Fear turns into faith when worry turns into worship

Well..it's me. Sister Johanson Jr. 

First off welcome home Joshy!!! Utah is so happy to have you back! 

I'm glad everything went awesome with the homecoming, sounds like it was just an awesome experience and I love hearing about missionaries who just have let their missions change them. That's awesome. 

So I am now on the opposite side of the state, I'm in Orangeburg. Heavenly Father is just such a jokester cuz when I first got here I want to go downstate and got sent clear upstate. Then this time, I wanted to go back upstate and got called clear downstate. But that's just how things work isn't it? 

Also! I'm in a trio. Cuz they are still low on numbers in sisters so some trainers have to train 2 second transfer greenies, me being one of them. They actually only had 2 sets of sister trios this time..or 3? But I was lucky to be one of them. I actually wasn't looking forward to it when I first got put in. But it's so great!!! I'm with sister Harvey and Sister Rymer. Sister Rymer was actually in the MTC with me and roomed with me. So that's pretty awesome. And Sister Harvey went to USU before her mission and is way into energy types!!! So that's great too!! I love them so much :) 

So this week, we were just getting used to the area and learning about all the people here. Our teaching pool isn't super big and we don't get fed a whole lot. But I'm really excited cuz that means we get to start up all the fire and find lots of people. I love getting to see the progress :) I have faith that Orangeburg is just the whitest field in South Carolina and is gonna be the highest baptizing area in the mission. It's just in disguise and we have to water it a little. Twill be great :)

So something about southern culture is everybody here talks forever. Back out west if you want to say something, you politely wait your turn. If you wait your turn out here you never gonna leave. You have to program yourself to interrupt people. Sometimes then it doesn't even work. We went and contacted a referral this last week and started reading the intro to the Book of Mormon with him. After the first two paragraphs I asked him what he was understanding from what we were reading. Holy cheese puffs was that the wrong question to ask. We were on that porch for the next hour listening to him talk about how the jubabites (jaredites) and nepitites (nephites). We tried at least two times each to say "alright well we gotta go see ya later." He wasn't having it. I thought I was gonna live and die on that porch. But God is on our side and we made it out of there.

I really love this work and I love being a missionary!! I really miss Anderson but I'm so happy to be here in Orangeburg with these amazing sisters :)

Hope everything is going well. Ammon is gonna be 8 soon!!! That's crazy! 

Love y'all!

Sister Johanson

When you break up with the devil, change your phone number

Well kids, 

What a week! I'm not sure how much I liked it.... The unthinkable happened, I'm being transferred!! We are being whitewashed. It makes sense cuz I'm still in training but it only crossed my mind slightly so I wasn't expecting it at all. I am so so sad. I love these people so much and my investigators and this place!! Man. But it's ok. God has another plan for me and the people here. 

This week has just been one adventure after another. We took our car in to be fixed on Monday and they didn't fix it. So we took it in on Friday and they still have it. So, we are still without a car. When it did work for the few days we had it this week, Sister Barnson got it stuck in a ditch and pulled the entire front bumper off. Last Monday we spent all day with Sister Killough as she drove us around town to do our errands. But she was sick and gave Sister Barnson the sickness. Then Sister Barnson gave it to me. So, it's just been one thing after another this week. 

Then I found out I was being transferred on Saturday. Our investigators also decided to lose all contact with us this week. But the sun does still shine in South Carolina. Everything is gonna be ok, we hadn't seen one of our investigators since our last appointment a week and a half ago before she went on her trip and that lesson had gone so bad. So, we've been really worried about her and she wasn't answering any of our texts or calls. But then she showed up to church yesterday and loved it! 

We got to help Joey and Karen paint their house cuz they just moved in and that was really fun. Joey is finally being our friend...he's got the best paper towels man. Jeff believes the Book of Mormon is true. Janice is just my favorite person to teach ever. Just to physically see her progression is amazing. Oh my goodness!! 

We went over to the Lomax's the other night and taught them about how to apply the scriptures to ourselves. We acted out Nephi getting the plates and Abinadi. They were the funniest, we ended up getting the point across at the end. But at the beginning, Sister Lomax was pretty sure the moral of the story to Nephi was if you need to get something, you got to chop someone's head off. We made sure she didn't think that at the end of our lesson. 

Whale, I think that's all. I hope you all are doing fantastic and getting back into school ok. I love you all and wish you..good things. 

God really does take care of us always and His plan is always greater than ours. I'm excited to see all of Joshy photos next week and give him hugs for me!! 

Love you!!

Sister Ali Johanson

God answers knee mail

Whoa what a week fans! This has been an interesting one.

One thing I'm grateful for this week is that a week has 7 days in it. Cuz the first half of last week was just..not so much fun. I thought I was gonna have to email you guys a lummy email. But thankfully the Lord allows things to get better and the rest of the week wasn't completely lummy.

We went ridiculous amount of miles this week on our car tho! All of our appointments were falling through and we were just going back and forth everywhere and nothing was working out. (We only have a certain amount of miles we are allowed to go a month.)

We got to go to ZTM this week and it was great! Finally got to meet my zone. Sister Yancey, my MTC comp, is in my zone and I got to see her which was just so great! I love her lots. Also got to meet with president and he helped me a lot with stuff so yay.

One of our appointments this week went really badly hot. The member that we have been bringing to the appointments with her started arguing with her and trying to convince her and stuff and Sister Branson kept trying to bear her testimony but kept getting interrupted by a phone call or the member would interrupt her. It was awful. The spirit wasn't there at all.

But! The days got brighter and we got two more investigators this week. One of them came to church and he is just completely absorbing everything we teach. One of our other investigators came to church as well! Gospel principles was just filled with so many less actives and investigators! Was awesome!

I gave a talk on missionary work, and it was so good! ;) hehe just kidding. I mean it was alright, I like giving talks tho.

We had another storm this week and it cut off our power in the middle of planning. Some did our dishes in the dark and the rest of our planning. Then our fire alarm started going off and wouldn't stop. Some had to yank it out of the ceiling and it still wouldn't stop. So we were trying to turn it off with no lights and man, it was awful.

Also our car broke down, something wrong with the battery. We're getting it fixed today but yesterday was an interesting day without a car. Because our area is like a donut. The elders are on bikes so they have an area in the middle of town and then since we have a car its all the area surrounding it. So we don't even live in our area, we have to drive to get to it. But anyway. All sorts of funny things. This next week is gonna be so busy! Which is great :)

I'm just learning all sorts of things and now that I'm finally learning how to work with my Como He is sending her away. Isn't that how things work?

I love the gospel and I love you guys! Continue being missionaries to people around you! Members are what make all the difference.

Sister johanson

This is us and the Killoughs. Taking pics cuz Sister Branson leaves in

a week! I love them.

This is patty our investigator and the massive tree that fell over in

the storm. The other two are sister Branson and I drawing with glitter

glue. Can you tell which pics are mine? Ha can you spot my gnome?

In the dark, look to the Son

OY errybody!!

It is so nice to hear from me again huh? ;) hehe just kidding. It's always nice to hear from all of you tho :) so this week...was AWESOOOOME! Which is funny cuz last week I was pretty sure it was gonna be a not so awesome week. It started out kinda crummy. But it got better. Our key indicator numbers are going up and we're continuing to see progress in our investigators! 

We put one of our new investigators on date this last week! She is the sweetest little old lady and just loves the missionaries. She just really wants to come closer to Christ. My favorite part of teaching her this last week was when we were telling her about how our church is patterned exactly how Jesus Christ established His church. And then we went on to talk about the priesthood and restoration. Then we told her how we had a prophet today and he called 12 apostles and her face just beamed! You could see her realizing that that's exactly how Jesus Christ had done it. Man, one of my favorite parts of the week. But yeah, she came to church yesterday and just ate it up. She's so cute. Yesterday we taught our other investigator on date, but it was funny cuz we were talking about how there is no such thing as coincidences and God gives us exactly what we need. Then we started talking about platypuses and how they are not a coincidence, God put them on earth for a reason! hahaha so funny. But besides that, the lesson went real real good :) 

Also we went and visited a less-active yesterday..which is..we don't know if she's a less active or not. She's on our ward roster but she doesn't seem to know that she was baptized into our church ever. So it's confusing. But I had my bag sitting on my lap close to my tummy, and it was really dark in the room. So she turned to me and asked me when my baby was due. ha I was so confused and then realized she thought my bag was my tummy!! hahahaha it was so funny. 

Let's see...I don't know what else has really happened this week. Not a lot, other than I'm being eaten alive. Bugs just love my savory blood I suppose. I will try to actually send some pictures this week. Not many are of me..sorry. I don't take a whole lot of pictures. Maybe later. 

But I love you all and I just love love being a missionary!!! It's the bestest thing ever!! The church is true, the book is blue and..so are you :) 

-Sister Ali Johanson