my heart’s plugged into your heart

Mon, Mar 23, 2009

Sister Denison is my new companion. I know her really well because she was one of the other sisters in my zone before the transfer. She’s really fun and throws her heart into everything that she pursues. I really respect her for her decision to go on a mission. She didn’t come because she had to, she didn’t go because she felt like the Lord asked her to, she came because the gospel changed her life and she wants to help spread the gospel so it can change others’ lives.

Last week Sister Davenport and I had an interesting experience. We met a man walking his dog and he invited us in for a lesson with his family. The spirit was extremely strong in that lesson. When I repeated the first vision the whole room just went quiet and we all just sat there for a couple seconds. That hardly ever happens in our lessons. It’s not for lack of trying, but most of the lessons I teach are mostly informative and interesting, not necessarily spiritually intense. I’m sure the Spirit is present during our lessons, but he was especially present during this lesson. That probably didn’t make sense, but oh well. Afterwards we were trying to figure out what was different about that lesson. Did we do something different? We had been trying to have better prayers so maybe that was part of it. But in the end I decided that the spirit was strong because someone in that room was super in tune with the Spirit and ready to hear the message. I forgot to mention that the parents were drinking alcohol as we taught…It could have been something else…but I’m pretty sure they were a little tipsy by the time we left. Maybe the parents were receptive to the Spirit even though they were drinking, but I felt really connected with kids and I believe that they were the reason we were there. The next day we had an appointment with the family, but they weren’t there so we decided to go and visit a referral given to us a while back. We knocked on the door and some kids answered. Some of the kids were the kids from that family we had just taught. We talked to an older sister there and she said we could come back the next day. We went to see her, she wasn’t there, so we went back over to the family we taught before hoping to see them again. We saw them at the door and the wife was laying on the couch looking really sick and then their “friend” saw us and asked us to come out on the front porch with him. He shut the door behind him, cracked open another beer (he was pretty drunk) and proceeding to tell us that we were crazy and that the bible was the only word of God. He made a complete fool of himself. We didn’t say much except that we wanted to talk to Amy and Jesse ourselves but he didn’t let us in. So we walked away. And that was it. Randomly the next day when we were back in the area we ran into the drunk friend and he apologized. That was nice, but we mostly just wanted to go and talk to Amy and Jesse and the kids again. We’ll try back later I suppose. I just have to say that after a while the looks and the comments start to wear you down…

This week started off with paintball and I got two massive bruises on my arms. I have no idea why the president allowed us to paintball, but it was super fun and I hit three elders!

Sister Davenport was saying goodbye to Jenny and her kids(a recent convert). Sister Davenport: “I’m going to be sad to leave you.” 5-yr-old Emily: “That’s okay cause my heart’s plugged into your heart.” Ahhhhhhh….cute. A 9-yr-old was hanging on Sister Davenport crying and said: “You can’t go!, I can’t have any more depression in my life!!!!” haha.

The first day Sister Denison and I were together we knocked the ginormous houses. Haha. They are huge. I’m in a very very wealthy area. Haha. At this one castle, four super spoiled lap dogs with diamond collars barked up at us through a huge glass door and fancy pool reflecting in the back. We just stood there awkwardly reminding ourselves that we were the higher species.

At church the primary sang us called to serve at their opening exercises. It was cute.

Blanca and Bonnie will be getting baptized this next Saturday. They have incredibly difficult lives and their lives of course are going crazy this next week so it’s going to be fun! Why can’t every baptism be like Joshua’s? His just flowed perfectly with no hang ups. Haha. I love Bonnie and Blanca and they need this now more than ever.

I love you all! Thanks for the prayers!
sister johnson