Ups and Downs of the mission

Dear Family,

I love the ups and downs of the mission! Today was transfer day. New transfer but luckily no new things on my side of the island! haha Sister Coelho and i are staying together one more! Which is good because i still have a lot to learn in portuguese and in my teaching skills. SO happy. And we have some marriages to take care of and some people to be baptized. it will be a great transfer. The one sister in our house got moved to another area in the zone and the other sister in our house is training a new missionary from the US. haha... So pumped. I will trade name tags with sister coelho and i will be from cabo verde and not know how to speak english.. just portuguese and creole and sister coelho will be sister johnson from alaska!!! We are going to try to make her believe it for one week. Just one. But i am so excited! This should be a test for my Portuguese and creole abilities. hahaha... poor americana sister.

But yeah. Dont worry i will be a nice cabe verdiana! So this week was pretty normal... nothing great. Just a lot of patience testers. We are having a lot of solid people to teach but after a week or so they stop being solid and just get annoying and stop keeping commitments. I think someone else is trying to follow up faster than we are. But this is the Lords work so We will win!! We are learning the importance of daily follow up with these people. Whether it is from us... or from the members! So we are giving the members the list of invites from our planner.. the one that says the actions before baptism and they have to go there during the week to follow up with the investigators and read the book of mormon with them. Our part now is to follow up with the members. haha

The investigators that are being more chato... (annoying) are Erika and Vitor. I love them... but the week was so up and down. We get there monday and ask about preparations for the wedding this week and they are like without faith that it will happen. they keep saying how they want to get baptized first. So we go through the baptismal interview questions and they are so excited, acting as if they are so prepared until... we ask about the law of chastity! they are just not taking it seriously! The law of chastity is one of the most important commandments and everyone.. i literally mean everyone but members of the church.. maybe... break it! It has become something totally normal for me... but it shouldnt be! So we bore strong testimony of the importance of this commandment and we started to see some changes. The best part of this lesson though was the member. The lord works in mysterious ways because i am like the sister in charge of the telephone in our companionship because i talk really fast on the cell phone and dont waste many minutes... so i was calling our member Nunu who already taught erika and vitor with us and we got all planned that he would teach with us. Well then i started thinking it was weird how he said he didnt know where they lived... but he had already taught with us. So he keeps calling saying how he is lost. so finally we give the phone to erika and she explains to him. Then we wait outside and he says he is wearing a yellow shirt.... turns out it wasnt the right Nuno... At least he was a member though. haha and i think less active but it was gods plan that he showed up because he was amazing in the lesson!! He made them commit to be married and baptized haha it was great. But then they got lazy again during the week and wouldnt go to the records place to get a drivers license thingy to even have the documents to get baptized. So we were going to mark the marriage today, but we go last night to the house and they say they have something ^more important to do^... SO i guess eternal life is less important... but as i said...

I am learning patience.

And i love them... SO MUCH. i think that i why i get so disappointed. and also i can see myself in them. haha so we are still praying and yes.. we fasted too.. so that they can make this decision in their lives. We actually recieved a call from nunu the night after our fast saying that he wants to pay for them so that they can get the documents prepared.... Wow... what a blessing. Now they just have to decide. They are really just living paycheck by paycheck. She is pregnant and doesnt work and he fishes... which is a rough profession because it depends on what he sells and the people who fish are super bad influence... but he isnt using drugs anymore! nothing!!! so that is a blessing!

I know that this is all true though. and i have been seeing a lot of my weaknesses this week. its a little discouraging, but at least i have a whole life to progress. i want to be more understanding and patient with others. and i want to be able to show the love i have for others through service! Service with a smile! that is the trick... do it with joy. I have seen a lot of how the savior is our ultimate example. I am learning so much from his example and how i need to come closer to him by doing the things that he did! Serve and love. And i also know how he was obedient. Exactly obedient everytime. That is what we need to do as people and especially as missionaries. Even when we have a lot of temptation to break the little rules... like go to bed late or just talk about other things than our work... we need to remember how to be more obedient. i think i am at the point in my mission where i can just be good.. or decide to be great and i hope that i can be more like my savior and decide to show my faith through my exact obedience! In basketball we always heard that saying... we have a lot of people that are good... but then there are those that are great. And what made the difference.. discipline and yeah.. obedience to the plan! so basketball can apply to missionary work! haha obedience exactly every time and i know i will see more miracels. 

 i love you all have a great week

sister johnson

Increase Faith

Dear Familia!

So i blame myself... we made a goal (sister coelho and i) to increase our faith and our hope this month. What a bad... i mean great... idea! haha but this week for sure tested our faith! First i will start with the amazing news i recieved during the week...

do you remember SERGIO AND IRENE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THEY GOT MARRIED AND BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I kind of count this as my baptism.. and marriage... so you can say that i had 2 marriages this past week! But yeah. so yeah. Sergio and irene got married on friday and BOTH of them got baptized. this means they are not using cafe or alcohol or nothing and that they are going to prepare to go to the temple. i am SO beyond happy. I was SO sad to leave but i am so happy the sisters there helped them reach there goal and that they made this promise with heavenly father. Wow... this is truly the work of the lord. i hope you all remember all the crazy stories and updates we had with them! Good work Sister kohlert and sister cardoso and sister mendes! haha

But yeah so zaza and patrick... i will do a day by day update of what happened with them.

monday- as you know all was going GREAT!

tuesday- We recieve news that we are going to do a musical number at the wedding. no problem. haha just my comp cant sing and she only plays piano.. Sister johnson SOLO. hahahaha

wednesday- still great... just that we go to zazas house and its the day before the wedding and she talks about some strike that is going on at the marriage place. Umm what? But then she said that the strike will all be cleared up by the next day. No problem... yeah right

thursday- The day of the wedding. So i wake up.. get ready in cute clothes and super pumped to go to the wedding and take many pictures. We leave a little late so we have to take a taxi... and they arent super expensive but not cheap either. so we take a taxi there and show up. We see something happening outside but dont thing anything of it. We walk in the place and ask about where the marriage will be and they say "no marriages today... there is a strike. so no one is working today!" WHAT!!!! So we go back outside.. (funny thing is the strike is being filmed and apparently we were on television... a member told us.) But anyway we call zaza and she says it will happen at 2 pm.... oops. So we have to do a lot of planning and re marking and then we go back home. i think we were both a little upset. But the whole time i was thinking.. HOW. i mean it is the day of the marriage...we already passed through a lot.. WHY one more thing. but it tested my patience. so finally 2 comes and despite my lack of faith that it wouldnt happen... the wedding happened. We see zaza and patrick and we listen to the vows and it was great! Then we go to the church to have a little ceremony... where sister johnson would be asked to sing.. this part is funny.

So we get there and the elders have helped a lot with bringing the food and everything. so they are there at the church. so we ask them if they want to sing. They say sure. We just needed one more lady to sing with me so i wouldnt be overpowered.... umm... well there was no members there. but i asked this lady who said she sings that she can do it with me. she seemed very confident and i do a quick teaching of families are forever... forgot the name of that song in english. But yeah. So just as we start the bishop is conducting and says that we will sing uma familia tenho sim to start the ceremony. so... there goes our practice. we have to quickly change to love at home.... oh no. I will just say... the lady tried... but... it was the most embarrassing moment of my life. but i dont think any cabo verdians noticed. hahahahaha

So then on friday- all good. except zaza gets SUPER sick and cant come to her interview. so we had to go to her house. she was basically sweating up a storm with some fever.

but she was interviewed.

Saturday- I woke up excited for the baptism... and with faith that nothing bad would happen. but obviously not enough faith. The tank to the baptism fonte BROKE! what! So we get that call one hour before... so we go there and try to get everything figured out. we left so fast we forgot clothes... so we had to go back to our house to get clothes. and then we got permission to go to the ocean... but then with 5 minutes before we start the meeting... the zone leaders call saying they got some guys to go fill up the tank and all with be good in 20 minutes. so althoug the baptism started one hour late... it happened and it was SO beautiful!

sunday- She was late to church.. but got confirmed! all is good! hahaha

OH so dad asked about patrick. he was a less active. so no he was not baptized again but he is on the path to repentance. great family!!

Love you all sooooo much. this work is real. hahaha even with the ups and the downs i love it- and i know i am strengthening my faith.

Just let me say one thing though... We need Sabbath day pamphlets. We have law of chastity and word of wisdom but the day of the lord is super important! haha i hope one day maybe we will have those things!

Love Sister Johnson

Zaza and Patrick!!!!

My awesome comp

The power of fasting

Dear familia!!

Oh my goodness.... just one hour ago i recieved the best news EVER. i am so happy that i was able to email after this happened. but it is all about zaza and patrick and how they MUST be really important to the plan of heavenly father because they have passed through a lot this week.

Let me begin.

So all is going super well.. we mark casamento.. they have these people coming over to prepare the plans. Like where it is going to be... who is going to give the spirtual thought. What the food is that we are going to eat.. ya know.. all those important details. So they were all preparing with so much help from friends and family and then... the disaster. I am on a division with another sister... Sister Rasmussen... (she is incredible by the way. she is a new missionary who is super amazing and obedient and has it all down. i was definitely learning from her! haha but back to the story) And we get home that night and i call my comp to get some information for the morning... And she says *just pray for zaza and patrick*... and i was like NO. So then i find out the next day they went to have a lesson with them and it was just zaza. she opened up to the sisters and said that her and patrick got in a fight and there was past wounds that got brought up between them and all sorts of things that i think patrick got super mad and ended up texting everyone saying the wedding was off... yeah. 

So that was HUGE drama. We didnt really know what to do. So we mark with them again on saturday and just pray. pray. and pray. Thank goodness this week was fast and testimony meeting because i think we needed to fast too! So we get there on saturday and they still arent talking. we expressed our love and i dont know why but we ended up talking a lot about forgiveness and repentance. we were planning somehting else but that is what came out. they committed to going to church and patrick (the menos ativo) said he would talk to bishop. So we go to church and they show up... But DONT SIT next to each other.... so we obviously saw things were still bad. We just kept expressing love. And fasting.. haha. So then after the talk with bishop that he had they committed to talk about it that night and call us that night. So we wait for the call.. nothing. So today.. being nosy and persistent missionaries... WE call. haah but it was the best call ever and i had the opportunity to do it. Zaza was like *SISTER... I AM SO HAPPY, Thank you So much for all the prayers.* YAHOO!!! After we talked a little bit but not much because we dont have minutes here in cabo verde... haha every second is like a nickle... well sort of. but anyway i was so happy and sister coelho and i did a lot of jumping up and down and hugging and then gave a prayer of thanks!

Wow! What an adventure. i know now they can get through anything and also that the power of prayer and fasting is so real! We cant go wrong with fasting! I know that on my mission i have seen a lot of these blessings. and it has tested my faith. I was happy that during all this i recognized that i felt peace.. and even though i wanted to yell at them and tell them to stop being selfish.. ha.. i felt peace and was able to recognize them as sons and daughters of god. knowing all would work out to his plan. I am just super happy the plan is that they will get married this week and zaza will get baptized on the 11!

So what else. NOt much... this was basically the greatest ever that i forgot the rest of the week. Oh wait. We had our record together of people in church! YAY. We are going up from here. We made some good plans and looked at our numbers. We had like 22 member present lessons this week and we realize that we need to have more members in our lessons as we want more people in church. The members are really what bring their friends to church. that is why you members out there... are SO vital! We need to work together in this work. My comp is genius and did all these calculations with the key indicators about how we need to strengthen this indicador to have this one increase... it was great. so we are going to present that in our leadership council tomorrow! haha it will be fun! I heard there is great food.

But also to close. i have been studying a lot about the atonement of jesus christ this week. I have been looking at scriptures from the plan of salvation lessons to study the atonement and i really have learned a lot about it. I thought about it with the plan.  I know that in the pre mortal life with our heavenly father he presented this plan to us and at that moment when christ volunteered to be our savior we had faith in him to accept. And now we need to continue to have that faith in him and know that we KNOW his atonement is enough. We already accepted it. I know that he is my savior and that i can grow and become new through his atonement. whatever weakness i have i can change because of him. And the same with all the people i meet here. The atonement is really helping them recieve more light in their life and remember the faith that they already have in him as they accepted to come down to earth and follow gods plan!

I love you all!

Sister Johnson

Casamento

Dear familia e amigos....

the subject means marriage!!! i will start with how today we went to mark the marriage date of zaza and patrick. they will get married next week. july 9. WE are super excited for them and zaza was smiling so big!!! She has a dress and everything and her little ring that she wears. i am so excited for them.

but it was a struggle. last monday we went to mark and we know how they got in a fight and apparently the marriage was off... well then we just told them to pray... read... talk. haha and they worked it out. so the next day patrick calls us at the end of our studies and says he is ready to mark casamento. so we go to their house and walk to the registro... but it was just patrick. so obviously we need both of them but zaza went to her sisters house and didnt bring her cell phone. so we call the sister... too late tho because zaza already left. so we get a taxi and go find zaza as patrick waits in the registro. we find her by luck on the street and she finds a kind lady to take her son.. diogo ( he is the funniest little 1 year old ever )... and then we make our way to registro. we think all is ready... but no! the license... or ID of patrick is wrong. it says he was born in praia but he was born in fogo.... ugh!! haha who makes that mistake. so that day we couldnt. the next day he gets things figured out and we finally go today to get it done! yaya! no problems simple. even though they said they would meet us there at 10:30 and dont show up until 12:15... cabo verde time. no problem.

so next thing about this week is that it was good and the only things i can really remember are funny stories. so let me begin. on wednesday i made these awesome tacos. all by hand! they were legit and super good. i think i got to excited and ate way to much though. because during the whole day i felt super sick. i just kept going though because i didnt wanna go home... pride in me made me stay out. but during the lessons i was just praying i wouldnt throw up. and i was praying for faith too. and the wholde day we were blessed with lessons to! So then finally at the end of the day we make our way home and we have this big hill before our house. i just told myself to make it up the hill and past this group of people... well.. the lord had another plan. i threw up about 5 times... nasty i know... right next to this house. i felt so bad. but they were SO nice. they told me to drink water and dont worry about it. they even tried to speak some english to me. haha but we couldnt just let them go with out a present of that scene. so we gave them book of mormons because they were so nice and they took them and the guy even wanted to shake my hand full of throw up. i shook my head but he insisted... so yeah. cabo verde. haha but extra great contacts with book of mormons! baptisms!!! haha

Next we had 2 divisions... they were great. i learned a lot about faith overcomes fear on these divisions. i know that as we have faith.. even when we are feeling down we can overcome.

next is vitor and erika. another couple. they are preparing for marriage! but vitor has Word of Wisdom problems. BUT he has dropped everything except maria joanna. i think you can figure that one out...

So we are having problems with investigators in church. every single one of our other key indicators were met last week... miracle. except people in church. SO we made some plans. we talked about the importance of the sacrament. so we are going to have our people write on cards a question they have... and then they have to seek an answer in sacrament meeting. i think this will be an invite for our members as well. a lot of people show up to church after the sacrament is passed. we need to make it a priority to prepare ourselves for sacrament. like grandma said in my letter this week :)

Next is the sketchy bread place we eat at.... This place is awesome! So we walk into a store... but instead of buying at the store we go to these stairs that our like corridor stairs of a prison tower and we walk up to the top. there is a small whole in the wall where we can ask for bread while they are having meetings and it just is super funny to me... or when they dont have meeting we walk into the room and just buy it there. but it is the BEST bread i have had. especially with butter. and we are their favorite costomoers. they are muslims. haha i just love them. we cant teach them but they like to hear about what we do and our message as we come and buy their bread. its like 25 cents for a huge thing. IN LOVE.  creepy place... but so worth it.

Love you all :)

Sister johnson