Monday, November 18, 2019

November 11th, 2019: Here we are!

Good day wonderful friends!

I've made it to Prairie Grove, mainly unscathed. It's so crazy to be back down here at the bottom of the mission. I feel like I don't know anyone again! I was sad to say goodbye to Orchard Hills and some of its wonderful people there, but I am so happy and excited for the new adventure of Arkansas again! I love my companion, Sister Jack, as she is so fun and cute and I know we are going to have a blast together! This is here last transfer, so we gotta make sure each moment and miracle counts!

I was given the lovely surprise of having little to no one to teach, so Sister Jack and I got some work ahead of us. We spent a good amount of time knocking on some doors. 

We even accidentally crashed a party! Whoops! We were trying to contact this family and we walked up their driveway. We noticed that there were a lot of cars, so that was our first warning. So, we knocked on the door and it was dark and everyone had party blowers! Surprise! We weren't the sisters they were looking for.

On Sunday, a sister who had returned home was visiting. I hadn't known her before, but I had heard of her. She served in Greenwood awhile before me. She brought her family and we got to be good friends with them. We had a friend with her sister about curly hair, as Sister Jack was asking for advice. I learned some fun new terms, such as "squish to condish", "t-shirt plop", "prayer hands", and "the pineapple style". Clearly, I need to update my vocabulary.

I'm so happy to be here and I am thankful for the blessings in my life. I know I will figure things out and that things will come in time. I'm grateful for my Heavenly Father, my Savior, Jesus Christ, my friend, the Holy Ghost, and for the restored gospel with a modern day prophet. I know this church is true and that God is aware of us and He knows what we are going through.

I'm so grateful for all of you and I love you all!

Love,
Sister Savannah Johanson


November 4th, 2019: Time to Say Goodbye

Hi guys!!!!

Here we are! The end of the transfer! It's been a fun time here in Missouri, but it's time to head back down to Arkansas to good ol' Prairie Grove. I'm excited because I'm going to be with Sister Jack and I took her place when she was here in Orchard Hills.

We had some fun times this week. It was a pretty normal week, but on Thursday, we had a wonderful miracle happen to us. 

We met this lady whom we tracted into. She was the first house we knocked on. We introduced ourselves and she just let us right in! We got to talking about church and the church we are from and how she knew someone in the past who was a member. We asked if she wanted to know about the church, so we told her about what we believe as far as Jesus Christ teaching his gospel, truths getting lost, and Joseph Smith praying to know the truth and having the First Vision. We talked a lot about the power of prayer and the importance of going to church. We asked if she wanted to learn more and have a Book of Mormon, which she said yes! It was so amazing and I was so happy! We hadn't had something like that in so long.

On the weekend, we helped a member deconstruct and then reconstruct a playset she had bought on Facebook. It took so long, but it was pretty fun! We were so tired afterwards.

This week, I've learned about how God keeps His promises, even if we forgot or don't always believe He will. If we do what He has asked us to do, He has made promises and He will keep them. I'm so grateful to know this, as it helps me know that He is always going to fulfill those promises, even when I doubt.

I love you!

Love,
Sister Savannah Johanson


October 28th, 2019: Power of Prayer

Hi Guys!

It's been a really good week! We had so much fun and we were really able to get to work and try our best to do the things we need to see the Lord's hand in our work.

We had a really good week with our investigators. A lot of them have been struggling with a lot of things and this week, they have done really good at overcoming them and they are all in much better places than they were before, which made me really happy. I had been praying so hard for them and I was so grateful to see how Heavenly Father was able to help them.

We had our ward trunk or treat on Saturday and it was a lot of fun! Our Chinese investigators came and they really enjoyed it. They actually had never been to the church before and they were asking so many questions. We ended up showing them around and helping them understand how things work. It was so good to have them there and our members were so amazing with talking to them and being their friends, even though they didn't speak English. Sister Dixon and I also set up a bingo game for the kids for some indoor carnival games, ut it actually went really well. We had fun doing it.

This week we were trying so hard to try and do everything we needed to find people. We hadn't found anyone in awhile and we really needed to put in the work just to find 1 person. So, we were talking to more people and spending more time finding and we were praying so much to be able to find that 1 person. And, we finally did! It was on Sunday. We were tracting and we saw her in her garage and we went up and introduced ourselves. She asked about which church we went to and when we told her, she said the really appreciated the family history work our church does and she went on to tell us all the amazing experiences she had with it. She was saying that she had gotten pretty stagnant, so we offered to come and help her. We gave her our number and she said she would call us. She also said to come back anytime! We were so happy to see the result of our efforts and to see how the blessings come after the trial of our faith.

I also went on exchanges this week to the YSA ward and it was so fun! It was just a party over there and I got guy o meet so many amazing people there. Things are just so great there and I really hope I can serve there one day.

This week I learned a lot about prayer. While I've been on my mission, I've been learning a lot about how I can receive strength for praying for my struggles and weaknesses, but lately I've learned how wonderful it is to pray for others. I want to help others so much, but sometimes, there is only so much that I can do, but there is so much power in praying for them and their struggles. I love the idea that by praying for people, that they will receive an added strength from the Spirit and will receive blessings and help from God because I asked Him to help them. It helps me know that I am doing something for other people. I've really started on listening to the Spirit on who to pray for, as there are some people who need that and some blessings are conditional upon us asking.

So I would invite you all to pray for someone in your life. Maybe ask Heavenly Father who you should pray for and try and be aware of those who need that special blessing from God.

I'm so grateful for this gospel and for this restored church. I know we are all disciples of Christ and that because of Him, we can return to our Heavenly Parents. I'm going to keep trying and keep learning.

I love you all so much!

Love,
Sister Savannah Johanson









October 21st, 2019

Hi friends!

It has been a fun week! There wasn't much of a particular reason, but I just enjoyed it. We were out doing good working, trying to do good things.

As far as teaching goes, it was an interesting week for us. A lot of the people we have been teaching finally opened up to us about a bunch of issues they are having and now I don't necessarily know how to help them.

However, we did have this guy who has been visited by the missionaries for a long time. He is a really less active members and he has had a lot of struggles in his life and can have the tendency to be angry at God for all the bad things that have happened and are going on. We hadn't been sure how to help him for awhile and how to share anything with him, but we finally were able to this last time. We were very glad we did, as it helped us understand him more. He actually came to church Sunday to listen to Sister Dixon give a talk. It's going to be a process with him, but I think we can get him in the right direction and give him a lot of help.

Unfortunately, on your mission, you come across a lot of different things with people who have so many different problems and you are never entirely sure how to help them, so you have to keep praying for them and trying to figure out how to help them, having faith and hope that things will work out.

We had this awesome experience yesterday, though. We went tracting on this one street and there was only one person in our area Book on that street, but we had only briefly looked at him and didn't know which house he was. Amazingly, the first door we knocked on was his! It truly was inspired. He is a less active member who has health issues and really needed some help with some things and some friends. So we were able to set up a time to come help him clean his kitchen! I was so happy!

This week I learned about humility and realizing that we don't know everything. More often than not, we are wrong and there are things we need to repent of and change. The best kind of humility is learned when we don't need to be called to it, but when we consciously decide to be better.

I'm so thankful for all of you and I love you all!

Love,
Sister Savannah Johanson