Oy what a week!!
I don't ezactly know where to start. First off I guess, transfers are this week. Our 3 pack is going down to 2, which we knew it would. I'm staying in Orangeburg with Sister Rymer and Sister Harvey is leaving us to go do..who knows what. Somewhere I can only imagine will be disappointing with disappointing companions. Just kidding, nothing is disappointing in the Lords work. It just will never be as grand as these last 6 weeks have been. We're really sad she's leaving. It's been so much fun.
So some of the accomplishments of this week, I'm getting really good at catching bugs in the air with my hands. Soon I will level up to chopsticks and then go on to win the National Karate Tournament...or whatever it is. Also guess what? So you know my favorite class that I took in college? Atmosphere and Weather? Well it finally came in handy. We were talking about humidity levels and heat (because it's really humid here if you didn't know), and I could explain it all and talk about saturation levels and how the saturation level raises when it's hotter and stuff like that. Who woulda thunk you could actually learn stuff from college? It's amazing.
I would like to bear my testimony about prayer and fast offerings. So this last week I looked at my MSF bank account and I only had $10 left for the rest of the month. And I knew that my companions like to eat out a lot and I needed to buy groceries and all that stuff. So I prayed specifically that we would be able to be fed by the members of the ward this week so I didn't have to spend money on food. And I will have to send you a picture of all the food we got, but our fridge was overflowing with food all week. It was amazing.
So these past few weeks, we've been finding lots of new investigators but they've all been pretty flaky and we've been planning to put them on date, but then we can never get a solid return appointment or they always fall through so we never can meet with them again to put them on date. So it's been pretty frustrating. So we were doing weekly planning, and I have been reading the book Drawing on the Powers of Heaven, and it talks about how you can set specific goals and draw on the powers of heaven and by your faith you can make things happen. So I suggested to my comps that we set a goal this week of finding a solid investigator of who we can have return appointments with and accept and be prepared to work towards baptism on October 31. We set our goal, then came up our resolves, which were what we were going to do this week to make this goal happen. One of them being that we were going to ask everyone we talked to to be baptized. Then we had to write out what we needed the Lord to do to make this happen, then we wrote out our commitment, or what we needed to each repent of so that way this could happen. So as soon as we finished that we had to leave to go to an appointment. We got there and the guy we had set the appointment with wasn't there, he didn't even live at the house we had met him at. So it was kinda dumb, but then another guy came outside and started talking to us. So I gave him a Book of Mormon an we started talking with him. And then we invited him to be baptized and he said yes! We were so shocked, we didn't know what to do. So we kept talking to him about it and then a little bit later we put him on date for October 31, and he said yes! We were just like...what the heck is going on? So we told him we were going to need to meet with him regularly so he could prepare and teach him more and he said "Alright, well I get off at 3:30 and I'm off on Fridays" and then we set up an appointment for the next day. It was just...amazing. We left him with Moroni 10 to read before we came back and he said he would read it. So that was a miracle.
Ha but then funny story, so we go back the next day and there were lots of drunk guys out on his porch and lawn so we went to call him. Right as we're calling him, he called us and told us we should reschedule because he hadn't gotten back from work yet. So we were ok with that, but we asked him if he had read. He said, "Yes I did and I want to reschedule with you for as soon as possible because I have lot's of questions for you." We all got really excited at that. But then he said, "I read about all the people eating each other. And kidnapping the women." We were so confused and asked, "Did you read in the Book of Mormon?" and he said, "Yes, the place where you marked." So we were really confused but set up a time to come back. Afterwards we went to Moroni 10 and saw that he had started at the previous page which starts at Moroni 9:8. Go read it, we laughed forever. Luckily he still wants to meet with us.
But anyway it's time for me to go. But I love you all and hope you have a great week and continue to see miracles happen! You are all amazing!!!!!!
Sister Johanson Jr.