Come inside and receive your free gift...Jesus.

Oh won't you all miss all the good southern Church marquees? They are the funniest! 

Oh goodness, I hope you all had such a good Christmas! I just love mission Christmas's. They are the funnest ever! Friday we went to downtown Charleston and went caroling with our zone. It was the funnest thing ever. We split up into smaller groups and we just roamed the streets and would stop at different places and sing Christmas songs. Oh everybody would just love Charleston. You all need to go there. I'll go with you! But we had lots of random people just stop and take pictures of us or video record us. We prolly got put on a lot of My stories on snapchat :D haha

Yesterday was great, we had lots of different meal appointments since members can feed us on Christmas and everybody just wanted us to stay forever. I love this ward, they probably have some of the best people I've ever served around! They are awesome. We have been fully stocked up with treats and goodies until next Christmas rolls around. Last night we went to a members house named the Poston's and they are so fun. They fed us some good ole southern food. You know I can't remember the name of what we had, but they just have a giant pot filled with corn on the cob, shrimp, sausage and potatoes. And they just throw seasoning in there and mix it all together, throw it on the fire and then throw it on your plate and into your tummy. It was yummy. Brother Poston made sure to steam half a bushel of oysters for us and showed us how to thoroughly shuck and eat the oyster. Just bite and swallow. Although Sister Goettsche just kept chewing which is probably why she didn't like the taste as much. 

I think my favorite part of Christmas though was getting to go to church Christmas morning. It was so cool just being gathered together with all of the different members or nonmembers there. Being there and knowing that whatever everyones conversion or testimony or understanding of the gospel was; we all knew Jesus Christ enough to choose to celebrate the day of His birth worshiping Him and partaking of His gift of the atonement. I'm grateful to be surrounded by so many disciples of Jesus Christ who are all trying to follow Christ to the best of their ability. And that's all that we can do. Isn't is so amazing that all across the globe you could've seen the exact same thing? I'm so grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ. I love Him and am glad we can continue to celebrate His birth through the way we live our lives. I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

Sister Johanson 

God sent Him, Mary wrapped Him, will you let Him in?

Merry Christmas everybody!!! 

Hello! I hope you are all very ready for Christmas. The saddest part about Christmas being so close is that it is going to be over very soon :'( so sad. 

This last week was so fun; we had Christmas zone conference. We learned all about how to be healthy and not get sick from the mission doctor and then we learned about how to hit the standards of excellence by our AP's. Man oh man, life is so fun isn't it? You just will never stop learning and having ways to improve. I feel like I should have things down by now and just know everything! But alas I do not. Sorry to all of those that that probably comes as a shock to you :) But I'm grateful for opportunities to improve otherwise I would just be stuck! Haha we also watched a hallmark Christmas movie called Christmas in Conway. It takes place in south Carolina! So fun :) it was very good and cheesy just like Hallmark videos are. But there were a few parts where the married couple kisses and all us awkward missionaries are just cringing and squirming in our seats. But besides that it was good :) 

Let's see...what else happened this week. We had some ward activities, we had a relief society activity and we made those cute snowmans at the bottom of the page, and our ward Christmas party was last night. We are all stocked up on sweets and food for the rest of my existence. So blessing or a burden..I'm not quite sure. 

I was reading in the Book of Mormon this morning in 3 Nephi, right before the signs of Christ's death. And it talked about the different groups that the Nephites split themselves off into and how they weren't united with each other but were "at peace" in the sense that they decided to mind their own business and not go to war against each other. And it made me think of this goal that everybody is trying to come to of world peace and how the world just goes about it in that way. They feel like if they can quit all the wars and just separate from each other and promise not to fight against them, someday we will have peace. But recognizing the difference in what we learn later in the book of mormon after Christ comes when for a few hundred years the people lived in complete peace imparting of all their substance one to another. That this Christmas season reflecting on who Christ is, that He really is the Prince of Peace. That is what He came to bring. So there is nothing in this world that will bring ultimate and lasting peace without the use of Christ Himself. Like one of the latter day prophets have said, the only thing that will save the world from it's calamity and self destruction is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's what we are doing! We are saving the world. One person at a time. I'm grateful for this Christmas season and what I get to be doing during this time of year. I love you all and hope you have a great week full of love and service and Christ filled activities. 

Merry Christmas!!!!

Sister Johanson

Hallelujah!

Hello there everybody! Greetings again from the south. 

Holy cow, can you even believe that Christmas is just right around the corner? It's just sneakin up on us isn't it? I LOVE being a missionary around Christmas time. It isn't always how you picture it tho. They tell us all the time that people are much more receptive because it's Christmastime but it seems that lots of people want us to wait till all the holidays are over to come over to their house. But despite the challenges of the season there are definitely so many miracles. There was a quote that I read this week that said that miracles are the natural result of the Messiah's presence. No wonder there are so many miracles around this time of year because presence of Christ if filling the earth. And I love being able to feel like I am on the Lord's errand helping to bring those miracles to pass by testifying of the Savior. 

We had a really good week. We had ZTM on Friday on which I got to give a talk on overcoming trials of faith. Gee wiz Heavenly Father sure likes to give us topics that we need to learn more about. It's been so good learning about faith while on my mission. It is an ongoing battle to understand fully how to use my faith to cause miracles to happen and how to trust God in no matter what circumstances I am in and to have full faith in His plan for me and for His children. But I have definitely learned that our faith, to have a full impact in our life. cannot be centered on any goals or people or situations. But that it is centered in our Savior Jesus Christ, who is perfect and who we can always turn to for more and more and we will never hunger or thirst but receive freely. 

I am grateful for this gospel and for this upcoming week. It should be really good! Yay Christmas and yay the gospel! Hope you all have a good week!!

Sister Johanson

look pictures! 

I found some gnomes..which I love :) 

also some gator places

and Charleston!

and us at the parade last week..yeah they made me wear little dingle hoppers on my head

Christ died for you, what have you done for Him?

Hello everybody! Happy December!!! Yay december!!!! 

We've kicked the month off right. Yesterday we were in our city's Christmas parade!! It was so fun! It was us and our elders and the WML and ward missionaries. Ah it was so fun. It was pretty cold and wet but luckily it stopped raining before the parade started. We stapled 4500 pass along cards to candy canes this last Wednesday and then handed them out during the parade. Only had one lady try to reject the card but then found out it had candy attached so she let us give it to her. A lot of people would get a card with the temple on it and go, "Woah! That is a really  nice church!" hopefully they don't go looking for that one around here because then they will never find us. We then went to our stake Christmas Carols and Cookies. It was so fun! They had each ward in the stake perform a series of musical numbers and then everybody brought cookies! So good. 

It's been cool this last week how much the Lord has blessed us. I've tried getting back into my greenie attitude I had at the beginning of my mission of when all of our plans would cancel and I would get so excited and go,"Sweet! That means we are supposed to be somewhere else today". So I tried that this Saturday and it worked! We had an awesome day, and if our plans had went through there are some really prepared people we would have never met. Obviously there are a lot of things that just happen because of peoples agency. But Heavenly Father knew before hand that it would happen so He prepared something else for us to do. 

Man, it's been a pretty eventful and stressful last 6 weeks, but it's been so cool to be able to draw closer to my Savior. I've always wondered what it felt like to feel His grace supporting me. I knew He could enable me and help me through my challenges, but I never felt like I knew how to unlock the power of grace to help me. Not saying I have all the answers now and like I've never felt the Savior helping me before, but it's just been cool these past few weeks. I have felt very lonely sometimes, or like I didn't know what to do or lacked the motivation to continue and so I would just kneel and pray very sincerely for Heavenly Father to just help me to do what He needed me to do. And there has been a tangible source of strength that has been given to me each time I have done that. And it's just filled me with light and the spirit, and I know that it's what's helped me to keep going. And it get's me excited to be a missionary and to serve and to be alive and to be here! I'm so grateful for Heavenly Fathers constant care for me and for the Savior and the Holy Ghost. Definitely grateful to be here and to help people to gain access to the atonement, the enabling and redeeming power of it, in their lives through the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love you all! I hope you can feel God's love for you too. 

Have a great week!

Sister Johanson