My Week in Short :)

Monday was pretty normal, didn't do too much besides emailing and walmart. But Sister Taylor really likes Arbys Sauce... a lot. So I bought her a bottle of her own because I love her so much :P hehe.

 We also visited with the Less Active family, the R*. The dad, was a convert about 3 years ago. He became too reliant on his missionaries so when they weren't over EVERY day, he completely lost his testimony. So we are working on getting him spiritually self reliant. He and his wife Maria have three little girls and she is pregnant with her fourth.

I also took my drivers test so I can get my privileges which is good because we went on exchanges again this week. Sister Taylor is now STL over the Bountiful and Cannon zones, which means she covers the sisters in the Tongan program...super cool! :D so Wednesday we went on exchanges with them. Sister Taylor was in Cannon for the day and we had Sister Kapeli, who is from Tonga. Buuuut... that also meant I had to drive and act like I knew the area! I guess I know more than I thought I did, but it was still super stressful. I realized I hate driving in cities.

We also added a new investigator this week! Her name is A* P*, who is 13,  and she wants to be baptized, but her dad thinks she doesn't know enough... and she totally does! Her dad and his girlfriend are both less active and they just need to figure out that its her choice and she wants to do it! We've been doing a lot of splits, which gives me lots of opportunities to lead in lessons... although sister taylor is pretty good at making me do that already... :P and sister weber is coming along really well, we're all learning a lot from each other.

We saw sister k* as well this week, she is having a hard time because she loves her ward but is going to have to move and can't find a place in the ward boundaries. Hopefully she is at least still in our stake. I would be so sad if we couldn't teach her anymore! :( We are also still teaching S* the New member lessons and S*. We had our district meeting on friday and did planning and met with T*. a little about T*, he was inactive for over 40 years and his wife died earlier this year, which opened him up to the gospel again. he is reading the Book of Mormon and learning so much! it truly has the power to convert through the spirit :) 

Saturday we had lunch again with President Hollingshead and his wife, Sally, gave us the ingredients and recipe for Chiliritos because I asked for the recipe... she is so sweet! :D

Sunday we went to the missionary prep class that they hold in the seminary building at 7:30 am, which was cool! more sisters for splits! :P for most of this week Sisters Taylor and Weber have been sick, so I finally sorta made them get blessings, which is good, because they are both really stubborn :) so we asked the District Leader and his comp, Elder Anderson started sister taylors and right off the bat, he said, "Heavenly Father has been waiting to give you this blessing". Needless to say, I had my I TOLD YOU SO MOMENT and just laughed. But now im sick. I have a terrible cold and can't breathe out my nose... SO FUN! :D not. But I am happy with the work I am doing and can't wait to do more! :)

LOVE SISTER JOHNSON! :) ♥

FUN WEEK! :D

This week was fun and exciting, because we got our new companion, Sister Weber! A little more about her, she recently turned 20 years old, from Maui, Hawaii and is just the BEST! :D our little trio is rocking Centerville! 

It was great to get a letter from Brother Bingham and the Websters this week, and of course mom sent another package :P haha i said no food or lotion, mom said, "popcorn and gum doesn't count as food...right?" silly goose :P

 Well, last week i mentioned S* baptism, so here is a little bit of her story! Stephanie is about 25, a single mom, and her son's name is M*. She lived in California and before moving here knew zilch about the church. She works at * and many of her coworkers are LDS. One day one of them invited her to church and she came! she enjoyed it and after a few weeks of going, asked how she could learn more! So the sisters started teaching her. She was on date for baptism in Dec, but had to be moved to Jan because she was visiting family in CA that weekend. So when she got back we were worried because she said she wanted to move her date. she wanted to be baptized when life was easy and she could be relaxed about it and not stressed. The member there, Sister Cosper (who rocks!) told her life was never going to be easy and if she made that step of faith, she would see the blessings that come from her faith. Then she was completely determined to be baptized on the 8th! :) she is so rocking awesome and we can't wait to start the New Member Lessons with her :)

Monday was a crazy day prepping for transfers and saying goodbye so elder perkins, who left for Australia. Some of the Zone met up and we ate Five Guys for lunch and then sister taylor and i spent the rest of the day cleaning for sister weber :) haha well, a lot of it was organizing and making room for a third person. 

Tue was my first transfer day! i've been out for almost 7 whole weeks now, but it seems like longer! we tried to walk around and do some contacting because it was a beautiful, bright sunny day, but no one was outside. but we did end up going on splits again and i got to see sister weber in action. She is a great missionary and is super excited because her last area was a little bit slow (she was in the Centerville Stake, right north of us, bordering us :P haha) but we actually have people we're teaching! :) This week, we also got to help with an activity days activity on missionary work, had a lesson with Sister K* (she is still fantastic!), T*, R*, S*, and another NML with S* (new member lesson). next week i'll expound more on who these people are, because i can't remember if I've mentioned them or not :) 

We also had stake conference and i got to speak for a few minutes at the Youth/Adult Session and got to talk a little bit about moms conversion story :) 

One really cool experience i had this week was last night at S*'s lesson. They have a less active woman named E* who lives with them, and she is a complete hoot. whenever we go over and she's not sick (she has a lot of health issues) we have so many laughs. But S*'s mom, C* said that we have really impacted E*. Apparantely many have tried to get her out to church or break her shell, but we have been the only ones able to do that so far. She even went out and bought a dress so she can go to church shen she gets better! I love the people here and the experiences i get to have. i see miracles every day and am so blessed to be able to go on a mission. 

Sorry for the short letter this week, but love is sent your way, and just to share a quick scripture, D&C 6:34 is an awesome one! :) 

love you! 

A Busy Week!!!

This week has been crazy busy, getting ready for transfers and doing exchanges. SUPER CRAZY!  But fun! :) 

Monday was so fun, we went to Boondocks for our Pday activity and did a BUNCH of laser tag and bowling and games. Then we had a lesson with a LA family, the T*, and they rock! D* is a recent convert and he wants to have more faith, its just something thats really hard for them...we're just trying to get them to the temple! :) 

Tuesday was Zone Conference, and it was awesome!  We had to leave at 7:40 and they said it would start at 8:30, but it actually didn't start till 9am. But thats all right :) Sister Taylor did a training on bearing pure testimony which rocked and president Hansen gave us new SOE's (standards of excellence), which are kind of like mission wide goals and he wants to be continually improving. He is seriously the BEST mission president ever :)

Wed I had my first exchange. It was in West Bountiful with Sister Toutai (her companion sister smith came to our area). It was really fun getting to know her. She was in the MTC with Sister Taylor and she is just really fun loving and easygoing...and a fantastic singer!  Seriously, her voice is gorgeous. Then... drumroll please... WE HAD A BAPTISM!!!  S* got baptized on wednesday night right after we finished exchanges. The spirit was there so strong and Sister Taylor and I bore our testimonies while she was changing and taught the restoration. Sister Blankenship was also there, the Sister that Sister Taylor  trained before me, which makes us sisters :) After the baptism, we ran home, packed, and went on ANOTHER exchange!

I went with Sister Bill and Poutu up in Bountiful and their companion (they were in a threesome) Sister Henriques went to our area. Sister Bill in from Montreal, Canada (french speaking), Sister Henriques is from Brazil, and Sister Poutu is from New Zealand! So I got to hang out with sister Poutu, which was fun...except she still has Laryngitis from when she was in the MTC! O.o boo. but we did some visits and made phone calls they needed to make. Then we had a dinner, visited more, and exchanged back! So that was thursday. I missed Sister Taylor a lot... 

Friday morning we were going to go to the Rec center to play basketball or something, and I convinced Sister Taylor to go, even though she's not a morning person. At all. But we got up and started getting ready... then realizing it was 5am. she had set the alarm too early. So we went back to bed till 6 (we were meeting at 6:07...yup, our ZL's are funny :P) and we walk outside to get into the car and BOOM. Someone had parked behind our car and we were so mad because we had gotten up so early for nothing!! UG! so we went back to bed for a little bit and then got ready. That morning sister taylor wasn't feeling so hot so I made her sleep and I did some other stuff, including a watercolor because I was really missing watercoloring! i'm kinda proud of it... :) That day we also visited sister K*, which is always nice and we helped T* finish up her house. She had made a lot of progress by herself during the week and we were so proud of her! we were basically just there to motivate her. We've been praying for her because she goes in for her weightloss surgery today but she's been to church two weeks in a row now! 

Saturday we helped a Nonmember lady pack/clean/who knows what to her house.  The rest of the day was lunch with president Hollingshead... and another exchange! with sister Hathaway and Alcantar (don't have pics) but they are really great sisters. Sister Alcantar has something wrong with her stomach and keeps having tests done and they still can't figure it out. 

Sunday was slower, except we had a 7am ward council and then S* confirmation at 2:50pm. I made waffles for breakfast too... :) IT WAS AWESOME!!! then we had more church and dinner, then sister taylor had an MLC, which is a leadership mtg before transfers at the mission office...so I did more personal study! :) I found out that one of the Elders in our district who is comp to the ZL's is going to Australia finally for his mission...he was waiting on his visa. Its a bummer, cause we were buddies! seriously...we make fun of each other a lot. Also, we are losing one of our ZL's, Elder Lawrence, which is bummer too! He's going to Layton. and... drumroll... we get another companion! we will now be in a trio with myself, Sister Taylor, and Sister Weber! This will be her third transfer and she is from Hawaii!

This morning we went to the rec center and played basketball kinda for a final activity and we just had a lot of fun! i'll miss all of the missionaries I have come to really respect (and for the sisters, totally love!) But this transfer is going to be amazing and i'm so excited! also thanks for the letters! i've gotten a few, this morning I got one from sister grimnes! Thanks, they help so much! :) LOTS OF LOVE, and keep the faith! :)

Having fun at Boondocks

At S*'s baptism!

Some very happy Sisters! 

Hannah's watercoloring

BBall in the morning

Darling... and fun to see a little where they live. 

Another Week in the Life of a Centerville Missionary :)

This has been another great week! Monday we had a pretty chill P-Day, we got to go play Volleyball...which was interesting. If you didn't know this already, I am terrible at anything that has to do with sports. So whenever I had to serve or other people had to serve multiple times before it got over the net, I would call them Sister Johnson serves...they all got a hoot out of that :P anyways, so that was fun.

 Then all of our appointments cancelled on us so we tried to work out exchanges that we will be doing this week. Sister Taylor is a Sister Training Leader (STL), so we have to go on lots of exchanges, but with me training and the Christmas season we haven't gotten any in so far... so we will be doing three this week. SO FUN! :P except it will be a super crazy week.

On Tue. Sister Taylor had MLC, so I studied all morning, then we had another lesson with Sister K, a final meeting with S*, who is getting baptized this week, and since it was New Year’s Eve... we got to do a district activity and got to eat pizza and watch Ephraim’s Rescue and Monsters University (of course, I was rooting for Tangled, but alas...most hadn't seen Monsters U yet...) but it was a blast! :) Then Sister Taylor and I got home and read cheesy jokes mom sent me and drank martinellis! :) NO, we didn't stay up till 12 because we would've died from tiredness... but Sister Taylor let me curl her hair too! Now I just have to get her to wear a flower in her hair... :) haha you know me!

On Jan 1st, it was a new year! But really, it didn't feel like it. We spent much of the morning on paperwork and study and in the evening we had dinner with a newly activated family (and S*, who was baptized my first week out) and it was lots of fun!

We were going to go on exchanges and I was going to be up in North Salt Lake for a day, but they cancelled last minute. But hey, at least we got our room cleaned all spic and span! Thursday we returned some dishes to a lady who made us cake... and she talked for about an hour and a half. We probably said all of three sentences the WHOLE TIME. But she was super sweet :) then we tried to do some contacting, but no one was home, the middle of the day is a hard time to fill, especially when people cancel on you.

S* had her baptism interview and we got to watch her little son M* for a few minutes. He is a funny little kid, just coming up on his terrible two's. Then we had a New Member Lesson (NML) with t* &  b* who were baptized just before I came out. Their dad, P*, we added as a new investigator because he is a non-member and he has said he may want to be baptized, which would be super legit! We also made contact with a Non Member referral and set up an appointment to meet with her this week.

 ALSO... I yelled happy birthday at the sky for my mom because it was her birthday! :D Haha

Friday we had a district meeting and planning all day, and then met with a Less Active (LA) named S* and her daughter A*. The people here are just so stinkin awesome! 

Saturday was also lots of fun! We woke up at 5:30 because the ZL's invited the zone to the Bountiful Rec center for morning exercise, and I wanted to try it out. BUTTTT...Sister Taylor is SO not a morning person, and I think she wanted to kill me... it was really fun though! We got exercise in and then made hash browns for breakfast and ate fruit! We also got to help T* clean her house again, and a lot of it was going through her clothes and seeing what she could give to DI, which she did a good job doing. It was a bit harder for her because she is having weight loss surgery and some of it she was holding onto with hopes of fitting again someday, but with encouragement we helped her fill 3 and a half large trash bags with clothes she was getting rid of! Yay T*!

Later that evening we went to President Hintze's house and watched Hastening of the Work videos for him to put on a disc for us to show members (if you haven't watched them, do it!) Of course, Sister Hintze took a picture of us and sent it to our moms...it happens a lot down here :) 

Sunday was great. It was fast Sunday, so we were REALLY hungry all day of course, but it helps when you're at church from 9am till 4pm. we helped teach a combined YM/YW missionary class where the spirit was SUPER strong! And of course the Fast and Testimony meetings. Sometimes it’s hard because people don't always bear pure testimony (read the talk Bearing Pure Testimony!) and it’s more of a thankamony or life story, and although you can feel the spirit, it doesn't have the power of conversion behind it. But when we met with T* on Saturday she told us she read the scriptures we had left her that I had looked up about forgiveness and handing things over to the Lord. She said she followed the footnotes to one and found a scripture that rang completely true with her and brought her so much peace and comfort. It’s amazing to see the effects we can have on people’s lives and it just makes me so happy! :)

Haha on a funny note, a Less Active Sister we are working with I met on Sunday and we sat next to her in church. Turns out she is the Aunt of one my friends from High School... her name is J* S*. It was funny to make that connection. It really is a small small world! :) Love you all and enjoy the beginning of this New Year! :) 

 MOM: I’m doing great! :) I don't need much. ALSO! As a note for dad, there is an IN and OUT out here, and I ate there... and it was GOOD! :P haha but I am watching what I eat, more fruit and veggies, sometimes we get hookups at subway. LOVE YOU ALL! I pray for you all and love you! Sending hugs and love, and mom! I still have to send your bday present sorry. :) 

Celebrating New Year's Eve

Yummy Sparkling Apple Cider

Apparently this is fascinating. LOL!

Yummy cupcakes to celebrate the new year!

Poor Cupcake.

It had NO chance!

Being Silly

5:30am.... way too early!

Sis. Taylors famous parking

Sis. Johnson with Sis. Hintze and Sis. Taylor