we work hard and we are going to baptize nations. or just moscow either one. we will take it :)
Love you all!
Sister Johnson