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