Aren't they so beautiful !! - our girls serving together and got new hair cuts — with Kathleen Jeanette Lawson

A fresh new look for these Sister Missionaries, instead of the wind blown and wet look.  

February 27th, 2017

Hello everyone!! 

It's been a long long week, I pushed through it and now we are here it's Monday once again.  Sister Lawson and I got our hair done on Monday, a member in Ayr paid for it and it was at a pretty alright beauty salon. I felt kinda like a rough hard mountain hiker that just walked into a doll house, when I walked in. My hair a complete mess from the rain and wind. The hair dresser washed me hair and I got it cut pretty short once again and layered, Sister Lawson got highlights. i know you guys are all sooo interested to know this. Hahaha so I'm going to stop right there and continue on with the rest of my week.

Tuesday. Boring wet and cold day.

Wednesday, in the morning we left for GLASGOW! We had exchanges with the Glasgow STLs. In the SIM we have I think 4 sets of STLs. STLs in Dublin, Belfast, Dundee, and Glasgow and the STLTs in Edinburgh. So much! (Sister Training Leaders, go on exchanges with other sisters and assist the President in training them) I was with Sister Esplin, who's from Alaska, but her parents are originally from Utah. It's so great to be back in a city where there is alot of people to stop and talk to on the street. They seem so much more polite and open than people in Ayr. Most of the GQing missionaries do in Glasgow seem to be on Byers Street and near the University there. We met with an investigator of the STL's named Ian at the Fraser Building. He's a Malaysian guy, studying something to do with Genetics. It was really funny teaching because he wrote down all these questions he's had while studying the Book of Mormon, he said that he's going in to so much Depth because his grandfather appeared to him in a dream and said "Read the Book and the truth will be revealed" I'm laughing right now because I'm imagining his grandfather saying this in the funky Malaysian accent, that sounds kinda Indian if you don't know what their accent sounds like. Anyway... It's really cool how invested he is to find out the truth.

After Dinner I met the STL's recent converts, two young women in University. They were super nice, I felt weird though teaching females close to my age. That never happens. We also taught a gay guy that evening that's a balding ginger and unusually sweaty, he's pretty nice and seems interested. I'm curious to see how far he'll go. He works every Sunday and is really busy so that's a problem. 

Thursday we taught a pretty swell lady that Sister Lawson was teaching before I came, but since Susan got her eye surgery that didn't go so well she hasn't been able to met with us. Susan is a freaking rock star! She's in her 50s I believe and is so active her whole life. She works for the queen untill recently she retired. She also was training to be an Olympic athelete and also was a trainer, she worked with Usain Bolt and knows him personally. Oh my goodness Susan is so cool. She's definately a mum to and talked about her son so much! I hope that she's still met with missionaries after Sister Lawson leaves in a few weeks probably. Besides from teaching Susan it was just a really long day in the rain and wind, trying to find.

Friday We did whatever we could to find people to teach. When we were heading to the university and walking between building, we did the usual greeting people with Hi, How are You? trying to get people to start a conversation with us, when we called out to a guy and he yelled at us while walking quickly, "I'm not in the mood for Mormons!" we just said "Hope you have a good day." and then kept walking. The man a short while later returned and apologies and said, "that was really rude of me, I've just been having a bad day sorry." We told him it was fine. I think this is the first time some one has actually apologised for being rude, it was nice for a change. 

Saturday We travelled to Cumnock with some kind members to follow up on a online referral. It's about a half an hour car ride there from Ayr. We taught this wonderful woman Naomi, she was an exchange student in Lehi Utah 20 years ago and has kept  intouch with a woman there. Her mum was recently diagnosed with terrminal oral cancer, and wanted to be reminded about the Plan of Salvation. We unexpectedly dropped by on Saturday morning and when she opened the door she looked so relieved and happy to see us. She quickly invited us in and we had a beautiful lesson with her. When we gave her a new Book of Mormon she started crying, and thanked us for coming over, she said that speaking about the Plan of Salvation has made her feel so much calm and peace about life. Naomi is also a special needs teacher and she said that this also gave her comfort for the children she is teaching. Her son also has a genetic disorder. I loved the moment we had to speak to her, hopefully we'll see her again on the 11th of March to talk to her more. 

Sunday was a long day as well, but we were able to sit down with Aairon's mum and organise his baptism on the 12th of March. He'll be baptised before church and then in that sacrament meeting he'll recieve the Gift of the Holy Ghost and be confirmed as a member. I'm so excited for him!

Hope everyone is doing well, 

                                                                                           

February 20, 2017

Hello everyone!

The week as been a very positive week over what has been happening this month. The people seemed to become more open now that the year has begun to get back to normal and it's getting warmer too! Remember when I say warmer it's not warm, it's just not as freezing.

We worked so hard lately and I know the Lord knows our sacrifices, the blessings have been coming to us abundantly lately. Aairon the 10 year old boy we've been teaching forever, now has a date for the 11th of March!! I'm so excited for him, he's excited too. I don't think it's just the Baptism part that he's excited about maybe the massive Costco Cake that Sister Sharky promised him, after he agreed to be baptised of course. We don't bribe people to make convanents. 

Graham has been consistantly a pain these past few months and we came to the concultion that we need to drop him. I can't say I'm that disappointed and sad, he's made missionary work here unenjoyable, stressful and unhappy. I don't like dropping people, but if they refuse to keep commitments and progress there is nothing more that can be done for him.

There is another old man Patrick that has been texting us every day non-stop demanding that we see him and met with him. He text stuff like "Where are you?", even at 9 o'clock at night he sends "Meet me now". And then he accuses us for not having faith. Patrick was only taught by us once, we told him finally that he makes us feel uncomfortable with his messages and that we would still welcome him at our church services if he's interested. He continued to message us with increasingly abusive messages until we blocked his number. I'm a little bit concerned to see him again in the street, but it'll only be in public so he can't do anything.

Really besides from those two men, the people in Ayr were mostly pretty nice this week. We had long spiritual conversations with people on the street, where they told us about their struggles in life and we spoke to them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then ended with a Prayer with them. Most of the people weren't interested with meeting up with us, but at least they had a positive up-lifiting experience with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint Missionaries. 

We finally saw the Kennedy's this week, they are the less active family that lives next door to the Church. They are moving soon because of the abuse they recieve from their neighbours. Sister Lawson knows them well and she said that their is a difference in their home. The Spirit is present. Brother Kennedy has been starting to read and study the book of Mormon lately. They said the prompting to just move away came from God while they were praying about their problems.

On Saturday the Edinburgh STLSTL Sister Paxman came with the Glasgow STL Sister Esplin and had exchanges with us in our area. I got to be with Sister Paxman and she's my favourite Sister Missionary in this mission. I really enjoyed spending the day with her, I drove the Glasgow STL's car around. Funny thing about that car is that it's the same car that I had in Perth but got moved to the Glasgow STL's car. So yeah I drove my old car around and we got lost and ended up going to Annesland on our way back from Barassie. I felt so bad for wasting time, I'm really appreciative now for not having a car in this area. We had lunch with Sister Kerr, while Sister Lawson and Esplin were at lunch with Sister Burn. I love the Family! Hope and Isabel was there and we taught them the Plan of Salvation, they are less active so re-learning the lessons and asking deeper questions about it really helps them strengthen their testimony. It was a precious moment talking about Eternal Families, Isabel has been through two rough marriage. She's grateful for them though because of her children she received. In order to be sealed to her children, she need to be sealed also to her children's father. The daughter Hope, testified to her that even though she needs to be sealed to her father only if the father is worthy enough to stand besided them they don't need to be with him also for all eternity. Hope has found in her heart a belief that if he is worthy to be beside her mother he must have changed mightly through the atonement. Isabel agreed that even though it's hard to forgive him of the abuse he's caused her, it's nor her place to with hold temple blessings from him. Only the Lord can judge.

I loved this week and hope for better weeks to come.

Hope that everyone else is doing well,

Cya

Letter to Mum.

Hello Mum,

I'll be looking forward to reading a new book. Mum you have NO IDEA how much I long to pick up a book and read it. It's seriously killing me just being able to read lds books. 😥 First thing I'm going to do when I get home, after sleeping and talking to you guys. Is find a place of solitude and warmth, and read a whole entire novel. I'm itiching to read Lord of the Rings or Fablehaven, because it's opposite to what I've been reading for the last 18 months. I really didn't appreciate reading that much before my mission and didn't really understand how important it was to me. After I read that novel, I'm going to get my Biology textbook and study it. Then I'm grab my trumpet and practice, then I'll go for a run alone, then I'll  listen to music or go to a concert with Chantel, then I'll go to a Mexican restrauant with the family, then I'm going fishing with Dad, then I'm going to diet like none other, then I'll get a job, then I'll sort out how to do math and school again. And during some point I'm going to some how get to St George and bask in the sunlight, aborbing so much Vitimine c and d

Is it bad that I already have a ton of stuff I'm itching to do when I get home?

Besides from missing all of those things it's been a good week, as you saw from my email. I'll write a letter to you again some time, but I don't have that much more to say. I hope that you'll listen to my thoughts and ideas, that you didn't just brush everything aside that I thought long and hard about. I hope you take me seriously like the adult I'm becoming, know that I do see the world as well and has some wisdom and experience of my own, no matter how small it may be.

Love you

Sister Johnson,

July 2016

I only have a few minutes to email because we awent down to Howth, Ireland this P-day so sorry if this email isn't as detailed as it can be.

Also HEY EVERYONE!

So yes I'm in DUBLIN IRELAND! I'm so pumped that my first area is in Ireland. I went through 3 countries in 1 day to get here, Scotland, Northern Ireland and now Ireland. We took at bus at 10:30am to the ferry and it was like a 3.5 hour drive and I thought I was going to puke. In the seat behind us were these REALLY Irish men and we some how struck up a conversation that we brought teaching the gospel into it. I was thinking wow I wonder if teaching the gospel to strangers will be that easy. NOPE. Anyway I'll get to that later... I finally arrived in the flat at like 9:15pm, we were late :( 

72 Tolka vale, 

Finglas road, 

Dublin 11 Ireland

You can send letters to this address if you want to

It's the yellowish apartment building behind me in the picture I'll send

So my companion is the lovely Sister Stein, she's from the Netherlands. The missionaries I meet people are from America, Australia, England, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, New Zealand and I'm sorry but I forgot the rest. When we arrived in Edinburgh Scotland I was exhausted, the mission home is amazing though. It's seems like a 100 years old or something like that. The ceilings, furniture, style is beautiful, and I really felt like I was in Europe, I should've taken photos for you but I'll do it when I come back in 17 months.  We tried to climb Pratt's hill but they said a serious 'incident' happened so we went some where else near by, Edinbrugh is so pretty! Scotland from what I've seen is gorgeous. I hope I can serve there sometime.

Anyway when they announced that my companion was Sister Stein it felts so right, it does feel a bit awkward still spending 24/7 with a Sister I don't know at all really and it's just us two a lot of the time.  

How's mission life? Not too bad actually, amazingly my first companion wants to run with me so we spend the first 30 mins in the morning running together. So nice to run outside...

It's kinda stressful trying to find new investigators because we only have one right now and we don't have any referrals. I really want to work on trying to get the members more involved with missionary work because trying to find people on the street willing to talk to us is hard. A lot of people make the excuse I'm busy, I've never been rejected so many times in a day in my life. I think I'm taking it well... Dad and Mum I know how you feel, kinda. Trying to find people to teach as really made me impressed with Converts to the church, they are definitely the elect of God's people. We taught this very un-active lady the other day, and I'm saying taught very loosely. And she straight up told us that she didn't want to change, she doesn't believe that she sins, she just makes choices, and all she wants is to hear about God and feel his love. It made me realize how different our church is, we require action in the church. You can't be forgiven of your sins and utilize the atonement unless you do some thing about it. Look up the Bible dictionary definition of repentance if you have time. Basically Repentance is a change of heart you much turn away from the sin and have no desire to do it. Repentance with the covenant of baptism and the partaking of the sacrament allows us to change into a better person. 

The mission life is kinda stressful, because of the numbers and such. But we do Baptize in the Scotland/Ireland, last month they had 40 baptisms and this year 167 total so far, the goal this year is to get 360 baptisms!

I'm excited to get some people to the font! The area of Dublin we're in is really poor, I think most of Ireland have really bad economy and everyone is struggling finding work. The members in the ward have such a personality it's fantastic! We had testimony meeting this Sunday and it was interesting the mix of people. I couldn't bare my testimony so they asked me to give a talk next Sunday. exciting... We have 4 Elders in my area and they are funny. We went down to Howth together and walked down a trail to a little pebble beach and we were like every where. It felt so nice to wear normal clothes and not have to try to talk to everyone we passed. It started to rain for the first time since I've been here, but it went away after 2 hours and the rest of the day was so HOT. One of the Elders said that he felt like he was walking in hell. 

That's all I can think about saying right now, it's been an overwhelming crazy week but I still LOVE being a missionary. I like trying to talk to people, walking around all day, praying all the time and talking about the Gospel 24/7. Ireland is super humid, and not very green where I am because it's very much a city, the buildings are all really old and low. There is a very mixed culture, I've spoken to more Brazilians than Irish in the streets and some people from all over Africa. So many people can't speak English well, I wish I knew Portuguese or French or basically any other language as well. 

LOVE YOU ALL

Sister Johnson

Enjoy the photo's I took this week, the mountains across from the ocean is on the Isle of Aayran 

and the Sister Sharky makes a giant Yorkshire Pudding with some meat she cooked in the slow cooker during stake Conference. Basically the food they make for the missionaries is Potatos, Carrots, other veg and some kind of meat, like Sunday roast everyday.  

February 13, 2017

I just past my 9 month mark on Saturday! Whoop Whoop! Now I have barely less than 9 months left of my mission. It feels super exhausting to get this far and I hope that the next bit would be easier. I hope that I can accomplish a lot more in these next 9 months than what I've done so far. This last week was really difficult. We did over 30 hours of finding in the streets and knocking on doors. And didn't have much success in lessons, we taught another old man named Patrick. He was really strange and still wants us to meet up with him again, we'll see how it goes. Graham has taken another step back because he hasn't been honest to us about how he feels about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, he tells us that he was only telling us that he believes those things to keep the peace????? Why would he want to join a church so badly if he doesn't think that it's true? I have no idea... We really tried to tell him repeatedly since the very first time we met him that be believe that Joseph Smith is a Prophet of God and the Book of Mormon is the word of God and he's said nothing about it. Sister Lawson and I also tells him to pray about these things and to read the Book of Mormon. Graham even tells us that he's read the Book of Mormon when he can't even tell me that it's about. He forgets things so easily and we remind him constantly but he isn't progressing of making any effort to do anything on his own. He might be a waste of time, Sister Lawson and I are considering just seeing him every month now. 

Sorry for the brief email this week, it's just been a really cold long week. Enjoy the photo's I took this week, the mountains across from the ocean is on the Isl of Aayran and the Sister Sharky makes a giant Yorkshire Pudding with some meat she cooked in the slow cooker during stake Conference. Basically the food they make for the missionaries is Potatos, Carrots, other veg and some kind of meat, like Sunday roast everyday.