Sunday, May 18, 2014

March 31, 2014

Hola familia!
One of the best parts of the mission is learning to recognize and receive little miracles every day. We have received so many of these this week, it is hard to keep track.
The Ward: We had a really great church block yesterday, Obispo Monarez is really passionate about missionary work and is working very hard to get others excited. Hermana Santos, Elder Cassani, and I spoke in sacrament meeting and then the third hour, Hermana Kleivins, Hermana Sewell, and Obispo Arana spoke. We are really pushing member missionary work. We feel blessed to be in this area at this time. Our ward is really supportive, we are doing all we can to stop spinning our wheels and begin moving forward.
Hermana Sewell and I had a really great experience yesterday with a pair of sisters that have recently returned to activity. Yesterday we shared with them a few spiritual experiences and something hit them. One began speaking about all of her past spiritual missionary experiences and she told us “Our ward has always had programs to baptize more people but we never reach our goal. Something must be wrong… I think it is time that we stop working with you and the missionaries start working with us!” It was really fun to see her come to this realization. By the end of the lesson they were both excited to get this program started that she was making diagrams and writing lists. This morning we woke up to a text with a name, set appointment, and an invitation to join them. Member missionary work at its finest!
The area: Aurora is amazing. We continue to be blessed with families to teach. Although most are set Catholics with no such interest to change, we have been blessed with opportunities to teach them the first lesson. I came to a neat realization the other day: many times I feel, at the end of the day, that we weren’t able to teach many lessons, or see much progress and we wonder if we were following the spirit. But I think that as long as we do our best and are obedient and worthy we have the spirit, and God probably blessed us with a lot of opportunities to invite people, however, because of free agency, others simply did not accept the opportunity. How frustrated God must get when He sees what is best for us but we exercise our agency to choose something of lesser value. Especially when we think we know what is best. I have learned that as much as we think we know, God always knows more.
The companion: Hermana Sewell is amazing! I am so blessed to be working with her, she is always positive and happy. The work is always exciting, and we see a lot of miracles. We are continuing to unify our teaching and work as effectively as possible; thanks for putting us together. I am learning a lot from her.
We had a great experience teaching new investigators this week… we helped Yolanda y Filipe pick a baptism date and they came to church. We started teaching a family from El Salvador… really good food!! Even their hot dogs are better! And we get to help out with young women’s activity this week.
Quote from Hermana Sewell: “This is what a mission does to you… Physically it makes you weak and fat, but spiritually it makes you bold and strong!”
Love you all!! Thanks for all you do, don’t forget to prepare for conference!! It’s going to be epic!! And tell all your friends, because we get to hear from the LIVING PROPHET!! Pretty cool!

Hermana Johnson  


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