LAUREN'S JUNE 16, 2014 E-MAIL

 DISTRICT FUN!

 Pics below (from Zone Conference):

My district with chocolate mustaches (I didn't have mine so I wasn't in it), me with some of the other amazing VC sisters, and President and Sister Meredith :-)

Greetings!

Happy Father's Day Dad!!!! Sorry it's late! It sounds like you had an awesome day though! (and awesome presents!) :)

I can't believe this transfer is almost over! This is week 5 so we have one more week after this! What the! Sister Henderson and I are doing wonderful and Moraga is just magical. :) We aren't teaching as many lessons as we would like and what not, but the family we are teaching is doing so great!! (the M***** family - the dad, Brother M****** is getting baptized June 28th, the mom is already a member) :) We are blown away by him! He is such a great guy! And we are going to talk about his daughter getting baptized soon after him as well :) The families in our ward  are AMAZING fellow-shippers! ) I just love our members!! And we are so excited for this family and we already love them!

So mom for your questions, we have been eating at members' homes almost every night the past couple weeks :) And they feed us goooood food :-) We had salmon the other nights, steak another night... we are spoiled out here. Our investigators right now are Brother M***** and his daughter, L***, and Brother R***. So we only have 3 right now. But we have some potentials that we are hoping will become investigators soon :)

As for visiting part-members, we have visited a lot, but haven't had much success yet as far as helping the non-members in the families. We have been visiting a lot of less-actives too but not much success with them either. We can tell they have been bugged by missionaries so many times, but luckily they are really nice to us.

Oh yeah, we had Zone Conference last week! It was a really good one. :) It was a lot about faith and about our individual gifts and potential. Our mission President, President Meredith, is simply amazing. He is so full of faith and humility. He's just like everyone's dad but also feels like a general authority at the same time.

Last week, we visited a member in our ward who is 106 years old!!!! Unfortunately she had a nasty fall a few weeks ago so she hasn't been doing as well lately (but for 106 she is doing awesome! She is able to walk and talk and eat and everything!) It was so neat. Her son-in-law takes care of her. Visiting her was just very special. It made me reflect on my life and who I am and who I want to be. We read some of D&C 76 with them (which happened to be her son-in-laws favorite chapter; he cried when we read it to him). We read verses 5-10:  

5 For thus saith the Lord - I, the Lord, am merciful and gracious unto those who fear me, and delight to honor those who serve me in righteousness and in truth unto the end.

6 Great shall be their reward and eternal shall be their glory.

7 And to them will I reveal all mysteries, yea, all the hidden mysteries of my kingdom from days of old, and for ages to come, will I make known unto them the good pleasure of my will concerning all things pertaining to my kingdom.

 8 Yea, even the wonders of eternity shall they know, and things to come will I show them, even the things of many generations.

 9 And their wisdom shall be great, and their understanding reach to heaven; and before them the wisdom of the wise shall perish,and the understanding of the prudent shall come to naught.

 10 For by my Spirit will I enlighten them, and by my power will I make known unto them the secrets of my will—yea, even those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor yet entered into the heart of man.

I just love these verses. One of my favorite verses from the scriptures while I've been out here is 1 Corinthians 2:9, which is almost the same as verse 10:

9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

So far while I've been out here on a mission, my testimony and knowledge of life after this one has grown a lot. I just know without a doubt that there is so much more than what we can see right now. Sister Henderson and I have a really cheesy and cliche saying that we say to everyone: The Gospel makes dreams come true. The Gospel is so simple and beautiful, and living it, teaching it to others and learning more about it is like taking a blindfold off and helps me to see what true happiness is and what is to come. I wouldn't trade that knowledge for anything. :)

Love you all! Have a great week and do good stuff!!!!

Sister Johnson