Hola y'all!
Sorry I'm literally so behind in my emailing y'all. But here's this week from like 2 weeks ago jajaja.
On Monday Sister Teague made pancakes for breakfast! Yum! As our first pday spent living in DeRidder we had to figure out how to do laundry...we went to a laundromat since there aren't machines in our apartment and the ones for our complex suck. So we loaded up the car with our dirty clothes, stopped by Walgreens for flu shots, of course, then went to the laundromat. It was wack, took a lot of quarters and only 1 other person came in. Afterwards we came home, ate lunch and went to Leesville for district pday, except it was just the Many Elders and Leesville Sister Trio. But we played Uno Flip and Mafia which was fun! After pday ended we went to meet the Partin family! They're both recent converts and have a daughter who is 11, but they don't want her to be baptized until she's older...BUT our welcome to their house was 8 DOGS!! That's right EIGHT dogs! Also a snake named Richard and a parrot named Pickles. I will now list the dogs' names for your reading pleasure: Potatoe, Chewbacca (Chewie for short), Biscuit, Gravy, Echo, Sandy, Coopa and Bear. Let's just say I was one happy camper covered in dog fur after that jajaja.
Tuesday we went to the post office to mail Dennis a Book of Mormon and saw Sister Rubin from church there! She said hi to us! Her family always runs out of church as soon as the meeting is over, sadly we didn't have a full conversation with her but it's nice to know she recognized us! Then we decided to go to this park (Sister Farris actually pointed it out to us), Veteran's Park, for some dot calling (calling the people we've met in our areabook) to try and get an appointment with ANYONE. About 5/20 people responded so that's fun. Then we came home and had dinner (and I sent in my mail-in ballot! Yay I voted!) before our lesson with the Jackson family. This was my first time meeting them and they are awesome! The mom, Janaya, clicked on our Facebook ad and she has 2 teenage boys, Assad the oldest and Ja'Ron. Janaya had read all the way to chapter 14 in the first book of the Book of Mormon! She had some questions about one chapter and so we read it with her and showed them a video explaining it more. Ja'Ron LOVED it! He saw how it applied to his own life and even clarified some questions he's always had. Even though he's the youngest, he's so eager to learn and to accept our message! It's amazing how prepared that family is to hear the gospel!
On Wednesday we had district council over Zoom. The whole mission could only travel 30 minutes from their apartment due to Zeta, soooo since the Leesville sisters are within 30 minutes away we drove up there to be with them! It was so weird that Leesville is a trio now without Sister Newby! Sister Hansen moved in with the other sisters and they made a mega couch for us to sit on! It was awesome! We even got to eat lunch with them! Then we went to our appointment with Sister Hancock, which she almost cancelled because of the rain (it was only raining a little bit) but I wasn't gonna let that stop us since we had to be in Leesville anyways for a dinner appointment. So I called her and told her we were STILL gonna come over and she was like...ok...we read Ether 12 in the Book of Mormon with her about turning to God for strength in overcoming our weaknesses. We discussed her goal to go to the temple and how she can stop smoking. She said she'll try and asked us to continue "not giving up on her"! She's so sweet! Then we went on Post for dinner at the Britt's. We had chili and crackers! Perfect for that rainy day! Then we taught the kids about the plan of salvation. 3 of them have been baptized, but Brother Britt's teenage son, Trace, hasn't. We're not really sure where he stands with religion, but he had some pretty interesting thoughts about what happens when we die...but Sister Britt was able to bear her testimony of the plan and the importance of temples in our lives which was cool. Then we drove back down to DeRidder for our lesson with the Jacksons! We also taught them the plan of happiness since they had so many questions about where we came from and where we're going. Janaya seemed a little hesitant about it, but Ja'Ron totally accepted the whole thing and described the warm feeling that came from knowledge of God's plan for him! It was amazing to see how much he trusts in God and wants to learn more!
Thursday we had our first lesson with Cecilia, a referral for a missionary visit. It went well? She was so surprised at how young we were and was super nervous in front of us. Eventually she opened up and told us about being drug free for a whole week and working with her boyfriend, Danny, as they both stop doing drugs together. She really wanted people outside of her situation to provide support too. We introduced the Book of Mormon to her as a source of joy and strength. She even shared a spiritual experience with us and said she'd tell her boyfriend about it! That afternoon we went to Ray's house to do service in his yard. He was pretty surprised we weren't wearing dresses and that we didn't bring male backup...don't worry y'all, we showed him how much work women can do! We weren't able to clean up his whole yard, but we got a lot of it done! Then we went to tell him we'd come back again and he was so happy! He may have been smoking something, but I've never seen him so happy! He even said he loved us and to text him when we got home safe! I think we're slowly warming up to him! Then we went to visit Brother Hutton and his mom who isn't a member, but loves the missionaries. It was pretty awkward (as are most conversations with Brother Hutton), but his mom was listening the whole time and even asked us to pray for her friends which was cool. Then we stopped by Walmart on the way home and Sister Teague was able to do ASL with a lady at the store! It was so cool!
On Friday we visited Valorey or Ms. Val as her friends call her. She told us she got off work for her "2 daughters coming over"! She's so sweet and we had an awesome Bible study with her about hearing the Spirit and deciding if it's a spiritual prompting or your own thought. As we left she said that she could be our "black mama" here in the South! She's literally just so loving and kind! Then we went to the park to call some people and Sister Teague got to talk to a lady cop that was there doing some k-9 unit training. She was super cool! Then the Leesville trio called us to invite us over to a member's house for dinner (they live within our ward boundaries, but don't want to leave the Leesville ward..we'll get them someday;). We pull up and it's actually 2 families, a brother and sister with both of their spouses and kids. So it was one of the little boys' 2nd birthday party and they were blasting some music outside. Those families are so cute though! They're actually from Tonga so I hope y'all can see where this dinner is going. They all lived on "island time" so food wasn't actually ready for like an hour after we got there jajaja. But they had us start off with pizza to "warm up our stomachs". Then when the BBQ came out we filled out plates with chicken, rice, potato salad and these noodle things. My plate had NO empty space! THEN they told us to go back for seconds (really thirds when you count the pizza) as the husbands kept bringing in plates and plates of meat to eat! They wanted us to keep eating more so I went over for a smaller plate of rice and noodles. THEN it was dessert time! There was a huge chocolate cake and ice cream, so we got our plates and the lady scooping the ice cream scooped like 3 scoops the size of my whole hand onto my plate! Remember this is already after about 4 plates of food! I thought I was going to EXPLODE! But I finished the WHOLE THING! Then we drove home and talked outside with our neighbors Sean and Josh for a bit. Sean thinks we're a cult and that Jesus was an alien...interesting guy...jajaja.
Saturday was Halloween! We went outside for exercise time in the morning and on the way back inside our apartment we got to talk to Sean and we even got his wifi password! While I should say Sister Teague got his wifi password jajaja. I think he's warming up to us! After our morning studies we went to the park to do some weekly planning. While there we received the nicest catcall I've ever heard, a group of boys playing basketball yelled to us "looking beautiful today ladies'' to which I yelled back "thank you"! After calling a billion people we went back home since we had to be inside by 6pm that day. We came home to Sean yelling at Vicki from the second floor about how she's a communist. We just walked on by into our apartment...The rest of the night we had dinner, finished planning and decided to take out the trash in hopes of talking to our neighbors more. As we walked out Josh's (the neighbor directly across from us) door was wide open and his friend Augusto was there holding it open (in his uniform because he's a correctional officer). We say hi and Sean sees us from inside (they've become instant friends I guess) and yells "my 2 favorite mormons!" (with a little more colorful language) He then proceeds to waddle out in a huge orange charizar Pokemon onesie as his Halloween costume. Just imagine a 27 years old, hardened military man who's like 5"3 come out in a onesie to give you a high five...it was pretty interesting and hilarious (I think he was a little Halloween drunk jajaja). Of course he made some jokes about us brainwashing him to join "our cult" before we left jajaja. What a fun apartment we live in!
On Sunday it was daylight savings so we got an extra hour of sleep! Hallelujah! Since it was the first Sunday of the month we had fast and testimony meeting at church. There were less than 30 people there, but 4 of them bore their testimonies (the Bishop, Brother Jones, and the Beardsleys) and us as the missionaries of course. At the end of the meeting a new member from the Leesville ward, Sister Landry, came up to us and said "there is much work to be done here" and we were like "YEAH"! So that's super exciting that she's willing to help us out with stuff and recognizes that the ward needs help. But we got invited to ward council (meeting with the representatives from each age group/teachers) to talk about what to do to best help the ward. We're also going back to the 2 hour block of church again! That's super exciting! Back at the apartment we called Brother Larimer, a member from the Lake Charles ward who moved up here temporarily while they fixed up stuff from Laura. We just called him to read a chapter from the Book of Mormon for about 30 minutes. It was cool. Then we called some more people before heading over to the Beardsley's house for dinner! Sister Beardsley made broccoli cheddar soup with bread and Brother Beardsley made chocolate chip cookies for dessert. They're such a cute young couple with their kids Eloise and Dean! They told us all about their engagement story that took 3 tries and Eloise just got baptized and is the smartest 8 year old I've ever met! Then we came home and got to talk to Sean again about all of our missionary rules and Sister Teague very awkwardly invited him to church...he said no, but we're still buds so it's fine jajaja. That night I ate pie and ice cream in celebration of my 7 month mark.
This was a good week and I'm super pumped up about it being November now. I mean there's winter, Thanksgiving and of course my birthday! It'll be quite a fun month indeed! I've been doing good and it was only like my second time getting up and bearing my testimony in church so that was fun. But it was a lot easier than the first time I did it because I actually truly believe in the words I said and they were my own, formed from my own personal experiences so that was super cool. I have a feeling it'll happen a few more times in this small ward, so I'm going to keep moving forward to build up my testimony and share it with everyone around me. :)
Have a blessed week!
Smile because God loves you and remember that I love, love, love y'all too!
Love,
Sister Johnson
November Bug Bite Count: 0 bites
October Bug Bite Count: 39 bites
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!!!
1. Sister Teague and I figuring out how the laundromat works
2. Selfie of Sister Teague and I with Ms. Val
3. Me next to a statue at the park we go to
4. Sister Teague and I with our dessert plate, after I had already eaten like a whole scoop
5. Sister Teague and I finished this whole box of cookies in 1 week!
