corn road

This week I have seen how anti-Mormon rhetoric helps my cause as a missionary. Once upon a time there was a man who kept hearing all this weird stuff about “the Mormons.” Something about multiple wives. So he and his wife looked it up on the internet and in the search they stumbled across mormon.org. They were interested by what they read that they decided to order a Bible and talk to the local representatives serving in their area…me and sister dodge. When we got the text from headquarters we rolled our eyes. Another person who wanted a bible. Don’t get me wrong, we want people to have the Bible. That’s why we give them away. The Bible is the main book of scripture that talks about the Savior. Even if they don’t accept the Book of Mormon, it’s better that they read at least the Bible than no scripture at all. But usually the people who want just Bibles aren’t really interested in talking about Christ’s restored gospel, and since our calling is the bring people unto Christ through His restored gospel, it’s a little disheartening. But we called to set up an appointment and John’s wife, Diane, answered. She said they had time that day and she told us that John was interested in finding out more about the Book of Mormon. Yay! (Another chip off the shell of pride that traps my soul. Someday I’ll be free of it—one chip at a time.)


So we drove to go and see John and Diane. We were warmly welcomed and we sat down at the kitchen table with everyone that was home: John, Diane, their 19 year old son, and their son-in-law. I can’t even tell you how rare that is for everyone, as opposed to just the person who ordered the item, to sit down and listen to us. I began the lesson by explaining that our most important and foundational believe is that we believe in God, we are His children, and He loves us. “Wait a minute please,” John said. He grabbed a notebook and so did his son-in-law. “Can we take notes?” he asked. “Umm….yeah,” I answered. First time anyone has ever taken notes during a lesson I was teaching. At this point we were a little scared. We were afraid that we had just walked into a trap. Sometimes people will bring us into their homes to correct our beliefs. It’s never happened to me, but it happened to Sister Dodge so we were scared. But our fears were unrealized. They sincerely wanted to take notes in order to remember what we taught. Everyone asked really great questions. And we answered all the anti that they had heard from other sources. During the lesson John asked what they would have to do to become a Mormon. It was an awesome lesson. And to top off the cake, their daughter walked in with a chocolate cake and we all got a piece. One of the coolest lessons ever.

We saw them a couple days later and taught the Plan of Salvation and it was another awesome lesson. Everyone asked really great questions. So basically this is a really cool family and of course we think they are going to get baptized. We are so happy to know them. They searched out the Church because of the weird things they had heard about us. Bad press is good press.

On Saturday we taught another lesson to a less active who invited two of his non-member friends. Sweet! (I tried so hard to keep the word “sweet” out of my vocabulary because it’s so missionary cliché, but to no avail.) Anyways, one of the friends was asking us all these questions about the anti she had heard. She wasn’t asking sincerely, but she was just trying to shake our faith or make us look stupid by revealing our ignorance…but we do this all day everyday so we patiently explained that we were aware of all the different arguments against the Church that she brought up and yet we still believed. We encourage people who are researching the Church to research whatever and wherever they feel inclined, but we always emphasize including a sincere and prayerful examination of the Book of Mormon in that research. Usually people against the Church aren’t willing to do that, which is fine; it’s their choice.

So while we were being grilled by this girl, the other non-member friend of the less-active was getting upset with her and he started sticking up for our beliefs and views. Wahoo! We have an appointment with him this Wednesday and Thursday.

One last story: Becky and her son had a baptismal date and they were supposed to go to church yesterday but we couldn’t get a hold of them for a like a week so we assumed they were not interested any more. Sad day. Crush. But just now we got a call from her saying her little boy had the swine flu, but he’s better now, but that’s why she hadn’t been available. Yay!-Not about the swine flu, but about how she’s still interested. Which leads me to this new thing I am learning. I have decided to assume everyone is going to get baptized. I am going to allow myself to raise my hopes because it’s worth the fall. As a missionary I get crushed over and over and over again, but it’s better to have high hopes than to live my life in a neutral pit. I’d rather be crushed over and over again because everyone deserves all the help they can get. I have to believe in everyone because I have faith in Christ that he can help them all despite whatever. It’s a scary lesson to learn, but I’ve learned that I can recover from big time blow when someone I love decides not to follow the path that I believe will make them the most happy. Their agency doesn’t have to affect my hope for them…so there’s my philosophical entry of the day.

Random: There is a road in our town called Coughran Road. Try pronouncing that name, Coughran. When I saw it, I pronounced it “Coog-ran,” but it is actually pronounced “Cough” (as in ‘I have a cough’) and “ran” (as in ‘I like to ran’ haha…sigh.) Coughran. So I thought that was a weird name, but what’s weirder is that the Pleasanton residents don’t even pronounce it Cough-ran. They instead call it Corn Road. So when they see “Coughran Road,” they say, “Corn road.” Why? Well, why not?

Love sister alyse johnson

no time cause we got a ride up to pday!!!! butterflies are everywhere cause i'm in the middle of the monarch butterfly migration trail, rebecca came to church, youth fireside, life is crazy/awesome/busy.
love sister johnson

the steady march

I AM STAYING IN PLEASANTON FOR ANOTHER SIX WEEKS! Yay! I was afraid I was going to be transferred this time, but nope. I get to stay which has made me very happy because I love it here. This week was very good. I went to the Temple on Saturday morning. Sister Swaim took us up and then she took us out to lunch. Sister Davenport (my trainer) and Sister Kleisler (my last companion) serve in the area where the Temple is so they joined us for lunch which was really fun. I love my companions so much. I miss Sister Denison. I haven’t seen her but once since we were together. Basically all my companions instantly become my best friends for life. Where it would usually take me about a year to become really good friends with someone, it now takes about 6 weeks with a companion because we spend every second together and we somehow really enjoy it. Even the hard times are fun. Rambling…I’m done

So this week started off blah. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t super amazing either. That’s how most days are. These kinds of days are the ones where you learn the most. They are days void of interesting stories, but they are the days where your true character is shaped. So basically it was boring and hard to keep going but you just keep going because you have to and you want to because, who knows…the next person might be ready to listen. Well, day after day after month and finally we have a day like yesterday. Yesterday was awesome. We taught Becky, Jared and Nicholas in the morning: Becky is a young single mom living with her two cute sons Jared (10 years old), and Nicholas (3 years old). She let us come in last week and we’ve been teaching them every day since then. Jared asks a million questions and I am letting him borrow my little kid Book of Mormon so he can read it with his mom. They are really sweet and as of right now they want to get baptized.

Then we saw Anna Hopp. She had her back surgery this last weekend. Everything went well and she was so excited to see us. She loves us and needs us and it makes me feel so good to feel loved and needed. We found out that her distant LDS family members are in fact RLDS, but she feels like she is where she needs to be. The ward is awesome. They are taking her dinners and she is loving it.

Then after Anna we went and taught Laura. We met Laura knocking on Saturday. It was raining and before we even introduced ourselves at the door she let us in, sat us down, and gave us some ginger ale. She’s really nice. She’s Baptist and her husband is a very catholic Catholic. She believes in Christ, but has been searching her whole life trying to find something to feel a void in her heart. Yesterday when we saw her for the second time she had read the Book of Mormon and had written down a bunch of questions. One of her questions was “what does the Holy Spirit feel like?” We explained that it was sometimes a peaceful warmth, or a stream of ideas, or a feeling that gave you goose bumps. She said she didn’t really know what that felt like, but she said that when we were over teaching her the day before and as she was reading the Book of Mormon and as she was talking to us right then she felt excited and could talk fast enough to ask all of her questions. She had so much excitement to learn more. She said this excited feeling was unusual for her because normally she was very calm and mellow. “That’s the Spirit,” we exclaimed. I like the way she put it because I’ve felt the Spirit like that. Since I’ve been on my mission, I feel like I’ve gotten better at recognizing the Spirit. I’m still not very good at it, but I’m a little better than I was before my mission. Anyways, back to Laura. So we taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ AND the plan of Salvation and she was very touched by the things we said. Things were just clicking. Yes! I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see someone have it click. Especially if all day long you are meeting amazing people who are not ready yet. Who don’t understand with their heart the things we are saying. It was awesome…and then Laura’s husband came it. “Are y’all Jehovah’s Witnesses?!” “no…,” we meekly replied (well kinda we are but in a different sense than he was asking). Then he grunted and stormed off. All I have to say is that I’ve never been more grateful not to be a Jehovah’s Witness than I did in that moment. Needless to say, her husband isn’t thrilled with us coming over so that will add some complications, but it just shows that he loves his family because he wants to protect them…I can respect that.

After Laura we taught a lesson to a woman named Monica. Sister Ashley has been inviting her friend, Monica, to church activities and last night she let us come over and start the lesson with her. Wahoo! It was awesome. It’s days like yesterday that get me through the drudgery of routine. Consistency is the greatest lesson I’ve learned while out here. And the reward isn’t necessarily the good/amazing days, but the reward is the person/people that me and my investigators are becoming because of the steady march.

I just wanted to say real quick how much I miss my family. I love all of you and I miss you a lot. I’m not trunky, but I do miss you guys just in case you thought I forgot about you.

Love, Sister Johnson

It's not worth it

You are not going to believe this. We had a baptism yesterday. Yep, Anna Hopp was baptized. I should probably tell you a little more about her since I’ve hardly mentioned her at all. Once upon a time about eight years ago Anna was having a rough time. She heard a knock on her door and suddenly she was being taught the doctrine of Christ to two Sister Missionaries. But it wasn’t time for her to be baptized yet.
Eight years later she found her self in Salt Lake City, Utah to visit family who had recently moved there. During her visit She was determined to achieve one of her dreams: to see the Mormon Church. She marched her husband and step son all around Temple Square taking pictures of the temple, the fountains, the flowers, the statues. One of her favorite experiences was taking a tour of Brigham’s house. At the end of the tour, two happy sister missionaries asked the crowd to take a card and fill out their names and addresses so a DVD about Jesus Christ could be sent to their homes. And what do you think happened? No one took a card…surprised? Not me, but Anna was. “How rude!” She thought to herself, “They just gave us a free tour of this huge house and no one was willing to take a card?” So she took a card. “They won’t be able to find me,” she warned, “because I live way out in the boonies.” But never fear! They sent the Pleasanton Sisters out to find her because out-in-the-boonies is our specialty.
So we found her and taught her a lesson about Joseph Smith, but she didn’t seem incredibly interested, however she agreed that we could come back and so we did. We taught her again and tried to get her to come to church for several weeks, but it never worked out. We had about given up on her three weeks ago after leaving a voice message on her phone inviting her to church just one more time. The next morning at 10am we sat waiting outside the church waiting for our prospective church attend-ers--the 15 minutes before church is a very nerve racking and often very depressing experience, but every week we stand out there waiting in hopeful anticipation. Suddenly we got a call. Rebecca? Janie? Henry? No, it’s Anna. Anna? To be quite honest we weren’t expecting her to call us back let alone come to church, she surprised us and asked if she could come to church even if she was late. Yes you may come and please do! So she came and loved it. The ward made her feel welcome. The next Thursday we drove all the way to Floresville, which is about a 45 minute trip, to teach her again. It was the end of the month and we were running low on miles, but we threw the miles to the wind and had faith that the miles would work themselves out. :) (Side note: the miles DID NOT work themselves out which testified to me once again that faith is principle of belief AND action, not just belief. Oh well. You live, you learn, and then you move on…and then you apply what you learned otherwise the experience is merely another declaration that, yes, that “boing” you keep hearing is wise counsel bouncing off my forehead…all right my theological rant is over.)
So we visited her the following Thursday and she had read the entire gospel principles manual which made for an interesting discussion about the second coming: Apparently Obama is the Anti-Christ? I have no comment. I love being completely oblivious to all news outside of my personal interactions with others. But don’t worry, all the really important news filters down to us: Michael Jackson’s death for instance. Anyways, I need to speed this story up. The next Sunday she came for the whole thing and loved it. We asked her to pray about being baptized next Sunday, she read more of the Book of Mormon, we went on a field trip to the San Antonio temple and sat in the waiting room with her which was Awesome!!! And then poof! She got baptized. Her testimony about the Book of Mormon was shaky and then it was solid as a rock when she had to defend it to her future son-in-law who thought it would be a good idea to pull out an anti-Book of Mormon Book two days before her baptism. It definitely had the opposite effect on her than he was expecting. She pulled out the bible and spent the whole night testifying to the truth and validity of the Book of Mormon. And then we heard Elder Holland’s talk the day of her baptism. Bam!
So her years of study finally flowered into the making of a simple covenant to follow Christ to the end. It was beautiful and she is determined to remain true to that covenant.
Comments on Conference: AMAZING! I don’t know if it’s just my perspective as a missionary, but we sure got a “talkin’ to.” You knew they weren’t messin’ around when the very first talk was Elder Scott’s talk. Bam! I loved Elder Christofferson’s (sp?) social commentary…it was awesome. I totally have fallen into the trap of relying on other people to tell me what is right and wrong instead of learning principles and then figuring it out for myself. I know that over the years I have dabbled a little too far into the “It’s all good” philosophy and have forgotten that my motto instead should be: We’re ALL children of God and because of that, no, it’s not ALL good. Respect the children, discern wisely, and have the courage to say, “It’s not worth it.”