GLEN WAVERLEY - Week 60 - December 19, 2017

Wow so much has happened this week.  It's been a good one!

Last week we had our mission wide Christmas Party and it was so much fun! We had an AMAZING Christmas music devotional to start it off, and then had the "Olympic Games" (haha it is like President Vidmar is an Olympian or something LOL) it was super fun though. 

BUT it is summer now, so it was 40 degrees (100 degrees F) the day of the party. It was sooo hot. 

Also it was sooo fun to see all the missionaries! All the missionaries in the mission (except those who are in Tasmania.. they had their own Christmas party..) were there (like 160+ missionaries!!) It was so fun to see some of the missionaries that I don't get to see very often anymore.

Pretty much this whole transfer, there are always extra sisters staying at our flat. The sisters that live 7 hours away got to spend a couple nights at our flat this week (for the Christmas party) so that was cool. But it is fun, because we get to know some sisters that I NEVER see :) haha

We also had a zone meeting this week and it was great. We talked about recognizing and following the Spirit. It was awesome and our zone has such a fire right now. After the meeting, we all had companionship interviews with our zone leaders to talk about what goals we could set in our individual areas. 

The zone leaders challenged us to set a goal to get 5 new contacts a day. It is a really high goal, especially since like all the Chinese are back in China right now. BUT we have been working hard & are out GQing ALL the time, and we have seen sooo many miracles!! We have been able to get the goal twice and on the other days, although we haven't gotten 5 new contacts, we have met some super keen and prepared people! God is so good. 

BEST NEWS OF THE WEEK!!:::

VICTOR IS GETTING BAPTIZED ON SATURDAY! Victor is an old investigator from my last area. I street contacted him back when I was with Sister Fong (ages ago) and he's been meeting with missionaries ever since. I taught him for almost 8 months and I have grown to love him soo much. I started sobbing (LOL surprise, surprise) when they called to tell me that he is getting baptized. This is such a miracle and I am so grateful to have been apart of the journey.

Not going to lie, it is SO hard to be away from family and home at Christmas time. BUT I am so excited to spend Christmas in the place that has become my home away from home (Australia is awesomeee!). & I get to spend it with people who have become part of my family. so I guess I really can't complain. 

I am so grateful to be a missionary. Christmas is such a special time to be a missionary and talk about Our Savior. This is the first time that I have been able to focus 100% on the real meaning of Christmas, Jesus Christ. It has been so cool and my relationship with Him has grown so much. 

I love you all! 

Hope you all have a good Christmas!

Hopefully you will be enjoying the snow, sweaters and hot chocolate!

I will be sweating. :):)):)

xoxo,

张姐妹

Sister Johnson

MISSION WIDE CHRISTMAS PARTY

Missionary Tree with all their names on it

Sister Maughan, a favorite senior missionary of Alyssa's

"I love hot weather, even if it is in December"

The Ward doing some Christmas Caroling

Aussie Jingle Bells from the side of a cereal box

esky in the boot = cooler in the trunk

kelpie = famous dog here

singlet, shorts and thongs = tanktop, shorts and flip flops

swaggies = kind of like a traveler? not sure actually..

HAHHAAH I LOVE AUSTRALIA.

Hail storm came through - those is some BIG hail

Heart Attacked or Post-It Note Attacked a 

member's door for Christmas

GLEN WAVERLEY - Week 59 - December 12, 2017

Sorry fam I don't have much time today to write, but I love you all and I am grateful for the love and support :)

This week was good and we are still plugging along here in Glen Waverley. I love Sister Chen soo much and we get along great. We are always laughing and having a good time. :)

Also we were able to meet with heaps of our investigators this week so that was awesome! They are all doing great and it is a miracle in itself that we have people to teach right now. Most of the Chinese are back in China for the New Year & holiday. but we are soo blessed and are teaching heaps right now.

Last week, the assistants invited everyone to extend a new baptismal date. Sister Chen and I decided we would invite in every single one of our lessons this week. With the guidance of the Spirit, we invited everyone we could and it was great. Although not everyone we invited said yes, it was so cool and we had some GREAT lessons. We now know what their concerns are and how to help them, so that they can accept a date in the future :)

BUT we did have two of our investos that DID accept a baptismal date. (yay!!!)  Michael accepted a date for the beginning of next year. He is doing great and loves everything we teach him (he really loves to pray). He is super prepared and even though he gets distracted easily (lol it makes it so hard to teach him), he is progressing heaps! 

Yu also accepted a date for the 30th of this month. However, she is still a little nervous to accept the gospel because her entire family believes in Buddhism. But, no worries she has incredible faith so I know it will all work out..in the Lord's timing. ;)

On Sunday night we had a massive stake Christmas Music Night and it was awesome!! The stake center was absolutely packed and it was soo powerful. They had so many different people singing and the Spirit was sooo strong. I love Christmas time and this activity definitely got us all in the Christmas spirit! <3

uhh thats pretty much it.

I love you all and I am so grateful for you!

have a good week

oh & p.s. #LightTheWorld

xoxo

张姐妹

Sister Johnson

"Mom, I bought a chocolate Christmas countdown last week.

I made it to day 6, then I popped them all out and ate them. 

NO SELF CONTROL.  

Buy hey it was so fun, awesome."

Less active member, Alicia, was so excited

to see Sister Johnson and Sister Chen

to give them a Christmas gift.

Cute Christmas gift from Alicia

Sister Fong (far left) from American Fork

 hit ONE YEAR mark on her mission.

Flatmate also hit ONE YEAR mark, so Sister Johnson

and Sister Chen decorated her wall.  

(some of those 1's are made out of candy - yummy)

When Sister Chen makes dinner !!!! YUM

GLEN WAVERLEY - Week 58 - December 5, 2017

Hello family and friends!

Wow this past week has been extremely long. It feels like it has been ages since I last emailed!! Probably just because soo much has happened this past week. 

So last week was the week of transfers and it was pretty crazy, to say the least. Our flat is about 3 minutes from the mission office and the mission home, so we usually are roped into helping a ton with the transfers. This past week we had all the sisters that were training/going down to Tasmania AND all the Goldens. So on Wednesday night, we had 14 sisters sleeping in our flat! Our flat is pretty big.. but even that was a lot of people. 

Because we live close to the mission office, we have been able to go in and help Sister Kennedy (the mission secretary) and the office missionaries a couple times. We helped them set up for all the Goldens coming in, the trainers lunch and running errands to get what is needed (and much more. We are also busy with our own stuff to do, so we can't help them a ton but it is always fun to go in and help. They are SO busy and they do so much for all of us missionaries, so it is nice to be able to return the favor in any small way that we can. 

Also our ward has started to do caroling to less-actives, non members and investigators. Not many of the members signed up, so that means that they signed up all the missionaries in the ward (lol yay). On Sunday we went out and visited 5 families and it was....painful. I am not a good singer and at the first house I was biting my lip soo hard to keep myself from laughing. We had a rough go of it and it turns out that singing acapella with 6 other (mostly tone def) people is a bit hard. Good thing we visited some very nice people and they kindly listened to us absolutely butcher the 3 Christmas songs. After each house, Sister Chen and I would get in the car and just laugh and laugh. Good thing it is only a once a year kind of thing ;)

This past weekend it has been a bit cooler and we have had so much rain. There have been some cool thunder storms that came through, and because we were stuck inside (Sister Vidmar didn't want us out in the storm) my flatmates and I went out and played in the rain. It was fun on Friday, but ever since then it has just been annoying. Mostly because all of our Chinese investigators are afraid of rain (not even joking.. they don't leave their house when it rains) so they cancelled all our appointments to a day with "better weather". So that is cool. But it has given us time to catch up in our area book, and to do some DEEP cleaning in our flat. We have desperately been needing a good clean, especially after having soo many people in and out of our flat. 

We were able to meet with a new investigator Michael this week! I GQ'd into him on the street last week and we were able to meet with him & share a little about God and prayer. He seems promising!! He has a desire to know about Jesus Christ and believes that having a religion will help him and bless his life. We will meet with him again this week so I will keep yous posted :)

Yesterday, we met with our investigator Allen! In our last lesson with him, he really wanted to know about the commandments and what he needs to do in order to  make it back to live with God. Yesterday when we taught him, he had heaps of questions (really hard ones...(糟糕)) but he was able to understand and accept the commandments (for the most part). It turns out that he has a huge problem with the Word of Wisdom (pretty much every part of it (double糟糕)) so we will be working with him on that. He is still awesome and he totally has a real desire to change his life and be better! keep him in your prayers :)

That is pretty much our week.

Thanks for the love and support!  Miss you all heaps.

oh and don't forget to #LightTheWorld

xoxo

张姐妹

Sister Johnson

Text from the state

Play day in the Rain

With all the rain, the slugs came out - gross

Zone Conference - Maroondah Zone 

Americans - Sister Patchell, Sister Cahoon,

Sister Johnson and Sister Fong 

GLEN WAVERLEY - Week 57 - November 29, 2017

Hey fam!!

So we just had transfers and I am staying in Waverley! This is honestly a huge blessing to stay in this ward and this area. I get to be here with the amazing members for the Christmas season and into the new year! :)

I am also now with Sister Chen! She is from Taiwan and is so cute. She is the sweetest person I have ever met. She has been out for 14 months so she is into her last 2 transfers on the mission. She is AMAZING! I love her so much already and I know this transfer is going to be great!

This week was great! It was an amazing last week with my best friend Sister Cahoon.

It was so hard to say goodbye to her after such an amazing transfer. I LOVED getting to serve with her again. I am bummed we only got six weeks together this time.. but I get to see her heaps this month so it won't be too bad. AND we go home together so that is a blessing. 

Said goodbye to two missionaries last week, Sister Pratt and Elder Chen (he was my district leader and later my zone leader)

We were invited over to the Kerwin's house (the bishop of another ward and his family) to help them set up their Christmas decorations. It was sooo much fun. They had Christmas music playing and it finally felt a little like Christmas!... but it was soo hot and that was weird. this is the first Christmas when we will use an AC instead of a heater!!!!

Bishop Kerwin (from above) also invited us and all the missionaries in our district and our zone leaders to their Christmas party. It was so fun and man, square dancing with all the sisters was dope. I loooove serving in family wards. The Christmas season is going to be so fun!!! (oh and the members are soo nice and are always giving us sweets/desserts. here is hoping that I won’t gain 897824 pounds please..;);) lol) 

All the missionaries may or may not have gotten into a huge cake fight after the Christmas party and wow there was cake EVERYWHERE. Don't worry we cleaned it up.. but just so you know, mint cake in your nose really starts to burn ;) haha

We also have been meeting with a few of our investigators and they are going great!

We met with our investigator Kevin and taught the Word of Wisdom. He had no problems with it and totally accepted it. He is progressing so much and hopefully we can commit him to baptism soon. He is so prepared now!

I am excited for this next transfer.  Well I hope you all have a good week!

Oh, and go to mormon.org and check out the Light the World Christmas campaign.

it's way good and the videos are great. made me cry :')) But yeah go out and light the world.

love you all,

xoxo

张姐妹

Sister Johnson

New companion - Sister Chen

A little fun with some cake after a ward party

Helped to decorate the Kerwin's home for Christmas

Bishop Kerwin and his family

Sister Pratt 

Elder Chen

THANKSGIVING PLAY by Missionaries

at Ward Party

GLEN WAVERLEY - Week 56 - November 21, 2017

Not much happened this week, but it has been so fun here in Glen Waverley with Cahoon!

Happy news- it is finally summer here and is starting to get really hot!  Sad news- I am now constantly sweating so that's cool :):)

I got to go to the Temple and do baptisms with Jeff this week! Sister Li and I taught him and he baptized almost 8 months ago, and this past weekend he was FINALLY able to go to the temple! It was so fun to go with him and be a part of the special day :) 

Also we hiked 1000 steps again this morning with our flat mates. It was so fun and SO pretty! I love Australia!

Shout out to Cahoon for writing about our week.

I think she said it best (Alyssa just blocked and copied Sister Cahoon’s letter this week, oh boy)

Our ward put on a Thanksgiving Potluck this week though, which was weird since none of them even celebrate it here. So they had the American missionaries share about a typical Thanksgiving in America.. and we ended up getting all 6 of the missionaries to act out "The First Thanksgiving" it was actually pretty funny. 

Yu is not getting baptized this week because she decided to come to the Sunday Pot luck AFTER church instead of actually coming to church. So that sucked. But we went over all of the Baptismal Questions with her and she is super prepared!! She answered everything perfectly and hopefully we can push her date back to next weekend. 

We also met with Kevin again finally!! He is awesome!! It’s been almost a month since I last saw him but he said he has been praying and still seems really keen to learn/be baptized. Only slight set back is that he showed up with a bunch of coffees and had bought 2 for me and Johnson. So we had to give the entire lesson with these coffees in front of us..and then dump them outside right after he left. So we will probs be going over Word of Wisdom next week :) :) :) 

Also taught Allen (the super keen guy who GQed himself last week) we taught Plan of Salvation and it was awesome!!! Such a cool lesson! He asked so many good questions and he has such a sincere desire to learn. After we asked him that when he knows these things are true would he be willing to get baptized and he sat and thought about it for a second and then said yes! So we are going to give him a date for the end of December :) 

Those are probably our top 3 investigators right now.. but we have actually found a lot of pretty keen potentials this past week, so that’s been a blessing. 

Well hope you all have a great Thanksgiving!

love and miss you all!

xoxo,

张姐妹

Sister Johnson​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Olivia, a member friend

A favorite show from a few years ago

"Look Mom, I climbed a tree"

Going to the temple with Sister Li and Recent Convert Jeff (who did baptisms 

for the first time)

Beautiful Melbourne

Sister Johnson and Sister Cahoon at 1,000 Steps

Lots and lots of steps