Weird Week

Hola!

This week was a weird week. One of those where it seems like everything is falling through but then in the end it turns out to be a really good week. Probably the biggest thing that happened this week is with Kimberly and her family. She is going to get baptized on September 28th for sure!! It was going to be on the 21st, but we realized that was this Saturday and nothing was ready, and we haven't taught her everything and no one knew about it, so we decided to push it back a week. Last night we went over to her house and did a Noche de Hogar with her whole family. It was good cause we haven't been able to really get to know her parents cause they are always working every time we go over there. But last night was amazing! We played some really fun games and just showed them how to have fun and learn about the gospel at the same time. The mom, Sara, was really appreciative and started crying as she explained to us why she wanted to come back to church and that she wanted her children to grow up well, not like she did. It was really good. This family was a miracle family, just placed in our laps. So amazing! I am really excited because we are going to go over there every Sunday night to do a Noche de Hogar so I feel like we will grow a really strong relationship with them.

There was also a wedding this week for a couple that is going to get baptized this Tuesday, the other sister's baptism. I love the Spanish culture. When there is a party, everyone comes. They loooove to party. It brings such a sweet spirit of unity and love, I love it.

Honestly not much else happened this week that was out of the normal. We are working on finding new investigators because we have a couple really strong ones...but no others, haha. So we are working on that.

Sorry for the short email today, but I love you all!!! Que tenga buena semana!
Hermana Johnson 

MISSION VIEJO!!!!

Hola familia!!!!!

Hello everyone!! This week has been awesome! I was transferred to the Mission Viejo 5th ward and I am in the best area! Seriously in the Carlsbad mission, it was known as the coveted area because it is so awesome. It has some parts of our area that are pretty much like a mini mexico, haha. And it is awesome because in this little place, it is called Via Lomas, there are like 7 members! It is so different than my last area where there were like 10 maybe members in the entire area, but here we have the majority of the members in the ward and they are all awesome! Oh and I have a new companion. Guess what her name is?.....yep, Hermana Johnson!! Haha!! It is pretty fun, we get a lot of jokes about it. People are always like, oh Johnson and Johnson, like the soap, or like the oil, or like the lotion. Haha, but the best one that we got was, "Oh, Johnson and Johnson, like the butt cream!" Haha, we laughed pretty hard about that one. I love my companion, we get along super well. She just barely came out into the field with Hermana Velarde so I am technically still finishing her training. And unlike Hermana Velarde, she is not native, so she is still learning how to speak Spanish. She is pretty good though, and she is a very good sport about not getting too frustrated when she can't understand and stuff. I remember getting really frustrated with that. But I feel like in this last week my spanish has improved a ton, my confidence in what I know has grown a ton. Because she can't understand everything and because she has a harder time speaking, it forces me to always pay attention and make sure I know what is going on and it forces me to talk more often. And it is really nice being only in a Spanish ward. I actually feel like I am a spanish missionary now.
Ok so our investigators. We have some pretty cool investigators. Luz is amazing, she is someone that the missionaries before us found and she loves the church and knows it is true, but everyone around her, the people she lives with and especially her husband are super against it. So we are working with her on that.
We are teaching the cutest little girl! Her name is Kimberly and she should be getting baptized this month. She is 11, and her parents are members and were baptized a while ago. But with work and other things they stopped going to church for a while. But they decided that they want to start coming back to church and they came yesterday! Kimberly really wants to get baptized and she really likes reading the book of mormon and stuff like that. She was a referral and we just barely started teaching her, but we are really excited about her.
I am really excited to be in this area. Other than it being super hot right now it has been amazing. I love the members and I feel like I was sent here for a reason, I feel like it will be a really good place for me to learn and grow and improve as a missionary and that we will see a lot of miracles here. It should be a good transfer.
Congratulations Kirsten and Mark on finishing your house!
Les quiero!
Hermana Johnson

Translados!!!

HOLA FAMILIA!!!

So......today is transfers!! Our p-day was switched to today (tuesday) because yesterday was memorial day and the libraries were closed. So its pretty much like 2 p-days in a row! Writing emails and transfers! So I don't know exactly where I am going yet cause I won't find out til 4, but pretty much I know, haha. Because there are only 3 spanish areas, and 6 spanish sisters, it makes transfer guessing pretty easy. So I will be going up to Mission Viejo in the ward up there, I don't know who my companion will be yet, but I am super excited!! We thought that I was going to be the only one leaving and that my 2 companions would just stay together but Hna Hodgson is leaving too, so we are both going up to Mission Viejo! Hermana Velarde is super excited to take over the area and have the challenge, I'm really excited for her, I think she will do really well.
This last week has been a little bit crazy. To be honest my motivation wasn't quite as strong cause I knew I was leaving which made it a little bit harder to focus. But we still had some amazing things happen! First of all, Ener. I know I have talked about Ener before. He is amazing. So he came to church this last week and he told us before church started that he needed to tell us something afterwards and it wasn't good. So we were like freaking out in church, praying that we would say the right thing to help him and that everything would go well cause he is our strongest investigator. After sacrament meeting he ended up just giving us a letter that he had written, and he stayed at church with some members and we went to our other ward. The letter was awful. It pretty much told us that he can't meet with us anymore cause his wife is going to divorce him if he does and that everything in his life is just going really bad. So yeah, we were super sad. Then we go over to his house the next day, yesterday, for a lesson. We talked to him about the situation and he told us that he stayed for all 3 hours of church and in the last hour he told all the men about his situation and pretty much all of them said that the same thing happened to them and that he should just keep going. So he is!!! And he is soooo solid! He was like, "It doesn't matter, I'm going to keep going." So good! He is going to get baptized on September 28th and I will come back to see it.
Another miracle. We were contacting at like 8:35 on Sunday night and we ran into this 19 year old who looked super sad. We asked him if we could do a 20 minute lesson with him right then and there and he said yes. The spirit was so strong. We talked about how God loved him and a lot about the atonement. When we left he had a big smile on his face. It was so cool to see the instant change in his persona. We are going to teach him again today, I'm super excited to see what happens with him.
Well I don't have much time, but I love you all and I will talk to you next week!
Con mucho amor,
Hermana Johnson