Thurs. April 4th - Wed. April 10th

Hello again!

Did anyone like the new format verses the old way where I broke it down by weeks?

I think I'm going to write the new way today. The day by day break down was nice for the sake of mapping out what I did this week, but by writing a regular letter it flows better and I don't have to think as hard. I can just write what comes to my mind =)   (We all know that a lot of things are frequently in and out of my mind)

First things first  I  ABSOLUTELY  LOVED General Conference!!!!! If you missed it watch it ASAP... in fact stop reading my email right now to watch it! haha or you know, whenever you want. I just wanted to emphasis how amazing it is. I was spiritually nourished and I feel confident in how I can increase my faith and improve the quality of my relationship with the Savior and my Heavenly Father over the next six months.  I can't really recap on my favorites because I would probably tell you something from almost every talk! I know I would, I already did in a letter I wrote to Tristan today haha.  So what I would like to highlight is how much missionary work was talked about.

Have you CAUGHT THE WAVE? If not, I invite you, along with Russell M. Nelson to CATCH THE WAVE! There were so many wonderful talks about sharing the gospel and why the restored gospel is so significant! We really do have something amazing that needs to be shared with all of our brothers and sisters here in this mortal life.  Plus there are missionaries like me who are working hard to build up the Lord's kingdom and it's always more effective teaching people that members know. 

Please do as Elder Neil A. Andersen advised and let sharing the gospel take you to your knees, as it should.

The stone is being cut out from the mountain without hands and nothing can stop the work of God. Even though I don't understand the Daniel (2) scripture very well, I do understand that the Lord is hastening His work and now it the time! 

Milestones:

Monday April 8th was my 14 month mark!

Tuesday April 9th was Sister Awerkamp's 3 month mark!

This past week has been rewarding. We are trying to spend more time in our assigned focus. We work in the northern part of our area but we have permission to come down and work with less active sisters in Yonkers. We went up and spent some time doing a look up and tracting in Irvington and it was gorgeous!  The approach is a little different up there and I'm still getting the hang of it, but I know the Lord will help me find ways to touch the hearts of those rich people lol.

On Friday we went to the elder's APF (area proselyting focus) and Sister Awerkamp and I tried an approach tracting that I had thought of (or rather the spirit impressed upon my mind) a night or two earlier. It was to focus on the Book of Mormon. After the small talk that you do to start talking to people, just as the wealthier people want you to make your point  we asked them if they've ever heard of the Book of Mormon. The results have so much potential for good. We are able to teach an actual lesson because we tell them a little bit more about the Book of Mormon/what it is. We tell them we are giving away free copies and we'd love to leave them with a copy. From there if we can expound more on the restoration and set up a return appointment we do. If they aren't interested in that they let us leave them with a copy of the Book of Mormon, a restoration pamphlet, and our phone number.  It didn't work every time, but in the hour or so we gave out three copies of the Book of Mormon! Which is a big deal up here haha.

It's nice because if they are already religious we have something to build off of. If they're not religious they've at least heard of the bible. The Book of Mormon truly is our unique message we offer to the world. 

As I mentioned earlier I absolutely loved General Conference. Sunday in between sessions our Mission President and his wife had our zone over for waffles! Oh the blessings of serving in the zone that has a chapel literally next door to the mission home! I mentioned in the pictures I sent this week that I met Jill Frehoffner (previously known as Jill Harmin. Her sister Angie used to be in my mom's Young Women class and she baby sat for our family for years. And Jill served a mission here in NY city as well! Now she is married to someone who is a counselor to my mission president. CRAZY! lol

I am thankful for what the mission is helping me become. I am grateful for this investment my family and my heavenly father is making in me by providing for me to be out here.

NEWS:

Sister Awerkamp is going to be training! Our mission president pulled her aside on Sunday to tell her. I imagine this means I'll be going to open up a new area again. It's hard to say. I will definitely keep you posted. I will find out more specific details between Thursday-Sunday. There are 32 missionaries coming in April 17th. 16 of those 32 will be sisters! There are 10 Spanish and 6 English coming. CRAZY.

I love you and I pray for you often!

Sincerely,

Sister Johnson

Pictures:

Our apartment

Sister Awerkamp and I might start going by Faith & Hope ;)

 On Easter we had a challenge where we played the Game Never Have I Ever, but each time we lost we all had to take an Easter egg bubble gum! Needless to say our mouths got really tired from chewing so much giant pieces of gum at once!

 In between general conference on Sunday I met Jill Harmin! Who's sister used to babysit for my family in UT before I was even born! She served a mission in NY city too! Now she's married and her husband is a counselor for my mission president. SMALL WORLD!

Off to go do some service for a lady in our Branch. We're helping them remodel their home which was built in the 1860s and added on to in 1920! 

Zone Conference Pictures

March 27th - April 3rd

Hello family and friends,

 

I have been inspired by Sister Awerkamp. I'm attempting to write this week without my regular format of days. We will see how this goes! 

In the pictures I'm attaching check out last weeks adventure to the city! I ran into Brendan my recent convert on the train on our way down to Times Sq.(no picture with me-sorry)

Later at the Lincoln Center chapel (temple) I ran into McClain and other friends of Luke's from the Baby Cute Boys! SMALL WORLD! 

Then there is a picture of the group of us that went to the city in front of a cool statue that said Love. I don't know why we have it in NY since the original is in Philli but I'm not complaining! It's fun to take pictures by.  We went to the Rockefeller center to see our relief society president's daughter perform in an ice skating showcase of choreographer   It was awesome! The piece she was in did a really cool modern piece to a song by FUN (a band I like). It was awesome!

Easter Sunday was really special =) I was asked by someone in our branch to speak for 5-7 minutes in the combined third hour about Christ and I definitely felt the spirit take over! I bore a strong testimony about the blessings available to us because of what our Savior did. I testified about our responsibility to keep the commandments and soften our hearts (being humble and submissive like children) so that we can be changed through grace and the atonement of Jesus Christ. That way we can be the people the Lord knows we can become. We can be confident in the presence of God one day =)

For Easter dinner the Hippen family (one of the greatest families ever known to missionaries) fed us a delicious meal and let us be apart of their Easter Egg Hunt! They take good care of us.

This has been a busy week and we're doing a lot of work to strengthen the less active members of our branch. We are also teaching two people that are friends or coworkers with Brother Johnson from our branch. Member referrals is the best way to go when it comes to missionary work. Please think about who you know that you can invite to meet with the missionaries!

Tuesdays we go to a member's home to help here with service. I think I mentioned this before but they are remolding their house and so we get to help with construction! We love it. This week we painted primer on over 30 boards that Sister Awerkamp and one of our members sanded last week.

The bummer of Tuesday was that Sister Awerkamp and I got a parking ticket because our meter expired when we were at lunch with some elders. We would have been fine on time but they were late. It costs $50! Ouch...

We're going to split it. Some silver lining to Tuesday is when we were walking to Buffalo Wild Wings (for lunch) we were walking against some INTENSE WINDS! It normally wouldn't be a silver lining but it was so ridiculous we were laughing and bent over holding our skirts down.  We looked ridiculous!

Today we went to the temple. On our way there the train was running a little slow and we were worried about making it there on time. This man named Richard who was sitting next to me started talking to me and we ended up talking to him all about the gospel! When Dalley commented on how we might not make it there on time Richard made some comment about how maybe the reason it was delayed was so that we could teach him about God. I told him I absolutely believed that and that God works in mysterious ways.  He is from Brooklyn and has Italian heritage. He seemed very receptive and open. He has a restoration pamphlet and information about the church website and information about general conference. He said he sees missionaries everyday in Brooklyn.  He's going to talk to them the next time he sees them. I was grateful to be able to share so much with him in the time we spent on the train.  When we got to the temple we were about 10 minutes too late to go to a session so we performed initiatories instead. I was able to feel the spirit very strong when we were there. It was cool. Mostly I was pondering some things in the near future. Also I got to see the bridesroom and the sealing rooms. In the sealing room I felt the spirit even stronger! I look forward to the very special day when I will be there (in AZ) for my own wedding!

After the temple Sister Awerkamp's boyfriend's parents were in town and we got permission for them to take us out to eat. It was us and the two Spanish sisters that we live with. We went to a really nice bakery/cafe near the temple. I had a delicious grilled chicken and mozzarella open sandwich with basil pesto sauce and a Belgium brownie =)

We had forgot our phone in our apartment today when we went down to the city so we were late to our appointment. She made us a ton of spaghetti! She sent us down to a 99c store to but some Tupperware lol. While we were in there we talked to two women about the church! One of them asked if we were Christian. Then she specified to Mormon. I told her yes! She said we looked like one because of what we were wearing and how we carried our self. I said that's good because we're missionaries so we should look like it. We didn't get much on her story except she wants us to pray for her. I think she's going through some hard times. We did get her phone number and are hoping to set something up to see her this next week. Her name is Mel.

After leaving the member's apartment with two containers FULL of spaghetti we went to look up another person that we were trying to get in contact with. There was NO WHERE to park! So we decided we'd have to come back another time when we had a better plan of people we could see in that area. I was so out of it and tired from the day. Without realizing it I guess we ran a red light. Shortly after we got pulled over by undercover cops! Yes indeed.  So we get pulled over by undercover cops and they asked us if we were lost.

 I said no we were just distracted, we've had a long day. I began to ramble about how we were looking for where to turn in at the mail box (as a visual marker of our apartment) because the GPS showed it on the map really close. Meanwhile mind you we are two white girls in Yonkers and I'm wearing a ring pop! We also have church music playing in the car (I'm not sure if they could hear it). They were standing on each side of the car (at each of our windows) When they found out we lived here they were surprised! They were even more surprised that we needed a GPS to get home! I started to explain that we're missionaries for our church and how we go visit people and that's why we were using the gps Luckily, shortly after I said that we were missionaries he said, "Don't worry about it, Have a good night!"  What a blessing!

I suppose that is a blessing when you are on the Lord's errand! lol

 

Sister McAllister is on the phone right now talking to her 9 yr old grand daughter. It's her birthday so she was telling her what was coming in the mail. She said, "It is MoNey HoNeY!" It cracked me up!

 

Well things seem to keep getting more crazy the longer I am in Yonkers! haha.

I hope you are preparing for the spiritual feast that awaits us this weekend! =)  Also, transfers are coming up in two weeks. I will keep you posted on what happens.

I love you very much.

Thank you for your love and support.

 

Sincerely,

Sister Emily Johnson

Pictures

The first one is Nini beating her pinata!

Then it's mary who got baptized on March 23rd

I dyed my hair a few weeks ago

This is when I first got the color done. It's faded since then. But it's all good. Now it's close to my natural.

March 21st - March 27th

This has been a crazy week!

We celebrated Hermana Keanini's birthday! There was a baptism! And I've been sick and waking up during the night with a burning sore throat.  It has been a busy week but one full of memories. Today we are going to the city! The Rockefellar Center to see some ice skating. Our Relief Society President's daughter is in it. We don't know that much about it except that we are excited to go!

NEWS: It has been announced that we are now allowed to email anyone outside of our mission boundaries. This is something the brethren of the church have announced. This means friends, family, extended family, neighbors, whoever, can now email me. So if there is anyone that you know that is dying to email me, their prayers have been answered lol.

Here are the HIGHLIGHTS:

Thursday March 21st:

Our investigator cleared her baptismal interview! We got the offical thumbs up/clear/green light. Whatever you would call it, we got it =)

Friday March 22nd:

Happy Birthday Annie!  Hermana Keanini, from Hawaii, lives in our apartment and it was her birthday as well. We surprised her! We celebrated Hermana Keanini's birthday that morning with a hideous homemade Mexican pinata! We bought it from a Mexi mart. It was totally authentic =) That thing was a solid rock! We didn't really have many options for where to tie it so we tied it next to the wall where there was a loop. It was funny because she would hit it one swing and the wall the next. What ended up happening was Sister Awerkamp and I each held one end while Nini beat it's back. We were all laughing pretty hard.

Also that night we had an appointment with one of our investigators who's the neighbor of our member (Johnson family). We hadn't been able to see him in a few weeks so it was nice to follow up with him on the commitments we extended. We changed his baptismal date to May 4th but he is still working towards it =)

Saturday March 23rd:

Happy Birthday Seth. My present to you is Mary getting baptized! haha ok maybe not. But at least I was fully engaged in missionary work when I couldn't be with you to celebrate. 

It was a hectic day! We had a lot to do, but when it was all said and done the baptism went great! Mary loved it  =) She had to go under three times! Her dad was the one baptizing her. After the second time she said, "Don't bring me back up until everything is under!" haha.  Saturday is when I first started getting sick.

Sunday March 24th:

Mary was confirmed a member of the church and received the gift of the Holy Ghost!

Later we had an appointment with Sandra Hurley. She is a member we are helping prepare to go to the temple! She's working towards April 20th for the day she goes through the temple =)

Then I rested for part of the day to fight off getting sick. The Denison's who I served with in Kingsbridge live in our building and they are so sweet! They came by to see if everything was ok (they knew I was sick) and they let us have some left overs. They had just fed the missionaries from Kingsbridge. It was Hawaiian haystacks! (one of my favorites!)

Monday March 25th:

We got Mary's baptism record submitted to the mission office. I ended up sleeping part of the afternoon, which unfortunately made it really hard for me to sleep that night. After District Meeting (which Sister Awerkamp did a great job on the training) I got a priesthood blessing from Elder Ordaz.

Tuesday March 26th:

ZONE CONFERENCE! It was awesome seeing some of the other missionaries that I love =)

I love getting together with other missionaries and the mission president. I always learn so much!

The things I took away from it include: using the teaching pamphlets in following up as well to rekindle the feelings and thoughts they had from the previous lesson (when we discussed the pictures the first time). Also, using the follow up as an opportunity to assess or discern their concerns. 

We had dinner at the Hippen home! They are the greatest! We have them every Tuesday night and I always love starting off P-day when we leave there. This time she made a truffle cake for dessert and it was simply divine!

Today Wednesday March 27th:

I slept through the night last night! It was so nice!

Well I've got to attach some pictures and head out, but I hope you know how much I love you.

My testimony of Christ is burning stronger each day. It's been kind of hard being sick because I haven't studied as much as I would have liked to or needed to. But I know the Lord is mindful of me and my situation. I am excited to dive in and study about his final week that represents so much this Easter season.

Love,

Sister Emily Johnson

Upcoming:

This Thursday and Friday Sister Awerkamp and I get to be office sisters! We're excited =) Mostly it's because the office couples will be at different zone conferences.

Sunday is EASTER! What a special time to be teaching about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

The April 6th and 7th is General Conference! This will be my third and last general conference on the mission.  It's surreal. I'm excited to hear them report on all that has happened since President Monson made the announcement of the age change this past October!

This is going to be short

I apologize that I can't write more today.

I love you All!

This has been a hectic week and it's still kind of crazy. I don't have much time to email but I want you to know that you have been such a blessing in my life. 

Thank you for your examples to me. I am fighting the good fight and I'm trying to do what the Lord would have me do.  We might be having a baptism this Saturday. We still haven't quite worked out the details. We have to wait on a few things so everything is up in the air right now.

Mom thank you for the packages to Sister Awerkamp and I.

Tristan thank you for your package!

Love,

Sister Emily Johnson

Sister Awerkamp and I made our own St. Patrick's Day meal! We made pork chops, (green) mash potatoes, pork gravy and salad! I cooked the pork chops and gravy and she made the mash potatoes...and I ate the mash potatoes! Are you proud of me?

 Monday night we had a freak snow storm that came out of nowhere! We were at Natasha's place and when we left the roads were crazy! We were able to drive home safely but I definitely had Sister Awerkamp say a prayer in the car.

Also Sister Awerkamp spotted this awesome sign while I was driving! He had seen it before so we made sure to stop and take pictures.

Thurs. March 7th - Wed. March 13th

Thursday March 7th:
The elders that we serve with started riding bikes on the days they don't have the car. It was snowing a lot on Thursday. We met Elder Aagard and Elder Rydalch at the church to discus some details for our branch. Since Elder McCullam went home we wanted to get on the same page. Elder Rydalch is a new missionary from Oakley UT.  We were suppose to have a dinner with them but the dinner canceled because of the bad weather. We all went to McDonalds. We did a lot of stop and go as the elders biked there. We'd go a certain amount in our car and then pull over until they past us. We have a lot more respect for the elders because of their ability to ride their bikes in bad weather.  We are kind of jealous we don't get to ride bikes because it'd be a great work out. Yonkers has a lot of hills and their breaks don't work very well.

Friday March 8th:
My 13th month mark was a snow day! haha well at least the first half of the day was. We watched Legacy and Together Forever as an apartment. When we got the all clear we went back to our scheduled day. Natasha, a recent convert, came with us to do some look ups in Tarrytown. The person we came to see wasn't home so we made our way up the street. I was able to help shovel the sidewalk for this guy who looked tired. A little ways into my time shoveling my lower back muscles really started to ache! haha so I had a good reminder that we should be in our best physical shape so we can serve anywhere and anyhow the opportunity is presented.  I pushed through and finished the job I started.
After we dropped Natasha off back in Elmsford where she lives and works (it's near to Tarrytown) we decided to tract a little further up her street. It was very cold, but I felt the warmth of the spirit burning within me. The sunset was magnificent and the colors seemed so vibrant as we went door to door. We mostly talked to Spanish people but I was able to get contact information for two of the Spanish individuals to give to the elders in that area.  I also saw a lawn that had flamingos in it and it reminded me of my mom being reminded of my Aunt Barb! haha even though her flamingo incident was a long time ago I know that my mom always thinks of her. So now I guess I do too! But it's funny to have a silly reminder of family members you love.
We went by the home of a less active woman from the Dominican Republic who lives in our branch.  Her siblings and mom are members but her husband and kids are not. She is such a sweet lady. She let us in and we visited for a while. We scheduled a time to come back Monday. She wants to feed us =)

Saturday March 9th:
We went to the church to work on some information for the branch and Sister Awerkamp practiced the piano. Later we went to pick up Bailey Fillmore. She is our branch president's daughter.  She came with us to the Nelson's apartment (the Nelson's are the branch mission leader and his wife from AZ!) We picked a song to practice to sing in sacrament on Easter Sunday. Following that we had dinner and correlation. Then Bailey came with us to our appointment with a funny black lady from the branch who we are helping to prepare to go to the temple. We visited her two weeks ago. It was a neat experience because we had some thoughts about potential concerns she might have or things that could come up, but the Lord had prepared her in between our visits because she was way ahead of what we had prepared. It was neat to see! She also kept making comments that we couldn't help but laugh at. For example she was talking about how she had seen the elders street contacting in Getty Square and there was also a person preaching on the other side of a square with a bull horn. She said how all the people were leaving the guy with the bull horn and coming to the Mormons! The Elders were "kicking it!" =) She was so funny! Also, she set a date to prepare for. She's going to the temple April 20th!

Sunday March 10th:
It was a hopping day at church! There were a lot of people there that we had been trying to work with at church. It was a beautiful sight! Our investigator Mary who is getting baptized next week was there as well. After church we had Linger Longer (2nd Sunday of every month). It's always a treat! (no pun intended)  As linger longer was wrapping up Mary had a seizure =( We found out though that she has seizures every two months or so and she takes medication for it. Her daughter knew what to do and we got an ambulance there asap. They took her to the hospital to check out her vitals. She was released later that night.  During the day we went with Natasha to visit a lot of people. We were able to visit a less active member (we read from the Book of Mormon with her). Then we saw Herbert and Shirley (potential investigators), the Simmons(Active members), and we visited Mary (investigator) right before she got released.

Monday March 11th:
As an apartment we are doing a sweets fast where we are off of sweets for one month. People here feed us so many treats and we hardly walk at all. In the city I could maintain it, but here, not so much haha. Anyways there are some rules we decided on. One of the rules is that you can have one sweet once a week (minimal serving). I got a weird ear ache on this day. It was kind of a boring day but we were able to help one of the less active young woman prepare a talk that she has been asked to give Sunday on the Young Women value Knowledge. All of the Young Women are speaking in sacrament meeting. 

Tuesday March 12th:
We were able to visit a lot of people. One of which we were able to talk the visiting teacher with us. It helped us out and it helped her as well. Highlight/embarrassing moment of the day:
We were visiting a less active woman and while we were there we were talking to her. She had been playing Monopoly with someone in the background. I asked, "Oh is that your son?" Her response, "My daughter..." The girl was right there and could definitely hear me and she just looked at me. I tried my best to repair the situation (even though the woman is already a little awkward) I said something about how I saw the short hair and assumed but then I realized I've had short hair before. We quickly moved forward in the conversation.  To give you a better idea of how awkward this situation is, the daughter although where what look like boy pajamas, was 20 yrs old!!! YIKES! She looked more like 17-18 though. hahah it was just so embarrassing. Regardless I think the mom is going to ride the bus with us to church this week! 
We rapped up the night at dinner with the Hippen family (as usual) and they are one of my favorite families! They are the best and are what I hope my family is like in the future!

Wednesday March 13th:
I love you! Today is kind of a crazy day. We need to go change our clothes into the dryer. Later we are meeting the zone at the Scarsdale chapel for zone activities! Volleyball, soccer and making Horchata.

I love you!!!
Sincerely,
Sister Emily Johnson

Transfer P-day

Thursday February 28th - Wednesday March 6th

With it being the last week of transfer we got fed quite a bit, especially since Elder McCullam is going home.

Thurs. Feb. 28th:

We met up with the Elders to work on somethings for the branch.  Elder McCullum told the Hippen family he would write a song on their ukulele that he would perform his last night.  He had the music of it put together but was stuck on the words.  Which is the exact opposite of my problem =) I wrote some sweet words!  We plan on collaborating on future songs =)

We had dinner with the Altom family. They are the cutest! Plus she made amazing dinner rolls. A funny moment from when we were teaching them about the doctrine of repentance, I asked the son Maddox, who's four, how he knew he needed to tell his mom he was sorry (previously we established that he had told his mom he was sorry). He said,  "Because Heavenly Father told me to."

We looked up a less active member who is very nice :) We had a good lesson with her.

Friday March 1st:

We had dinner with the Johnson family. They have three darling children ( 7yr, 4yrs, and 5months)

We were teaching his good friend Vasu who he met in dental school.  Vasu is doing general dentistry so at dinner it was pretty easy for me to build a good connection with him because we talked a lot about dentistry! I am so grateful I had the chance to work as a dental assistant. It is a fascinating field.  Vasu knows a lot about the church and has recently started reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning.  He was raised Hindu but he likes Joseph Smith's first vision.  By the end of our lesson he accepted an invitation to work towards receiving an answer and being baptized on April 6th.  We're seeing him again next Friday after another dinner with the Johnson's. 

Saturday March 2nd:

The elders have been teaching a girl named Natasha.  Despite serve opposition from friends and family, Natasha decided to be baptized. =)  Saturday was Natash's baptism!  It was absolutely wonderful.  We helped the elders get set up and fill up the font.  It was at the Scarsdale chapel. Our branch doesn't have a font.  It was luke warm. We wanted to make it hotter but the kitchen is under construction so there was no microwave, the stove wasn't connected and there were no working faucets. Unfortunately there's wasn't much we could do for the water.  Natasha shared a wonderful testimony afterwards.  I am so excited for her!  In preparing for the baptism we had some oreos and we practiced the song we were writing for the Hippen family.  I really want to take music lessons when I get home so it's easier for me to carry my own note without being influenced by others as I match the notes they sing lol. I pretty much ate sweets this day, which left me with a migraine that night. Oh and when we left the chapel from Natasha's baptism in the evening there was a beautiful snow that had fallen.  It sparkled under the amber parking lot lights 

Sunday March 3rd:
Sunday morning was hard because I still had a bad migraine from the previous night, except now it was fast Sunday.  I decided to pray to see whether or not I should fast this day.  The reason I considered not fasting is because one of the medicines I take makes my sick if I don't eat something first. I had thought about different options: taking some food and medication and then starting my fast or just waiting until I broke my fast to take my medicine with food then.  As I prayed my headache started to leave and I decided I should fast. 

Fast Sundays go pretty fast in our branch because we usually have branch counsel at 8:30am and then church starts at 10:30am. I was especially tired because I didn't sleep well and then Elders played a prank on us and set an alarm on our phone that went off at 2:30am! Not Cool! hah.

It was a struggle to stay focused during church. I felt pretty miserable. 

After church we had two dinner appointments! One with the Fillmore's (Branch president's family) and the Simmons. We were getting together with them to celebrate the Simmons going through the temple and being sealed together.  Sister Fillmore asked us about a month prior if we could help prepare them. Now they are an eternal family! What a blessing.

After eating and drinking again I started feeling better.  Every time I struggle physically fasting I think about how much Christ probably thirsted for a glass of water when he going going through the last few days of His life. Or how sick He must have felt or how He probably had a migraine.  Thinking about the Savior gives me the incentive to hang on a little longer.

The other was with the Johnson family and Natasha came. Sister Johnson is a great cook! She made cheesecake for dessert and it was legit! Afterwards we went to Natasha's apartment to watch the CES Fireside =)

Monday March 4th:

We went to district meeting/zone meeting. I was a little edgy and irritated at the start of this day. I was trying to be patient but I was loosing it. However, I was able to work through it and soften up. One of the things that helped me was reading Elder McCullam's mission experience.  I was proof reading it for him.  He served for a year in Albania but got quite sick and served the second half of his mission here in NY.  He has endured many hardship and trails during his mission service.  Reading his talk touched my heart and helped me reflect on the bigger picture of my mission. What have I experienced and how has that shaped my testimony and character of the person I am today.  It was interesting to think about.  I know the Lord has a plan for me and this service is helping me become everything he needs me to be. Even when it's hard and challenging, each trial is shaping me.  His talk helped me realize I should be grateful for hard days. Also, that if we really understood what people have gone through (because we all face trails-if we could openly read what others have experienced) we would much more willing to love and respect.  That was a good reminder for me because some people in our zone kind of irritate/annoy me a lot haha. However, I remembered that I needed to not look at what's on the outside or how they present themselves, but rather be loving and respectful no matter what. 
We had a dinner with Mary (our investigator) at 5pm and Natasha (recent convert) and 7:30p.m. We were soooo full!

Tuesday March 5th:

It was Elder McCullam's last night. When we were at the Hippen's home for dinner we performed two songs. I wrote the words to both and he wrote the music. I have a video of it, but it is too large to send through email.  I wish I could though, it turned out way good!  

Wednesday March 6th:

Today was transfers.  At the end of the meeting President asks all the missionaries leaving to stand in the front and we sing "Each Life that Touches ours for Good" as the closing hymn.  I couldn't even sing. I just started crying. So many of my wonderful friends were up there and they were all leaving.  It was a hard moment. Afterwards I talked to most of them and that cheered me up.  It was liking having part of my heart leave with them. I know I will be fine, but this is one of my least favorite things  about the mission. Although, I will get to see them all again very soon. :)

That's it for now.

I love you!

Sincerely,

Sister Emily Johnson

It was soooo WINDY today!

This is Elder Kerr (who's uncle we refer dental patients to)

Dinner with Mary =)

The Simmons and the Fillmores

Natasha and Elder McCullam

us

 the McAllisters (they are a senior couple serving here and they let us email on their computers)

 our apartment Hermanas and sisters!