Wednesday, December 20, 2017

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,
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




Wednesday, December 13, 2017

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
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





Wednesday, December 6, 2017

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