I'm in California!!!!!!!!!

Ok so a ton has happened this week, we'll see if I can remember it all and explain it in the time that I have. First of all, I made it safely to California! I was assigned to serve in San Clemente with Hermana Garner. She is awesome! She is super good at making conversation with people and with directing the lessons. I really like being her companion. We have the best apartment in the mission, hands down. (Autumn, 100% hands down! :D) San Clemente is on the coast and our apartment is on a huge hill so from our balcony we have the most gorgeous view of the ocean, the best is when the sun is setting. Someday I'll send a picture so everyone can be jealous of me. :) But because San Clemente is in the north part of the mission, and the mission is splitting, on July 1st I will for sure be a part of the Irvine California mission instead of part of the Carlsbad mission. It kind of stinks because I really like this mission president, but oh well. It just means that my entire mission will be on the coast! Wahoo!

This first week has actually been super good. We have had soooo many lessons to teach and there is always something to do. Sometimes it is overwhelming, but we have hardly had to tract or contact so it has been pretty good. We are assigned to 2 wards. 1 spanish ward that covers a pretty large area and we also serve in the singles ward in San Clemente. I really like it because the singles ward is awesome and I get to work on my spanish. But it is also kind of hard because we go back and forth teaching people in English and in Spanish so I feel like it will take me a little bit longer to learn the language. Slowly but surely I am improving my spanish. There are these 2 families, the Garcias and Concha and her kids, that we always go visit. And Hermana Garcia and Concha (they are sisters) talk SOOOOO fast!! It is ridiculous, I never know what they are saying. Concha keeps asking me if I'm sad because I just sit there and stare at her really intently because I am trying to understand what she is saying. I really like the spanish culture though. I feel like I already understand more than I did a week ago, even though that isn't that much. Our lessons this week have been awesome! I was super blessed to have a trainer who knows what she is doing and has been working super hard in this area so we already have 2 baptisms on sunday! One of them is a guy in the singles ward named Nick. He kind of reminds me of you Grace (hopefully you're reading this) He is AWESOME! Seriously, he is so prepared. I have only taught him twice, but they have taught him 6 or 7 times before I got there. He is having a lot of people coming up to him giving him anti mormon talk so this past week we have just been clearing a lot of that up. But Sunday he told us for sure that he doesn't understand why but he knows in the hard of his hearts that all of this is true and that he is going through with it on Sunday. We were so happy. Concha's son is the other boy getting baptized this week on Sunday. He is 8 and is so adorable. Concha would be baptized but she needs to get divorced so she can marry her boyfriend that she lives with and doesn't have any money to do it. So she is just waiting for that whole process to happen. But this weekend is going to be super awesome. Yesterday we had a lesson with another single adult investigator named Jeremy. He is a friend with someone at church, Ryan, and they are both in the marine's at camp pendleton. Jeremy has been through a lot in his life and has always wondered what made Ryan be so positive through everything that has happened to them while in service. So for a long time we have been trying to set up an appointment with him. Finally it happened yesterday and it went awesome. He shared with us a lot of stuff about his life and after a good long, almost 2 hour, lesson we committed him to be baptized as well. It was really cool, he is such an awesome guy.

There was a lot more that happened, but those are the most important points. I have loved being out in the field. I am always tired, and you don't have any time to do anything for yourself, but it is fun to start learning things. Doing the work for real makes you realize all the things you need to work on, but I am excited to start working on them. (like contacting-I do not like it and I am suuuuper bad at it) But overall I am doing awesome and I am loving living in California. The weather seriously is amazing. Oh and we heard about a bombing that happened yesterday in Boston. We heard about it in a spanish lesson so I didn't really understand exactly what happened, but something about 2 bombs went off at the finish line of a marathon? So sad! Mom or dad, will you email me details in English please? :) Les Quiero mucho! Que tengan buena semana!

California Bound!!!

Ok before I forget. We got our travel plans this week! My flight leaves Tuesday morning at 8:40 and I will be arriving in California around 9:30. I am allowed to call you in the airport before my flight leaves!! I am not really sure how all of it works though so be ready for a call anytime in the morning. I leave the MTC at 5 but I don't think I will be allowed to call until I get to Salt Lake, so it shouldn't be that early.

This week was super cool. Easter in the MTC was awesome! The rumors were not true, an apostle did not come. But it was still awesome. They did a special mission conference where they served the sacrament in the big meeting room with 3000 people there. It was really powerful, I don't really know why it was more powerful than a normal sacrament meeting but they had pictures of Christ playing on the screen and Hermana Naatjes compared it to Jesus feeding the 5000. I don't know, it was just really cool. And to hear all 3000 of us missionaries singing Easter songs about Christ was really powerful too. The talk, even though it wasn't given by a General Authority, was also very powerful. Then later that night we had a devotional given by Sheri Dew. Wow, she is like a girl Elder Holland. Super good. It was just a good day.

So we got a new investigator this week named Domingo. We have only taught him once and we will only teach him one more time before we leave, but it was cool to teach him because he doesn't believe in God. It was kind of hard to know how to teach and what to say, but it was actually a very good lesson. He really does believe in God, but he is just bitter and confused. We could still feel the spirit really strongly and it was really cool to see him feel it too even though he wouldn't admit it.
This is my last couple days!!! It is going to be bitter sweet. I am reeeeeally excited to go to the mission field and to teach real investigators, cause as much as I like teaching my teachers as fake investigators, and it is still really cool and I have learned a lot, it is going to be way better to teach real people. I am excited to eat real food again. As much as I like eating the same thing over and over again, it will be nice not to feel like crap after every meal :) (oh my gosh! one of the elders in my district found a 4 inch dead grasshopper in his salad the other day! it was soooo gross!!) And I am excited to go to California and have awesome weather every day! But it will be sad to leave at the same time. I have made some really good friends here and it will be hard to leave them. It stinks cause not a single one of them are going to my mission so I won't even get to see them at mission conferences or anything. But it's ok cause I'd way rather go to California and make even more friends!

This weekend is General Conference and I am sooooooooooo stoked! Dad I can't wait to hear your song, Did You Think to Pray, in the Saturday afternoon session! This weekend is going to be the perfect ending to my experience at the MTC. I get to spend 2 days feasting on the words of Christ, and spending time with my district.

Oh I forgot to tell you, they split my mission in half! They literally took my mission, cut it in half, and made two missions out of it-the new Irvine mission and my mission. So now it is even smaller! It goes from Oceanside (most north) to Del Mar (most south) to Temecula (most inland). It is not very big. I talked to someone who's brother just got back from there the other day and he said that even though he was called spanish he only served in one spanish area. So there is a chance I won't speak a ton of spanish, but that is ok. I was actually kind of frustrated about it when he told me at first, but the Lord has a plan for me and if it isn't to be in spanish areas then that's ok. And someone (I don't remember who) promised our class that if you want to learn the language, have an honest desire to, and work your hardest, then you will learn it. So if i really want to learn spanish, which I do, I will.

Also, I didn't explain Doctrine, Principle, Application very well last week. Pretty much it just means to study the WHY (doctrine) of everything in the church. Why do we need an Atonement, why did we need the fall, why do we live the word of wisdom, etc. And now just on the surface, but really studying deeply the 'whys' of the gospel. The gospel makes so much more sense once you really start to understand it.

I saw Hunter Woods' car today!!!!!!! We were on our way back from the temple and Elder Barbosa in my district, (he is friends with Hunter) was like "Hermana Johnson come here!" He was standing pointing at Hunter's car in the temple parking lot just smiling. It was the greatest moment ever. I could see Tom's (their cat) paw prints all over the car and I could see TraceCe's makeup in the front seat. We wrote them a note and waited there for a couple minutes just in the hope that they would come back and we'd see them. But it never happened. It was still fun to see it though. That's the car I drove all semester last year! :)

Well next time I write to you I will be in California. WAHOO!! I hope everyone is doing super well and that they had an awesome Easter! I hope you are as excited for General Conference as me! :D

Les Amo Mucho!
Hermana Marci Johnson

Tengo 12 dias mas!!

HOLA!!!

This week has been suuuper good. I have been very focused but at the same time having tons of fun. Ok so I know I have talked about my teacher in the past 2 emails...but I am going to again :) We had a devotional on Tuesday night about the concept of Doctrince, Principle, and Applications and the way the guy explained it was kind of hard to follow and pretty confusing and I guarantee hardly anyone at the MTC knew what he was talking about. But our district did! Cause we have an awesome teacher who been teaching us that same concept for the last 4 weeks and has drilled it into our heads! At first it was super confusing, but now I love using it in my teaching. If you don't know what it is Elder Bednar wrote a book about it called Increased Learning or something like that. You should read it! It is a way to study and teach. But after the devotional we talked for an hour and a half in our room about how blessed we were to have the teachers that we have. I feel like my understanding of the gospel has doubled just through learning by this method. I understand more of exactly why things happened, what it means to me, and how I need to apply it in my life. As I understand the Doctrine more, it leaves me with more freedom to govern myself in my own life. It is awesome, and I highly recommend you learning about it. But we were talking about how now we have a great responsibility in our missions to teach this to the missionaries around us, and to help change the culture of missionaries so that we can be more effective teachers. It isn't a coincidence I was put with my particular district, at this time, with this teacher, so now I need to take what I have learned and apply it and teach it to others.
I only have 12 days left! Ah! We should get our travel plans today of when we leave and when we will be able to call and stuff. Oh and they just changed the rules church wide that you are now allowed to email anyone! So anyone who wants to get a hold of me by email now is allowed to! But DearElder is still the way to go cause we still only have a half hour to email people and getting emails in the middle of the day is awesome!
Me and Hermana Naatjes had a really cool experience teaching our investigator yesterday. The spirit was super strong. In some devotional, someone said to "let the spirit be the senior companion" so that was what we tried to do, and it was AWESOME! It made me really excited to go and have those experiences for real in the field. Our investigator shared some very personal stories and we were able to fit the gospel exactly to his life, and in spanish too! I don't think I stopped smiling for like an hour afterwards.
My team is coming to Utah! I keep telling everyone that I am super excited even though I won't be able to see you guys. Tell everyone that I love them and to have a great Easter and the Woods and a great lunch tomorrow at my house! I'm super jealous! But don't worry, I am really glad I am here right now and I am having an amazing time learning how to teach the gospel.
This week really has been super good, maybe one of the best yet here in the MTC. I am growing a ton personally and I am beginning to be able to not worry too much about Spanish and I am just letting it come. Oh and we are hearing rumors that an apostle might come on Sunday for Easter! We'll see if it is true, but that would be awesome! I love you all and hope you are doing super well! I love this gospel and I know without a doubt that it is true. The Spirit is the most powerful and important thing anyone can have in their life and I want to be able to share this with the people in California. I'm super excited!
Les Amo mucho,
Hermana Marci Johnson

p.s. I ran into Brock Teichert (or something like that) I didn't know he was going to Rome too! And Mary is home! Wahoo! And laura got her call!!! That is so exciting! You and Emily are going to be able to speak Chinese to each other! so cool.

Lo Clavé!

Hola familia y amigos!

Cada día en la CCM, improvo mí español! Me encanta aprendiendo una idoma nueva! No me gusta que necesito pensar sobre todas las palabras que digo, pero un día podré hablar con fluencia!

That actually took me a while to write..so I am still not that good, but one day! I have found myself starting to talk more and more in spanish, but I am also finding myself saying the wrong things more and more. Haha, its all part of the process. I love watching my investigators faces as they try to figure out what I am saying, its hilarious!! Oh and we are getting pretty good at translated phrases we use in English into Spanish, that don't make any sense in Spanish. Like: Lo clavé! (I nailed it!) and we also abbreviate a bunch of words too, like: Soler means usually, but we say El Suel for The usu (usually cut in half...I don´t know how you would write that) And we also say Tots Nuncs Jáms for totally nunca jámas (totally never ever) haha, its pretty fun. You got to make the MTC fun somehow! And yes, we are 19 years old girls :)

This week was a pretty good week, not much new happened. The schedule in the CCM is the same everyday so it is hard to remember what happened and when it happened. Seriously, the time flies. I only have 2 more p days here after this one! But this week I learned a lot about the spirit. Hermano Avila taught us a CRAZY lesson! I wish everyone in the world could have heard it. But it was all about the doctrine of the Atonement and how it is connected to EVERYTHING in the church. He is a really good teacher and is super straight forward so sometimes I actually feel really overwhelmed after his lessons. But we learned that for you to have the fulness of the spirit in your life you must receive all of the ordinances and be living the covenants that you made with him. He drilled this into us because for you to be able to use the atonment in your life you MUST be baptized, because that is when you get the gift of the Holy Ghost. Crazy, so if I really do love my investigators and the people around them I will see that the reason they need to get baptized is so that they can have the blessings of the Atonement in their lives so it is possible for them to be perfected and live with God again. I can´t even explain how mind blowing and cool the lesson was. But he told us to study the talk given by D. Todd Christofferson titled the Power of Covenants, and it is really good too. So I challenge you to study it too!

Courtney King came into the MTC yesterday! I haven´t seen her yet but I saw her the night before at the devotional because her mom was the pianist that day so that was cool. Oh and ChaiDee left for Germany! I need to write her and tell her that I know another person going to Alpine, Germany. That is crazy that Beth is going there!! And Nicole is going on a mission, what?! I was so excited to see her!

On Tuesday the district above us is going to leave and then we will be the oldest district. Weird, I feel like I just got here, but I also feel like I´ve been here for 3 years. My district is so awesome though. We had a district testimony meeting that was sooo awesome Tuesday night after the devotional. The spirit was so strong and people shared some really cool stories. Our district leader, Elder Kroeger, has the strongest most powerful testimony I have ever heard. I love it when he bears his testimony. Its funny cause in Sunday meetings, our district dominates in the zone meetings. The zone leaders are in our district, our district leader, Hermana Naatjes is the coordinating sister, I am the music coordinater, and Hermana McKay just got released as the coordinating sister. So more than half our district goes to sunday meetings and there are only 3 other people besides our district that are in there. Its pretty funny. I don´t even know if that made sense for those who have not been to the MTC, but oh well :)

Well I love you all and I am doing great here in the CCM!
Les amo mucho,
Hermana Marci Johnson

It's Already P-Day!!

HOLA! This week flew by. All of sudden it was Sunday again, and then all of a sudden it was Thursday. The days just kind of mix together, probably cause we do the same thing every day. :) No but this week has been really good. We got a new teacher this week and he actually served a mission with Braden Stohlton! He was our very first investigator, and then he became our teacher! It was kind of intimidating at first actually, mostly because he is a really intimidating guy. The first lesson with him no one talked. It was kind of awkward, I felt like I was the only one who would say anything because I was sick of the silence. But I absolutely love him now! He is SUCH a good teacher. He is super direct and just tells you what's up, which is scary sometimes, but he is awesome. He just barely got off his mission like 6 weeks ago so he always has tons of stories for us. But the thing that he has taught me the most this week is the importance of studying, and studying the right way. I think it was Elder Holland who said something like this: You tell me how you spent the hours of 6:30-10:00 in the morning, and I will tell you how your day will go, how your week will go, how your transfer will go, how your mission will go, and how your life will go. That really stuck to me. Even though I've heard it before, I didn't realize how much you study on your mission, and how important it was. You really need to learn to love it and learn how to do it effectively. After a couple lessons with Hermano Avila I really started studying better and it has been awesome!! I love it! It's nice because if I want to be a good missionary than all I have to do is be the best studier I can be and that is something I can control.
Another awesome thing I learned this week was about Doctrines, Principles, and Applications. The Doctrine of something is why you need it or why it is important. The Principle is what it is. And the Application is how you do it. We have been studying this in depth for every topic that is in Preach my Gospel. (well not every topic yet) But through studying this and using this method to teach, it makes your lessons and your understanding of the gospel so much better! It's awesome.
I love the spirit that is here. I had a really cool experience this week where our district leader was supposed to give us a talk on baptism and was looking on LDS.org for a talk to help him out when he felt really strongly like he should change the topic and go with this other talk. Then in the lesson I felt super impressed to tell the story about how I gave those Book of Mormons to my team. At the end of the lesson one of the Hermanas was crying and told us this huge story about her brother and how this lesson hit her really hard that she need to give him a Book of Mormon with her testimony in it. It was so cool. The spirit was so strong and there was just such a unity in the room. I love the spirit and the power that it has! It's awesome being here because you can feel it all the time!
The MTC has been great. I am learning a ton everyday, and my spanish is improving all the time. It is crazy how fast you can grow in so little time. I have only been here for 2 weeks and I know WAY more spanish than I did when I came in. Oh yeah, funny story. So one of the Elders in my District was teaching a lesson and during it he said this: "Yo se que Jesucristo pegado por sus pescados." Which means, "I know that Jesus Christ punched for your fishes." HAHA! What he meant to say was, "Yo se que Jesucristo pagado por sus pecados." Which means, "I know that Jesus Christ payed for your sins."  Haha, stuff like that happens all the time.
Pues, Hasta Luego! Les amo much!
Hermana Johnson

HOLA FAMILIA!!

Hola!
Sorry, I forgot to give you my email. It is marci.johnson@myldsmail.net (just in case you couldn't figure it out, haha)

I am doing really well here at the MTC, or the CCM in spanish. I LOVE my district and zone. We have so much fun together. I love my companion, Hermana Naatjes (Notches). She is from Minnesota and has such a strong testimony. She kind of reminds me of Emily and Laura Peterson. I love teaching with her though because she always has a strong testimony to bear. Well, this is how it works here at the CCM. You come in on Wednesday, meet everybody, and then go to a bunch of workshops to introduce you to the CCM. Then on Thursday you study all morning, go to a bunch more workshops, and then you find out that you are teaching your first investigator the next morning. At this point, I still don't know ANY spanish. But, you spend the rest of the night on Thursday preparing to teach a lesson in Spanish the next morning. I was sooo nervous. I am in an intermediate district, but everyone else in my district knows WAY more spanish than me. I was super intimidated at first. But I did it. I taught an investigator in Spanish without knowing the language. And we still continue to teach everyday, and I still don't really know the language. Even though it was frustrating at first and really nerve racking, I love the way they do it. I am here at the CCM to learn how to teach the gospel to the spanish people in Carlsbad, I'm not here to learn Spanish. And they get that point across from the very first day. I'm sure our investigator gets a kick out of the things I say though, but it is almost always conjugated wrong, or just completely wrong, haha.

I have seen sooooo many people that I know here. A ton of people from PG, a ton of people from soccer clubs, and just a lot of other random people. I think my district thinks I'm crazy cause I always leave randomly cause I see somebody else I know and I want to say hi to them. I see Anita and Taryn a lot. Well actually Taryn is gone now, but I saw her a lot when she was here. Luckily the spanish people and the german people eat together usually so I see ChaiDee almost every meal. I love it! I don't get to talk to her a ton, because we have NO time, but I always see her and I got to talk to her a couple times.
Hey Brian, I heard that President Hinckley in a conference talk one time promised that if you read the Book of Mormon out loud in the language you are trying to learn, by the time you finished it you would be fluent in the language. So read the Book of Mormon before you go! I know you are already trying to, but in case you didn't know about this promise, I thought I'd let you know. :)

Well, I am doing great. One week down! Everyone says that once you hit your first p-day, the time flies after that. Which is good, cause even though I am loving it, it feels like I've been here for a year. My spanish has already improved a ton, and I am really excited to see how much I continue to improve. Before I left everyone was asking me how I was going to do with going to bed at 10:30 and waking up at 6:30, well....I'm still working on being good at that. :) I don't think our room has actually been asleep at 10:30 once since we have gotten here. We usually go to bed at like 11 or 12...but we are getting better. It is just kind of hard to stop talking sometimes when there are 6 girls in one room! But don't worry, we still get up at 6:30 everyday! Well, my time is up, but I hope everything is going good at home! I love you and I miss you!

~Hermana Marci Johnson

Today was the day. The mission has begun!

Well... Today was the day. We dropped Marci off at the MTC at 1:15 pm. And after about 5 minutes of a good-bye there, we started the drive home, where I and Marcia began our hour-long+ breakdown. We are so excited for her and the opportunity she has. We are so excited for the people that she will touch. And we are also so sad today, now that it has really hit us that we won't be seeing and interacting with her for a long while. We have another one of these to do on June 5th with Brian, and some time in the near future, we are expecting yet another one of these great and terrible experiences with Andre. It is AWESOME! I'll be posting Marci's letters on this blog each time we receive one, hopefully each week. Stay tuned.