SISTER JOHNSON'S APRIL 28, 2014 E-MAIL - PICTURES!!!

 

PICTURES!!!

Here are the pictures you requested: me by our car, our apartment (that was a couple weeks ago and it is much cleaner now!!) and view from our balcony (trees!)

 

First Mission Car!

 

First Mission Apartment!

 

 First Mission Balcony!  haha!

  

Helping Hands Service Project

 Sister Johnson with Sister Henderson (on the right) and two other sisters

Here is Lauren's e-mail ... 

Howdy!!

Thank you for your email and the update! Hahahahaha, what in the world?! Brad is going to test the survival skills he doesn't have in the forest? Haha, just kidding Brad. :) That's cool! Tell me how it goes and I hope he doesn't die!

That is an interesting talk that the mission president gave! I definitely think it's good for missionaries to focus on talking with members about the work; it gets the members more involved of aware of what's going on in their ward. :) 

Well things over here are going pretty good! Unfortunately, almost all of our appointments fell through last week :(, but our investigator M**** came to church for the first time!! We were worried because it was about 20 minutes after sacrament started and she still hadn't shown up. But, I said a little prayer (and Sister Henderson said she did too) and boom, she walked in the door. :) Haha. She missed the sacrament, but that's okay because she enjoyed the rest of church! People in the ward were so awesome too! They all came up and said hi (the ones who have met her before) and others introduced themselves. It was awesome and we were so happy! We went to Gospel Principles after sacrament and our ward mission leader taught the lesson on missionary work. It was a really good lesson and people shared their experiences with doing missionary work and the spirit was strong. :) The theme was that missionary work is all based on love. We want all of our brother's and sister's to return to Heavenly Father with us, and that's why we do missionary work. That's why we're out here teaching people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the only way we can return back to Heavenly Father!! Missionary work doesn't only have to be serving full-time missions either; it includes home teaching, visiting teaching, and simply serving others. It's all about love!

We were only able to see M**** once last week, so we are going to be pushing her baptismal date back a little bit because we won't be able to teach her the rest of everything before this upcoming Sunday. But, I think it will be good for her because she will have more time to learn everything and it won't be crammed in. She is awesome though, and such a sweet girl with a great spirit!!!

My training for District Meeting went pretty good last week as well! It was pretty simple and basic, but I talked about how we can help our investigators resolve their concerns with coming to church through helping them focus on Christ as the center of going to Church. Everything we do at church all goes back to Christ - we take the sacrament to renew our baptismal covenants and remember Christ, we listen to talks and have lessons to learn more about Christ, we serve others at church to become like Christ, etc. So basically, when we help our investigators understand that coming to church is all about coming closer to Christ, it can help them increase their desire to come to church and can help with any concern they have (maybe they say they are too shy - being Christ-like and serving others at church helps you to open up, get to know people and love them! Or maybe they say they are too tired - going to church and remembering and learning about Christ gives us spiritual rest, rejuvenation and strength. Some people are too busy, have work or don't want to sacrifice their time - the Savior sacrificed everything for us! Sacrificing our time and attending church shows that we appreciate His sacrifice and is the least we can do.) Anyway, that's pretty much the gist of it!

Anywho, those are pretty much the highlights of the week. We didn't hear from our other investigator S***** :(, but he usually goes through cycles of meeting with us and getting back to us and then going MIA for a week. We have faith in him though! We have also been visiting potentials and less actives and are trying to increase our teaching pool, but not much has happened yet. We are just doing what we can to balance our area and the Visitor's Center (which is hard because we are expected to do what all other missionaries do each week on top of serving at the Visitor's Center for 6 hours each day!) It is fun though - we love our area and we love the Visitor's Center, so we are very blessed! :)

Thanks for all your prayers and support! I love you mommy dearest and everyone else! Have a great week!

Love,

Sister Johnson

 

WE LOVE OUR MISSIONARY!!!

A VISIT FROM THE MEYERS! APRIL 21, 2014 E-MAIL

WE LOVE OUR MISSIONARY!!!!!!

 The Meyers Family with Sister Johnson!

Hello!

Sorry but this e-mail is going to be short and wimpy this week! I have to do the training in our District Meeting tomorrow and need to finish preparing for it!

Thank you for telling me about Easter! I'm glad the Easter bunny was able to bring everyone something. :) Also thank you for buying that CD!! Sister Henderson's iPod ran out of battery and she can't find her charger so it will be nice to have a CD to listen to. :) Did you find "The Work" CD in my room? Thank you thank you!! :)

This past week was really good! Our investigator M**** has an official baptismal date for May 4th!! We are super excited! So weird, it will be my first baptism. How cool!! We are also working with our other investigator S***** to read the Book of Mormon. Hopefully we will set a baptismal date soon with him too. He's so funny and interesting. He has such an interesting way of explaining things. Hahaha. But he's so neat! We really enjoy teaching him. :) And our ward is awesome and we get so much help from them. We have been very blessed recently!

It is so fun being comps with Sister Henderson! I learn so much from her! The other night we had deep doctrinal discussions that were so awesome and mind-blowing. During lunch one day we also talked all about the shows we used to watch when we were little, like Sailor Moon, The Jewel Riders, etc. It was pretty great. :) 

Yes it was awesome to see the Meyers!!! Their kids are so dang cute! And they gave me a chocolate bunny! :) So sweet! It's crazy that it's been 8 years since I've seen them!! When I came in the Visitor's Center, Sister Helig (Senior sister) told me there was a family who was looking for me and I thought immediately "It must be the Meyers!" So I went and looked for them, but they had left. But then they came back! So we got to chat for a bit and take pictures. :) And the dress I am wearing is one of the vintage ones I bought. :) Our Easter was good though, the Visitor's Center was pretty busy and there were a lot of families at the temple having pic-nics and fun stuff like that. There were a lot of cute little girls in matching Easter dresses and it reminded me of Brittany, Brad and I when we were little. :) We didn't have an Easter dinner or anything but that's okay! Our ward had an Easter dinner but we couldn't stay since we had to serve at the Visitor's Center. Yours sounded really yummy though like it always is!!!

So we live about 25 minutes from the Temple. Did you get my address I sent last week? I think I sent it to Brittany so you all can google map it haha. As for mission rules, they are just the basic rules that all missions have. Nothing too unique or specific for our mission. If you want to know what the rules are you can look up the Missionary White Handbook and read it. We read out of it everyday. :) All the rules might seem crazy and hard to follow but they really aren't. At least for me. It's because I like following rules haha. I'm weird (and cool) like that. ;-)

We have been showing the video "Because of Him" all week in the Visitor's Center. It's like seriously my favorite video ever. We have to watch it at least once a day or we go crazy. Hahaha not really, but actually kinda. It's just super good. There are a lot of missionaries watching it in here right now haha. Have you all watched it? You should watch it on the big screen. Watch it!!!!!!!! It sums up everything so perfectly. And the music it amazing. And the clips and just everything about it is amazing. Everyone we know needs to watch it! It's the best. 

Well, that's all I have to say for this week! Hopefully next week it will be better!

Love you all and have a great week!!!

Love,

Sister Johnson

NEW COMPANION! - SISTER JOHNSON'S APRIL 14, 2014 E-MAIL

Howdy!!

Thank you for the Easter package!! I am excited to see what goodies you have sent me! I still have that stuffed Hello Kitty you sent me for Valentine's Day that sits on top of one of my suitcases for elegant decoration. :)

You'll  never guess who came into the VC yesterday!! Trevor and his new wife!! Hahaha! They went to San Francisco for their honeymoon and decided to stop by the Oakland Temple because they had never been! How crazy is that! I was like no way!! It was really cool! Haha. I got a picture with them and told him to send it to you. :) I couldn't get over how funny that was that they came!

As for CD's, I would like the one called "Work" (I'm pretty sure I have it) and just send some others that you think I would like that I can listen to. :) (Also, if you want to buy me the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou and send it to me, you totally can because I can listen to that. :-))

So my week the past week:

My new companion is Sister Henderson and she is awesome!!! :) She is soo funny, she makes me laugh all the time. She speaks Mandarin, Cantonese and a little bit of Spanish. She is super smart and always has interesting things to say and I learn so much from her! And she is a great teacher! I am so lucky to be with her and to learn from her!! :)

Even though it's only week 2 of this transfer, I have already learned a lot of new things. It is neat how you learn different things with different companions. Sister Henderson has such a great spirit about her and I already feel that Heavenly Father put me with her to learn how to be more simple about everything. That the Gospel is simple, and not complicated. That I don't need to stress out if I don't know something; that I know what I know and have my testimony, and deeper learning and understanding will come through time and diligent study. Or if it ever feels complicated (like teaching-wise or anything) it's because it's me who's making it complicated. As long as I am calm and have the spirit to guide me and trust that the Lord will use me as His tool, everything is good. :) Sounds easier than it is, but I feel like that is what the Lord wants me to learn this transfer (or one of the things).

On Saturday we helped out with the institute with CAL Day, which is when all prospective freshmen/students come. The Institute had a table set up, and we where there to invite people to tour the institute and also handed out temple cards to invite them to the temple. It was neat; there were a ton of people so it was difficult because a lot of people didn't want to talk to us but we did our best. :) Some people were really nice though and we got to have conversations with a few! Didn't find any new investigators from being there, but hopefully we planted some seeds. On Sunday we taught the Gospel Principles lesson, which was on Honesty. The people in our ward are just so awesome. So many amazing people who are so willing to help us out with lessons and with fellow-shipping. We are so blessed to be in the ward we're in!! Also, we are so blessed to be at the Visitor's Center. We meet so many interesting people every day and we are so lucky to be such a peaceful, beautiful place. At the back of the Visitor's Center, we have an amazing view of the temple and of Oakland and San Francisco. We have talked about this past week how lucky we are to be there. And we are! We're so blessed. 

Sadly, some of our investigators have recently dropped us/aren't really responding to us. But, we do have two investigators that we are seeing regularly. One is progressing , M****, and she is just so sweet and awesome! Last week, we taught her the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chastity, but before that we followed up with her about praying about April 27th as a baptismal date (but then we told her it would have to change to May 4th because she has to live the word of wisdom and chastity for 3 weeks before she can get baptized). She said she still wasn't sure, but that she would keep praying about it, but what is funny is at the end of the lesson when she prayed, she said "Help me to prepare for my baptism on May 4th" and both Sister Henderson and I were thinking "What?!" Haha, so it isn't really an official date, but it is close!! So we are hoping and praying she will get baptized on May 4th! Our other investigator, S*****, did have a baptismal date set (for yesterday actually), but last week we knew it wasn't going to work out because he didn't respond/meet with us for a couple of days and we still had to re-teach him some things that he didn't understand and get a baptismal interview. We met with him this past week and taught him again about the Restoration and Joseph Smith (because a couple of weeks before we read the baptismal interview questions with him and he didn't really know what the Restoration was, which is not good! Haha) And committed him to pray about Joesph Smith and the Book of Mormon. We asked him again about baptism, and he says he would like to get baptized in the summer time after he's read the whole Book of Mormon. So, we are going to create a reading plan with him to read the Book of Mormon, but we are hoping/have faith that he will get baptized before he reads the whole thing. He's awesome though and such a neat person! So anywho, that's what's going on with some of our investigators.

Something funny that happened this week is when we were going to visit former investigators/ potentials- Sister Henderson was telling me about how with her last companion, one day they were driving and she told her that if you ever see a mattress in the road, you know you're in the "hood" (I hope that doesn't offend anyone reading this by the way!). Then, a couple minutes later, they saw a mattress in the street haha. Well after she told me that story, we saw 2 mattresses in the street of the neighborhood we were in! Haha. But what's weird is the neighborhood we were in wasn't even dangerous. Anyways, it was just funny. So now every time we see a mattress on the street we say we're in the hood. Haha. Anywho. You had to be there. :-)

Well, I guess that's it for this week! Thanks for all your love and support. You all are awesome and I think about how much I love you all everyday! Have an amazing week! And Happy Easter!!! :)

Love,
Sister Johnson

P.S. - There is a video on mormon.org called "Because of Him" that is supposed to be really good (I haven't watched it yet), so you should watch it! :)

SISTER JOHNSON'S APRIL 7, 2014 E-MAIL

Hellooo!

Thanks for all the updates! Sounded like a fun General Conference weekend at home! Yay for new traditions! Actually though that doesn't seem like a new tradition because Dad usually makes yummy breakfasts for conference anyways because he's amazing and cool and wonderful and stuff. :) Brittany sent some pics of ya'll watching conference and everyone looks as snazzy as always!

Well I will tell you about my week. :) It was a fun week! We taught M**** on Tuesday about the Plan of Salvation with an awesome member of our ward, and the lesson went well! When we started the topic of baptism at the end, she told us she had been thinking about getting baptized before we invited her!! How awesome is that?! She's amazing! We are really excited about her. We also had another lesson that day with M**, and taught him the second half of the Plan of Salvation. He is awesome but is super busy with school and is feeling like he doesn't have a lot of time right now to keep learning from us, although he is really interested. He just doesn't want to be stressed and busy while learning. So we are hoping that we can keep teaching him and Heavenly Father will bless him with all his school work. Wednesday morning we had a breakfast with all the Visitor's Center sisters and senior couples at Elder and Sister Poulsen's house (VC Directors) and it was a good time! We got to know each other better and share our thoughts on the real reasons why we came on missions. I was one of the first ones to go and I didn't know it had to be deep and spiritual so my answer was lame haha. But overall it was really neat to hear the other sisters' testimonies. The senior couples are also awesome! It is so nice to have them because they kind of feel like second mom's and dad's. It's nice to be around them and they are super funny and loving. :)

General Conference was great!! We watched the Saturday morning session at the Institute in Berkeley. There were only a few members there with us but it was a good time. :) Unfortunately none of our investigators could make it to the morning session. For the afternoon session we watched it at the VC. It was fun because a lot of other missionaries watch it there also. We watched it in what is called the Center Theater (just a big room where we show movies and have presentations and stuff, although the internet wasn't working for the first half of that session so we missed it and once we finally got it to work we only had time to rewind and watch the first half so we missed the second half). On Sunday we watched the morning session again at the Institute and there were more members there. We had a fire going in the fire place and a small breakfast. :) Afterwards Sister Kim played some primary songs and we sang songs with some of our members. It made me tear up because we were singing some of the songs about going on a mission and I remember always singing those in primary, and little did I know when I was young and singing those songs that I would actually be going on a mission! Crazy. :) Anyway, it was nice and the members of our ward are awesome and so loving. :)

There were a lot of good talks this weekend! (Darn, I don't have my notes with me right now!) But I personally felt an overall theme of the need to be stronger now than ever before, as our standards and the world's standards are growing apart more and more. We need to not be ashamed of who we are and what we believe. At the same time though, I felt a theme of humility. That we need to humble ourselves, even to the dust. That we need to follow God's commandments because God knows all and will bless us beyond measure if we simply trust in Him and devote ourselves to Him. (I especially felt all that with Holland's talk on Saturday morning.) I also really liked Bednar's talk on burdens and that they are necessary to have to help us grow spiritually (if they are the right kind of burdens), and that the Lord will always be there to help ease our burdens. That talk and many of the others definitely helped me a lot. Oh, I also liked the talk (shoot I can't remember who gave it! Ballard I think?) About having all members of the church/families study Preach My Gospel! You all at home should do that! It really is an awesome and inspired book. In the scriptures, somewhere in 2 Nephi (I think) in that verse that talks about "other books" coming forth, Preach My Gospel is one of those books. Just sayin'. :-)  What were some of your favorite talks? :)

Oh also! Transfers are this Wednesday! I will be staying in Berkeley and will be getting a new trainer, Sister Henderson! (I've met her a couple times - she is super cute and sweet! She speaks Chinese and has been in the Chinese program her whole mission, so that's cool! I'm really excited!) Sister Kim is going to be the new Sister Trainer for the VC with Sister Cooper and will be going to Lafayette. It is going to be weird but neat to have a new trainer! I learned a lot from Sister Kim, that's for sure. It will be neat though to learn how another missionary does things. But anyways, that's the transfer news. :) Oh also, I will be the driver for this transfer.....ehhh......haha. It's because Sister Henderson got in an accident or something a while back and she can't drive anymore. So, yeah. I really liked not driving haha. But oh well - I will definitely learn the area really well since I will be driving!

Well I think that's all for this past week! Thanks for reading and for praying for me and supporting me always! I love you all so so so so so much and miss you all everyday, but that's okay! Being on a mission is good because your love for your family grows so much everyday and your testimony of eternal families grows. At least mine has recently. :) Anyways, have a great week!!!!

Love,

Sister Johnson

Here are some pics! The first is from the breakfast we had at the Poulsen's house with all the VC sisters, the second is a picture of the beautiful view of Oakland and San Francisco from the temple (it was really clear day so I'm really glad I got a picture!) And the last is when we were playing/singing primary songs after conference. :)

 

SISTER JOHNSON'S MARCH 31, 2014 E-MAIL - PICTURES!!!

Hey Everyone!  Here is Lauren's letter from last week.  I'll have to get these out a little sooner!  Pictures too!

 Sister Oa, Sister Lindsay, Sister Kim, Sister Johnson, Sister Campos, and Sister Kwok!

 On an exchange with Sister Cooper!

 In front of the Oakland Temple

 Eating Taro and Avocado Ice Cream

Hi Mom!

No worries, I got your email in time! I will send you some pics today and take the rest you requested this week. Haha you just took the Christmas tree down?! Why am I not surprised! Jk. :)

So actually we have transfers next Wednesday (April 9). We find out this Saturday if we're staying/leaving, etc. And I might stay but there is a chance I could be leaving, or that I'll get another follow-up trainer if Sister Kim leaves. Sister Kim feels like she is going to be leaving Berkeley, which is scary because that means I kinda have to be expected to know everything! Well not know everything, but you know what I mean. I really don't know what's going to happen. But I'll let you know next Monday!

Yes it's General Conference this weekend! Super excited! We hope all of our investigators will make it! 

We already had our Zone Conference this transfer and I don't think we are going to be having one before transfers. I think for Brad, all the missionaries in his zone got together for a "goodbye" meeting or something, but I don't think they do that here, which kinda stinks because I think it'd be cool. Oh well! We have District Meetings every week, and they are fun! Our District Leader's are Elder Hoole and Elder Petersen. They conduct them and I'm usually laughing the whole time because they are super funny. They don't go all out like Brad did though with his metal armor suit and such haha. In our district is Sister Kim and I (Berkeley A Sisters), Sister Oa and Lindsay (Berkeley B Sisters), Sister Kwok and Sister Campos (Oakland 1st Sisters) and Elder Hoole and Petersen (Berkeley Family Ward). So three companionships of sisters and one set of elders. Everyone in our district is awesome!

So I'll tell you a little bit about our week last week:

On P-Day last week we had a Zone activity and played captured the flag! I was scared because sometimes I don't like playing sports with guys because they always get super competitive and scary (especially when Polynesians play haha) but it was super fun!! We all got Zone t-shirts. We got a zone picture; I don't have it yet but when I get it I'll have to send it to ya'll. On Tuesday we had exchanges with the Visitor's Center Sister Training Leaders. Guess who I was with? Sister Cooper! She's the one that dad talked to on the phone to ask about stuff to buy for the mission. Brad also predicted that she would be my trainer (which would have been awesome because she's amazing!!!!) It was an awesome day! She's so wise and comforting and loving and amazing! And, we found a new investigator for Sister Kim and I! Her name is M**** - Sister Cooper and I found her at the Visitor's Center - she was on Spring Break and decided to visit because she's always wanted to visit the Temple (she grew up Catholic but has been looking into different churches and wants to find the right one :)) and so we started talking to her and taught her about why we have temples/what we do inside them and the Book of Mormon! She was really interested so we got her info and she happens to be in our area! Then, we took her to the Family History Center downstairs and she ended up spending an hour down there doing family history work! Sister Kim and I have visited her twice since Tuesday and she is so optimistic and receptive to everything we're teaching her! It's crazy, it's a miracle we found her and I really believe the Lord has been preparing her for the gospel. :) She's so sweet and cute too! Such a blessing. We also had our second/last missionary training for new missionaries (we had one at the beginning of this transfer and one at the end). Crazy that my first transfer is almost over!! Friday was super fun - we had dinner with Elder Hoole and Elder Petersen at a member's home from the Berkeley family ward. We were at Brother and Sister Co's house. They are soooo funny. They are an older couple and both love bird-watching! Haha. Before dinner they heard a wood-pecker outside, so we went outside to find it and they were looking through their binoculars to see it and what kind of woodpecker it is. Hahaha it was neat. Brother Co is a jokester and is so funny, but Sister Co doesn't like that he always tries to be funny so she gets really annoyed with him. But that just makes it more funny. I was seriously laughing the whole time we were there. Also, we got to see General Woman's conference yesterday! Did anyone else watch it? If not you should because it was super good. :) It was all about being covenant-keeping women and helping to strengthen one another as daughters of God! :) We met with our investigator S****** who is getting baptized on April 13th (woohoo!) And we're doing our best to prepare him. He is such a neat person! He's originally from Nigeria. It's such a blessing to be able to meet so many different people from all around the world here. This past week I realized how precious everyone I meet is. They aren't just people from foreign countries in different cultures; they are all children of God and the fact that I get to know them and help them is a huge blessing and responsibility!!

Well, that's it for this past week. It was a great week though! I love you all so much! Thanks for all your love!!!!!