Miranda with her rain jacket.  Might be a bit short and Mum has to get her a longer one.

Streets of South Dublin, Ireland

Hey Everyone!

I'm having a day where I just don't want to write so I'm just going to try my best, okay?

So this week was up and down, but better than last week. We have a few more investigators and I'm really excited about them! We finally got to teach some women which is AWESOME! We meet up with a Romanian and a Brazilian, on Friday I think... and they both don't speak or understand English very well. I wish I could speak 3 billion languages as usual. We have so many Book of Mormons in different languages, it's really cool to see that no matter where you come from the Gospel is forever one and we make it easier for people to learn it in their own language so they can understand. But it's still important that they understand and know what we are saying as Missionaries. The Elders type Preach My Gospel into Google Translate to teach some of their investigators, I feel like it's super awkward to do that. And I don't know how they get people to come if they don't even understand what they are coming for... it's funny. :P 

It's been getting to be real Irish 'summer' now. Before this week it's been kinda sunny and warm, they called in a heat wave. But now it rains everyday and my hair looks like puff, I wash going to try and find a straightener but I don't think there is any point with this humidity. The Irish had a Football game this week so on the day of the game there was, zero point in finding because every one was heading to the bar to get drunk and watch the game. It started at 2 o'clock so it was especially early for that to begin. And I'm sorry to say that Ireland lost. I believe that was the day where we had the first lessons with the investigators, so we were productive. 

All in all, today wasn't that bad of a week. I got to have some fun along the way.

I hope everyone has a good week.

Love you,

Sister Johnson

Tracking Northern Dublin

My American Companion for the Day

Tracking in Northern Dublin

Hello Everyone!

So this P-day they stole it! Some leaders I don't know who, decided that having a Blitz (don't know exactly what that its) would be awesome to do it on the one day of the week that we have time to go shopping, cleaning, resting and doing what we need to do to have energy and things we need for the rest of the week. It made our day so stressful and we couldn't get everything we needed in the little time they gave us. We are Blitzing from 12-9pm. Sorry I just had to do a little bit of complaining at the beginning.

This week was slightly better than last week in terms of missionary work. We have two new investigators now!! One is Aqeel from Iraq and Owen from Malawi. I don't like how most of the people we talk to and make appointments with are men, it makes this really complicated because we need to have another women who is a member to teach with us if we meet in the chapel to teach. I think we get a lot of men because Sister Stein is really pretty and they want to talk to a pretty girl. The Elders seem to have a good mix of men and women though, so maybe men are just more friendlier in general and women need the incentive of an attractive man to stop and talk. 

Aqeel is pretty awesome he isn't a practicing Muslim, but his parents are both Muslim, and his mum used to be a Christian. Since he's been to Ireland he feels distant from God so he was interested in learning more about Christianity. He knows some weird things about Christianity which isn't in our Church such as nuns, praying to strange prophets and Mary, and other things, that the LDS Church doesn't do. He's really into meeting with us and wants to know more. Aqeel even went to Sacrament Meeting this Sunday! We just need to get him an Arabic Book of Mormon and I think he'll just get really into reading it. Rebecca you need to teach me some words in Arabic!

Owen is Christian already and just wants to hear more about Jesus Christ which is awesome. It's just been hard to schedule time to meet with him.

Hopefully Adam (an investigator before I came here) will be able to be baptized in the next week or two. He's Polish and has come so far from where he was before. I can really tell that he has a powerful testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We had 9 Baptisms this week in the whole missions! Our goal this month is to have 40 Baptisms total.

I gave a talk in Sacrament meeting and only had 5 minutes to give it, so I didn't really talk about myself, (sorry mum) Because I felt a little scared, and I really thought that I wasn't more important than the message I wanted to share. When I've been talking to Christians on the street or when people are like, you are just another Christian church I wanted to really think about and be able to strongly identify what makes our Church different from any other churches on the earth. What answer came to my mind first was the Book of Mormon of course and then the Priesthood. The Power and Authority of God. We are the only church on earth that has the Priesthood keys given  to us from God to Christ, Christ to the apostles, Apostles to Joseph Smith and then to every worthy male in the Church. Our Prophet is the only one on earth that holds all the priesthood keys. The Priesthood is the authority to make ordinances with God, and the ability to give blessings. The Priesthood isn't about only men being able to hold it, it's not a right but a privilege. A priesthood holder uses the priesthood to help others, such as healing, comfort, allowing others to make covenants and aiding in the setting apart of members to accomplish callings. The priesthood has blessed my life in so many ways, even now the power of the priesthood is helping me serve a mission. Since being a missionary I feel like my capabilities to focus, find comfort, study, and also to love others has grown enormously, and that's all given to me because of the power of the Priesthood. No other church on earth has this power, we must use the Priesthood whenever possible and help others know the blessings having the priesthood in their lives can bring. I also have a testimony in Home Teachers, if it wasn't for Home Teachers my family wouldn't have as easy access to the priesthood. When I moved out for a few months I really noticed the difference not having Home Teachers around made me feel. The singles ward and every ward must express how important and essential having home teachers visit families and homes that don't have a Melchizedek Priesthood holder. 

We had Exchanges with the STLS (sister training leaders) I went to the North side of Dublin with Sister Peterson and it's so different! Sister Peterson is from Seattle USA, so we had an American sister day out. She's so funny and cute! We spent a whole day together trying to do finding but in the area the STLs live most people drive and it's not so much a city but like a suburb. The homes around the flat are huge! And really pretty. It was interesting when you try to stop a lot of people and talk about religion they bring up evolution, which I never got on the South Side of Dublin. It makes me frustrated when people say they believe in Evolution when I think I know more about evolution than they do and I also 'believe' in it. Science and Religion are two different things it's like comparing a Dessert Food to a Meal Food. They are separate and work together. The people think they are so smart when they talk about evolution, but in my head I'm just thinking. How can you be so ignorant. Sorry I'm mean... Don't get me wrong I'm starting to love people no matter what, and I love how talkative Irish people are. It makes it easier to listen and understand people when they are speaking. I love the South side of Dublin because of all the different cultures and how everyone is from different places all around the world. North side, is really pretty though. I'm excited to see what the rest of the mission is like. Sis Peterson and I, were bad and ate sandwiches for lunch and had dessert for dinner. So having a Tart really topped off my day. Sister Peterson though accidentally locked us out, it was hilarious because right before she did it she was telling me that she's really forgetful and then right after she left the keys in the flat! HAHAHA we waited FOREVER for the landlord to get someone to get the flat open. The STLs had a baptism on Saturday so congrats to them, Sister Stein had a small role to play in finding that investigator too. They did a baptism in the river, but apparently it was raining and they had to dunk him under a few times to get full immersion, but that's how the guy wanted it done. I'm excited to have my own investigator in the water!

Anyway I better go! I hope everyone had a fantastic week.

Love you,

Sister Johnson.

We went down to Howth together and walked down a trail to a little pebble beach and we were like every where. P-Day

My flat is the yellowish apartment building behind me in the picture.  

My companion is the lovely Sister Stein, she's from the Netherlands. 

Writing letters to family and friends at the LDS Chapel

First week as a missionary in Dublin. Teaching the gospel isn't as easy as I thought.

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 :( 

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