Hola y'all!
So I'm still in Leesville or as my Grandpa called it WAY back in the day when he was stationed at Fort Polk (crazy right?!?!) "Fleasville" because no one ever stays in Leesville (and maybe there are fleas too?) jajaja. Just waiting on my apartment window to be fixed, but with the hurricane drama nothing has really been very reliable so…we'll just have to see what next week brings! But on to this week!!
Monday was a very strange pday...we had service at God's food box, handing out food and other supplies as people drove through the line, from 9am-noon but those count as proselyting hours...so our pday went until 9pm and our proselyting hours got moved from the normal 6pm-9pm to 9am-noon. AND the entire district was able to come down to DeRidder and help serve! It was exciting! They even fed us deer chili for lunch (from the extra hot meals they had)...it was my first time eating deer...it was interesting...not sure if I'd do it again, but it was cool. Then we all went to New Llano park in Leesville for second lunch…MORE DEER CHILI! Because they gave us all the leftovers! While there we met Matt and Brittany and their dog Jake. We literally talked with them for HOURS! We talked to them about their lives, gave them some deer chili, and the dog too jajaja. Then Matt asked about our stance on marijuana, Elder Teare was able to answer his question using the Bible and then we even got to talk about Jesus Christ and our unique message of the Book of Mormon! It was great! However our Elder Teare gets really excited about everything and kind of went very deep into the gospel...not exactly the best thing to do when you just meet someone, but he answered all of their questions so that's good. Then the district played ultimate frisbee in the 100 degree heat...it was super fun though! Hot and sweaty and gross, but fun! Then the Nachitoches Elders were making a Facebook video where Elder Hanks gets covered in food and stuff in his nice suit and we all got to help throw eggs and mysterious liquids at him. It was some serious district bonding this pday. They are the best!
On Tuesday we decided to get outside and take a walk which was very nice, humid but still nice:) Our lesson with our referral, Dusti, fell through when he didn't answer even though he was super excited for it that morning! We even think he blocked us on Facebook! Rough! After dinner we got a call from the Orlando Florida Elders about a referral named Michael. He sounds awesome and reads from the Book of Mormon everyday!! MIRACLE! We are having a hand off lesson on Friday! AHHH! I haven't taught in so long! Scary!
Wednesday was different than usual...we moved district council to 10am instead of 11am and then we all went to do service at the fairgrounds in Leesville together. After that we drove to DeRidder and helped an older woman named Ms. Kay, clean up her yard. Then it started raining so we said we'd be back the next day. She was so nice! She even gave us money for dinner! We all went to domino's for pizza. Wow our district spends A LOT of time together with all of this hurricane service...it's cool though.
On Thursday we did lots of service. In the morning we went back over to Ms. Kay's house and she had us weed her garden...as a part of hurricane cleanup??? It was very strange, but we got to pray with her and she gave us rainbow sherbet! Then we skirted on over to the fairgrounds in Leesville to do service there for a few hours and they gave us chili cheese dogs for lunch. Afterwards we went to the church for weekly planning and then came home and had dinner. Pretty good day :)
Friday we went down to DeRidder to visit Ms. Ursula and her husband Bruce. We got to talk with them more and they are literally so sweet. They told us all about their cats and kittens that used to be strays but then became indoor cats. I just love hearing her speak in an Irish accent! They told us that this can be our second home. Bruce is from Wisconsin and kept telling us why his state is the best jajaja. He definitely opened up more to us when it was just Sister Estes and I versus the whole district having sacrament meeting in his living room. At the end we got to share a Bible verse and Bruce was like "that's it?!" So we might be able to actually prepare a bit more of a lesson for him, which was quite surprising but yay!! Then we drove to Leesville to help at the fairgrounds since they close up on Saturday. It was super great because a couple of the people that we had made friends with asked us more gospel questions and our district leader even taught them a lesson privately! Then they were so excited to give us their contact info to stay in touch! MIRACLE! Back at the apartment our lesson with Ms. Charlotte fell through...oof. But then we had a hand-off lesson with the Orlando, Florida Elders with Michael our referral. They had been teaching him for the past 3 months, but since Michael lives on Fort Polk we made the transition for us to teach him. Michael is awesome! He has such a great testimony of Jesus Christ! Sister Estes and I both felt like we should invite him to be baptized during the lesson and kept thinking the Elders were going to on like 3 separate occasions! But then the timing just wasn't right and it was awkward...but we'll see about the next lesson ;) We finally have like a solid person we're teaching! MIRACLE! That night we also had a Zone Zoom call with the missionaries in our Zone to build our teaching skills.
On Saturday morning the Leesville Sisters had an 8am baptism that the whole district was invited to! His name is Christian and is our age, so it was really cool for him to be around all us missionaries. What was so special about his baptism was that since the power was out in the Leesville building, they got special permission to do it at Toledo Bend, a lake nearby. It was really cool to see how they did baptisms way back when in lakes and rivers, just like when Jesus Christ was baptized! Then we spent the day doing service! Whoop whoop! We were able to get 2 work orders done with our team of missionaries a.k.a. our district plus President McKay and his son Caleb. At the first one we helped a woman named Ms. Sandra who was so grateful and was actually curious about our church! So we got her phone number!! MIRACLE! The other work order we got done was in Leesville and the other Sisters got her phone number as well! MIRACLES EVERYWHERE! Then we headed home for the day and had dinner where Sister Estes made us all Mole which was good.
Sunday we continued doing service with "the A team" of our district of missionaries, President McKay and his son Caleb who is about to start his mission next month and Christian who got baptized on Saturday! We did like 5 work orders today in Leesville! It was awesome! We got to meet so many cool people and be able to serve them! And everyone kept calling me a hard worker even the firefighter! I felt pretty cool jajaja ;) As we finished up, getting ready to have lunch, we were deciding where to go that would have AC. One couple we talked to said that they had keys to their church building and that we could eat there, so we did! They gave us a bunch of snacks and we even got to sing some hymns with them in their church building! Afterwards we drove to the Leesville building to have our own mini sacrament meeting with just the district and Christian. It was super cool and we even had a spiritual discussion about the Book of Mormon. Christian even shared his testimony and it's like he's been a member of the church his entire life. He has such a strong testimony of everything, it's amazing! Then we came home and watched the Young Adult Face to Face broadcast with Elder and Sister Rasband (event where this apostle answers questions for young adults). 10/10 recommend. It was really good and talked about the recent Restoration Proclamation about Christ's New Testament church restored on the Earth today, the prophet Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon and revelation. Also fun fact: that night I counted up my bug bites from just Sunday and my total was 38 bug bites on just my legs...fun...welcome to the South!
Gosh dang y'all! My testimony grows little by little every single day, it's crazy man! I've had so many experiences on my mission so far that have built up my testimony so much! I grow closer and closer to my Savior Jesus Christ by reading The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ every day. It truly does help build our personal relationship with Jesus Christ and I know that it contains the word of God. I know that by following the example of Jesus Christ can bring us true joy because I have seen it in my life and in the lives of others. I just love joy, the gospel and the Book of Mormon so much!!
Have a blessed week!
Smile because God loves you and remember that I love, love, love y'all too!
Love,
Sister Johnson
September Bike Mileage: 0.0 miles
August Bike Mileage: 46.9 miles
July Bike Mileage: 161.0 miles
June Bike Mileage: 61.6 miles
Pictures!!!
2. The district at domino's for dinner after service
3. Me doing my organizing job at the fairgrounds handing out meals :)
4. The fairgrounds service team!!
5. Companion selfie on the dock at the lake for Christian's baptism.
6. Christian's baptism in a lake!!!
7. Elder hanks demonstrating the size of spiders here in Louisiana
8. got to hold a baby snake we found while doing service on Sunday in a man named Ari's (short for Ariel) backyard
