one plus one

Mon, Apr 20, 2009

Thank you so much for the emails! It is really nice having mail when I get online. Thank you for the package. I think I like the toothpaste-squeezer the best…genius. I’m 23-years-old. I’ve waited a long time for this day so I could say, “No body likes you when you’re 23! What’s my age again?! What’s my age again?!” …Okay, so that was total not missionary appropriate, but I couldn’t help it…I’ve seriously waited like 10 years to sing that song. Anyways, my birthday came and went like any other day. Sister Denison bought me a strawberry shortcake twinkie the night before as a stand in for my traditional birthday cake. And I got a text message from a member and an awesome package from my family. It was weird. I thought I was going to be super depressed about being 23 and blah blah blah, but I actually didn’t have a whole lot of time to think about it. Things have been crazy!!! Good crazy and bad crazy, but even the bad crazy is usually good crazy in disguise.
So basically everyday this week we had an incredible day of appointments lined up, and by the last hour of the day every single one of them would fall through. That’s been happening for the past two weeks. However, don’t get discouraged. Because that last hour of the day usually turns into this miraculous appointment we weren’t even expecting. First was the Puente family. They were taught the lessons about three years ago, but then moved and hadn’t seen the missionaries since. After a day of disappointment, we knocked on their door to see if they were home and voila! they let us in and we got to teach them a lesson. Same thing happened with a guy named Joel and a guy named Ray. Interesting thing about Ray. We met him outside a members house just a few weeks ago. He acted like he had met us before so I just assumed we had because we meet 1000 people every day (slight exaggeration). He was visiting his 18 year old son at his ex-wife’s house and the 18 year old son said we could stop by another time. So we got the 18 year old’s phone number…but not Ray’s phone number. Whoops. Over the next two weeks we kept thinking about him and how we wished we had his number, but there was nothing we could do. His son wouldn’t give us the number because he didn’t feel comfortable giving out his dad’s number to a stranger which is understandable. So we were sad. One day we thought about him again and as we were groaning about how sad we were that we didn’t have his number, suddenly we look down at an old potential investigator sheet and lo and behold his number was right there! The sisters who were here before us met him and had all of his information and for some reason that particular paper was just sitting out. Whoa. Okay, that probably doesn’t sound as cool as it was, but it was cool. We called him up and had an appointment with him that night and he said we can come back. Yay!
This last few weeks has been full of drama, but I’m happy to announce that most of the drama is reconciled at this point. Holy moly. Holy moly. Don’t worry, sister Denison and I get along great.
Oh! We have had a couple of really cool member referrals. Some guy who is business partners with one of our members asked to come to church on Easter and then he came again yesterday! Another family said they had a friend that kept asking questions and asked if he could go to church. Cool.
At church someone was giving talk and said, “It’s as simple as one plus one equals two. Obedience plus sacrifice equals blessings.” I guess my brain decided that it needed to do an algebraic exercise because suddenly I stared proofing the equation in my head: Blessings minus sacrifice equals obedience? Blessings minus obedience equals sacrifice?…I’m not trying to be annoying it just happens automatically.
This week I had an interesting experience. An atheist man we were talking to said something to the effect (in much cruder terms) “When I get to heaven and God confronts me and says that I didn’t devote all my life to kissing His feet I’ll say back to him, ‘Yeah, but I was nice to your children.’ And God will be okay with that.” I thought about it because this attitude is pretty prevalent down here and I wonder, is it enough just to be nice? In sacrament we sang Hymn 191 and sang “He died, and at the awful sight The sun in shame withdrew its light. Earth trembled, and all nature sighed in dread response, “A God has died.” At that moment in the song I was filled with shame for my ingratitude. The God of this world who gave us this chance to become more like him so we can be with him again is being forgotten by his very own children. No. It’s not enough just to be nice. We can’t forget that the opportunity to love comes from His sacrifice. He gave us all and we want to take it and run.

I love you! thank you for your letters and emails!
love,
sister johnson