We had a Baptism

Dear familia e amigos...

WE HAD A BATISMO!!!!! Be ready for the pictures. Ok so i know i mentioned last week we would have a baptism... but during the week i was getting super worried if it would actually happen. but it did and i am so happy. This story is a good one so i hope you all enjoy... Ok here it goes!

So you know Aritson. We found him because we had been teaching his mother and his sister is a member. He was tough to get a hold of though because he doensºt have a telephone number and he lives in 2 different houses. and he may be out of town a lot because he has these horses in another area that he goes and works with. So he is a tough one. But let me begin with last monday.

So last monday we meet with him and his mom that night and have a pretty good lesson. He is still super excited to be baptized. Then comes tuesday.... haha So we had this ward Christmas party that we invited him to and then after the party we were going to have a lesson with him. Well he didnºt come to the christmas party. 

*Quick note about the christmas party... hahahahaha... ok so we walk in and there is this music playing. Not christmas music at all. haha So if anyone asks if they have christmas music in cabo verde. I think it is limited to the hymns and the regular music we listen to everyday. It was pretty funny. We were there for the spiritual part of the party though thank goodness. We saw the little nativity they did.... well i think it was a nativity. You know how good as it gets. But donºt worry Aunt angie and Trey... there were joseph's shooting guns.

Anyway back to Aritson. So we donºt find him tuesday. then comes wednesday. WE also do not find him. If any lessons fell through we tried looking for him but still couldnºt find him. at this point we were pretty worried. We left a note at his house though and said to meet us at our lesson the next day at three. So then comes Thursday. CHRISTMAS. we had a great breakfast... a great weekly planning.. a great lunch of some oreintal rice you will soon see. haha and then we went to our lesson with him at the chapple that was supposed to be at 3... WEll there was no one at the chapple.

So then we couldnºt decide where to go looking for him. So we decided to pray like good missionaries do. haha. But in all seriousness it was good. We prayed to know what house to go to and find him. Before the prayer i was feeling going to his house that was across the ribera. After the pray i didnºt feel any different. Sister zimbelman said "lets walk" So we started walking. I was just praying we would find. him. And then sister zimbelman said... " is that him" Right as we were about to cross the ribera we saw him coming up the road!!! We were soooo excited. If we had gone to his other house we would have gone the opposite direction and totally missed him. It was definitely inspired we found him. 

but the story doesnt stop there. Friday was his interview at 12 with the district leaders. WEll he didnt show up. Luckily the elders live forever away on the other side of the island and didnt have a bus ride until 430 that afternoon. So we were kind of praying our lesson after lunch might fall through so we could find him... (i mean not really praying but you know) it did. so we searched. WE found him just in time for the elder to interview him. He passed :) apparently he completely forgot about the interview...

Well it doesnºt stop there. Baptism. No one was there on time. haha but aritson. So we called around to find keys to the baptismal clothes. We finally find keys. But there are NO clothes. the elders had taken them to their area for a baptism a few weeks before and not returned them... i donºt know how we didnºt have any clothes but we didnt. we finally decide to do the best thing yet... CALL the bishop. hahah

Luckily our bishop is amazing and he has this secret stash of white clothing. So we finally get the clothes like 30 to 40 minutes late but that is ok. And then.... he was baptized and confirmed yesterday on sunday! YESSSSSSS

You canºt really have a normal bapstimal story on the mission. I dont think there is such a thing as a perfect baptism.

But anyway the baptism changed Aritson. Really. He was totally different sunday night when we had a lesson with him. He was soooo willing to learn. I think it surprised him how he felt different. He had a testimony before the baptism but he never showed total excitement. But yesterday he was humbled and willing to listen instead of trying to show us his knowledge he wanted to learn. I think that is thanks to the Holy Ghost. What a gift. The holy ghost is the real teacher. And i am so grateful for that. 

I know this church is true! I love you all so much. Something i studied this week in the book of mormon was in 1 nephi 10:17 and 11:1... Nefi had this desire to know the things of his father so he searched diligently. Then in 11:1... he sat and pondered. Then the spirit taught him. I have noticed that i study study study and then pray pray pray... and get up and go or study some more. This is good and all but i havenºt taken the time to ponder. In the introduction to the book of mormon it invites the world to read, PONDER; and ask god in the name of jesus christ if these things are true. Ponder is a big part of it i think. I have seen the change it makes in my studies as i choose to sit and ponder what i am learning. the spirit can really speak to us this way. And i have had the time to really remember my Savior. I love this opportunity and fact that i feel the spirit testify to me everytime i testify of the savior that he is our redeemer and through him we can return to live with god again.

This church is true ya'll... Fica fiche. (stay cool)

Ohhh and christmas... i loved speaking to my family but i have to say one of the members gave us something special... Coca Cola!!!! I donºt know what the rules are on that with us drinking it and stuff but anyway... yeah best present second to family and finding aritson was drinking Coke. I am becoming like dad....

Love

Sister Johnson

Baptism

 

Meeting Aritson

 

Week of miracles

Ola familia,

This week I will label as the week of miracles. haha... mainly because we found some people who are really prepared for the gospel in their lives. Yesterday was hard though because none of the people we taught who were super prepared came to church... so i think.. WHAT are we doing wrong??? After church sister Zimbelman and i talked about it. We thought that we are working as hard as we can so we cant get discouraged with ourselves or be too disappointed in ourselves. As we talked about it though we had some good thoughts about how we can do better. 

One of those thoughts were talking about the importance of church in our lessons. this week we did a lot of talking about the importance of partaking the sacrament and keeping the sabbath day holy. i thought we did a good job of getting across that our investigators needed to go to church. Then sunday comes and we see only a few of our investigators. I love the ones who did come, but the ones that did not come... it really hurt not to see them there. So as we talked about how we can do better we thought about the reasons that these people are missing church. The ones that are prepared said the reason they didnt come was because they accidentally slept in.. or something crazy came up. I see now that Satan is working so hard not to let these people come to church. He is having crazy things come up or making them sleep in. So sister zimbelman and i thought about discussing this with our investigators. Letting them know that now they have made this great decision to be baptized it wont always be easy... something will always come up. But they have to make the decision now to go to church and push through adversity. We had one lesson last night where we had to tell our investigator he couldnºt get baptized this week because he didnºt go to church. he seemed really upset about it. I realized that we need to let them know the importance of church and help them realize the effort it will take to go and also give them the confidence to be able to do it. 

Yesterday was a little depressing because they didnt come to church. But i will try to focus on the miracles that really did happen this week. For example, we have been praying for someone who will be ready for baptism. We had one person in mind but he doesnºt have a phone and last week we didnºt even know where he lived. We just kept praying to find him. And the end of last week... we found him. It is amazing how the spirit works. Because we had a lesson with his younger brother that night, the brother is Romario and the one who we were praying for is ARitson. Anyway the lesson before Romarios fell through. We were going to just go to our plano alternativo  but we decided to go early to our lesson with romario. And what do you know... it wasnºt him who was there... it was Aritson! The guy who is ready for this message. We were so excited to see him. And he was about to walk out the door. With minutes to spare... the Lord led us to the one who was ready. I just love this. We were able to have a quick 20 minute, but powerful lesson with him. And we recommitted him to baptism. :) I was beyond happy this day. And in all honesty when i think back to moments like this nothing really can get us down. We just have to remember all the good times during times that may be more difficult than others.

Another miracle i just love is last week... remember how we emailed super later than usuall? well it turns out is for a reason. We were pretty upset the place we email at closed on us.. so we were all complaining about it how we had to email super late... haha well we ate our words. because right after we get done emailing we see a member with his friend. We contact the friend and set up a date to meet with him... his name is Stephen... stephen has investigated the church before... Well at the time i thought nothing of it until we had a lesson with stephen. It was so powerful!!!! he committed to pray about the book of mormon and we set a date for baptism! He just had big eyes the whole time during the lesson and we could just see the spirit working on him. And it is even better that he is a reference from a member because he automatically has a great friend in the church. So we meet with him again today and i am super excited. So even when something you THINK isnºt supposed to happen.. happens... it really is supposed to happen with the Lord. he puts us where we need to be or puts people where we are. I have really seen that this week.

Love you all so much. 

Sister JOhnson

Love

Sister Johnson

Barco

Fast Ferry

Pres and Sister Matthews

Fast Ferry JK

Worlds smallest banana

Ok so this week was great

Ola!

Ok so this week was great! I only have like 20 minutes to email at this time because this place closes but i will email back a little later in the day. probably in like 3 hours... for those of you reading this in real time.

But for those of you who arenºt here is my weekly update.

So this week was good. a lot of lessons were falling through in the beginning of the week which was hard to cope with. we were so excited for all these investigators and we could never meet with them. but one thing i really noticed was every time we had something fall through i felt like we were where we were supposed to be and we were able to talk to someone else we needed to talk to us. 

For example... one day we had the bishop teaching with us. which was great. One thing we are really trying to work on as a companionship is really use the members more. my 12 weeks booklet really emphasized working with the members last week. this is so huge and so important. they really are the way that the work is going to go forward. so it was a big plus having the bishop sacrifice sometime to teach with us. So we had this lesson with a recent convert. but he wasnºt there... so as we were walking to our alternative appointment the bishop asked if we could stop at another less actives house. they are an old couple we had just met a day before. they have work every sunday so they do not go to church. this is a problem for a lot of the people here. but this couple has a goal to go to the temple so they need to make sure they are going to church and partaking of the sacrament. so anyway they were home and we ended up having a lesson with them...

now i will pause the story there as i talk about what we did before this lesson. WE had a district meeting. and in this district meeting we talked about the importance of revelation through church attendence and how we teach people how important church attendence really is! so we did some practices and learned a lot from them...

well now back to the story... we walk into the lesson with the less active couple and we end up teaching almost the same exact lesson we had practiced in district meeting a few hours before. it went so well. and guess what is even better... they still had excuses about work and things when we left.. but this sunday.. THEY WERE IN CHURCH. TOGETHER. not just the wife. this really made me feel so great. and they stayed for all three meetings. i hope the spirit sparked a change in them.

something i have learned is church attendance and partaking of the sacrament, more importantly, is soooooo important. and we need to do a better job as missionaries of getting this importance across to our members and our investigators. i have been amazed at how much stronger i feel the spirit and how much stronger i appreciate the atonement of Jesus Christ when i take the sacrament on my mission. i really do feel the forgiving power and also the enabling power of the atonement. And also something super cool is the sacrament is renewing the covenants we make at baptism. so it is like baptism all over again. 

I would call this week the rescue because we talked to a lot of less active members and met with a lot of them. if we could just get the less actives back to church we would have a ward so big we would need to split! And one way to do this is by sharing the importance of the sacrament and having them remember how they felt when they were baptized and that they can feel this SAME renewal as they partake of the sacrament. i just love this fact.

I love you all.

So glad to hear bama won... and also i am SOOOO sorry Whitney.. i mean sister johnson 2... and Dad about your birthdays. I promise i remembered... but then happen to forget while i emailed. so HAPPY BIRTHDAY to both of you. I love you both so much :)

love

sister johnson

The Fast Boat

Dogs are everywhere

We killed Sister Barros

Aunties made apple pies for Kiana and her companion

Love my companion

Ok so what a week,

First off. I just love my companion. She is so patient with me and so kind and loving. Like obviously i cant speak the language super well... obviously... but she has been a saint in allowing me and making me speak in the lessons. and she is so patient with what i say and allows me to make mistakes but also is so patient when i ask for help. the goal this week was to let me take the lead in teaching the restoration... so that was good. haha especially that we had sooo many first lessons this week. 

so the restoration... after this week passed i looked at my companion and i was a little discouraged and told her i didnºt know if i had learned anything about teaching the restoration or if i had gotten any better at it. she then asked if i felt like i could teach the restoration in english... i said yes. because i really do... and then she said: then you know how to teach it. it is just the language limiting you know and you will learn it little by little. it will come. that helped me a lot because i was discouraged about not getting any better at teaching lessons. but i think a good indicator is if i feel i can do it in english then i must be getting better at it. 

ok so my companion is really great with awesome advice all the time. we have become friends now.. which i told her is bad because now we talk non stop and sometimes talk through the night... haha so we are working on exact obedience and really trying to get our studies in even if we have all sorts of stories to tell. haha sister zimbleman is great.

so best experience this week... was JOSE AND DIRLIN. they are investigator family. a really beautiful family with a boy and 2 girls. we talked to them about the book of mormon in the beginning of the week and one day while we were walking to go exercise we saw jose at work reading the book of mormon. he had a big huge smile on his face. he was so happy. and then the lesson we had the next day was incredible. we talked to them about keeping the law of chastity and they told us they knew the book of mormon was true. they had a smile on their faces the whole entire lesson. both of them. and i could literally see the change in their lives. incredible.

so i know the book of mormon can change lives. it really can. it is incredible to see. the book of mormon is the evidence we have today that we have a living prophet... that we have personal revelation and that we DO have the church of jesus christ on the earth today. it is His church and he leads and guides it through a living prophet. i love this. and the proof and evidence is the book of mormon. it testifies of chirst and we can get closer to christ by reading it. and i know it is true.

the second great thing that happened was a funny experience... it wasnºt funny at the time though. so we have these doors that automatically lock when you close them. and so if you dont have the key.. you canºt just walk back in and get it... so one morning we left the key in the apartment... i had my key but it wasnt working because they other key was in the other side of the door. so we prayed and prayed for a miracle. all the windows were closed... there was no way to get back in. while we were praying though i felt that this experience wasnt going to be for us. it was for whoever we would meet in the process. we ended up making a lot of contacts that morning that we would not usually see because in the mornings we are always studying. and we happen to meet a carpenter. and he miraculously opened our door... with some handy work. so we talked to him a bit... gave him a pamphlet and picked a day to meet with him and his family. the lesson ended up falling through. but i hope we find him again. but i know whoever we met that morning or talked to or invited needed to happen. all things happen for a reason. so although we were really upset about our door... it isnºt about us... it is about the people

i love it in santo antao. this place is great. i really love the people. they are so beautiful. but i have decided i am in the rock climbing area... we climb this like cliff thing to get from one zone to another... it is pretty exotic. i will have to take a picture of it. but it makes me laugh because this place really is not america. haha and i am climbing rocks to get to people... how cool is that??

i love you all

sister johnson

What a week

The beautiful Primeria-they had a primary program

Dear familia e amigos...

What a week! I have decided that sundays are the hardest on the mission. mostly because it is judgement day. it is where we see what investigators will actually come to church... and yesterday we did not have the numbers we were hoping for. it was a big let down for me and kind of discouraging. i felt like we werenºt doing enough through out the week to help these people realize how important it is to come to church. i have noticed the small and simple things really do bring great things to pass. for example, when investigators stop reading their scriptures or stop saying their prayers we can tell a big difference in them and in their progress. the same is when they choose not to go to church. i feel like we start way back at square one. but i have to keep positive and realize these people have thier agency. and i need to keep doing the best i can do.

this week i would say the highlight was the zone conference. the food was the best... haha just kidding. the spiritual feast was really the best! We talked about the mission goal... which is mcvp. mission cabo verde praia. so first we have being master teachers... then we have c is consecrated missionaries. i love talking about consecrated missionaries. this was my goal to learn how to be one before my mission and i have learned that on my mission it is a process. but the zone conference was really helpful. we talked about our agency and our will. our agency is the one thing that is really all ours. and the goal is to learn how to give it to god. we read a quote that said giving up our agency is really the one surrender that is actually a victory. i love this. i decided to learn how to better give my will all to the lord and what he wants me to do day to day and what he wants me to be. and it wont be losing anything i will be gaining so much. this is also a process. but it excites me to. the fact that we can truly give our will to god. it is exciting.

so after the zone conference we had to take the barco.. ship... back to our island... but the only one left was the fast ferry. mom... i am so sorry but you will probably never be able to come to santo antao.. the only way is to get here by boat and on the fast ferry imagine being on a rollercoaster... or that ship ride at lagoon... for 30 minutes. Never again!!!!!!!!!! i even get sick on the regular barco... but the fast ferry was... well death. the two other sisters with us were vomitting the whole time. sorry for the details... i never actually threw up but man... i had a headache so bad the whole time and felt like i might. my companion and the district leader came out the best... our district leader was ready for more... we begged for him never to make us take that again... it was rough. but back to happy things...

i think my favorite part of the week was finding domingas and her boyfriend bemvindos... they are great. the day we saw them bemvindos was in a bad mood... or just really sad. we told him that our message can help him through difficult times. and his face kinda lit up and he got kinda hopeful. so we set a time to meet with them. come to find out domingas is actually a member. hasnºt gone to church in 20 years. she sat in the lesson and we talked about the restoration. bemvindos said he would study it out. he seemed pretty sincere about it to. and during the lesson domingas wasnºt really into it... but after the lesson we marked to talk to them again and sister zimbleman quietly asked domingas if she would help us teach her boyfriend. that was an inspired question. domingas got really animated. and she got super excited to help out. i think she just needed to know she was needed. she doesnºt want to feely needy.. but that fact that we need her really changed her attitude. and come to find out this sunday a member knows her really well and has been asking her to come back to church for years. she has been planting the seed and now she is prepared to make that step again in her life. i am really excited for them in the coming weeks!

this week sister zimbelman and i made some goals for the companionship. we talked about a lot of ideas and a lot of things we wanted to improve on and i think by doing this we got pretty overwhelmed. today we talked about how we are actually going to accomplish these goals. making goals has always been a struggle for me. i feel like when i make goals i never complete them. so then i get discouraged and just decide not to make them in the first place. because i always want to improve on so many things i always want to make so many goals... and then i get discouraged. but today sister zimbelman suggested that we make a list of what we want to do as a companionship... this list may get long. but then we will prayerfully pick the one thing we want to do better and make a goal with that one thing. i learned again that by small and simple things great things are brought to pass. it is always little by little.

 

i am loving santo antao with all my heart. i have definitely found loving the people is easy. but the hard part comes when i try to find the best way to serve them. so my goal this week is to also find ways to better serve the people. so when we teach the doctrine they will have open hearts and want to listen to us. and for the members, want to help us in this great work. we need to members in this work. for one, they understand creole better than i do. and they know the people here and where they live, what they like to do. i noticed this week that investigator families opened way up when we had a member present that they knew really well. so we need members, but we also need members who are friends with these people. and that is another reason why references are super important as well. we will have a built in member friend right there. i hope to better learn how to use the members in this work and work with them and help them get excited about the amazing spirit that comes when we teach the gospel and help others come unto christ.

i hope i never leave here... like in alma 17:23... i want to stay here... perhaps until the day i die.. die in the mission at least :) hahaha i have been studying alma 17. what a great chapter for missionaries. today i learned i need to be patient in my afflications. and then the lord will make me an instrument in his hands. 17:11 i think... patience. :)

Love~
Sister Johnson