A Story

HOLA!!!!

Well let me start by telling you a story. Once upon a time 3 sister missionaries were weekly planning and realized that this could possibly be the last week that they were together (because transfers were coming up in a week) and that they really wanted to work really hard this last week and teach a lot of lessons, be exactly obedient, and see miracles happen. So they prayed and made a promise to God that they would be exactly obedient this upcoming week so that that could happen. Then the next day one of the sisters said "oh man, you know what else we should do for our last week together? We should all dye our hair!!" The other 2 missionaries replied, "What a great idea?! That sounds like so much fun!" So off they went with their day talking about what their new hair color would look like and about how much fun p-day was going to be.

Then Monday arrives, and they decided that they should probably get a hair cut too because their hair was getting a little unhealthy. So they call up a member and went over to her house so start off their super exciting day. They only needed a trim so they figured it wouldn't take a super long time...1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours later they are STILL there!! The trims turned into hair cuts that not really any of them wanted. And p-days are only so long and they had some important hair-dying business to do! But they shrugged it off, ran home ate, emailed their families, bought the super expensive 8 dollar boxes of hair dye and walmart, and began the process. Immediately before they started, they all had a sinking feeling in their stomach warning them that what they were about to do was possibly not the greatest idea, but hey, it was going to be fun! So all 3 ignored the feeling. They started with a sister named Hermana Bullough, she was going to be going blonde. The other 2 sisters worked as fast as they could to get all the dye in her hair as possible because they only had like an hour and half till they had an appointment. As they were putting the dye in, she read the box. "As you turn to ash blonde you will find that it will help get rid of the red tones in the hair, etc." Oh no, she thought, why would it say that? My hair is going to be red!! The other 2 quickly responded and calmed her telling her that that was ridiculous, her was going to be a very pretty blonde. She was calmed and then it was time for the other sister.

This sister's name was Hermana Johnson. Now Hermana Johnson chose to go darker. So with very little time left the other sisters quickly put the brown dye in her virgin blonde hair. Although she was nervous, she was excited to see what the outcome would be. After both these sisters went there was not time to do the 3rd sisters hair, but they decided that they would finish with hers the next p-day. So excitedly and nervously they both took showers and started getting ready, for they had an appointment in about 20 min with an investigator. They got out of the shower, blow dryed their hair, and did everything they could to keep the tears from coming out. Hermana Bullough had an orange halo on the top of her hair, and hermana Johnson's hair was BLACK-an emo looking black!! AHHH!!!! What were they supposed to do?! They had to leave! Oh, they had an idea...Sister Drinkwater, a professional hair person who just happened to be serving in their mission. The phone call went something like this, "Sister Drinkwater, we need help! Hna Bullough has orange hair and Hna Johnson's hair is brown!" Her response, "You are all DEAD!! You dyed your hair?! Oh man, this calls for an emergency sleep over...I'll be there at 9:00" So then they cleaned themselves up, did what they could with their hair, and left for their appointments...although they did get their a little bit late. So much for the exact obedience thing, haha. They came back that night and sister Drinkwater came over to save the day.

Yep, that's how our week went. It was actually super funny. It was a good lesson on listening to the spirit, if we all had of payed attention to the super duper strong impression we all had to not dye our hair, it would have saved us a lot of trouble. :) So that is the lesson for the week, the spirit is working, make sure you listen.

Despite all that, our hair actually turned out really well after Sister Drinkwater fixed it up a bit. I'll send some pictures so you can all see. I have brown hair!! Besides that our week was actually very good. We repented for not being exactly obedient and we ended up teaching 31 lessons with almost all members! It was crazy, we are going to see a lot of success with helping our members invite their friends to be taught, we are really excited!

Well transfers are this week, there are no changes for us which is AWESOME!!! We were sooooooo excited when we found that out. I love you all and I hope you are having an amazing week!
Con amor,
Hermana Johnson

 

El poder de los miembros

Hola a todos!!

So this week was super good. I definitely have the best companionship in the mission and it makes a huge difference in the everyday missionary life. This week we worked hard and had a ton of fun, I love it! At the beginning of this week we had a training on how to use members better in our finding and how to strengthen them as well. Our ward is mostly converts, like 95%, and a good part of them were baptized in the last 7 years, so that combined with a whole bunch of other stuff just means that our ward needs a lot of strengthening. SO i was thinking about what we could do and we decided that we were going to focus almost solely on the members in our ward. We dropped a lot of our investigators (except for our really good ones like Teresa) and gave some of them to other missionaries as well and we have been focusing on the members and less actives. It has been soooo awesome! It's crazy cause we still have a TON of work. And I am really excited to see how many referrals we are going to get from working through them instead of by our own finding means.
We have been meeting a lot with Sarai Cervantes lately. I don't know how much I have talked about her, but she is the mom of Kimberly, the girl who got baptized when I was first in this area. Sarai is sooo awesome! She really wants to go to the temple and we are helping her prepare for that. I am hoping that she will go through before I go home from my mission!

For choir we are preparing for an Evening of Music on the 22 of this month. I am suuuuper excited about it. One of the Senior couples (fun fact: his name is Elder Loyd and he worked with Derek Marquis for years) in our mission scheduled this concert for us for the purpose of bringing non-members to the concert. It is going to be huge! There are so many people coming. Pretty much everyone in the mission knows about it and they are told to bring their non-member friends. Our goal is to fill the chapel and all the way back to the stage with non-members. Then we are going to sing for an hour about Jesus Christ and the Atonement mainly and our mission president will speak for a little bit. It is going to be CRAZY!! Crazy thing to is that it is the night before Elder Risk goes home so it will be his last concert and then I am going to take over the choir!! Ah!!!!
Oh and we sang at a ward yesterday and we all got a text that said that one fo the investigators or non-member friends that was there at the performance decided to be baptized during sacrament meeting!! So cool!! The choir works!
I am doing great, being on a mission is such a fun time of your life. I love the people, I love my companions, I have soooo many blessings, and it has been such a good experience to share my testimony with members and non-members alike. Transfers are next week and I have ABSOLUTEY no idea what will happen, but come what may and love it, right? :)
Les quiero bastante!!
Hermana Johnson

I love being a missionary!

Hola a todos!!

I love being a missionary!! Everyone in the world should take the opportunity if they can to serve a mission. This week really wasn't anything spectacular, nothing crazily different happened. But I really have spent a lot of time realizing the amazing opportunity I have right now to be a missionary, a full time servant of the lord. I have the opportunity to spend all of my time learning how to listen to the spirit so that I can better be his servant and find the lost souls around me.
I have such a great love for the people here in this area, I never want to leave. We had a couple really powerful lessons this week with some less actives and active members who are struggling. We read D&C 121 with them and felt the power of the knowledge that our trials are only going to be for a short moment.

We found a solid family yesterday. Their names are Isabel and her son Alan. They are one of those families that just have a light about them. Alan has a TON of awesome questions, he was very open in our lesson and the spirit was really strong. We are probably going to pass them off to the elders though because he is 17 years old and the elders in our ward would just be the perfect people to teach him. We have become quite the distributors of investigators lately...this is like the 4th person that we have passed off lately, and we have another one of pass off, haha.
Ok one of them is actually a super funny story. So we started teaching this guy named Glen. He was super awesome, accepted a baptismal date (I think I talked about him a while ago) and really wanted to come to church. We started helping him apply for a bunch of jobs so that he could change his work so that he could come to church and everything. So we were super excited about it. About the time that we were helping him with the resumes and everything he started acting super weird, we didn't trust him, and we could tell he was pretty much just interested in us and not in the message. So....we passed him off to the elders. They had a super awesome lesson with him and then we said bye and that was it. Then the elders called him, texted him, called him again, texted again, and he wouldn't answer them. The funny thing is that we would NEVER call him to set up appointments, he would always call us and schedule them. Hahaha, super funny. So yeah, we have been passing off some investigators after that, we don't really want that to happen again... :)
Teresa and Miguel didn't come to church :( We have been really struggling with getting our investigators to go. That is our only focus with them this week. Tons of prayers so that they come would be awesome!!
I love this work, I love the gospel, its true, and the lord has a plan for each and every one of us. Even if we don't understand it, don't like it, or are having a hard time seeing what the plan is, God knows what he is doing. Trust him. Les quiero bastante, y espero el dia en que los vea otra vez!!
Hermana Johnson

Benidiciones galor

Mis queridos amigos y familia,

This has been a great week. Did I tell you all about Teresa?!?! Well, pretty much she is a miracle. So our roommates have been teaching her and her family forever now but they finally decided that because she spoke spanish and she didn't understand most of what they were saying, they should pass her off to us...wahoo!!! Well, she has so much desire to learn, she is the golden investigator. My companions and I all had this vision of their family going into the temple to be sealed together and I know that they can do it. It is going to take a lot of work because her husband doesn't believe in God right now. But the Lord is preparing him to accept this gospel. He had this super spiritual dream and it led him to wanting to meet with us!!! So we are teaching both him and his family...they want to do it separately right now, but that will change. :) I am really excited to see them progress. I know that the rate that they progress is completely dependant on our faith so prayers for them and for us would be awesome! Their families names: Teresa Herrera is the mom, Miguel Barrera is the dad, and the kids are Natalie and Sophia.

This week I just realized how much I am blessed. We sang as a choir at a youth fireside last night and it was super awesome. I love singing for youth because for some reason the spirit is just really strong when they are all together. But while we were there I realized that I am sooo blessed. I have been blessed with an amazing family, amazing parents, an amazing mission president, a crazy opportunity to lead a choir of 80 people at the age of 20, amazing companions, the opportunity to be at the front end of this last battle for the salvation of souls, and just with so many other things. Us, as members of the church are INCREDIBLY blessed!!! My challenge for you all is to write down all of these blessings, to remember them in hard times, and to help those around you to have them. Think of the blessings that we have that others do not, they need those blessings. I promise you they are searching for them. There are thousands of Teresa's searching for more happiness, searcing for the truth, and searching for these blessings. It is our job as members of the church to figure out who those people are. Pray for the gift of the spirit, for the gift of discernment, and pray to be able to put yourself in a position to be able to share these blessings with others. And then actively put yourself in positions where you will be able to share, don't sit around and wait for God to do it for you...cause he doesn't work like that. I love you all, I miss you all, and I hope that you take this counsel to remember your blessings this week and share them with those around you. LES QUIERO!!

Tu hermana, tu amiga,
Hermana Johnson

Some good turns and some bad turns

This week had both some good turns and some bad turns. We'll start with the bad.
We got a text from Benito a couple days ago that said that he didn't want to get baptized anymore, that he changed his mind. Ugh. We were like, what the heck?!?! It was super random cause the day before we had had a really powerful lesson. So we called him and talked to him about it and asked him what had happened. He kept making up excuses, that he didn't have enough time, that he was still meeting with the Jehovah Witnesses and they were hispanic and he liked that better, and other stuff that really didn't make any sense. So i spent a LONG time on the phone with him trying to figure out what was going on and bearing my testimony. Finally at the very end of the conversation he told us what his real concern was....he really liked a girl from the Jehovah Witnesses church and she told him that she wanted to marry him. HAHAHA!!!! Are you joking me? That was his concern, which was completely valid because he is like 45 and lonely so I understand that that would be hard, but he didn't want his family to be in 2 different religions. SO...he didn't want to meet with us anymore. Try as we might, he wouldn't let us. We were suuuper bummed. Fast forward a couple days. We call him and he confesses that he feels terrible and that he thinks that this is actually the true church because he has felt terrible ever since then and and didn't feel like that when he was meeting with us. So he does want to meet with us still!! So it really isn't that bad of news, but he won't be able to get baptized this Saturday...we don't think. We are going to see him tomorrow though. PRAY FOR HIM!!!!

But also this week we had an AMAZING training! We had some people come down from Salt Lake to train our mission about a new way to teach. They showed us how to use pamphlets and questions in a very simple way to bring the spirit in every lesson. They showed us how to have the investigator receive revelation immediately on the spot during the lesson with the way that we teach. It was AWESOME!! It was an all day training and we learned a lot, but the spirit was super strong there. It was a very spiritual experience and one that has helped out in our teaching a lot. We have used the new method almost every single method and have gotten some really good results. I am excited to see what will happen as we improve in our ability to teach it.
Also this past week we were able to find 6 new investigators, which we really needed!! They all have a lot of potential so we are really excited about that. Their names are Teresa, Miguel, Natalie, Sophia (not 8 so not really an investigator), Ernesto, Teresa, and Fernando.
Anyways, I love you all and I hope that you are all doing amazing!!
Con amor,
Hermana Johnson 

El poder de la oracion

This week has been amazing! First off, me and Hna Bullough got another companion and her name is Hna Roos. She is from Idaho falls and is awesome!!! She is super prepared to be a missionary. She is on the ball and has a really good memory, which is a perfect combination because I definitely dont....runs in the family :) But we have had some really cool experiences this week with just feeling the spirit. We have had the spirit almost 100% of the time just by being diligent in our studies and staying focused on the work, it really has been an awesome experience.
And good things happen when you have the spirit....Benito is going to be baptized on the 25th!!!!!!!!!!!! It is a solid date this time, he is really excited about it, he has started living the commandments and he told a couple people about his baptism. And he FINALLY came to church yesterday!!! WAHOO!!! We were extatic. But we had some really powerful lessons with him and he is really starting to change, it is super cool.

I had a really cool experience this week in learning the power of prayer. I have received a couple blessings in the past that have told me that it is really important for me to focus and learn about the power of prayer and I never really understood what that meant, I'm sure I still don't understand all of it. But this week I had a cool experience that grew my testimony. In choir we had practice and it didn't go over how I wanted it to, I didn't feel like we were ready to perform on Sunday (yesterday) like we needed to. So I prayed a lot about what I needed to do. As I prayed ideas popped in my head of things I needed to do, but none of them had to do with choir- they were things like read the scriptures, pray for this, and y the scriptures at the bottom of the himns, but not like tell the choir this or do this or any direction in that sense. But I did what the spirit told me. Yesterday morning I felt the spirit super strongly and I felt really strongly that the only thing that mattered about me conducting was if I had the spirit or not. If I did, the choir would, and then the audience would feel it. So I focused and prayed for the spirit, and it was amazing! I could feel by prayer being anwered as I was conducting. I knew what needed to be fiexed and I knew how to do it, and my conducting was a million times better. The lord answers prayers, he does, and he can do it immediately if you have faith in him and in his plan for you. I love this gosel, it is true. It can and it does change lives. It changes your life too, remember that. I love you all, and I miss you.
Kevin and Jessica, FELICITACIONES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am soooooooooo excited for you!!! I want to see a whole bunch of pictures!!
Con muchisimo amor,
Hermana Johnson

Cambios, como siempre :)

HOLA A TODOS!!
The theme of this week could be summed up by a quote given to us by our Relief Society President....but I can't remember the quote exactly so here it is the jist of it. :)

God never gives us bad gifts or blessings. He is always waiting to bless us with the very best that he has. But sometimes we don't want to choose those blessings, we would rather continue doing what we are doing and receive the same blessings that we are already receiving than to change to become better and to receive the blessings that God wants for us. Forced change is the way that God blesses us with the things that we would not choose for ourselves, but that he wants to give us.

Forced change is AMAZING!!! And this week was full of it. :) On Tuesday night, New Years Eve, I received a phone call from Elder Risk. It went something like this. "Hermana Johnson, how are you doing today?" (me) "I'm doing pretty well, how about yourself?" "Great. Now hermana I have a question for you, do you have any experience conducting a choir?" Me, fumbling in my brain trying to figure out if I do or not. "Um...not really, I have lead some VERY small groups in doing choir things....but not really, um. no." But I would love to learn!" "Great, well then, you have been selected to be the co-conductor of the Irvine Mission Choir." Me, smiling, freaking out inside, not sure what to say, trying to figure out a response, and then he continued. "Conducting can be learned, but we feel like we need to have somebody who can take control of the choir, who can lead them and that they will respect, and we all felt very strongly that you would be the one for the job." Me, mind blown. "I would love be the co-conductor, what do I need to do?" AHHHHHHHH!!!!! yeah, the next day I got to lead 2 songs and figure out what to do with them and everything. It was crazy. I had thought about maybe trying to be the conductor one day because Elder Risk is going home soon (oh yeah, he is the conductor right now) but I was thinking that I would have to go tryout or something, I was not expecting that phone call. But I am really, really excited about it. It is going to be a very humbling calling, but as it says in Ether 12:27 if I come unto Christ, he will show me my weaknesses. BUT he gives me weaknesses that I may be humble. And his grace will be sufficient for me as long as I humble myself unto him and have faith in him, and THEN will he make my weaknesses become strong unto him. And I know that this is a true principle for you all as well. We are meant to have weaknesses, there is a reason that God called me to this assignment. He knows that I will grow and learn and be able to fulfill what he has for me. And I know that through him my weaknesses will become strong unto him. And I know that will happen for you as well.

Well, that isn't the only thing that changed this week. Tomorrow is transfers!!! I thought for sure I would be leaving and be moving on to other things, but it turns out that you never know what God has in store for you. I will be training again!!! But I will keep training Hna Bullough at the same time that I start training the new one! I am super excited for it. God has something great planned for this transfer for us, I can feel it.

As for investigators and everything, this week was a little bit slower of a week. But we had a great lesson with Benito and with Christian and his family, actually mostly his wife. Neither of them were able to come to church :( but we were able to set a baptismal date with Benito for the 25th of this month, so prayers that he will make it are gladly welcomed! :)

Thank you for all your support and your love, I love you all and I hope that you have an amazing week!
Les quiero!
Hermana Johnson