Reconquista, Santa Fe.....

WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!  I sure hope the date´s not until September! I want to be there so bad! Nice work Dave! Mikyla you´re a lucky girl :) He´s a good one. 

As for this last week there is quite a bit that´s happened. I have officially worked in every province in the mission! and everyone thinks I´m gonna die (end my mission) in Santa Fe. I have a cute companion from Chile, Hermana Ruth Riquelme. She´s a sweetheart and loves everyone. The first day that I got here was Hermana Allred´s last day! She got to spend her last day with me and I got to help kill (send her home) her off :) It was a lot of fun, I spazzed out when I saw her from the window on the bus, Huge surprise for me! and Hermana Lund is my HLC, I feel like when your parents get old and their kids take care of them, ya know? We have really great Zone leaders, I was so excited to know that I would be working with them this transfer.

We have a cute little branch full of mostly women and an elder is the branch pres. Poor kid had 8 months in the mission, and had a really bad cold this week. You really can´t afford to be a missionary, Branch President and be sick.

Little milagro of this week: We´re working a lot with the recent converts and went to go start the lessons with one of the boys and his mom. When we got there the Augostin´s friend Marcos was there and he sat in on the lesson. We focused a lot on him too. We taught them the Restoration and Follow the Prophet, and in the end invited Marcos to be baptized. HE ACCEPTED! and was excited about it!! Later when we came back to pick up Augostin´s mom to go with us to a lesson they told us all about how they were talking about what the Book of Mormon was and how things were at church. Really cool experience and high light of the week. 

WE HAVE A WASHING MACHINE!!! so much easier to do laundry and we don´t have to ask anyone else to do it for us!! So happy! :D OH and we have hot water! It lasts through four girls taking 10 minute showers (even though a girl taking a ten minute shower seems impossible I managed to do it in 8 minutes once :)

Well, I´m glad you all had a great week! and that you´re all safe and happy :) Have another good one so you can have stories to tell me next week.

Love you all!

Hermana A. Johansen

Transfers tomorrow! and . . . I think I´m gonna be staying here

We had a decent week, WE HAD SOMEONE AT CHURCH!! Finally!  he´s 24 years old, and asked his pastor if he could come to church with us. As you may already know, yesterday was
Fast and Testimony meeting. He didn't take the sacrament, but the got up to share his testimony. It was alright up until he said that he could receive revelation for other people. We just taught him once and I wan´t even there thanks to exchanges. We have a meeting with him on Wednesday so if we´re both still here that should be fun.

Yeah transfers are this week, and I think I´m going to be here in Formosa for a while. Hermana Bedoya thinks I´m gonna die as an HLC, and I personally think I´m about done. I love it, I just think my time´s up . . . Which wouldn't be the case if I stayed, cause the area is the
HLC area. Oh well.

This week . . . what else happened this week? . . . OH! I finally made those brownies that you sent me for my birthday! We had an amazing Zone Conference. The Heyman´s LAST! It´s the craziest thing! AND it´s Hermana Allred´s LAST pday, and I bet her and Hermana Lund are spazzing out right now, I can just see it.

We found a cute girl named Florencia this week. She wasn't able to come to church this week, but we´ll get her. She´s super cute, I think she´s 16 and really relates to Joseph Smith´s story. She has a special little spirit and we love her. We also met a lady who´s been listening
to missionaries for about 9 or so years! She knows it´s true, and just has these silly obstetrical. We´re gonna see if we can help her out with that. As for the Portaño family, they couldn't make it to church either, but it´s kinda tough when the only days we get to see them is on Sunday. They were thinking about us all week and actually drove by the church. So that shows something. Sadly they didn't read the pamphlet, but they will :) We hope so.

We had a good week anyway.

LEXI! Hunny, I´m so proud of you! You´re so pretty in the picture mom sent me! Thank you for smiling for me :) Mike, that´s one cool story! Crazy what the Lord can do, and pays such good attention to the little details.

Hey kids! (Steven, Sabrina, and Kevin) I know it´s vacation time, but don´t slack :) Keep yourselves busy, well Steve you have work so have fun with that. Make some mischief for me would ya? Have a fun summer with out me, cause I´ll be there for the next one, muahahaha.

Love you all, please stay safe at work, Dad. Thanks for the fotos mom!
I need to charge my camera before I can send more pictures.

LOVE YOU ALL!!!
Hermana A Johansen

IT´S BEEN SOOOO COOOLLLDDD!!!!!!

It has suddenly decided to freeze over down here in Formosa. It really
does get cold down here, and it´s a different kinda cold. It´s the
kind that likes to sneak up on you, get you wet and seep into your
bones. One day we were dying of heat and now for the past three days
we've been shivering in our rain boots. I've been sleeping in at least
five long sleeve shirts, a sweater, two pairs of pants, the thin thing
I call a blanket, and my coat. We've been looking for good prices for
a blanket, we found a sweater and some gloves so we´re good there, and
we´re working on getting a heater. (I also ran out of lotion and the
weather change is making my exima act up . . .on my face . . .so I
bought some stuff for that) Luckily our stove works. Just our shower
busted again and we don´t have hot water so we´re pros at taking
bucket baths.

We had better luck finding people this week, but sadly none of them
came to church, and due to the weather hardly even any of the members
came. We went from about 150 people in the ward to most of us being
missionaries. We got a new  ward Mission leader, he´s the ex stake
president and we still go without a bishop.

We have Conferencia Multi Zona tomorrow so that should be fun. I love
being able to see pres so often.

As for the experiment that I had of trying to help people feel the
spitit when we meet them I hope it´s going well, I´m going to keep
working on it. I think the harder thing is to help make sure that your
comp is having spiritual experiences and can always feel the spirit. I
think that might be the key.

We met a family yesterday, they seem pretty great, the only thing is
that they like coffee and tea, and they´re not married . . . but they
want to try to go to church! That´s something!

You´ll never guess who I did divisions with this week!! HERMANA BATEMAN!
it was so cool and so much fun to be able to work with my first
comp ever. She´s great and it was crazy to be there working and
thinking of how we had no idea we would be doing what we are or if
we´d ever be able to. She goes home before I do so that´s weird but oh
well.

Sounds like you've all had a fun week! Thanks for telling me all about
it! We have a lot of travelers in our family, and that´s so cute about
Mia! I was thinking about them the other day and wondering if they
even remembered me, cute! Kevin! You are freak'n awesome! So much
better than I am, no lie. Allred's going to love you! When I get back
I really got to get my game on so you don´t keep being better than me ;)

Sully´s going to France! Congrats to him. 

Tell everyone hi, Family and friends.

As far as I know this is all I've got for ya this week, I hope you
enjoy. I am actually working on another t-shirt for our ´Sistrito´
I´ll do what I can to show you how it ends up, picture or showing you
at home, either way you´ll see them.

Love you all! Stay safe, stay happy, stay healthy, and may the Spirit
be with you!

Hermana A Johansen

President is crazy about Instagram.....

I had consejo yesterday and didn't get to write until today. I´m sure President may have already posted the pictures on his Instagram, and if it wasn't him it was his cute daughters and Hermana Heyman.

We had a good meeting yesterday, we learned a lot, and for the FIRST TIME EVER the Hermanas had to chance to take part in Rendir Cuentas, and it´s a good thing we did. When our leader talked about why we had our numbers he made it sound really bad and said that the Hermanas were waiting for Transfers and that´s why our numbers were really bad,
and pres said that we were going to get what we (supposedly) wanted. . . as you can image working with the Hermanas and knowing their situations I was not at all happy with what happened, and Hermanas Allred, Healey and Lund all knew it. Thankfully we had the chance to rebuild that burned bridge (phew!). The Zone has been having a tough time and we've been burning through plans to fix it for a good while. We are working hard, and really I don´t want to leave this area until a difference has been made, that´s what happened in Bella Vista. I think when I said that the last few weeks were the hardest of my mission I forgot how hard it was to start in Bella Vista, we got there with a lot of things to fix. I think the Lord likes to send me on rescue missions . . . or I really am just having a hard time.  I like the first one, makes me feel better about what it is I´m doing. We had a tough week, but at least I´m happy this time :)

We still don´t have much of a teaching pool, we´re searching and praying for people in our ward directory for people to visit so we can find some prepared people. There are ways of doing things that we´re going to have to change, just little things like how we present ourselves, or if in the moment we´re actually sincere about what we´re doing (in other words: exercising faith to have success at all times. Which is some moments easier said than done but possible). I'm trying to be sure this week that the people we meet have a spiritual experience especially in the first few moments, and always leave them with a testimony. This should be fun. Also to find more reasons to love the people here, I could always love them a little more.

The world cup starts soon, and it's already fun here when the local football teams play each other. People will get ready for them all day with huge flags, jerseys, their motorcycles, and every once in a while a truck. The two biggest teams here are River and Boca,
you can always tell when they´re playing and at about 8:00 you know who won.

Oh! the music went well in Stake conference. Elder Viñez of the 70 came and spoke and Presidente y Hermana Heyman were there too. Elder Viñez is so AMAZING! Learned so much from him. They also changed the Stake Presidency. The Stake President is in our area. He´s a cool guy with a wonderful family.

All the people we found the other week choose to not listen to us any more. 
Maria came to conference so that was great!

I´m glad ya´ll had a good week! I tried to explain exactly what it is that dad does for work to my Zone Leader on the bus last night after consejo, lucky he´s from Cali so I got to use Spanglish. Congrats on your graduations Kevin and Justin on your graduations. 

Love you all!!!
Hermana A. Johansen

Skype on Mothers day.....

HEY!! It was good to talk to all of you yesterday! We were all on a mother´s day hi for forever after. I feel like I've been revived for another good four months. 

I saw the picture of Kevin´s mask, GOOD JOB KID!! I wanna make one.  When I get back I´m going to be drawing so much! There is no time here! I doodle a little bit in Sunday school in my planner . 

This week has been a lot better! We actually found people! We´re happier, and the last two weeks have actually helped us grow closer as a companionship, district and a zone. When you´re at what seems to be the lowest of lows the gospel is what really picks you up. Apply the principles and they help you out of what ever rut you´re in. I think when you´re always teaching people about the gospel you´re put through trials a lot of the time just so you know that what you´re teaching really works.

Sofia ´Fe´ is so cute!! she looks just like Brit and her eyes are HUGE! I love that picture, it´s adorable. Lexi's 8! Oh my goodness! She´s so big! and another baptism in the family that I´m missing, it´s alright, I´ll be there for other things. Joel´s a babe ;)

I´m glad ya´ll had a wonderful mother´s day! and I can´t wait . . . well I can . . . rephrase . . . I´m very patiently excited to talk to all of you again!

Love you! and I´ll talk to you again next week with pictures.

Hermana. Amanda Johansen (the original :)