I have some Good NEWS!!! (5/30/2012)

I have some news for everyone....

 

 

I am a mom! A missionary mom that is. I am training a new missionary. Her name is Sister Tillman. President Cotterell called to inform me that I would be training a new missionary on Saturday. Sister Wilson and I both cried. I think we were having way too much fun together. Sister Tillman is amazing. To describe Sister Tillman in a nutshell: She is from Corinne, UT and she worked on a dairy farm. Her job was to milk the cows and 4 am and 4 pm everyday. She graduated from Box Elder High in '09. She likes to play the piano, her favorite color is pink and her birthday is Feb. 9th. Both her parentals served missions and her brother is currently serving a mission in Guatemala.

 

This past week was really good though. We met with a lot of less active members and part member families. Bishop gave us a couple of less active sisters to go by this week. We stopped by and had a good lesson with them. One of them is really interested in coming back to church. She asked about a singles ward and agreed to read the Book of Mormon everyday. She works every other sunday though. :( However, she will be at church this sunday! :)

 

We met with Sister Jan on Tuesday. She is still praying about a baptism date. We finished teaching her the Plan of Salvation again. She just soaks it up.

 

Wednesday was our last district meeting of the transfer. It was Elder Merrill's last district meeting ever. (He is a dying missionary...aka: he is going home next week). It was sad. We talked about receiving revleation through the Book of Mormon and role played that. It was so good! On our way home from district meeting we stopped by a few members who live in Linden (since we never get to go to Linden much because it is out in the boonies). We talked to the Prescott family. Sister Prescott's daughter was there and talked about how she would like to come back to church. Her husband is not a member. We are hoping we can work with them in the near future. We also stopped by a family who lived at the end of a really really long dirt road. When we finally got there, we discovered there was no entrance into their house because it was an electric fence and had like 10 dogs. It was pretty intense to say the least. We spent probably 20 minutes trying to figure out a way to get into their yard. We finally got the dogs to bark, but I guess they got tired of barking after a while. We tried to lure them over toward us by shaking a package of tic-tacs. It kind of worked, but we eventually just gave up and left a note on their fence. We got caught in a flash flood on our way to dinner! We were just driving along and all of the sudden the wind picked up and it started raining like all get out! (I hope you enjoyed that southern talk :] ) We survived though.

 

Thursday we went out with the Daltons and met with a couple of less active families. Then they took us to Dairy Queen. I got some frozen hot chocolate and it brought back a lot of really good memories with my bestie. (Thanks Sister L for introducing me to DQ's frozen hot chocolate. mmmm!)

 

Friday we met with Jan again. She wants to be baptized, but wants to make sure that the date we invited her to be baptized on is going to be the right day. She has been praying a lot about it. We are praying for her too. We met with a lady in Spring Lake (also in the boonnies). I felt bad for the poor lady. She is very lost. She invited us to come back. I hope that she will start coming back to church. We went out with the Guymons in the evening and contacted a part member family. The daughter is really interested in coming to church! yay!

 

We went to dinner with Bruce and Margaret on Saturday because we found out Sister Wilson would be leaving. We went to Cracker Barrel and had breakfast for dinner. :) I got an apple bran muffin and it was amazing.

 

Sunday was great! All four of our investigators came to church! Lewis showed up all on his own. We tried asking him if he needed a ride or anything for church, but he never answered our phone calls. And then, we come to church and he was there! It was really good.

We went out on exchanges with Sis. Knight and Bro. Hill in the evening and visited the Brunson family and then had a lesson with Lewis.

 

Things are going good in Dunn. That's for sure. Thank you for your prayers and outpouring of love. It is greatly appreciated. I love you all and want you to know that I know that the Book of Mormon is true. There really is no way that it couldn't be. I am glad my testimony is rooted so deeply in the Book of Mormon. It has made all the difference in my life and I know it can in your life too! I have witnessed that first hand.

 

I love you all!

 

Love,

Sister J

Whoa. Did that just happen?

Greetings from rainy, but warm Dunn!

 

It has been dumping buckets basically all week. Luckily we get some sunshine pretty much everyday too, but then it dumps buckets. At least the 'bacco plants and cotton plants will have plenty of water this summer! It might be better if tobacco ones didn't though...

 

We had a great week this week. We were incredibly busy this week and saw so many miracles. It was amazing!

 

We had a relaxing P-day last week. It's so nice to just rest sometimes. I am thankful for the convenience of close stores. that is definitely something I took for granted back home. We had a lesson with the Hudsons that evening. It was really good! We each chose our favorite scripture from the Book of Mormon and talked about why it was our favorite. The spirit was so strong there. The Deans came with us and they are just the cutest old couple ever. We talked to them about baptism. Bruce says 'yes!', but Margaret says she can't truthfully answer that she believes Joseph Smith was a prophet. Bless her heart. She wants to know, but just can't seem to accept it. I sure do love the Hudsons. She will get there. I know she will.

 

Tuesday we had another sweet experience with sweet miss Jan. She didn't come to church last week. We asked her why she wasn't there and she said that she didn't go because Russ didn't feel like going. She then went on to explain that she had felt awful all Sunday because she knew that she needed to come to church. I love the spirit. :) We talked to her about how that was the spirit telling her she needed to come to church. She opened up with us a lot and told us that she wants to know this true for herself and not because she is trying please Russ. That made our hearts so happy! She is praying about a baptism date for June 23rd. She also bore her testimony to us about how she had felt very much alone before she started meeting with missionaries and that ever since she had been coming to church and reading the Book of Mormon she didn't feel alone anymore. I thought that was a very profound statement she made. She is very right in saying that. We do feel alone when we aren't doing things to allow Christ into our lives. I pondered a lot about that this week and realized that He doesn't ever leave us. We either choose to leave him or don't know where to look to find Him. That's why being a missionary is definitely the most rewarding job we can do. You get to help people develop faith in Jesus Christ and see how the gospel changes everything about their lives. Hearing Jan say that was definitley one of the sweetest moments I have experienced.

We went on exchanges with a couple of future missionaries later that day (Sis. Gunn and Bro. Guymon) to go and see Lewis. When we got to Lewis' house, he had his George Albert Smith book out and was reviewing Sunday's lesson. He said he really liked it and wanted to learn more about it (it was all about prayer). We had a great lesson on the Atonement with him. We then spent the evening trying to meet with less active and part member families. Nothing came of it.

 

Wednesday we had a great district meeting as always. Elder Merrill is a great district leader. We focused on teaching people, not lessons. We made cinnamon rolls for our district and they were gone in a jiffy! Elder Merrill doesn't eat sugar. At all. I don't know how he does it. He told us a story about how a snake almost got into the cottage in Dunn. I was thinking to myself, "Great. we might find a slithery creature in our cottage. At least in Deep Run we only had to worry about spiders getting into our beds. Now we have snakes!" I am completely paranoid now. Elder Merrill and Sister Wilson think it is hilarious. We keep a bamboo stick right outside the door just in case now. :) (That's how Elder Merrill killed the last snake that was there). I don't know if I'll ever be able to live that one down now.

We had this crazy miracle happen Wednesday night. We didn't have any appointments so we decided to drive out to Benson and contact some PM families and LA families there. We had zero luck until we knocked on the door of a less active lady. She wasnt home, but her son was there. He hadn't been to church in almost 10 years. We talked to him for a few minutes. He told us about how he had wanted to serve a mission at one point. We told him he still could if he wanted to start coming bck to church. He said he didn't think so and we left. We decided to do some proximity work around the neighborhood there (which took about 30 minutes) and were unsuccessful with that. As we headed back to the car, we saw Derek (the less active) run out to our car. He asked if he could meet with us the next day because he had decided that going back to church would be a good idea. We were completely ecstatic and told him that we most certainly could! It was definitely a tender mercy. Especially since I was thinking to myself while we were there, "what in the world are we doing in Benson? Nothing has happened since we've been here." And then, a miracle happened.

 

Thursday we took the future missionaries (sis Gunn and Bro. Guymon) and went to see Derek. He was running behind schedule so we decided to meet at the ice cream parlor in Angier called Sunni Skies. I think we taste tested all 99 flavors. They even had this ridiculously spicy kind. I thought my mouth was going to burn up! My eyes were watering and it was bad. Luckliy the taste tester lady gave me some vanilla to sooth the burning. I guess they have you sign a disclaimer if you decide to buy the spicy ice cream. lol. We ended up meeting with Derek there and had a great lesson. It was kind of like an Ammon and King Lamoni (see Alma 22) experience. Derek isn't sure that god even exists, but he feels like he needs to come back to church because he has seen how happy people are who are in the church. He is moving to Florida this week. So, we forwarded his info to the elders that are there. He text us and asked if we had sent it to them today. He is on fire and totally ready for the gopsel in his life. It reminded me a lot of Elder Holland's talk from conference about the laborers in the vinyard. It's never too late as long as the master is still asking for more helpers.

 

Friday we met with Jan again and reviewed some of the Plan of Salvation. We also had a lesson with Bro. King (he lives in front of us) He is a funny old man. He was going off about some song that talks about whiskey. It was pretty funny. We met a very nice less active man. He was very drunk when we contacted him, but he really liked going to church when he was a kid. His wife is baptist and wouldn't come out to meet us though...she thinks we are heathens according to him. He told us that we could come back, but to call so he wouldn't be drunk. lol. We also had a miracle happen! We had recieved some referrals from the Clayton elders (elder pace and elder jaros) and we were able to go and contact one of them. The elders had originally met him while helping to jumpstart his car and had talked to him about meeting with the missionaries. We drove out to Angier, found his house, and contacted him. He came out and was SO suprised that we actually came! It was really funny. We set a return appointment with him for saturday, but he jaked us.

 

Saturday was an adventure. We went to a baptism in Fayetteville with the Hudsons. It was their first time ever coming to a baptism! Jan and Russ also came and they all had a good experience. After the baptism the hudsons took us out to lunch to a place that is kind of like Zupas, but Zupas wins. It was good and then we had to make some stops with them since they don't come to Fayetteville very often. We went to Sams Club. It was kind of funny walking around Sam's with the Hudsons, on  a saturday. We came home and washed Bro. King's cars for him. He told us we should make him some brownies again because they were really good. lol.

 

Sunday was wonderful! It was ward conference and Pres. and Sis. Cotterell were there. They taught the gospel principles class and it was amazing. The spirit was so strong in that room. Jan came to church all by herself! She called Russ to go, but he didn't want to :( She came though! She really enjoyed church and Sis. Knight took her right under her wing and made her feel right at home. The Hudsons were able to talk with Pres. Cotterell after church and he was able to talk specifically with Margaret for quite a while. I think it really helped her. She started crying when he asked her what her question was that she had. I was so grateful he was able to talk with her. we had a lesson with them that evening and watched 'safety for the soul' by Elder Holland. She thinks the Book of Mormon is true! She just needs to listen to her heart now.

 

Speaking of Elder Holland, he is coming to our mission on June 2nd! I am nervous. He is super intense. It should be quite the experience though!

 

The church is true. I know the Book of Mormon contains the words of Christ. (see 2 Nephi 33:10-11)

 

Have a great week!

 

Love you all.

 

With lots of love,

 

Sister A. Johnson

Happy Mother's Day 2012 - May 13, 2012

This past week was the fastest week of my life. I can't believe it's Monday again. Where does time go? (sigh) Sometimes I wish it would slow down just a bit.

 

Sister Wilson and I had the best preparation day EVER! The Arps are an older couple in the ward who love to go bowling and as we were discussing this over dinner the week before, Brother Arp challenged us to a game of bowling. So, we did just that on preparation day. We had a great time at the bowling alley. Bro Arp's score pretty much was all of our (mine, Sis. W and Sis. Arp) scores combined. Bowling is definitely not my forte in life. However, by the third game, I broke 100 for the first time I can remember in my life! Miracles have not ceased! It was a lot of fun. We also went to waffle house for lunch. Sister W had never been there. I was famished and decided I could handle two chocolate chip waffles. It was a bit of an overexaggeration. I could only get through one and a half. So much chocolate! mmm... We did FHE with the Anderson family. Sis. Anderson is from Layton, UT. She went to Layton High and graduated in "05 and now has three kids. They are the cutest kids ever. We told the story of  Enos and the kids dressed up with their dad's sunday shirts and ties on their heads as Enos and had their bows (hangers) and arrows (straws) ready to go. It was so cute. After dinner, we spent the evening contacting referrals with no reaping unfortunately. Oh well. We planted seeds!

 

Tuesday we went to see the lovely miss Jan. She is reading the book of Mormon everyday and praying and feels really good about everything. We had a great lesson on the commandments. She now understands why we don't shop and go to the movies on Sunday or do other things we would do on any other day of the week. It's always fulfilling to see investigators understanding doctrine. It's fun to see the "wheels turning in their heads." She is such a sweet lady. Russ (her less active boyfriend) has been to church 3 sundays in a row now! Amazing! True doctrine understood changes behavior. President Packer was right. Russ is working on overcoming some word of wisdom hurdles, but he is making so much progress. It's neat to hear him talk about it too because he knows it's only because he is relying on Jesus Christ to help him do what he can't do by himself. We met with the Hudsons that evening with Sister Knight. I love sister Knight. She's like a walking talking Google. She knows A LOT. We read "Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration" by Bruce's favorite seventy, Tad Callister. They are still dealing with their issues in D&C 132. We witnessed a miracle while reading the talk. Margaret turned to D&C 132 and read a scripture that answered her question about that section and it seems to be less of an issue for her now. (hallelujah!) The spirit definitley helps people recieve revelation for themselves. It really is such a blessing to have the spirit who can witness of truth and give us guidance and direction. It was amazing. They are still being stubborn about committing to anything to do with joining the church though. One of these days...

 

Wednesday we met with a young man named Daven. He talked to one of our members, Sis. Bennett while his mom was getting her hair done and Sis. Bennett had a good conversation with him about the church, gave him a Book of Mormon and our phone number. He called us and wanted to meet with us so we met him at the church and had a great lesson with him. He has heard a lot of negative things about the church, but said he would be willing to pray and ponder and read the Book of Mormon to find out for himself. He is very smart and knew a lot about prophets, apostasy, and all of that. It was awesome.  We also had a great experience with a less active family, The Barneys. We had dinner with the Barneys which was good. Their son had a friend over named Deonte. He is going to UNC Greensboro. The whole conversation at dinner was on the amendment for families being defined as between man and woman only. They asked us our opinion and we quickly referred them to the family: a proclamation to the world and left it at that...seeing as that is all we really can do. Politics as a missionary are always a fun can of worms! After dinner we did a lesson with them all about putting on the whole armour of God and then talked to Deonte about the restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon. He seemed really interested and agreed to have the missionaries in Greensboro (which is in the Charlottle mission) to teach him more. I am so excited to hear about what happens with that! Missionary work is the best. Even if the people you teach are out of your area. It makes some missionaries somewhere really happy when they recieve a referral letter! :)

 

Thursday we drove to Morganton (which is in Fayetteville area) for zone training. Sis. W had to get some blood work done so we left bright and early and then ended up being ridiculously early for training. We helped Sis. Cotterell fix the lunch for the other zone who was there for their training and then we made some phone calls and tried to keep ourselves busy there. Training was really good. I saw Elder Fowkes, who was in the MTC with me. I haven't seen him since last June! He came up to me, said hi and then said, "You're getting old on the mission!" Such great words of encourgement from my fellow missionary....

We learned about the doctrine of christ and how we can better help our investigators understand why we invite them to be baptized. It was really good. We did some role plays resolving concerns and it was amazing. I always learn so much when we do role plays. I used to hate doing role plays...

We met with Crystal in the evening and ate dinner with her and then had a lesson. She agreed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. Yay!

 

We had a great weekly planning session on friday. We made some pretty extensive plans for helping this area to grow and I hope they will be effective. We went to military promotion dinner for a member in the ward with less active, Bro. King and his daughter Cherish (who is not a member) and we were able to have a good conversation with them. It was good to see the ward reaching out to them as well. Lewis didn't show up. :(

 

Saturday we were up early and helped Crystal set up a yard sale and then we were of to the Kunz family who were demolishing their front room. We got to tear off that awful wood paneling that everyone puts on the walls here and removed sheetrock and base molding. It was so much fun! We were to recieve a referral from a couple who were there visiting from Apex. His aunt basically lives up the street from us. We contacted her later that day and are planning on going back soon!

 

Sunday was good. It was hard, but life is hard so what can you do? Just take it in stride and turn to God I guess. Lewis came to church! I was so happy to see him. Jan and Russ went to the Fay 4th ward...so we didn't get to see them. Church was good though. We had some good talks. I realized again how much I love my mom and how much I appreicate everything she taught me. I have such a respect for her. I hope she knew that I loved her and looked up to her and appreciated her patience and cheerful countenance that she always had with us. She really was an incredible woman and no one can ever take her place. I feel like I have a big bar to measure up to in life as her daughter. I wish I could tell her how much she means to me, but I think she probably knows. I believe she was successful in raising us three hooligan children. We seem to have turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. :) I love her.

We had dinner with Bishop Ginn and his family and then did FHE about gratitude. They have a little girl named Kim who reminds me so much of Ashlyn. She kept making pictures for me that said things like, "I love you so much!" and so forth. She is so cute.

 

Mothers are the best. I am thankful for all the women who have played such a huge role in my life. I spent a lot of yesterday reflecting on that. I am thankful for my 2nd mom, Sis. Lindstrom and for my fantastic YW leaders, Sis. Nielson and Sis. Gooch and all of the other women who were there in my life as a YW. I am thankful for my wonderful aunts and my grandmothers. I love them all so much. Most of all, I am thankful for my mother. She IS incredible.

 

Have a great week.

 

Love you all!

 

Love, Sister J

May 7, 2012

We had a great week this week and my time on the computer is REALLY limited today so you will get the rundown of things in these parts of the world really quick.,..like 60 seconds, but not really. Okay.

 

We had a great lesson with Miss Margaret on monday evening at the Arp's home. She is still worried about polygamy and Joseph Smith. She agrees with everything else though. So frustrating!!!

We met with both Margaret and Bruce and invited them to start at square one: reading the Book of Mormon and focusing on their relationship with Jesus Christ and the question we invited them to consider as they read. They agreed. We read Moroni 7:13-16. Those are such good scriptures. Margaret really liked them a lot.

We also had combined district meeting with the Hope Mills district because President and Sister Cotterell came to do interviews. It was a great district meeting. We talked about find when you teach, teach when you find. Even the Savior asked for referrals when he was teaching (see 3 Nephi 17:4-9) We are setting goals to help us remember to ask who people we see can invite to our next meeting. It works really well. There is a family in the Hope MIlls area that have all been slowly agreeing to take the lessons because of that concept. Preach My Gospel is so inspired.

We met with Jan again. She talked with her father. He is not pleased with her choice to join the church, but said he will still love her. She wants to make sure this is really something she wants to do before jumping into it and therefore will not agree to a date to be baptized. She will get there though. She is very teachable and recognizes truth when she hears, sees, feels it. It's really amazing. We asked her who she knew she could invite to our next lesson. She invited her sister who said no. However, she was really excited to tell us because she then had the opportunity to talk to her sister about what we had shared with her earlier that day (the Gift of the Holy Ghost) and they had a really goood conversation and Jan was really happy about that. I was happy for her!

This week was a difficult week of finding. We tried and tried and tried, but had no success for the whole week. We contacted lots of less actives. There are SO many in this ward. Turns our three of them that we talked to were former "do not contacts" That could explain the slightly confused looks we received. However, all of them agreed to let us come back over so, that was definitley a miracle. No one got mad at us. I am always thankful for that.

We went on exchages with a girl I went to high school with. Her name is Kelsey Campbell. It totally caught me off guard when I saw her. It was crazy! But a good crazy. She just graduated from Campbell University which is pretty close to where we live.

I learned a huge lesson about being humble this week. My natural man (or I guess woman...) tends to get in the way a lot and I think that I can do things by myself. I learned that I can't rely just on myself alone. I need to rely on Heavenly Father and trust him. I also learned that I need to trust Sister Wilson more. Luckily Heavenly Father knows my weaknesses and gently rebukes/reminds me that it is not that way. :) I sure am thankful for Sister Wilson. I have learned a lot from her. She has so many strengths where I lack. I believe Heavenly Father knew that and that we could learn from each other.

We had dinner with some members who just moved from TX on Saturday. We played Book of Mormon baseball for a while, but none of us were much good at that so we watched some mormon messages instead and then went to a referral that Elder Merrill gave us. It was neat because we asked Elder Merrill who he knew in Dunn (he served here) and he didn't know at the time, but this house came to mind when he was studying one day so he told us to go by her. Her name is Crystal. We were able to contact her with Sis. Martin and had a good lesson with her. Her best friend is LDS and she has taken all the lessons before and wanted to be baptized, but her parentals wouldn't let her. Now, she is almost 30 though. We talked to her about the temple (she doesn't like that not everyone can go to the wedding ceremony). She wants to feed us dinnner and wants us to come back. She has some sticky situations that will make teaching her tricky, but hopefully we will be able to help her remember what she felt once upon a time. It was definitley a miracle.

Sunday was a really good day. The whole stake fasted for missionary work. Bishop Ginn expressed his gratitude to the missionaries. He is so thankful to have sister missionaries in the ward. I've never felt so loved as a missionary in my life. One of the little girls got up and bore her testimony. It was so cute. She is probably 4? "I would like to bear my testimony that Jesus lives and there are lights in the church and Jesus is where the light is and there are walls and lights everywhere in the church and Jesus is everywhere. And one time we had a pool party....um... I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." Everyone was giggling to some degree.

We taught the priests during 3rd hour of the block and had a great lesson about the Plan of Salvation. The Plan of Salvation is so amazing. It is a part of everything we do.

We went with Jan and Russ to Fayettville to Pres. Cluff's house (stake president) and had a fireside for recent converts, investigators, and less actives. It was such a powerful fireside. The whole thing is just investigators, recent converts, etc that bear their testimonies. Jan bore her testimony and it was very touching. That is definitely an inspired idea. They do firesides like that every quarter I guess and it is amazing. We rode back home with them, missed our turn so took an extra long way home and were able to talk to Jan about keeping the sabbath day holy and going on mormon.org and the articles of faith. She is an amazing lady.

 

I love that we have the scriptures and that they can give us guidance. The Book of Mormon was translated by the Power of God. It is another witness of Jesus Christ.

 

Have a wonderul week! I love you all and pray for you often.

 

Thank you for all your love and support. I really do appreciate it.

 

With lots of love,

 

Sister J