Week 24 ~ October 28, 2013

Well i made it through another week. dont worry i didnt die! but i am actually doing great!!!! i had a bit of a cold the last couple of weeks and so i am starting to get over that. but this week we have really started to get our ward more involved in the work! I love it when we are able to get our ward members excited about missionary work! this last week we were able to teach a young man who is dating a less active girl in our ward. he is so great! he has gone to church with his friends his whole life practically and really just wants to learn and grow! I asked him last night if he wanted to be baptized and he said he does more than anything he just wants to make sure he is doing it for the right reasons. well he is 22 years old so guess what... He gets to go to the ysa ward!! SO LAME!!!! he is so prepared! but that is okay it is all the same work! but I am doing good fall is beautiful I love it out here! winteris just around the corner though! I am mentally preparing myself for the worst! I love and appreciate all you guys do for me! I will keep praying for you all and I hope your all praying for me! I need all the prayers I can get :) haha I love you!

Love Sister Tori Johnson

Week 23 ~ October 21, 2013

Hi everyone!! Another transfer has come on gone. Lots of changes around the mission but not for me! I am staying right were I am in Colbert, WA and I am going to be here with my same companion Sister Stratton. Sister Stratton is excited we are both staying here. We have a few investigators that make it easy to stay for them. A couple fast Sunday's ago we were encouraged by our Zone Leaders to pray and fast to find a prepared family that is ready to hear the message of the gospel. Well guess what! We found ours! They are the Bradeen's. The mom is a less active member and they have two young kids. I have talked about them before I think but the mom's parents are members and have just started going back to church. They plan on going through the temple in the next few months :) perfect example for their children. We are so excited because we contacted them a few months back. all the way back in August but haven't been able to go over to their home until this past week and we hit it off so great with both the mom and the dad! Apparently my boyish attributes come in handy with cool people. He loved that I rode a dirtbike he was asking me all about it and stuff like that. I love it when I can connect with people like that. I also bore testimony about how my dad joined the church when he was 16 and how his decision to do that has blessed MY life so much! I told him how my family is special because of my uncles decisions and how my dad could have easily been just like his brothers but decided to join the church and it was the best thing he could have ever done for me in my life today. I asked him if being baptized and joining the church is something that he would want and he said yes. He just wants to do the best thing for his family. He doesn't have much of a religious backround at all so its going to be just a fresh start for everyone. Its a miracle!!! I love it when I can bless families like that. So that has been just a small portion of our week. I love being a missionary!! The Church is true the Book is blue and Jesus is the Christ!! I love you all and pray for you all often! Keep me in your prayers! I need all I can get ;)

Love ya!

Sister Tori Johnson

Week 22 ~ October 14, 2013

Well i got in trouble for not writing a long letter so i suppose i should do a long one today!! well  monday i was able to go on exchanges with our sister training leader i love sister hood so much! she is the cutest thing ever! she is a southern bell she is so cute i loved being on exchanges with her! but needless to say i was excited to get back to my own area! we were able to see so many people. we have a few investigators who are learning and are very interested in what we are teaching them. we have about 5 good investigators who seem pretty solid! Thursday was insane though! my mission president thought it was a good idea for us to have a night specifically set aside to do tons of missionary work. were were given like a week and a half to set up appointments starting at 5 and then 6:30, 7, 7:30, 8, 8:30 it was not fun! that is not enough time in between each lesson! we were in a rush all night in panic mode! it stunk! never again will i do that! but friday was awesome! we had a lesson with one of our investigators Chris. His wife just died not too long ago but i think that i have told you guys about him before but we had a good lesson with him on the plan of salvation and how we are here to have happiness and joy and our trials are in our lives so that we are able to gain experience and be better from them. he is definitely looking for the truth but we will see if he grabs ahold of it and runs with it. he is so great though and he has so much potential! saturday was the best day ever! we did so much service and helped out this lady who has cancer and cant rake up her pine needles so we raked them and ended up with 15 bags of pine needles and pine cones! those pine cones are not jsut any pine cones though! sister Stratton called them killer coneys because they were SO SHARP!!!! i was amazed at how painful they were!! so we had to gingerly put them in the trash bags! but it was so awesome i was in my jeans most of the day and so that was a treat! this week has been so great though we have seen so many miracles here in washington! the tree's are beautiful too and idk everything is just so great right now and i am so happy and i am doing well and i have the best family and friends at home and it is just the best time to be a missionary here in spokane! i love you all and hope all is going well!

Love Sister Tori Johnson!

Week 21 ~ October 7, 2013

Sorry everyone i was being lazy this week and didnt feel like writing a long email! sorry but i am doing good and everything is going good i love you all and miss you all!!

Week 20 ~ September 31, 2013

Alright everyone So the nice warm weather has come to an official end.... :( I am getting really nervous for winter. I have been stocking up on every warm thing I can find in the store so we will see how well I am doing in a couple months haha but this past week has been really great! we were able to talk to so many people even with the weather getting a little bit chilly people have still been outside working a lot. The biggest excitement this week was with our investigator his name is Davey Chavarria haha you have to roll the double rr good and strong. he is kind of a weirdo but I am starting to love him a lot. haha he is a very interesting guy. he retired from the military about 5 years ago and then now his new job is like a broker or something he was saying what he did but it didn't really make sense to me so I just kind of zoned that one out. oops not a good missionary. but oh well. SOOO that's not the point. He's an interesting fellow and so I didn't really have much faith in him progressing and putting forth much effort into learning about the gospel but as of now he is the most progressing investigator this area has had in a long time!! well since I got here which is like 4 months ago! But we had a lesson with him Monday and it went really good and the me and sister Stratton stopped by his house on Friday to chat with him really quick and we invited him to a baptism on Saturday but he wasn't able to go to that BUT we were talking about church and he was asking all kinds of questions on where it was and when it started so we were like hey come to church!!! (Heavenly Father has to throw things in our face for us to recognize them sometimes) but then we were thinking like hey he should go on a church tour before he comes to church and so Saturday night we took him on a tour and it was so great! other than the wedding reception going on at the same time..... >:[ haha its okay though we still felt the spirit so strong and then sunday afternoon he was there at church!! he had the coolest suit ever! it was like army green wool with blue plaid on it! it was seriously so cool! and then he got swarmed by everyone at the church who knew he was coming! poor guy he is a little more reserved so that might have been a little much for him but that is okay I think he felt welcomed but he stayed for two hours and he was there and it was just super awesome!!! we have another appointment with him on Wednesday so we will see what he says about church.  but I have repented a lot for this but out of all of our investigators he is the one I had the least amount of faith in and he is just so awesome!! he got a Book of Mormon from one of his XO's in the military 23 years ago and he has never read it before but he is reading it now! :) it is so exciting to see people start to accept the gospel. he says that he has never gotten an answer from heavenly father before and so he doesn't think that god will answer his prayer but we know that he will. :) well that's all the excitement over here in Colbert WA I want you all to know how much I love the Lord and how grateful I am for all of you and your support! I Love you!

Love, Sister Tori Johnson

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