Already a great week?

Ola familia e amigos!

I have to be honest there was a little sarcasm in that subject... hahaha :) Let me tell you why! So a quick review of this week... it was pretty rough. Pretty really rough. So today i am going to write about a few things i just love about cabo verde and a few things that are weird but awesome at the same time... maybe i will mention why it was so rough at the end!

But to start off... Today we went to Interior... or being... The country side of Santo Antao! We got permission from president to drive up to the mountains and see what everyone is talking about. Here in porto novo it is really dry and brown. But up in Interior it is amazingly green! It was sooooo beautiful! We have pictures but we will have to send those next week because the computer isnt working with pics today! But it was amazing... But it was also super super hard. The member who was with us kinda underestimated how long it would take it get there and get back. We decided to take a car up there and then walk back. But on the way back we realized it would take much longer than we thought... So we decided to take some detours through the rocky parts of the trail... Well as we all know.. Stick to the path! Because right then we started to see a car come by that could have given us a ride back down... Well we still had hope and kept walking... before we knew it another car came by. But we werent on the path so it didnt see us. Then before we know it ANOTHER car came by. So in total 3 cars. Three options to get us to our destination much faster and we were off the path so we missed it... See where i am going with this? :) Well when we finally get on the path there are no more cars going in our direction. so we end up having to walk the whole way back. 

So what i have learned from today is that it is very important to stay on the path. It was faster for us to go off a little ways and not have to walk the long way... but before we knew it there was another car going by. An easier option. In life we really need to stay on the path. Keep doing the things that the Lord wants us to do even if at times it seems longer or harder. We need to keep walking this path and he will guide us and make the path light. Those cars came by. He sent three cars! But we werent on the path to recieve the blessings. The Lord will always send the blessings, but we need to be doing his will, keep the commandments so that we can recieve them. Always do the will of the lord and we will be blessed. :)

Well dont worry we got back home safe and sound. Just a little late! So my hair isnt going to be braided all cute this week which kind of is sad. But it is ok because we also found these Aloe Vera plants on the way back to our house and we put some aloe vera in my hair! Everyone has been telling me to do that so i finally did it. i hope it works! haha~

So this leads me into telling the things i love about cabo verde. They are so useful. Haha They use all sorts of plants and things they have to live! Like Aloe Vera! Also there are cute little kids who see my companion--( sees white) And they call out "Bonjour". hahaha little kids always think we are from France.. it is kinda cute. So we have started to pretend we can speak france :) Then they go silent. hahaha. 

Also i love that everyone here seems to know exactly how i should do my hair! They are always giving me tips. And if i braid my hair by myself they get super surprised and ask "Who braided your hair".. Itºs funny. Also i love when people think i am from the Island of Fogo... umm idk why. but thats cool!

People here are super nice! super friendly. We always go down the street saying bon dia, boa tarde, boa noite. to EVERYONE! Always. haha And they are so friendly and even say it back. They also seem to think they are not Africans. I love this part. They are Cabo Verdianos! Not africanos :) They eat everything... and i mean everything WITH RICE. And they seem to think things like rice pudding... or sweet rice is really nasty. They eat alot of beans too. All sorts of types of beans. I dont know the name of half of them. And they also eat pork... but we are not allowed to eat pork. We dont know where it comes from... haha and if you saw it you would understand. Apparantly the water in Santo antao is cleaner than all the other islands, but i have also heard all the islands say that...except bravo... apparantly that water is different. 

Well here is just a few great things i love about cabo verde! This place is awesome and i cant wait for you all to see the photos we took today. This place is beautiful as well! We even got to see the other side of the island today. If you look up Lombo de figuiera and see how far away it is from Porto novo that is how long we walked... :) Love you all! 

Oh... and this week was rough because a lot of compromissos fell. But in the end i feel like we invited and that is good. We are here to invite. now the trick is to follow up really well so our investigators realize the importance of our invitations! 

Love

Sister Johnson

This week has too many themes

Carnival

House got flooded

Hill we climb everyday...just kidding kinda

Africa

Children of our pesquistador

 Baptism of Willy

Hello Everyone!

I spend tooo much time on thinking of a subject every time i go to do the email so i just gave up again. This week has too many themes so i had to make it very general! I will start with the Baptism of Willy! WILLY. haha he is super awesome. So he is in the other sisters area but remember when we were in a triple for about 4 weeks in december and january? Well we had the opportunity to teach willy a couple of times! And we loved teaching him. He is one of those solid investigators with a lot of questions. and he loves to read and is already finished Alma! and in his interview apparently he was showing our District leader some scriptures and stuff. haha i guess he is teaching us :) But he was blessed enough to get baptized in the ocean! We didnt have water in the church so he had to get baptized in the ocean! I am really happy for the other sisters and for willy! Finally. :)

The next is our week was a little crazy! The first part was pretty normal except we couldnºt find our baptism. So we had Romario marked to be baptized the 21st of Fev. We had a great lesson with him last saturday... he came to church on sunday! And then when we went to his house to meet him on monday he was sleeping. So we re-marked for the next day and he wasnt there! I cannot tell you how many times we passed by this week! It was ALOT. haha but he was never there!!! So we got really smart and tried looking for him in other places. We went to a house where a bunch of people hang out and looked for him there a lot of times too. We also called his friend, tony, about every single day and asked if Romario was with him. He never was. We checked by the beach to see if he was training there. Every time a lesson fell through we said a prayer trying to find Romario! Well this lasted the entire week!! We didnt find Romario, he missed his interview and then finally Saturday morning we see him walking into a house. So we follow him in there and idk what happened... i guess we were in a different part of the house but when we asked where he was after about 2 minutes of looking, he had already lefted "agora mesmo" or "just then"... hahahah "WHAT?" So then we go to our next appointment and come back after and we finally... FINALLY find him! he is sitting in chair with a lot of his friends. We asked to talk to him and ask if he really wants to keep talking to us. We are pretty sure he was avoiding us all week... haha but when we talked to him a little bit and told him about how baptism will change his life and about his potential as a son of god he was completely different.

So a little about the Romario before this week. He was cool, interessted. Wanted to get baptized... kind of. He was the type of investigator we had to pass by every sunday to go to church. Well after we didnt see him for a week, a miracle happened. Yesterday for church we passed by and he was already ready and almost out the door. He said he didnt need us to pass by anymore. And he basically chose his own date on Saturday for the 28th of Fev. And then he was interviewed by the district leader for his baptismal interview and before it he was asking alll sorts of questions and it was kind of funny, he was all nervous about it. And he never asks questions! He is completely changed. I guess it was that week of not talking to us maybe... haha

But really to me this shows that the Lord works in mysterious ways! It is incredible to see the difference in people. We tried so hard to look for him and talk to him and we did all we could. And the lord saw that. And then when we finally found him it was time to find him and he was ready. Even more ready than he was before... Also he had this earring in his ear that he was sooo attached too. After the law of chastity lesson he told us he would take it out later... wellll haha he didnt. But then once we found him again and talked again about the commandments he took it right out and gave it to us! The power of the atonement is real. it changes people completely. 

So also this week... our house flooded. It was a thursday. It was an emotional day. and at the end of the day we had a pretty cool experience. We felt like we needed to walk to a house that we knew our investigator would not be there because they were out of town but we followed the prompting and walked. We also knew we would have to run home to be home by 9. But we just felt right. So we kept walking and then a guy stopped us. He was super interested when we talked to him. He said he went to church a lot of times in the past and has all the books.. the Book of mormon and doctrine and covenants and things like that. We decided we needed to contact him and then we started to run home pretty happy we had followed the prompting. We made it to the house by 9! on the dot! and then we see that water is coming from the stairs... and then we walk up the stairs and see it is coming from our house. A thing in the bathroom had broken completely! it was spewing water out! And our floor had about an inch or two.... So we get brooms and start sweeping. haha it was awful... but at the same time pretty funny. We just had this awesome spiritual faith building experience and then we get rewarding with a flooded house. haha but that is ok! :) We finally sweeped all the water out and then called our land lord guy and they got it fixed in a few days! So we have water that works now... but sad story-- our hot water doesnt work any more so showers arent as pleasant. Oh and one more thing as well. We get a call from our investigator who we planned to get baptized this next week and she tells us she will be out of town for more than a month. :( So all sorts of great things happened that night.

Well! That is all :) Just know that i love you all! I love is here in cabo verde! And i realized something today. The atonement is for everyone. it is for everyone! And when we think of people in that way it really changes things for me. The atoning power and enabling power is for everyone and everyone can change and become like our Heavenly Father. :) It helps me love others even more.

Sister Johnson

Hola

Carnival

Barco again

Roberto is awesome

Hola!

This week was amazing! SOOO amazing! First off i want to thank my mom for sending packages! I FINALLY got them :) i would say it was a valentines day gift! And then also i got some letters from Becca and Kyleigh! Thank you SO much! My teammates a great i hope they read this some how. I dont have thier emails but i finally got the letter you all sent in novemeber i think. Thank you! And also another letter from a friend from school! James Bahiti. Thank you! and also the Hutchinsons! thank you so much. Nice to get handwritten letters ;)

But that wasnt the only reason this week was amazing... Stenio got baptized! YESSSSSS: finally. So the story on stenio begins when he shows up at church because a friend invited him and he said he wanted to change his life. Wow. The Lord had really been preparing him. I think i mentioned stenio last week a little bit. he is super solid. So funny and goofy. But this is what happened this week... So we go to Sao Vicente for a zone conference and cant meet with him for two days. But we call him on the phone and follow up a little bit for the 2-3 days we were out of town. He said all is good. But he finally called his mom who lives in Praia i think and she said he cant get baptized... Well stenio is 19 so it is totally up to him. But his mom was really against it. She said he was already baptized into the catholic church when he was a baby and it would be disrespectful for his family that helped with all that when he was born. I didnt really get the whole story but needless to say Stenio was basically crying on the phone when he told us. And that kind of took away the excitement he had about being baptized. So we finally make it back to Santo Antao.. which is another story...  but anyway we make it back and meet Stenio at the caixe (where the boats are) to have him meet our district leader and have his interview. Well stenio shows up super late because he slept in so they didnt have time for the interview. So we had to do it on skype later that day. Well skype decided not to work... but dont worry.. a lot of prayers and finally it worked. Then all was good. Only thing is stenio really needed to decide what he was going to do. So he had all these tests for school so we couldnt meet with him until a day before baptism. And that lesson was really important. The spirit was really strong too. We invited Stenio to pray that night and really think about his decision tomorrow so that he could feel prepared. 

The next day he told us he woke up feeling so much better about baptism and excited again. And his baptism was amazing! He bore his testimony after and i could feel how much it meant to him to have everything in the past just washed away. Like a burden he didnt even realize he had was just gone. Well that isnt the best part even.. the next day when he recieved the gift of the holy ghost the blessing after was incredible! We had been talking about a mission for stenio and asked him to think about it. Well in the blessing it said something a long the lines of "When you serve a mission... " I just got a huge smile on my face after that. and then the blessing continued and said that he will have an eternal family and be a great leader in the church. I was beaming! That is what it is all about. Of course stenio still needs to work and grow and learn. But baptism is the door.. There is a path after that of enduring to the end and it is so great to see that the people who are baptized are then continuing on that path and not stopping. Endure to the temple :) i like to say :) It is great to give this vision to our investigators. 

So that is stenio! Incredible. 

Next we had zone conference the beginning of last week. I just want to say a few things i learned in that. Incredbile... We talked about the Plan of Salvation. I learned a lot. One thing i want to share is about our potenital as children of god! So we talked about the plan god presented when we were in the pre-mortal life! And how satan wanted to make sure we all got back to god and wanted to take away agency. The thing about that plan is.. we didnt only want to return and live with god again... the plan was for us to return and BE like him. We can really become like our heavenly father. Think about that. It is incredible. We can be as he is and live as he lives. That is why it is essential to live on this earth and have our agency so that we can choose to follow the laws given to us and grow, GROW, and become like our savior :) I just love that! We are here to learn and progress. Never stop progressing. Continue to learn and grow and study. The oil in our lamps is the things we know. :) And also! It is all possible because of our savior Jesus Christ. He lived a perfect life and atoned for our sins so that we could learn and grow and someday return to live with our Heavenly father. There is so much i need to learn about the Atonement but know that i know my Savior Lives. He was our savior before this life, he is our savior now, and he will continue to be our savior after this life, beckoning to us to join him in the kingdom of our father!

Love

Sister Johnson

Ola Familia e Amigos

Ola Familia e Amigos!

Como vai?! Tudo bem! Entao... Donºt worry i wont write in portuguese... that would take to long and no one would understand except the people who speak portuguese and maybe the spanish speakers could pick up on a few things. I had a humbling experience with the language this week.. Haha.. you know how last week or two weeks ago i was all feeling good about it? Yeah well this week I was called to humility. haha Well kinda. But I know all my ability to do anything here on the mission is because of my Savior Jesus Christ and the enabling power of his atonement! All i have are gifts from god. I have been very blessed and i need to be better at recognizing him in every way. Being grateful. Like mom said a few weeks ago in her letter. Thanks mom!

Ok so about that experience. So i was feeling good about the language right? Well yesterday in church the bishop asks me two seconds before Sacrament meeting to give a talk :) hahaha i mean i knew these types of things happened on the mission but i didnt think they would really happen. It wasnt that bad though. it was on the Day of the Lord. Or the Sabbath day. So i focused on the Sacrament and my testimony of the Sabbath day and as missionaries do i invited us to think of the people who arent there and invite them to come next week. But really our number in sacrament meeting has been really down these past few weeks because of carnival. People party all night saturday and just dont wake up on sunday. But that really is no excuse! That is not conversion either. So we are trying to work on that. Church attendance is vital!

So this week we met a new investigator. He is the son of one of our investigators and he is awesome! This family we have been teaching is a mom and her son, Elvin. So we met her other son this week and his name is ... wait for it... ElviS.. haha funny they are so close in names and so close in personality too! It is great. So elvis studies in Sao Vicente. He is super smart. He is 18 and already almost done with his first year at the university! That never happens in cabo verde. haha people here and lucky to graduate when they are 18 or 19. It is like a HUGE accomplishment if a person isnt held back... but anyway so elvis is super smart. He came her for holidays and we taught him the first 3 lessons. He is so solid! He just sat there sooo into it. he asked all the right questions... Where did we come from, why are we here, where are we going after this life. When we taught the plan of salvation he was so into it and so excited to pray to know if it was true! He was a ray of sunshine to our kind of stormy week. The only thing with elvis is he doensnºt live in our area so we had to give him as a reference to the elders! So they have a baptism coming up pretty soon with him. he is solid. It was funny, when we left we said "Bye Elvis, See you in the Celestial Kingdom" haha he laughed really hard... but honestly that will probably be the next time we see him. He wont be back to santo antao until august. Hey, who knows, maybe i will be here too :) haha

So yes this week was kind of a downer! We have so many people who have this great potential but things keep happening. For example, Elvisºs mom got a new job in interior so she wont be back for 2 months... ugh. And then another solid person got a new job and she is working on sundays now instead of having work only on monday through friday! ugh. And then all the people who seem great dont come to church!

Church... We ask people to do three things. Pray, Read the Book of mormon, and COME TO CHURCH. If they only read and pray they are doing 2/3rds of what they need to do and therefore they fail! Church is so important and people cannot get baptized until they come to church. They cannot open the door to the celestial kingdom unless they are baptized. All we teach them is to get people to that point. Yes it sounds a little weird, maybe selfish... but we cant have eternal life if we are not baptized by the proper authority like christ was baptized. 2 Nephi 31: 10-11 i think. Baptism. It is the way by which we NEED to enter. And so that is our purpose. To invite others to come unto christ and they cant do that if they are not baptized. Anyway i know that it is a process. But i was feeling a little awkward at times inviting people to be baptized or to keep reminding people about the date they have. but i cant have fear inviting them to make one of the best decisions of their life.

I love this work and this gospel! The gospel is simple people. Faith, repentance, BATISMO, receive the gift of the holy ghost, and endure to the end. Endure to the temple and then to the end. I also have realized that baptism is the door, but there is a path that leads to the temple that is so sweet :) The temple should be the goal as well. Not just the baptism... but the temple :) I love you all! Keep being great missionaries.

Love Sister Johnson

Transfers

Guess who companionship is Not getting transferred

We liked to have fun waiting for the computer

Hola Familia e Amigos!

Well one more transfer happened yesterday! And to my great joy Sister Zimbelman and I are staying together here in the best place on earth! Porto Novo!!! I just love this area. I feel like i will be one of those missionaries who will serve here for about 7 or 8 months and then get transfered and then return to finish my mission here... I can hope. I just love this area soooooo much. It is perfect. 

Ok so this week was good... yeah pretty good. Do not have any complaints. I finished my 12 week training finallly! Yayyyy! One more hour of teaching every day! That is such a blessing ;)

Ok so I am proud of our ward now. Yesterday they presented the ward mission plan. It was perfect. They finally addressed a few things sister zimbelman and i have been trying to bring up with our ward mission leader for a while now! But they addressed it and it was fabulous. They said they are really going to help us have Member present lessons. And not just any member.. but members that will really be a good friend and watchman for our investigator. They way they are going to do this is we bring the names up in correlation with the ward mission leader... he will bring them up in ward council and the various quorems and classes will talk about who in their groups will be good to be an amigo! YESS. Perfect :) Now it just has to happen! So we will make sure to follow up. 

So some miracles this week. One is Milene. She was the girl who got baptized my very first week! Well after that she disapperared and when we tried to talk to her again she said she didnt like us and didnt want to talk to us again... I dont know what happened. Well this week we walked by her cousins house and she was there. We started to talk a little.. and she just came out with "when can we talk again"... Ummmm... AS soon as possible. hahah so we marked with her and we had a great first lesson again and she prayed to never miss church again. that was a miracle. She completely changed. I hope it continues this way and she continues to have this same desire. 

The next is Romina and her sister Antonita. Wow... So we met Romina in a lesson with another investigatore. She just kinda happened to show up. We marked with her after the lesson and when we had a lesson with her later in the week it was solid! Her sister was in and out of the lesson because of her son was acting up but at the end they BOTH accepted a Book of mormon and would start to read it. And Romina accepted a date to be baptized too :) So then the next few days we meet with them again. And THEY READ. Boy did they read and study. They had a ton of questions for us and it was a great lesson. They are super interested. Antonita is already in 2 nephi and she only had 2 or 3 days! I was so happy and amazed. And also she remembered the story line really well too.

The next one is about Stenio! Wow... So he is super funny. He is like this small little young man.. kinda nerdy but in a good way. He loves Basketball so we obviously needed to talk to him because of that. I dont know how to describe him but he is just super goofy it is great! But anyway we havent had time to talk with him for a while because he has eye problems and had treatment on another island for a while. We were pretty bumbed out because he is super solid. So i fasted for him this week... And it was amazing to see the results. On Saturdayafternoon we found him and he said he wont have treatment for about 3 weeks until holidays for Carnival! Carnival is in like 3 weeks i think. We were so happy... and i think he was too. We told him we would mark to meet with him in church the next day. He came to church and after church we asked him How it was... and he said the best thing ever.. "I feel like a different person". I just was filled with joy! He really is a different person. Especially after we taught the Word of Wisdom he has improved so much. He has such a desire to have the holy ghost and he realizes what a great gift this is. And he really wants to keep changing and getting better. He also said he feels more love in his family. His dad died when he was young because of an alcohol addiction and he says that was super super hard. But now he feels more love for his mom and everything! It is great to see his confidence too. He is saying no to his friends when they do things they shouldnt be doing. Solid.

So those are a couple miracles this week. This transfer is going to be a great one! Oh and one last thing that ties all these miracles together... THE BOOK OF MORMON. Each one of these people are reading the book of mormon and each one of them is changing their lives. I have seen the power of this book more than ever on my mission. It is proof of this church of this gospel! It is the words of God. And we can really answer the questions of the soul when we read this book. I will open up any page and find answers to my questions about an investigator. I wont even know i was looking for it but i will find it. And that is really the power of the holy ghost that comes when we open the Book of Mormon. Please read it daily. It is the proof, the evidence and the answer to allllll questions. I have a testimony of this book and i know it is true. I have read it, pondered, and asked god if it was true and he responded. He will do that for anyone who really asks with faith and real intent to act after they ask! 

I love you all.

Sister Johnson

Divisions

Ola Familia e amigos,

I hope everyones week was good! My week was... uplifting. Yeah.. uplifting. Let me start with the divisions we had this week. So we had divisions with the sister training leaders. They are on the island of Sal because we do not have sister training leaders here in santo antao and we also dont have them in sao vicente... so they came a long way to do divisions but it was meant to be. haha One of them is Sister Spolador. She is from Brazil. She did the split with me. So I wasnt super worrried but then i realized i would have no choice but to speak portuguese. So sister spolador is cool. We are like twins. Her first area was also Santo antao so she knew all the members and a lot of the same people! I could just feel her excitement and love for the people here. 

So it turns out creole isnºt portuguese! haha duhh.. but it was good to actually know this for sure. I could understand a lot of what sister spolador was saying. She started out speaking slow to me... but by the end of the day she was flying and we had a good old time. So it was a huge confidence builder to see the Lord is truly helping me with this language. Although i do not understand the creole that great i can understand portuguese. The talking is still not great... but Sister spolador was very complimentive and said i was doing fine. :) Now my goal is to understand creole. And i have added faith that the Lord will help me. He already has so much so i need to stop being so negative about my language skills... so i will stop being negative. 

P.S i heard a secret that nobody understands the creole until they become senior companion anyway.. hahaha... jk... but really. 

Also i think this makes it so i can be super simple and focus on the things that i need to focus on. :) By simple things great things are brought to pass. 

So other things i learned from sister Spolador is how to listen! Wow she is so patient and listens so well. She always uses something people say to highlight a truth of the gospel. it is incredible! i love how she did that. That is my goal.. to be able to listen and then use what people know to add more and give them more. I love a quote by Elder Holland that i think every missionary knows but basically he says we need to listen to these people and what they say will always highlight a truth of the restored gospel.. and then we will agree and then offer more! These people NEED what we have. I learned that this week too... also with sister spolador.. She has a strong testimony of what we do have and that everyone needs it. I think about the Gift of the Holy Ghost. WE need this gift to get us throught this life. We need it to direct us, to guide us, and in a lot of times COMFORT us. I am beyond grateful for this gift. And i hope i can always Remember my savior and be worthy to have this gift with me always. Like the sacrament prayer states.

I think the highlight of my week was yesterday we had a lot of less actives in church! It was so great to see people there who already had this great gospel in their life and realize they need it again. We talked to a lot of less actives this week. Basically we just invited a lot of them and a good amount showed up. I love when people keep their commitments! :) And the spirit was so strong yesterday in church. The peace we feel after the sacrament is incredible.

Oh and one more thing... President and sister mathews were on our island this week and gave a training. It was on the Restoration! Sister mathews gave a little pop quiz.. Who were the first missionaries of this dispensation... Who was the first investigator? 

There were other questions but i liked these best... Heavenly father and Jesus Christ were the first missionaries and Joseph Smith the first Investigator. I would love to be like the first missionaries some day :) But our challenge as a mission now is to get to the point and give them the proof. Which is get to the first vision and give them the book of mormon! I have seen the lessons change when we focus on the first vision, book of mormon and how they can know for themselves. We can really have a conversation and feel the spirit so strong when we focus on the points :) 

Love you all!

Sister Johnson

My cool hair

Sister Spolodor

Sister Leader

idea to get more references

Frustrating week

Dear everyone!

Well this week was a frustrating one... had to say it! MEMBERS! If you are a member of this church and reading this now you need to find a way to help the missionaries if you arenºt already! Ok glad i got that out... 

I know i am being hypocritical because i didnt help the missionaries as much as i could have before my mission... But it is soooo crucial. Members AND missionaries have to work together to bring this work to pass! So let me go on my rant about this week and then i will say some positive stuff...

So this week we had this plan to teach 4 members for 30 minutes this week. Just to get to know them and get them excited about inviting friends to church. We really wanted to show them that they have one person in their life who is ready for the gospel. Through prayer and through searching they can find them! Everyone here is a convert. So they all have friends but the also ALL have family. People they really really love and care about. So we had this idea... We talk to the ward mission leader about this idea and he says he will mark members to teach with us. So we call him the day before to make sure he marked with them and he said no one wants to meet with us... wait what? for 30 minutes. Just to get to know them and share a small message to get them excited.. no one?

I love the fact that our ward is so young... but i do not like that fact that our ward is so young. Because they are so excited to learn and grow and share what they know but the organization and the will to actually get things done just isnt there...

But anyway i just know the way to get the ward moving is really through the members. Obviously. But the trick is finding the best way to use them. A lot of them say.. when can we teach with you. Which is great... But we want the question to be "when can you come teach my friends... my mom, my dad" We dont want it to be just a random member in the lesson to meet a statistic.. we really want members who love the people in front of them.

I think the biggest challenge this week was Anna. I am sure i mentioned her before. She had a baptismal date. But then her Book of mormon was locked in a room for a week and she didnt read and now she really doesnt want to change her life or anything. And we dont know what her fear is or what really happened. One thing she did tell us though is that she fears being a member of this church and then not staying firm in the church. This is a understandable fear. It is hard to become a convert and completely change your life...

But one thing i loved that my district leader said was that baptism isnt the end, we always have the sacrament to renew our covenants every week. The atonement is ALWAYS there for us to use if we use it. Christºs sacrifice for us is there for us to change and be better. Baptism isnºt for perfect people. It isnºt for us to be baptized and never sin again. It is for us to show our faith that we are willing to follow christ and be a witness of him at all times. And by showing that faith and making that step we then get the gift of the Holy Ghost to guide us for the rest of our lives! This constant gift will always be there as we are worthy. As long as we are willing and desire to be a witness and try try try we are showing our faith. And the atonement is always there if we fall. Always. I love this fact with all my heart. We can get back up and keep moving because our Savior loved us so much and made that possible. We can also change with the atonement. We can become different people. Change our NATURE. the atonement is amazing. And i cant wait to teach Anna about this great blessing even more.

Another thing about changing nature is that i have been studying charity lately. This is one goal of mine. Developing charity. What great love this is. As i study this more i will fill you in on it but for now i know i have a lot to work on.

Know that i love the members here to! 

And i love you all!

Sister Johnson