Service for days! :)

Hello Family!!

This week was a week of service! There's lots of service to do when you serve here in New Paltz and I love it! No matter who it is or what you do, service brings good feelings cause it helps those you serve and you feel good doing it! We did service for an investigator, a less active, and a member this week:)

There's one little house across the street from our church and one day sweet Grandma Weed went and knocked on her door because she was worried her giant pine tree would fall on her house haha! She ended up needing other service done with her porch, so us and the elders went over to sand down and repaint her porch and help a bit with yard work around the house. It was super fun and she is so sweet! She was amazed by our quick and willing service, and loved what we do as missionaries! She could see the light of Christ and felt the spirit as we said a prayer with her at the end. We taught her a little about the restoration and she seems really open.  The sad thing is that she just found out she has to move in 30 days:(

We helped a less active family clean their house! They are in a little bit of a rough living situation, so it was good to be able to clean up around their house. When the house is clean the Spirit can dwell there more, so even service to clean someone's house brings them closer to Christ:)

Then we helped a sweet member of ours who has so much on her plate. She's an amazing, strong, hard working single mom. She needed helped moving stuff from her attic on the 4th floor down to her yard. It was so good to help her and I wish we could habe helped her all day! Service like that where you're able to lift someone's load and make their burden lighter is so fulfilling:) Try to find a way you can serve someone this week! 

For the beginning of our Book of Mormon challenge we've been studying a lot about the Atonement. One of my favorite scriptures is Mosiah 24:14-15 about Alma and his people in their trials and how the Lord strengthened them. This time as a read, something new stuck out to me in verse 15. It says "the Lord did strengthen them that they COULD bear up their burdens with ease" Could bear up their burdens, not did. It's still our choice, he doesn't force the blessings of the Atonement on anyone. Do you want to let the Atonement strengthen you, or do you want to do it all on your own? The Savior went through it all alone so you don't have to! There is nothing you will go through in your life that the Savior didn't experience first. He understands you perfectly. He can lift your burdens and strengthen you, IF YOU LET HIM!:)

I love you all, and I'm so grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ! Learn more about it, cause "ANY increase in our understanding of His atoning sacrifice draws us closer to Him." - James E. Faust

Love, Sister Johnson

p.s. We are going down to Manhattan to go to the temple next P-Day!! Wahoo! So I may not write much. If I write, yay! If I don't write, I'm okay! (More like great and wonderful and fabulous cause I get to go to the temple and go to my favorite city in the world!!) But I just wanted to let you know, just in case:)

PS - We went bowling today with our zone and it was super fun! I was given the nickname of John Cena?? But hey, it helped me score really well! It was Sister Ho's first time bowling so it was great and we loved it!

The week in pictures

Last P-Day I got to go to a WAL-MART for the first time in a year!! So that was exciting! We also enjoyed Petco! Real stores! And their big! But, we did have to drive 40 minutes to get there... so New Paltz is small.  But yay for upstate;)

We had a fun split this week and Sister Kelly came to New Paltz with me! We taught an amazing less active family, the Salinas family, the Restoration in a simple and relatable way reminding them of their spiritual experiences. We used "I Am A Child of God" to teach about how God gave us families kind and dear and he gave us prophets and Jesus Christ to lead, guide, and walk beside us. They remembered and talked about experiences going to the temple, reading scriptures together and individually, and one of the sons remembered his experience getting the priesthood. It was a great lesson and a great day, but it ended up crazy! When we went to meet up we were way behind schedule, it was pitch black, and raining. So we ended up just having a sleep over in Yorktown (approved by President don't worry) and drove back the next morning haha! 

Half of our cute branch is all one family! This picture is Grandma Weed's house and yard, 

and we're sitting on the porch of the Hekkings (her daughter and her family's house). Right down the road are 

The Weeds which is her son and his family. So fun and we love them!

Today for our P-day Adventures here in New Paltz we went on a beautiful hike! It was at a super fancy hotel preserve place in the mountain. (Mohonk Mountain Preserve). It's basically its own little town with all sort of fun activities and things to do. Our neighbor works there and was able to let us enjoy a day there. It's so fun being surrounded by mountains and trees again. It reminds me of Utah:) 

Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon

Hello Family!

So many great things happened this week:) Yesterday our little chapel was turned into a food distribution center as we put together the Bishop Storehouse food orders for members in our Newburgh Stake. The organization was amazing, and it was so fun to be a part of! Me and Sister Ho were in charge of bagging and weighing the fruits and vegetables to match each order. I loved it!

We have two sweet members, Sister Caraway and her daughter Lizzie (15), that we call every night and read family scriptures with them. We had a Family Home Evening with them about having effective scripture study cause they wanted to be better at that. Using Preach My Gospel ch. 2 we read a few ideas and they picked two things they wanted to try. That night they started their own scripture study journal. Sister Caraway writes just one of two things she gets out of our scripture study and then Lizzie tries visualizing what we read and draws a picture of it cause she's an artist. It's small and simple, but it made me and Sister Ho so happy! 

Sister Ho is so funny! Oh my goodness. All the english "rules" that get broken and the letters that you don't actually pronounce in a word, why? I even get confused when I try to explain something because there's always an expection. Anyways, She's helping me so much and I love her:) Heavenly Father is really helping me overcome my struggle to communicate with people because I have to communicate with her so she understands, and cause there's no one else in our apartment and no other sisters in our Zone! Just us two:) But we get along great and she's helping me communicate a lot so it's perfect! Tip from her: If it bugs you, talk about it. If you don't want to talk about it, don't let it bug you!:)

The greatest and most repeated lesson I have learned on my mission is that Joseph Smith really did see Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and he was called by God to be a prophet. The fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ was restored to the earth though him, and the Book of Mormon is the word of God and was translated by the power of God. I know that and I love that:) We had Zone Conference this week and it really strengthened my testimony of Joseph Smith and the Restoration. I love Joseph Smith and his diligence, faith, and trust. He wanted to know so badly which church was true and where he should go. He searched for so long and trusted the promise James 1:5 gives. He was so sincere and unwavering in his attempt to pray and know. He wasn't expecting to be called as a prophet of God, he was only 14! He boldly went through his life completely confident and with full trust in God. I love Joseph Smith and I am grateful for him. Every blessing and every good thing in my life, all that I love and have become, has been possible because of him, because of the Restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ in these latter-days. 

Our fast and testimony meeting on Sunday was powerful as well as members from our cute little branch got up and bore their testimonies, all of them being about the Book of Mormon and the Restoration. The last testimony was by Grandma Weed who is basically the Mom of our branch and was one of the first members here in New Paltz. She got up and said, "Imagine searching for something for 20 years, not knowing what it is. . . This is it." She held up her old, worn out blue Book of Mormon with the Angel Moroni on it and said with tears in her eyes, "The Book of Mormon means everything to me." I love our branch:) 

I love our Heavenly Father and His perfect plan, and I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the true church restored on the earth. I love you all!

Love, Sister Johnson 

180 degree flip!

Hello Family!!

Something I love about serving a mission is that the Lord can just flip your world right around so fast, and you know it will all work out because it's his plan! That's basically what happened to me this transfer - my whole world has flipped around, and so far I love it! I have been transferred to the top of our mission in a cute little town called New Paltz! I drove a car for the first time in over a year yesterday! It's so green, there are little houses and a cute little main street, and I am now serving in a branch (first experience ever with a branch!!). And it's so quiet!  Very different from the city:) My companion is cute Sister Ho from Taiwan. She came out with me and didn't know any English at first, but she's doing super great and has come a long way! She's so sweet and so happy:) Even though it's like I'm in a whole new mission, I trust my Heavenly Father and know that this is exactly where he needs me to be! I love it so much already and I'm excited for this new adventure ahead of me:)

My last week in Inwood was great:) Using the big map we carried all the way up to our area from the temple, we did a Family History finding event. We had people put their name on a sticky note and stick it on the map where they're from. Then we would talk about where they're from and their family and tie it into knowing where we come from by doing family history work. It was really successful and we met 5 new people who were very excited and seem to have a lot of potential! Especially one cure family, the Lota family. Jennifer, the mom, was so excited about doing her family history work. We talked to her about it and she made her husband come look at all of it too! He was very supportive and excited as well:) The sisters will meet again with her on Thursday:) 

I love when people say, the only thing that is consistent in life is change. I always thought that was so funny, but now I realize it's true! Life is all about CHANGE! That's the goal, as long as we're changing for good:) After being in Inwood for 8 months it was a little sad to leave. In a way it kind of felt like home, and coming here is a big change! But we need change to grow. We need opportunities to trust in the Lord more than we trust in ourselves. That's the power of the Atonement:) I hope that as change consistently happens in your life you're able to see the Lord's hand throughout it. That you're able to ask yourself what Heavenly Father needed you to learn then and what he needs you to learn now! Just like he says in D&C 11:12 "trust in that Spirit which leadeth to do good—yea, to do justly, to walk humbly, to judge righteously; and this is my Spirit." Trust Him and He will guide you through all the change in your life!

I love you! Make it a great week!

Love, Sister Johnson

Getting the map from the temple (66th street) to our chapel (200th street) on the Subway;)

Sinister Cunningham

MilK and Cream Cereal Bar from last p-day. They were filming for Food Network!

MilK and Cream Cereal Bar from last p-day. They were filming for Food Network!

The Orton Family ❤❤ I love this family so much! They are so loving, genuine, adventurous, and such good missionaries!

Maria - We do service with her every Friday in the park.

Our Family History APF

Our world map

Lauren and her kids

Stephanie

Inwood apartment. Me, Sister Christoffersen, Sister Segarra, and Sister Stark

Me and Sister Ho!:)

Mevelin 

Mevelin and her kids

Power, World Maps, and Subways

Hello Family!!

So remember our electricity problem last week? Here's our miracle story with that! So it completely stopped working in half of our apartment on Thursday, so we had to be really creative while cooking in the dark! We have a gas stove so we were able to light it with matches and we felt a little bit like cavemen haha! On Friday we had an electrician come and Heavenly Father totally protected us because when he pulled out the fuse box he just starred at it and then said, "This is your lucky day. You are so lucky." It was all burned except for about an inch circle around the wire. If the wire had been burned it would have exploded or caught on fire! So that was a miracle and Heavenly Father really does watch over his missionaries and His children when we do our best to live righteously! He sure does love each one of us!

We knocked on a door and this big guy with a beard and tattoos all over his arms flung the door open. At first we were terrified and thought we were going to die or get yelled at! But then he turned out to be the coolest, kindest, funniest guy! His name is Tyrone. He saw us and said, "Well hello ladies, or should I say sisters. Do you want some seltzer water and Pringles?" Haha! He gave us little snacks for the go and we talked to him for a bit. His mom met with missionaries when he was little and he still remembers! He's now a 39 year old dad with a daughter who he loves more than anything! We talked about the importance of family and he said we could come back! Basically lesson learned, don't judge a book by its cover:) Tyrone is awesome and would make an awesome body guard and a wonderful member someday!

Okay backup, remember before my mission when Missy Smith came to our house and talked about my mission cause she just got home from there? And remember that giant American Flag plywood board she carried through Central Park? Well it also has a world map painted on the back and it's like a 4x8 foot board! We took that from 66th street at the Lincoln Square Chapel (the temple) onto the subway, and all the way up to our church here at 200th street! Haha what? The things you do as a missionary in New York City! So that was an adventure and we were dead tired afterwards! We're using the map to do another missionary finding activity about family history work and knowing where we came from. We're excited:)

Transfers are next week, so depending on what happens, this will most likely be my last week in Inwood, and maybe my last week in the City! I love Inwood so much and I'm grateful for all the growth I've made here and all the lessons I've learned. This area has changed me for good:) I love my ward, I love this city, and I love the gospel! I know that the Restoration of the Gospel is real and it happened in our day. Joseph Smith truly was called to be a prophet of God, and that's why I'm here as a missionary! I love you all and I know that Heavenly Father does too:)

Make it a great week!

Love, Sister Johnson 

Choose! :)

Hello Family!!

First of all, shoutout to Liz and Lincoln cause they're MARRIED!! Wahoo!!

We started this week off with a Fiesta! Sister Cunningham from our ward had her 23rd anniversary of being a member so we went over and had dinner with her last Wednesday! Sister Cunningham is the funniest, most confident, bold, loving, talented, fearless woman I've ever met! Everyone needs a Sister Cunningham in their life to build you up and encourage you to keep going! She told us her whole conversion story. She is hilarious and I love her!

We have an amazing new investigator, Maria. I mentioned her a little last week, but she is a former investigator that we started teaching again. On our second visit she had read from the Book of Mormon and was able to draw some parallels between it and the Book of Mormon. We taught the Plan of Salvation and she had more great questions! She was out of town this week, but will be coming to church next week! We love her and are excited for Her!

The Elders have an investigator named Mevelin who is the greatest miracle ever!! 2 months ago when I was with Sister Balley we got a text one day that basically said "Hi this is Mevelin. Is this the missionaries? I got your number from mormon.org and I would like to learn more about how to become a Mormon." WHAT?! Every missionaries dream right?? We texted back right but didn't hear from her. We found out the next day the Elders had called her and set up a time to meet with her. They've been teaching her and her family, and she is literally the MOST GOLDEN person I've ever met!! She's willing to do anything to become a member and I love it! Last night me and Sister Christoffersen had a little Family Home Evening with her and her two daughters. We talked about building a strong family and what it takes. We talked about how FHE can help us do that, and we were able to set up a foundation for their family home evenings:) We played Jenga and it was so much fun!! I love them and I'm so excited for their family:)

Last night we also had a little bit of a power struggle haha! Our breaker fuse thing has been weird and our electricity in half of our apartment will turn off so we fix it with the fuse and then it happens again! (It's fixed now so don't worry!) But last night we had to plug our fridge into an extension cord and different plug to keep it running, move the microwave to the table so we could plug it in, and live mostly in the dark haha! (Only a few fuse things could be on at a time). Lucky for us we had some left over glow sticks, so we cracked those and use that as our light source haha! It was excited and definitely an adventure;) 

The thing I learned this week is that the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ is a CHOICE!! We must choose to have faith, Repentance is as simple as making a choice to change, we choose to be baptized and make those promises, we have to choose to receive the Holy Ghost and let it into our lives and choose to stay worthy of it, and then we choose to continue living it for the rest of our life or not! And just like Nephi, "I say unto you that the right way is to believe in Christ, and deny him not." Choose the right! 

I love you all! Make it a great week!

Love, Sister Johnson 

Ward Coorelation with Brother Cooper:)

The Wonderful Sister Cunningham!!

Mevelin's girls, Arianna and Nova

Our glow stick party when we lived in the dark;)

Our FHE chart for Mevelin and her kids

I don't know what happened to this poor little guy at the church, but it makes us laugh haha!

Us at the church

Happy 4th of July!!

(sorry this is back-dated but we were out of the country)

Hello Family!!

Happy 4th of July!!! (My favorite holiday next to Christmas). This was definitely one for the books:) We had a very fun day! We did a missionary finding activity at a park near the church right at a busy intersection. Me and Sister Christoffersen had painted a giant American Flag and stapled it to a church tackboard that we rolled out. We had it out so people could come take a picture in front of it for the 4th of July, and then we had two little posters. One said What Freedoms are you grateful for? And the other said En que libertad ustedes estan agradecido? Same thing but in Spanish;) We talked about religious freedom and tied it in to the restoration! It was super fun and really successful! We met 3 solid people for us, and the Spanish program probably found like 13! I love how many Spanish people there are here! Me and Sister Christoffersen are seriously debating if we should add in language study so we can learn more spanish haha! For dinner we had a classic American dinner, McDonald's! And we ended with a confetti shooter as our mini fireworks at the end of the night! It was definitely a memorable 4th of July!

This week we had an amazing lesson with a former investigator named Maria! President Smith promised us a while back that there was a former investigator prepared in every area book. We've taken that promise seriously and looked up tons of formers. We've found 3 interested people from it so far, and Maria was one. We taught her the Restoration and she understood it so well! She asked lots of good questions and seems to really understand:) We're excited to teach her more!

On Sunday we had a sacrament meeting that I will never forget!:) It was very special because we got to hear from a prophet of God. President Uchtdorf came to our mission and spoke to us (all 200 missionaries in the mission and the Manhattan 1st ward) at the Lincoln Square Chapel at the Manhattan Temple! We partook of the sacrament with a prophet of God! It was such a humbling and special experience, and it was amazing to have him speak to us. He talked a lot about how we get to start fresh every day. We shouldn't hang on to things and worry. Worrying doesn't do us any good. Repent, let go, and make every day a new day:) He also talked about taking the whole Plan of Salvation into account in our lives. Doing that puts everything into the right perspective when life changes and things happen. One thing that I loved which I'm sure you've all heard before is the idea of always sharing our testimony and passionately sharing the gospel, and when absolutely necessary using words to do that. Our example goes a long way and we can share the gospel every day just by the way we live our lives! So share the gospel passionately!!:)

Love, Sister Johnson 

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!

Rolling our giant American flag down the street to the park:)

Me shaking President Uchtdorf's hand!

President and Sister Uchtdorf with the whole NYNYN Mission:)