Lets get ready to rumble

Dear family,

YESSS! We had a baptism this week. I am sooooo happy. Djony finally made it to the waters of baptism... So he is someone we have been teaching since like august. He was a reference from a recent convert-- Micael.. who we baptized in august and they live together. So each time we went to teach Micael we taught djony. Djony was a little bit slower. he progressed super fast and then went off the face of the earth and we dont know why. About a few weeks ago we found him and started teaching him again... Actually it was when i got to go on a division with sister Coelho when she was here for leadership conference... We ended up teaching about the atonement and he changed completely. he stopped trying to disappear and we got to reteach him a lot of things. So yeah long story short he was baptized on saturday and confirmedsunday. We got a new bishop this past week in our ward and he already marked an interview with him so i hope him and micael can help each other. We are also talking to their other friend, Samora who has a date for the 7 of November. Its awesome how things work out. Friends help friends. This is a pure example of one by one. The lord truly is doing his work.

Any way what else happened... umm Me and my comp are having a great time together and the work is really starting to get going! We have a baptism this week that was supposed to be last week but in her interview she was completely honest and said she didnt know that jospeh smith was a prophet. So... yeah! We worked on that. The lesson we had with her when she finally decided to be baptized was a great one... we found out what she needed. She needed to know that baptism was only one part... Getting the gift of the holy ghost is what completes baptism! We testified of the gift of the holy ghost. She said "i am starting to see the world in a different way" and we said " that is the spirit." It is truly incredible how the spirit teaches us and helps us to see the world in a different way. We can be warned and truly guided.

I think a funny story about this week is during companion study we realized that this month is halloween. We discussed quickly what we were going to be... My comp said that this halloween she will be a missionary. I thought for a second and said " i think i will try being just a member of the church this year" my comp got all serious and said "Wow sister... that will be a SCARY costume." Just to let you all know... we have decided that there should be no such thing as a member. We call everyone missionaries now. It makes it more fun. And every member a missionary right?! woot woot. 

I love this gospel. Sorry this email is short. I want to reply to people more personally. There isnt a lot of stuff for all of you generally. Just that i hope you all are being missionaries because if you look for your own salvation... you wont find it.. if you lose yourselves in this work that is when you will find it. Exortation from sister johnson. Stop being selfish and get to work people!

Sister Johnson

Djony made it to baptism

Transfers Wooo

A wedding

Dear Family!!!

Well yesterday was transfers for those of who you didnt know... which is everyone i think. i think its always a surprise to you all but it is for me too. Well i got a new companion! She is Sister Dorgan! She is from utah...we lived in the same house for these past 3 transfers and she just got changed to my area as sister leader with me and her companion went to Sal with sister Zimbelman. her old area will be white washed by a sister who was in the island of brava and who served with me in santo antao! haha i think its funny. i know and have spent a good amount of time with almost every sister on the mission until now! And the only one i didnt know will come to serve in praia so we will get to know each other well. It is just great! I love our little cabo verde mission. but anyway sister zimbelman is lucky she gets to end her mission.. die.. in the area that she started.. was born in! That is super cool and she will  be with my daughter.. the sister i trained.. sister kohlert in sal. They will do miracles together. I will be with sister dorgan and basically we will have the time of our lives. I am not sure if we have stopped laughing since last night! But we will get to work because we got some work to do.

Monday.. was a crazy day as we recieved a bunch of sisters to our house for council. and we planned our training alllll day... we tried with many failed attempts to use a talk from general conference but finally it worked...we learned a lot of patience on that day.

tuesday... we had an AMAZING counsel! We gave our training and i think it went very well and then we made some great changes and goals to the mission. And we are going to start ponderizing and memorizing a scripture as a mission and also our goals for baptism are going up and our daily goals just got a great increase! We are working! haha i was super impressed by the zone leaders in mindelo and how they decided to cut out some common missionary break times to work harder. I was inspired and now me and my comp are going to use our time even more efficiently! No more long lunches. Quick and easy and out.

Sister mathews gave a great training on the laws and ordinances and how the pattern in the scriptures is ask... recieve... conversion... SHARE. we need to share what we recieve and help our investigators do the same.

wednesday.. we had zone meeting and transmitted all the information we learned the day before. We gave another training which i think was better than the first! And we got inspired by our leaders to do even better! This zone is awesome.

thursday... we had a normal day... finally.

friday... weekly planning... i was in a terrible mood. i dont know why but finally at the end we had comp inventory and like always sister zimbelman inspired me and i got over my anger! I think sometimes i want to show my love for these people so bad... but then we love them so much we get SOO mad when they dont complete committments. it is a constant battle. But i am seeing that we need to see the people in the eyes of our heavenly parents! Like said in the testimony of Elder Renlund

saturday.. normal... kind of. 

sunday... we got the transfer call! woot woot. And we got to teach some great people and had an amazing family night in the house of a less actie. She is so great!!! She invited all her friends.

So yeah this week we are helping two people prepare for baptism. I wil share the story of one this week because it was an awesome miracle. So we had a great zone meeting on wednesday and our AP who is from cabo verde talked about his story of conversion and it was incredible. He just a practice on how to figure out the doubts of our investigators by asking questions and turns out the practice was his story. He was an investigator of gold but never went to church because his mom would kick him out of the house... well he read 1 nephi 3 verse 7 and decided to go to church! what faith! But the thing is that same day we go and teach our investigator who is gold.. but had a doubt about baptism. she had the SAME problem. her parents will disown her if she gets baptized. We used 1 nephi 3:7 and she started crying. she knows what she needs to do. there is so much power in practices. we were so prepared for her because we had just practiced. i know in each phase of our lives we can practice for things ahead of time and the spirit will truly bring to our minds in that moment what we need. this is why we NEED to study and pray each and everyday to be prepared.

love you all

sister johnson

What a week...I feel a little overwhelmed

Dear Family,

A small chunch of what i wrote to my mission presidente this week:

What a week! I feel a little overwhelmed. I dont know if you knew but i get really worried and stressed every time i am asked to give a training. I thought i would blow up from stress our first zone meeting, but then i got through it. And then when we were asked to give a mini training last missionary leadership council... i also thought i would blow up and i got through it. And now we must give a full training this months leadership council... i think i am actually going to blow up. But i guess i will get through it. haha i think Heavenly Father just kind of laughs at how he is stretching us to our limits and helps us grow. He had a great sense of humor this week with all the things that went wrong. But we made it through. I loved conference. It was a great way to remember how simple and purê the gospel is! I got to remember to simplify. And also really feel the strength of the spirit in my life. I love the gift of the Holy Ghost. I am so grateful for the companionship of the holy ghost. because also this week i felt like i got reminded of some little things i have done in the past and i got all worried and stressed about how imperfect i am and how i may not be worthy. I talked with sister zimbelman about these feelings and she gave amazing advice and counsel. What a blessing it is to have companions and also how truly divinely chosen they are. She helped me understand the atonement even more clearly in my life. She said how if we repent our sins they are not going to go half away. Even if our sins be as dark as Scarlet they should be as White as snow. There is not pink people... what a blessing it is to have repentance. i am so grateful for the atonement and so blessed to use it. i have Always felt the spirit in my mission and i know that even though satan at times tries to make us feel as if we are unworthy my heavenly father has forgiven my sins. I love repentance and i see now that it is a process and a blessing! We should not feel scared or discouraged about repentance but truly aleiviated and blessed to be able to participate in this essential process that My Savior made possible.

that is the miracle of the week.

I felt like i should share that experience with my loved ones. Repentance brings joy.

But things really did go interesting this week. i wouldnt say completely wrong... but interesting. So first.

Monday-- Miracles. We were getting my hair done and it didnt go as fast as we had hoped but we still reached our goal for the day and saw people being put in our path.

Tuesday--We get asked to give training in leadership council on how to begin teaching. We laughed pretty hard throughout the day because our goal for the month is to develop knowledge. Heavenly father took that into account and we see what happens. We thought about changing our goal after that but we will continue with Faith and courage to develop this atribute. haha.

Wednesday-- We had a great meeting with the zone leaders and the district leaders about some goals we want to set for next month in our zone. The month of october is going to be a great month! We are focusing on teaching people not lessons. I love this principle. It is a constant goal of all of us but this month we will learn some new tricks!

Thursday-- We had a great division... I ran to the beach with one of the sisters and ran back. it was great and difficult. But beautiful! The sister i did divisions with is in her 2nd transfer and doing a great job. she is getting the language down and setting goals like a boss!

Friday--Great day.. cant remember what happened.

Saturday-- Conference! We get asked to do a interview with the public relations coordinator of Cabo Verde! And we have some great people at conference and made some great cookies.

Sunday-- We get punished for making the cookies on saturday because we ran out of gás on sunday.... right in the middle of making the noodles for our awesome tuna caserole... so what do we do... we grab everything in our kitchen and we make our way to the others sisters house and make our food there which makes us late for everything but thats ok because we still happen to make it in time for conference!!!! And we do that interview with the lady and take modeling fotos of us teaching investigators on the street and all sorts of great things. i will let you all know if i ever see the article... it will be in portuguese but maybe i will send it to you.

We have a investiagator who has a bar. she is doing really well and seeking to find a desire to get baptized. right now she is super worried. because of a catholic Family. but we are seeing that she is changing. she also started looking for another job so that she does not have to work in a bar! the gospel changes people! I hope she can find a job. we are praying super hard and hoping she will also find a way to go back to school! Our investigators have so much potential... they just have so many problems as well. But we are trying to find a way to help them see that as week keep the commandments we are blessed beyond measure!! Thanks for all your stories on keeping commandments. Super powerful. I cried. I love you all and keep striving! I learned in conference about how we are truly needed to be better! We need to be seeking exaltation! I love you all

Tchao..

Sister Johnson

I choose to laugh

Dear family,

This week was a great one!! i think the highlight of my week was yesterday we got to see the general womens conference and even better they have the translation into portuguese from portugal so it is SO much easier to understand than that brazil stuff... nasty. haha but i was happy and i understand pretty much all of it. Except the end with Elder Uctdorfs parable... i was a little confused but i will read it and i hope all will make sense. But i learned a lot last night and had a lot of answers to my prayers.. also we went with one of our recent converts Jocy.. who is just doing amazing. she is the teacher of the youth class now and she just loves it. Another recent convert went as well.. Du and it was great to see her. she is in the primary now so we dont interact a lot during church. hahaha but they both talked about how the children say they cant wear pants to church so we are going to have to lend over some skirts! They were laughing about it, but we are going to get some skirts to them ASAP. I love cabo verde.

Anyway so what i learned last night was a lot of things. I learned about our divine nature and how as we discover more about our divine nature it will give us more desire to help others! Wow service and helping others is truly the key to life. I think as we remember more about who we really are we will want to help those around us with more desire! I also learned how i can be grateful for my trials! This past month i would say has been the hardest of my mission so far... but i have learned to be truly grateful. And instead of ask why.. and if this is really all i have to pass through to become what He wants me to become. Thy will not mine be done. I have learned a lot more about that scripture. I also learned that it is the way we look at the path that will help us in our life. We can choose to see it with darkness and thorns... or see it with a bright blue and green path! I choose the green and blue and the beautiful scenery. But at times it is hard to choose this... i hope we can all learn to be better at having faith to see it this way.

So some of the sad part this week... remember ernesto? well we had the feeling we needed to work with him again this week and we passed by and it seemed he really changed. he was reading the book of mormon and saying how he could be baptized this week so we marked the date and he had the interview.. we passed by the day of baptism and apparently he was too sick to go. We know that there was a lot of other things that were impeding him... he said he was not prepared. Which is just sad! Because faith.. is not to have a perfect knowledge...or be perfectly prepared.. it is to have a hope in things we do not see, which are true! He was so determined that one day he will be perfectly prepared... we assured him that day wont come, we need to take a step of faith! And we also recieve no witness until after the trial of our faith! This week he passed up this opportunity but i hope in the future he can realize the blessings he can recieve.

But we also found another new investigator. one night we were walking home and a lady called out.. SISTER. i felt super bad because i had no idea who she was... but thats ok because she said we dont know each other but she talked to missionaries in Fogo a few years ago but she was a minor and her mother would not let her get baptized. she said she is able to make her own decision now and she wants to be baptized. we are super excited. tender mercy! But i couldnt help thinking that in a few years that will be aisha... i hope she has the courage to call out to the sisters as well.

Hmm.. what else. oh yeah. Today i have a special request for all of you who read this... I want to be able to better promise blessings to my investigators so that the gospel will really touch them in a special and indiviual way. So i was thinking of the blessings that  i have recieved from living the commandments... but i think i have already ran out of good ideas. SO the request is... Can you send me an email next week... well before next week so i can get it next week... haha and explain what blessings you have recieved from living a certain commandment.

So for example it can be any commandment... tithing... law of fasting, following the prophet, not stealing, going to church, reading the scriptures, keeping the sabbath day holy, taking the sacrament.. there are many. So be creative and think of a commandment and then say what specific blessings you have recieved. this will help me to share more personal experiences during teaching and also promise more specific blessings. And help you all see the blessings as well! We should always be grateful.

Thanks a bunch! I will let you know if i used your experience in a lesson and if the person is getting baptized. haha

oh that is another commandment.. did you know. Baptism and confirmation.

I think the biggest blessings i have recieved from all the commandments is feeling the Holy Ghost. It truly is a guide and a comfortor. We see the world in a different way and we are able to recognize who we are. I love you all. Stay awesome! :)

Sister Johnson

It means love and union