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

Cambios!!!

Familia!!

Hola familia!! Tengo otro sabrino!!!!!!! Estoy MUY contenta, y no puedo esperar a verle :) (I have a nephew! I am soooo happy and I can't wait to see him!) Sometimes I just wish everyone spoke spanish, haha. I am so happy for you Alyse!!

I don't remember if I told the people who sent me stuff for my birthday thank you, if not..THANKS!!! It was a great birthday! It is weird being 20, I still tell everyone I am 19 on accident.
This week was awesome! I don't even know what the highlight was. We didn't have anything like super amazing happen, but it was just an overall good week. Its funny though cause at the same time it was kind of a rough week. I found out for sure that this upcoming week is my last week here i am getting transferred next week!! Usually people don't know these things until the saturday night before transfer day (next week) but Hermana Garner happens to be a Sister Training Leader and she pretty much knows a lot of what it is happening and she told me, haha. I am going to leave and go up and serve in Mission Viejo. And my companions are going to stay here in San Clemente, but they are only going to have the spanish ward, they are taking YSA away from us and giving it to new sisters. So there are a lot of changes coming our way! It has been a little bit sad to think that I am leaving really soon cause I really love the wards that I am in, but at the same time I am ready to go. I have been here for a while and I am ready for something new. And I am suuuper excited to go up to Mission Viejo! We went up there for a baptism and the ward is awesome! Way exciting!

Oh actually the highlight of the week is probably Ener! He is sooo awesome! So we have been teaching Ener for a while, almost since I got here. But there was a long time where we didn't teach him because his phone broke and he worked a ton, etc. But we finally got in contact with him again and we started teaching him, and he is doing sooo good! He used to be athiest, but he is definitely starting to believe in God. He reads the Book of Mormon a lot and he always has questions. He came to church yesterday and loved it!! He fits in really well with the people in the ward. He has really started making progress recently so we are really excited. He made a comment in the gospel principles class in church about how he really liked going here and how he fits in here, but he didn't at the catholic church. So sick!
Another really cool part about this week is that we are helping a less active couple stop smoking! It has been soo fun! We have this packet that is awesome to help people stop smoking in 7 days and we presented it to them, like gave them a lesson about it, and they are so stoked. So last night we went over to their house again and we commited them to do the program! We crushed all their cigarretes, took all their lighters, and everything else that had to do with smoking. It was really fun and the spirit was really strong, cause they were just pumped to do this.

Anyways, hopefully that wasn't too scatterbrained but I love you guys!! And I am so excited for you Alyse!! When things slow down a little bit I wouldn't mind seeing a couple pictures :)
Good luck in school Caleb and Andre!! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDRE!!!!! You are almost 18!!!!

Les quiero y que tenga buena semana!
Hermana Johnson

What a week

What a week. The highlight of this week is probably Maria! So I don't know if I have even talked about her. But she is someone we have been teaching's daughter. We went over to teach Lupe (her mom) and she wasn't there so we decided to just teach her. She is 17 and has a lot of interest in religion. We taught her probably the worst lesson we have ever taught together about Joseph Smith, but when we shared the first vision we could feel the spirit and she liked it. She told us that that was really interesting and that she was interested, so we started teaching her instead of her parents! From the fireside last week we learned a lot about questions, so we had her write a list of her questions and then we taught her the plan and answered some of her questions as we were doing it. And that one was probably the best lesson we have ever taught together as a companionship! :) The spirit was so strong and she was completely engaged because we were answering her questions! Then the next day there was a baptism in the stake and she came with us. It was really cool, and the spirit was really strong. At first I was nervous because there were so many little kids crying that you couldn't feel the spirit and it just felt like caous. But after the baptism there were some really powerful testimonies given, and a gorgeous song and the spirit was really strong. She said it was a little different cause she has never seen a baptism by full immersion, but that she liked it. Then about 2 hours later she left to go camping for a week, and that is where she is now. We were a little nervous, cause we just had a training on how we need to be seeing our investigators every other day and contacting them everyday or they just don't progress towards baptism. Because "Satan is contacting your investigators everyday. So should you." (that is one of my favorite quotes, haha) So we decided to make her a little kit. We wrote down all the questions that she had and then we found a whole bunch of scriptures from the book of mormon that answered those questions. Then we wrote her a note with step by step process of how to pray and study using those scriptures to see if the book of mormon is true. We are pretty excited about it. I hope she does it while she is camping, cause she has a ton of potential!!

The second great piece of news is that we think that Jason will be baptized here pretty soon. We don't want to get to excited about it, but he has made a lot of progress lately and we are going to meet with him at least 3 times a week for the next 2 weeks and see how we can help him! I am really excited about him.
We had a really cool experience as a companionship this week during weekly planning. Weekly planning is so long and often dredurous that even though you are supposed to have the spirit with you while you are planning, it is hard to cause you get so tired. But we have been learning a lot about the spirit and we decided to make sure we were guided by the spirit the whole time. It was really cool...and really time-consuming, but that's ok :) But this week I am really excited about the goals we set, I really believe that we can reach them because we prayed about them! One of those goals is to get 2 baptisms before I leave! (which is most likely in 2 weeks!) It is a high goal but we are counting on Jason and one other. So PRAY for us!!!!!! We really want to do this before I leave.

Ni modo....les quiero muchisimo! Espero que todo este bien alla! Quiero que Alyse vaya a dar luz esta semana!!! :) :) Adios!

Hermana Johnson

Windows of Heaven

HOLA!

Ok we had a lot happen this week, and also not a lot happen. We don't really have anything different from last week investigators wise, but we had like 3 really awesome meetings.

The first one was zone training. I love zone training. We talked about the reason we are all here on missions and how the reason we need to be doing things is because we love God and we love the people here. We did a really cool practice. To start off, before we had even started talking about love or anything, we did a practice. We were in groups of 4 and 2 of us had to teach the other 2 about the restoration of the gospel. That was all we knew, so it was just a normal zone training practice. Then we all came back together and we learned about love and how we need to love everyone like Christ loved us and all this super cool stuff. Then we split back up into our groups and this time one of the missionaries chose somebody that they really loved a lot, a family member or good friend who was struggling in their lives right then. Then they told another missionary about the situation a little bit and the other missionary had to pretend like they were that person. Then they chose a gospel principle and they taught the "person that they loved" about that point. It was so cool, such a spiritual experience. I was the one pretending to be another missionaries brother, and he taught me. As soon as he started talking to me he started crying, more like bawling, and he just had so much passion for his brother. I instantly started crying and he just had our whole group in tears. He didn't even really teach me a gospel principle, he just bore his testimony, and he didn't tell me what his brother was going through, he just loved me (his brother). It was so powerful. If we could love everyone as much as that missionary loves his brother, everyone (well a lot of people) would come to know the truthfulness of this church and they would understand that God loves them. We have to love people!!! So cool!!

Ok second meeting. Mission conference. President Orgill just happens to be suuuper cool, and knows a lot of really awesome people. So he had this lady named Joyce Tan come and talk to us for 2 hours about how to find more effectivley and how to use the spirit more to do it. It was AMAZING!!! By using the technique that she taught us, she had a baptism just about every week for the last 6 months of her mission. Pretty much you tell the Lord that you are going to be here at this time and at this place (you pray about the time and place) and you go and contact there for at least an hour. She taught us how to contact very simply and how to weed out the elect from the not-elect (haha). We tell people that we want to share a short lesson with them that has changed our lives and if they let us sit down right then and there, then we teach them. If not, they aren't elect. So cool. So we decided to try it. After a whole ton of praying and talking with companions and stuff we went to this park that was in our area and we started contacting. 3rd person we went up to was sitting in a truck and he was awesome! We did a lesson right then and there (for our first time it was pretty good, but our lesson wasn't prepared at all. When he told us yes, all three of us were like, oh shoot what do we teach him?! Haha, but it was awesome. We will see what happens with him. His name is Robert, but we won't be able to teach him cause he speaks english...but hopefully he will still get baptized!

Third meeting. We had a fireside with Clay Christiansen last night. It was sooo good! He talked about questions and how if you don't have a question you cannot recieve revelation, because revelation is an answer to a question. So we need to figure out what people's questions are, and if they don't have any questions we need to help them have them, haha! There was so much more to that fireside, but I am running out of time so that's all I'll say. But it really was a great week, with a lot of spiritually uplifting moments.

I love you all and I hope you are all doing super well. Congratulations on the wedding Celinda!! I wish I could have been there, but I am soooo happy for you :)

Les quiero!!
Hermana Johnson

Milagros!

HOLA!!

So everyday in the mission is filled with miracles, you can see them everyday. We had a couple miracles this week that were super awesome. It was Friday and we had been in the house for a long time because it was weekly planning, when we received a call from a random number. It was from a lady named Gloria. She said, "Hola, ustedes me dijeron que iban a pasar. Cuando van a pasar?" (you guys told me you were going to come over, when are you going to come?)  and I was like, wait, you are you?? And then I remembered, Gloria. A lady we met in the street, a contact. WHAT THE?!? A contact actually called us! That never happens. So we told her we would come over that day. When we were at her house she told us that 12 years ago she took the missionary discussions and she was going to get baptized, but then she moved and the missionaries changed and we think some other things happened, and it didn't end up happening. But I guess she was reading the Bible or something because she was feeling a little down, and she remembered that she had talked to us in the street so she gave us a call and asked us to come over! Crazy! So we asked her if baptism was something she wanted to try to do again, and she said "Si, pero toma tiempo. Hay un proceso." (yeah, but it takes time, there is a process) Wahoo! We were really excited. She will have to get over some addictions and some other things, but if she is willing and if it is something that she wants, then she can do it. We were so excited.

Another good thing happened, actually that same day with Jason. I don't remember how much of Jason's story I told you guys but he is on a tour of the church history sites right now and we had our last lesson with him on Friday before he left. The hope is that by the end of his trip he will decide if he is going to do it or not. But we had had some iffy lessons with him and we really wanted to make our last lesson with him good before he left. So we talked about God's love for him. The spirit was really strong, we really hope he felt it. We helped him realize that he needs to understand the significance that God loves him and that because he loves us so much he sent Jesus Christ down here to perform the atonement for us. He admitted to us that he doesn't feel God's love and that he often rejects love and he doesn't know why. He told us later that the lesson really impacted him and made him think. So we are hoping that something on this trip will help him learn how to accept God's love and that he will finally stop rejecting the spirit so he can feel it!! Please pray a ton for him!!!

Oh yeah, and we have also been teaching the cutest family for the last couple weeks. We taught them about the restoration and we were kind of nervous because we knew that they were very religious and that they attended the catholic church all the time and they just had a lot of light in their eyes. We were nervous to tell them they needed to change religions. But shared Joseph Smith's story, and the oldest daughter, Evelyn was super into it. She told us that she really liked it when we came over and that she always learned something and that believed all of it. She liked that we answered her questions and stuff. Then her mom told us that she really liked it when we came over, but that she wasn't going to change religions. Which is fine, and honestly it was what we were expecting, but Evelyn is super into it and wants us to come back and keep teaching her! Miracles galore!

So all in all, this week has been really good. A lot of really good things happened. I love you all, I miss you all, and I know Chaidee already challenged some of you to do this, but for those who don't know Chaidee, I challenge you to count your miracles this week! Miracles happen every day!!

Les Quiero!!
Hermana Johnson