Pateince

Good Afternoon,

This week was great! Well... i mean i always can say that but this week was very emotional. haha good thing sister zimbelman is my companion because we just kind of laughed it all off. So lets see.. where to start.

Lets start with Aisha. She is our investigator who is 16. She is super elect! So awesome... only problem... she is 16. So she needed permission from her mother to be baptized... other problem is her mom lives in france. SO.. her date was to get baptized this week the 19th. We have been asking her for 2 weeks if she talked to her mom and finally on tuesday we decided that we needed to call. Instead of waiting. So she called on our telephone... and guess what... Aisha talks powerfully about the restoration and the book of mormon and about Joseph smith being a prophet of god and her mom Gives PERMISSION. We were so happy and amazed that it actually happened. Her mom is super catholic. But.... well... the next day we walk into aishas house and she gives us the bad news. Her sister called her mom later the next day and must have said something awful about us and now her mom wont even let aisha go to church. We were devastated. Well then we thought that we could do a fast.. And we did. But aisha still does not have permission... so we keep praying but we will see. Patience is something i am learning this month...

Patience is a great attribute of christ that seems to need all of his attributes to have it.. haha we have to have faith.. hope.. and still work diligently as we wait for something good to happen. i asked myself many times this week... Why is missionary work so hard. our mission president responded with a great talk from elder holland that compared the mission of the savior to missionary work. It was not easy for him.. and so it will not be easy for us. But i know that it is not easy for us because we are here to BECOME. Become something... become like our Heavenly father and be like he is. Imagine that. Becoming like our heavenly father, who is our god! It is not going to be easy. And for that Jesus Christ suffered it all. He knows exactly how we feel.

This week was quite a blur. We had a leadership training where i learned how i need to be a better leader. It was a great preparation for a division with an awesome sister who is kind of struggling with the desire to be out here. But she is great and i know she will keep going. It was funny because we both did not know each other at all but apparently she had heard a lot about me. We got along super well and then at the end of the division we were talking about some of her previous companions that i know really well and she said some nice things that they said about me.. i said *oh thats great that they said that... i thought everyone was just scared of me.* and then without hesitation she says... *OH i was SUPER scared of you*... hahahaha how do i give off this vibe.. all the sisters have this in depth fear of me for some reason. i guess i need to be nicer. sister zimbelman says its just because i am good at what i do... but i know i better be more compassionate and kind. hahaha

But i was super sick before the division and got a blessing... and the blessing was awesome and i was healed. The power of the priesthood restored on this earth is truly a blessing! I am so grateful for this great power that we all can take part of! Heavenly father truly loves us.

But that is about it for this week... Just that i love you all. We truly are so blessed to live on the earth in a time of the last and great dispensation! And to be able to have such great technology to share our beleifs. Keep sharing... keep being missionaries! There is no other or great work! In all the little things we do we are being missionaries. I do know this church is true. Because i prayed and asked god if it was and i recieved an answer from him by the power of the holy ghost. That is the unique invite of our church... to pray and ask god! And through him who knows all truth we will recieve our answer.

Love Sister Johnson

Kiana's new hair cut

Charity and Love

Dear Family,

so i blame myself... for the second month in a row. I made the goal of charity and love this month and i got sister zimbelman to make it with me and we are suffering. haha So this week it was a lot of learning and patience and muito (a lot) of LOVE. haha

So first with ernesto. So ernesto is this super awesome old man. He has a nephew who is a member of the church preparing to serve a mission. And also he has a niece who is a married member and about to have a baby. The only problem is his daughter... adopted daughter... was super successful in her life. She was a nurse and everything, but then she got into a bad relationship and now she is an alcoholic. She comes into our lessons very out of it and it just takes away the feeling because ernesto feels super embarrassed. So he has been taught before by the missionaries and has gone to church various times and he knows the book of mormon is true. Golden... And even better every lesson this week his daughter didnt come in and disrupt so we were feeling pretty good about it! Well we invited him to be baptized and he said he really wants to... its just not time... and he is not ready. The classic excuse for someone who has some kind of other doubt. So we kept trying to find out what it was and the whole time he brought up another type of question... 

I tried to have patience during our lessons and bare testimony... but i learned i needed to have more love because during the lessons i just got so frustrated and started giving him all sorts of classic come backs and scriptures and fighting words.... it was truly hard to have love. We then taught him during my division and i received my chastisement. The cute sister who was with me with her little portuguese and her new missionary spirit just bore her testimony... the spirit was so strong and i realized that it was the testimony that we needed to bare and the simply invite with power that we needed to give. i know that it is the testimony that brings the spirit and changes the hearts. So to end... ernesto was not baptized this week and we ended up having to leave him for a while because he was not progressing. but maybe one day we can go back and see how he is and i can show more love.

The next is that another baptism who was super ready decided she wants to be catholic... the padre is calling. que dor. And then every other single person who seemed promising just left... just plain stopped wanting to talk to us... Learning so much love and charity.

So this month has been quite the difficulty.... but as i was thinking yesterday i had a great revelation about basketball and mission... i love how everything in sports applies to life. heavenly father is super intelligent. And i have decided that i will be like elder uctdorf and all of my talks will have a reference to basketball.

haha but anyway i realized that as i played basketball i was super good at getting to the basket... like it was easy for me to get past people...but then when i was there at the basket... ready to make the point and i panic and miss the shot... so ALL that effort to get to the basket was just wasted...Because it didnt result in anything just a turn over. haha so i applied this to our missionary work right now. We are getting everything to the church... in the chapel and even to the fonte... but we are not getting them in the water. Its easy to help them get there but then we freak out... something happens and they fall! So then all that work... wasnt for nothing, but it didnt result in what we wanted. We are working so hard... but we also need to work smart! So we have decided to be more smart about what we do each day. Each lesson, each hour has a purpose. We are on the Lords errand and we need to do things his way. We need to work hard and get the numbers but also realize that these numbers are people and we know and love these people. So my goal this week is to work smart! Sorry if that analogy made no sense... its better in my head.

Just know that i love this gospel and i love the lord. I am seeing how the lord changes people and their lives and just as the rocky roads come and we think we cant go any more.. not even one more day.. a miracle happens. So after having a rough week and everything falling through.. we found what we have been looking for.. A FAMILY. They are super sweet and we started by teaching the 13 year old daughter. Then she invited us to her house to meet her family and they are just ready to hear the gospel. We are super excited and teach them for the second time today. they mom came to church yesterday and her husband promised to come next week. I dont write they names down in the planner i just write.. THE FAMILY... families are what we are working for. to have families forever.

Love you my family,

Sister Johnson

The hole in the wall where we get the bread

It really is a Hole in the wall!!

The Power of Prayer

Dear family,

what a great week! So...

Monday. It was raining so so so so so so so so much... So we tried to do fun things but ended up staying in the house. And also it messed up transfers so no one could leave or come. So luckily i got to stay with Sister coelho for one more day! And our area was flooded again so we had to try to find the secret ways around it haha. all the people were like *you cant go that way... * But we were protected. so we taught some good lessons and we were soaked from head to toe.

Tuesday. Sister zimbelman got to praia! So we were in an awkward triple with her and my old comp and sister zimbelmans old comp. but it was great. We got a lot of lessons taught and the adjustment began with sister zimbelman being my new companion again. We have both changed a LOT. We teach differently so we are learning the styles of each other and putting it together to work. haha i feel like i am so mean in lessons compared to sister zimbelman. she is just so sweet. 

Wednesday. We had mission leadership council even though half the leaders couldnt make it because of the flight problems! But it was amazing!!!!!!!!! Our mission presidents wife talked about prayer and obedience. And how to really pray we need to be obedient so that we can feel and follow the spirit and ask for gods will for us! This month is the month of prayer and we have made some awesome plans to make prayer more effective... Wow. Prayer is awesome and i will say more on this later. Then president talked about following up shows our love. so true! It was a good council and then we made some great plans for the zone with our one zone leader because his companion is stranded in sao nicalou... haha poor elder. But the plans were great and we are excited! Oh and the training me and my EX companion gave was pretty good. president said thank you! great sign! And also me and my EX comp have this awesome planeamento semenal coisa... and we presented it in council... now the whole mission is using it! yay! 

Thursday. We were supposed to have zone meeting.. but then it got changed to friday. (and on friday it got changed to saturday hahaha) But we got to teach a lot of lessons and...well i think something exciting happened but i cant remember. all i know is every night last week we got woken up at 4h30 in the morning to receive some sisters and help them as they waited for the next flight to the next island. haha

Friday. still no zone meeting... more time to prepare... and we got Sister Yeater! again! She had a dentist appointment so we had to go to that with her... it was good. i think. She was in a lot of pain so we dropped her off at the babysitters house... (a couple who works in the office) so that we could work the whole day. And the work that day was needed. it went well... 

Saturday. FINALLY zone meeting! And we gave our training... yay! so happy when it was over. haha i think it went well. We talked a lot about prayer. So what i have learned about prayer this week is awesome.

Sunday. Well......we had 7 investigators in church. BUT our two baptisms for this next week just decided not to show up... like what???? So we are upset about that and we will teach about repentance this week. just go to church people.. its a commandment. sleeping in is not a commandment

And now for the more spiritual part of my week. so prayer. Our mission president sent a quote of a talk about prayer by elder bednar in the 2008 general conference if i remember correctly. not sure if it is april or october. But Elder bednar talks about how our prayers in the morning and at night are like the Lord and how he created the earth. he said he created everything spiritually first... and then physically. So as we say our prayers in the morning we are doing a spiritual lay out of the day.. and as we say them at night we see what came true. I have started to do a prayer journal for the last 2 months or so and i have seen that as we write things down we can see the power of prayer and what the lord is doing in our lives. After council i started a new way of doing the prayer journal. I write down what i ask.. what are the blessing and the revelation recieved during prayer. and as i write down what is asked i can see at the end of the day if it really happened and be more accountable for my actions. The things i ask for always happen! Or if they dont i can see where in the day i needed to be better, repent and promise to be better the next day! Prayer is super powerful and i know as we follow the spirit in our prayers we will be asking for the WILL of the LORD. That means it WILL come true. it WILL happen. 

I love prayer and i know the lord answers and listens to our prayers as we are striving to be obedient. I love this gospel and i love you all. I can see this next month will be a lot of learning for me. Learning how to love and have charity for those around me.

OH and the thugs (delinquents)... THEY didnt come to church!!!! UGH. we saw them last night drinking wine and sprite... they didnt realize that wine was bad... we need to teach that one more time haha

Sister Johnson 

Transfers....

Dear Family,

Well....... My companion got transferred. We kicked her off the island. She finally get to leave the isalnd of santiago as she has been here her whole mission and she will go to the island of Sal to be sister training leader there! I am excited for her. She will get to see the white sand and all the tourist that they have there... She will get to see white people. hahaha 

BUT the Funniest news EVER. Is that i am going to be companions with... guess who?! SISTER ZIMBELMAN! hahahahahaah wow. So we already were together for 3 transfers and then she went to fogo island to be sister leader. then i trained sister kohlert and then i came here to Praia to be sister leader and now we are going to be sister training leaders together... we actually dreamed about this as we were comps. We joked that we would go back to mindelo to be sister training leaders together and do divisions in Santo Antao... but we will just be sister training leaders here in praia. hahaha So the fact we are together 1 more transfer here on the mission means eternal marriage. So how great.

But this past week was full of emotions i cant really remember what happened. I think the best part is how we got a call saying we are doing training in missionary leadership council so then we thought for sure we would be companions together. but now we are just giving a training with our ex companions so it will be a little awkward. haha just kidding. But our training will be on companionship study... ironic! haha but the lord has a plan. So we have been thinking a lot about what we do to make companionship study so efficient and we found a lot of small and simple things. That scripture is amazing. Alma 37:6 That is it by small and simple things that great things are brought to pass. We have been recieving all sorts of revelation on how to make our studies and teaching more efficient. and sometimes we will use that for a day or two and then make it even better the next week. The lord prepares us in his way and we always need to be patient on the lords time. One of the things we have been doing that is a lot of fun is that we have been choosing a key word in every lesson and we have to explain and touch on that key word each point of the lesson. For you missionaries i hope you understand, but it is quite fun.... anyway i will explain some other day.

But this week our focus has been on doing daily follow up visits. which is super hard here in cabo verde, but we have been making goals to do it. We are teaching a group of young men... they are known as Thuggies. But we have been teaching them in a house of a member! It is incredible the difference we are seeing. They are the first investigators that i have taught in which we have started with the ten commandments when we teach the commandments. haha we taught thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not bare false witness and all those great things that we usually just know to do as people.... but for them it was something new to understand that these are actually commandments of god and they want to change. So the bummer is there is one that is progressing really well and he wants to come to church but his friends did not accept and so he didnt go. But we got a message from them yesterday apologizing about not going ot church and saying they will go next week. That is huge... because to send a text message costs money and they sent two! I saw the process of repentance. We taught very slowly and efficiently about repentance one lesson as well... they all only speak creole and didnt go to much school so they have to read together to read the book of mormon, but it is incredible how they understand us... sorry side note... but anyway. we taught repentance. And now they know that to completely repent they have to keep the commandments as well.... Meaning they have to go to church! And correct what they did before by asking forgiveness. so they asked forgiveness yesterday and i hope we see them in church next week!

Well... we also are teaching a couple. Jesica and filipe. Filipe said yesterday he wants to be an adventista... so Adventist. And jessica still really wants to get baptized so we talked about marriage and the law of chastity. we were very direct and i hope she understood it is not a joke! They cant live in the same house and keep the law of chastity. So we got very bold and loving of course and she said she will have an answer for us this week. She is going to pray. We have already taught her all the lessons so she has responsibility now!

Oh... and hurricane talk. hahaha we are safe. we will buy water. and maybe i wont take a bath this week but so far it is just a lot of rain!!!! But no one worry... i dont think anyone even knows about a hurrican in cabo verde. hahaha it is just a small little island i bet it didnt reach the news of america. haha just kidding. ok bye. 

love sister johnson