May 24, 2016 - Cool subject line...

Hey everyone!

So this week was super...... Slow haha. We cleaned out our area book, so we are doing A LOT of finding.... Which means I have to talk to people aaaahhhh!!! People confuse us for Jehovah Witnesses  all of the time! Which means they usually run away. Then They find out we are Mormons instead and they run faster! hahaha

Our investigator came to church yesterday! That was super exciting! His name is Allen and he left that meeting saying he wanted to be baptized! Miracle of the week! He has a long way to go but through the atonement and with the help of Jesus Christ all things are possible!

Last week Sis. Christian shattered her iPad..... So we have been going with just mine which hasn't been that bad... for me at least haha. She said she is having iPad withdrawals, it's kinda funny! They shipped it down to Idaho to get fixed cuz I guess it's cheaper down there so we have been waiting the 2 weeks for it to come back.

Also something different that happened this week is I have been having weird stomach problems.... Sis. Taylor (the awesome mission nurse) thinks I might have some lactose issues, which we sorta suspected, but she put me on this no dairy diet, which I was supposed to do before the mission but I love cheese way too much... Needless to say it is really hard. But my comp is awesome, and horrible, and keeps me on track! So pray for me that I can stick to it!

Anyways I know this is a way short email, but I'm way short on time.... Which I know is every missionaries excuse. But I love you all and I will do better next time!
Love
Sister J
😊

May 16, 2016 - Exploding cars

Hello everyone!

This week has been just peachy! It was the first full week of the new transfer and Sis. Christian and I are like the same person!! We work so awesome together! She is even from Utah in the Salem area! Yay! This week we cleaned out our area book, always a blast...... We also had to drop lots of our potential investigators, and even some of our actual investigators. I was very sad that day. But they weren't progressing so it had to be done. I just have to exercise the faith that they will some day be ready!

It was stake conference for our stake this Sunday and we got to listen to Elder Murray from the 70. He is a fantastic speaker. He was the last speaker and in his talk he included everything spoken about in all of the talks before him, it was amazing! He also rebuked the congregation and told them that they need to be more unified. It was surely a blessing! Because our stake does have unification issues. The people are so diverse! In our stake alone we have a Samoan Ward, Tongan Ward, Spanish Ward, and English white polongy (idk if I spellled that right) Wards so it's a bit hard to relate to each other with so many different languages and cultures. Because of this it is super hard to do missionary work and get members to lessons and to get members to fellowship our investigators. So when Elder Murray told them this, inwardly I was dancing and singing and shouting and such. It was a happy moment! To make it even better they were also told to feed the missionaries and go out to lessons with the missionaries so that also just helped the meeting get better.

But this week we mostly OYMed (open your mouth) which means we talked to strangers. So everything I was taught as a child not to do when it comes to strangers... Well I've been doing it.... Sorry mom! So ya, we talked to lots of different people. As we were oyming we ran into a
homeless lady named Katie we had talked with before and we gave her a Book of Mormon... But as we were talking with her, the homeless people a few yards a way started fighting.... We didn't really know what to do, so we just awkwardly kinda kept talking to Katie.... But then they were wrestling and punching and yelling, and brought itself toward us so we felt we needed to leave.... As we were walking away one of the men fighting called after us.... We kept walking.... So he called again
but this time he started walking after us.... Ya super exciting. Don't worry we made it to the car in one piece and left. We were done oyming for that day haha.

Also, this week Sis. Christian thought our car was going to explode. It was really funny. Cuz the oil light had come on so we checked the oil then the next morning the car struggled starting, then as we were driving an orange light with an exclamation point came on and so she was terrified that it meant our car was in jeopardy and that we were going to explode and that the car wasn't safe to drive. So she called the elders to come look at it. It just turned out to be that the pressurein our tires was low.... Not quite exploding. Hahaha I haven't let her forget it, it was super funny!

Anyways I hope you all have had a great week! I love you all, make good choices!
Sis. Johnson

May 9, 2016 - Happy Mother's Day!

Hey everyone!

 First off happy Mother's Day to all you women in my life! I love you all and I want you to know how important you all are and how much I love you! I hope yesterday was a special day for you!

So this week was super fun, we had transfer number 3 and my mom left me for the North Pole. My new companion is really awesome though! She came down from Fairbanks and has been out 6 months. Her name is Sis.Christian and she is super chill! We get along great! She is such a
great missionary and I have learned so much from her already and it hasn't even been a full week!

So this week we got to do our favorite service again. The elevator was super fun and it looks the same as last time we did the service. Basically we sit in the elevator for 4 hours bussing people around and
going to every floor. The library is under construction so it's the only elevator in the building so to keep some order we do it. FUNNYSTORY: while we were bussing people around the same two guys came into the elevator really frequently. One was a construction worker he was taking piles of wall and stuff to other floors, normal right? And there was this other guy who was visiting he library.... Normalish right? Well the construction workers shift ended and he came back twice. The last time he just quickly hands us a paper and said that we dropped it..... I was really confused cuz we hadn't left the elevator for 3 hours so how could I have dropped anything not int he library?!? Well on he paper it said "dinner?" And his number and "text?" Sis. Christian and I didn't know what to do..... So we still haven't contacted him.... And we probably won't.... Especially cuz he was like 30-40 years old.... Awkward! I actually feel really bad about it all.

Now after that... Like 5 min later the other guy came in and it was him and us in the elevator and he is just standing there and we asked him what level he wanted (by this point we had gone to every level already and he hadn't gotten off) and he was like " actually I have a question do you girls like dancing?" He asked us both on a date to go dancing with him. We turned him down in the nicest way possible but he was very persistent and gave us his number and said if we change our minds give him a call........ It was a strange day!

Anyway so back to missionary work. We have been oyming like crazy (talking to random people) and yesterday on Mother's Day we felt prompted to go to one of our Ward s recent converts so we do and she wasn't home.... So we walked around and ran into this guy who was washing his car (in the rain) and we talked to him he said he had coworkers who were Mormon and took our number and a Book of Mormon!

Then a guy who was smoking walks up to us and was like "are you church people?"
We said yes. He said "I'm smoking right now, so it might not be an appropriate time to talk, but I need to go to church." We gave him our number and he said he would call. LIKE WHAT JUST
HAPPENED.!?! It was so cool! Things like that never happen!

Anyways I hope all is well for you all! I love you and hope you have
an awesome Mother's Day and week!

May 2, 2016 - We once were lost, but now we are found.

Hey guys!

This week was pretty awesome!!!!! First off, I was blessed with the privilege to skype my family! Wahoo!!!! Highlight of my week! Your looking great family! Love every single one of you! (Sister-in-law included :D)

We got transfer calls! I am staying here in the great old Inlet View North Anchorage Ward! Sis. Rose is leaving me to do bigger and better things for the people in the North Pole! Sis. Christian will be coming from serving in Fairbanks to keep an eye on me :)

I can fit in Sis. Rose's suitcase!

So this week was super fun.. But a bit discouraging cuz many of our appointments get canceled or forgotten. It is a bit frustrating. But out of the lessons we did have, we put some on date to be baptized! Wahoo! So that is exciting. Now they need to continue to progress and continually meet with us.... Otherwise it's not going to be able to happen. I've noticed a trend. When putting people on date to be baptized they become more relaxed, less strict with meeting with us. As a missionary it's like "NO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING???" Because it is when they are on date that they need to meet with us the most! ESPECIALLY when they are on date. Because they haven't finished the lessons yet and because they have made a commitment to better their life and come closer to God, so it is a guarantee that Satan will be there trying so much harder to influence them. And it is sad cuz it
works. But us missionaries aren't fazed, we are as persistent as he is, you can just recognize us better then him so we are probably more annoying to the investigator, but that's ok, I like being
annoying 😆

So we got to ride bikes quite a few times this week. First of all, last week on pday our whole district went for a bike ride down the coastal trail. That was super exciting!

Out of Sis. Rose and I we only had one good mountain bike, then we had like this little hippy type bike with this horribly hard seat (I'm not sure what they are called) but we rock, paper, scissored it and I won, so she got that bike. It was super pretty! The elders left us behind cuz my bike started having some struggles (well combined with my lack of bodily strength, but I wasn't going to tell them that) so we got lost.

As we tried to catch up with them, we found our district leader, Elder Villeagas (he is from the Philippines). I thought we had finally caught up... But it turns out they had all passed him and left him behind too. This was kind of an awkward situation, cuz the elders aren't supposed to be left alone with the sisters, but he most definitely wasn't supposed to be by himself. I told him he is stuck with us. He road a little bit ahead of us but still in view.

We road down a long ways asking everyone if they had seen a bunch of boys on bikes. There was a point when no one had....So that was confusing. At that point we stopped cuz  it didn't sound like they were in front of us anymore.... But that didn't make any sense. Two minutes later our zls come riding around a corner super fast behind us.... That was the  weirdest thing ever! How did they get behind us?! Apparently they had all gone down off the trail to hang out at the beach. Five min later, when we didn't show up, they came looking for us. Apparently our telepathy is a bit rusty. Cuz I don't think any of us got the hint to leave the trail to find them.... But that was super fun!

Over the week Sis. Rose and I tried to ride bikes as much as possible. The mission goal is to talk to 10 new people a day and invite them to take the lessons. It is hard to do that in a car, so we biked. We were passing this bridge with two homeless men smoking on the stairs. Our goal was to not let anyone pass us without talking to them. So we pulled the bikes over and talked with them. They were super friendly! We asked if we could share a message with them. They said yes! So we actually ended up teaching them the whole restoration right there on the bridge. One of them had so many questions. When we talked about God is our loving Heavenly Father.... He got a little mad. Asking us if God loved him why would he let him suffer and be homeless? We told him that he let his own son suffer, he lets a lot of people suffer so that we may learn and grow. He didn't like that answer. But after a little bit more, he calmed down and apologized and said we could continue. So we did. And he listened. They both like actually listened! (There is a difference between really listening and pretending to listen). At the end we asked them if they wanted Books of Mormon. The one who got mad excitedly said yes, cuz we had answered a lot of his questions. Needless to say he was much more receptive. He said he wanted to learn more. But he was homeless so we gave him a card with our number on it and he said he would call........................ We are still waiting for that  call..................... But homeless people are the best! They are so much more receptive and polite when it comes down to it. They are just awesome! Scary at times, but awesome!!!

Anyways I love you all! Make good choices! The church is true! I love
it so much! And I love you all so much! Keep on keeping on!!! 🤗

#selfiewithamoose