Hola y'all!
Well this was quite the interesting week full of accidentally leaving our zone, getting ringworm from who knows where and getting transfer news...read below to find out the details.
On Monday we went down to Gulfport for pday with the district. It was Elder Back's birthday so we met up at the church, the Gulfport quad of sisters stole their house keys and went to their apartment to decorate it for his birthday while we stayed at the church with the Elders. We played phase 10 and only got to like phase 5 but I won so that was fun. Then the sisters got back and we played volleyball, some intense 3 v 3 soccer and then chair soccer (I'd never played it before but everyone has a chair and that's a goal, so you're always on offense and defense trying to kick everyone else's chairs). It was a good pday. Then we came home and kept on calling everyone in our areabook since this week our zone is trying to find a LOT of new people, like 10 per companionship (and we only just found our first new person ever last week)!
Tuesday was a pretty uneventful morning. But I was hecking SORE from our soccer pday activities! And I found 34 bug bites on my back side so that was fun (don't know how those got there)...but that afternoon we were about to bike to the library for service and I pulled out my bike and the back tire was flat again! Bruh what am I supposed to do without a bike?! ...so we walked...then Tracy had to cancel our weekly lunch so we made a frozen lunch instead jaja. Then we finished calling our ENTIRE areabook (all the contacts we have in our like missionary phone book)! And only 2 people responded...oof...then we called everywhere in town for service opportunities and all of them said they were booked until September...so that was a fat rip...luckily we had Addiction Recovery that night at the church with our members. It was good and was about submitting your will to God's which was cool to think about how God has literally given us EVERYTHING but our will is the only thing we can really put on the altar. It was good stuff.
On Wednesday we had district council and I was giving the discussion on funding so I was a little stressed in the morning preparing for that. We also had last minute car inspections so we had to stop by the car wash on our way to Gulfport. My discussion turned out alright, luckily Sister Quick likes to talk so she answered my questions and got the discussion going. After we got back from District Council we had our companionship study before we headed over to meet Angie (someone previously taught by the missionaries) on our bikes (well I was on Sister Quick's bike cuz mine still has problems). We got there and met her husband who said she wasn't home yet so we started talking to him and as we were talking Angie pulled up! Her husband was definitely more interested in talking with us though than she was...but she had like 6 kids to handle too. After about 30 minutes we had met the whole family when the 2 teenagers rolled up, their Uncle Robert, some Pastor and a bunch of other friends in the neighborhood pulling up to say hi. But before we left we were able to say a prayer with them as a family...and the Pastor...and schedule a time to come back and share a message. They were super nice and had lots of stray cats. After dinner we went to North Hills Baptist Church for Wednesday night service but no one was there...so we went to the Church of God and there was a lady there who was confused why everything was closed. We offered to do a study with her right then but she was like "which church yall with?...the Mormons? *insert eyebrow raise*" and we told her that was our nickname and she said no...oof. So then we drove to 5 other churches (all less than 5 minutes away jaja) but they all seemed to be closed. Sister Cropper was like "is there some Baptist holiday we don't know about?!" Jaja it was pretty funny. So we decided to knock member doors and ended up talking to this less active member, Cody, for 30 minutes about his dogs, streaming twitch, his Gerber baby, masonry, him getting fat, etc. just the normal Southern things. But we offered to do some service for him so hopefully he'll reach out to us.
Thursday morning we had our monthly vehicle training meeting. Someone got in an accident and shared what to do if that happens...freaky stuff man. We went out to lunch with one of our members, Kristy Kilgore, at McAllister's (literally the only good restaurant in town that you can sit down at). I got a sandwich and spud (loaded baked potato) which were bomb and we got to hear all the Kilgore family tea jaja. Then we came home and started weekly planning when we got to like step 6/13 and were so tired! We decided to take a pause and took some fat naps before coming back to finish weekly planning. It's just been a long week man and 2 of our appointments had already fallen through so...rough stuff. We basically had dinner, finished weekly planning and did some training stuff for the rest of the night since our dinner appointment with a member fell through too.
On Friday we woke up at 5:30am!! Usually missionaries wake up at 6:30am and are asked not to "raise God's standard" by waking up any earlier jaja. But we were planning on going to Bishop's Storehouse (where we basically pack up people's grocery orders from the church and put them in people's cars) at 7am in Gulfport to surprise our district for the last one of the transfer. So a member, Sister Wood, agreed to drive us to Bishop's Storehouse if we met her at 6am at the church. So we did, we all piled into her truck (which was way to small for my cramped legs) and got going. She told us how she was taking a "new way" she hadn't gone before. We got on the highway and started going north which I thought was strange since Gulport was on the coast, so South from us,but I thought she was taking a new detour or something...then we all finally had the courage to ask and she was taking us to the Bishop's Storehouse in Hattiesburg not Gulfport!! We started silently freaking out because that was outside our zone and to leave your zone you need special permission from President Amos...so we quickly sent him an email explaining what was happening. It was kinda hilarious seeing all the missionaries in Hattiesburg when they saw that we were there, they were so confused. It was great though, reminded me of when I did it during hurricane season last here in Biloxi. By the time we got back home it was 10am and I felt like it should be like 6pm, we were all SO tired! But we got ready for the day, finally ate breakfast and did our personal study. Then we had a "cross study" with the AP's and another companionship of sisters training. It's like a little study with the 6 of us where the trainees do roleplays and everyone gives feedback. Although the last time I did a cross study was with Sister Lynch back in like December and we had to do a roleplay as a companionship, but today they made Sister Cropper do it all by herself which kinda freaked her out. But it was good cuz the AP's stressed how important it is to practice and take roleplays seriously, which she kinda needed to hear...so good stuff! The rest of our day was spent fixing my bike. I had to figure out how to find the hole in my bike tube then patch it up and put the tire back on. Sounds simple enough right?! Well as I was waiting for the patch stuff to settle down I was trying to take my back tire off and it didn't have a quick release so I tried loosening the wheel nut but that sucker would NOT budge. The wrench I was using was slowly just stripping it down and none of the quad could get it loose. We ended up calling our landlord, taking the bike to his work and using his wrench to loosen it, then taking it back home. MIRACLE for the landlord Mr. Purvis. Then I had to take the tire off, replace the bike tube with the one I patched up (hopefully correctly), get it back on the tire and back on the bike. Man my hands were filthy after all that. We'll have to see how it holds up this week...anyways after that whole mess we all, as a quad, went to Walmart to set up a little booth. We used our little outdoor table and poorly drawn signs to set up a booth outside our car in the Walmart parking lot. We had a "Honk for Jesus" sign that was particularly successful. And since there were 4 of us we took turns sitting at the car while the other companionship walked through the parking lot handing out Jesus material (aka a bundle of pamphlets, a Bible and a Book of Mormon) until we ran out of Bibles. It was pretty awesome! It was also hilarious cuz when me and Sister Cropper went through the parking lot for the last time, we had 3 bundles to give away. Sister Cropper gave away one and then I asked like 5 people if they wanted free Jesus stuff and they said no. But when Sister Cropper asks the next 2 people using exactly what I said, they say yes to her. It was hilarious man! Don't know what was off with me but I did get us an appointment with one of those people so fat MIRACLE! His name is Lindell and he said that he already read the Book of Mormon but got tired of it like the Bible. So I was like "maybe that's because you gotta study with someone?" And he was like "mmhhm maybe?!" Oh how I love being a missionary!
Saturday morning we were all anticipating getting transfer news (when President Amos adds the transfer boards up on the shared mission google drive)...and then they came! Also keep in mind that I've only been training Sister Cropper for 1 transfer and they white washed us into Wiggins so we totally thought we'd be staying together in Wiggins...until we saw the transfer board without our names in Wiggins...the quad was gone and it was just Sister Smart and her next companion...meaning we got transferred! But what I didn't expect was that we got transferred together to Collins, Mississippi (which is literally just like 45 minutes north of us (guess we're unexpectedly going north again jaja) and we saw the Elders THAT day before when we accidentally went to Hattiesburg jaja)!!! So we're pink washing (what they call white washing an area that's been an Elder area into a Sister area) into Collins and staying companions. Literally so crazy. I'm really excited to stay with Sister Cropper and go somewhere new, kinda sad to do a one and done (only being in an area for 1 transfer) in Wiggins though. I was also a little sad to find out that they assigned 3 Spanish-speaking sister missionaries (which hasn't happened in years!!) to this mission (and we have 3 Spanish-speaking sisters, which are me and 2 others that came out with me) but I'm not training one of them...they are opening a Spanish-speaking sister area in New Orleans (sisters have never been there before) but one of the sisters is training 2 missionaries...which I can't help but think she be my trainee...it's really weird and I know Sister Cropper must need me and I love her, but it's hard to think I could have been in New Orleans speaking Spanish. BUT I know that God has a plan for me and I'm holding on to that! The rest of the day was kind of a mess...we were all so distracted during our personal study thinking of transfer news, then we tried going to a craft fair but it wasn't there. We went to lunch with Tim, this recent convert whose been MIA for months since he's a truck driver, and his mom at McAllister's. He was saying how he wants to "light a fire under the Wiggins branch" and really wants to get things going. It was awesome! Then another member, Sister Bounds, joined us in our discussion about getting more branch activities and things for youth going. It was so hype! Then as we were leaving Sister Bounds looked at me and said "you have ringworm"...I was like what the heck is that?! I have a worm in me?! A parasite?! What?! Basically I had this bite on my collarbone that started getting bigger and had a ring around it, AND the night before I asked my quad mates what I should do if my bug bite was peeling. They didn't really say anything or care...jaja but now Sister Bounds was saying it's ringworm! Of all the things that could happen to me man! Don't worry we got me some cream so hopefully it will go away, but no one will touch me because I'm highly contagious...oof. Later that day we had asked Lindell, from Walmart, if he could meet us today before transfers happened and he texted us while we were on the way to get my cream that he was at the park and could meet "now". So we quickly planned a lesson and went to the park to teach him. It was so good. He even had his wife on the phone from in prison (and we're technically not supposed to teach people in prison but Lindell is the one who put her on speaker). We read 1 Nephi 1 and talked about how it applied to him using the new roleplay from Brother Lee Donaldson in the missionary department. It was awesome and Lindell really opened up a lot about what he's been through (straight up shows us his mugshots) and seemed excited to learn more. So dope. Then that night we had dinner with Ronny Kilgore, a member, and his sister Sister Shiryln Kilgore. We had tacos and talked, they are literally so hilarious and weird but awesome. Gotta love the Wiggins branch!
Sunday morning we went to church and got to say goodbye to all the members. It was kinda sad because we really only got to go to church like 3 or 4 times in the branch and didn't get to know all the people that well. We're still pretty close with some of them though and it was sad to say goodbye. Basically the rest of the day we had our studies, tried to stay awake, I had a Trainer meeting and we contacted some people before going over to the Shiffer's for dinner. The Shiffers are this cute little grandma and grandpa that showed us all their picture books and the crazy stories that went along with them and had their daughter, Sunny, and granddaughter, Sydni, over too. It felt like a mini hangout at the Johnson house for Christmas or something jaja. It was fun and we had waffles and omelettes that we ate on TV dinner tables in their living room. They are so sweet and imma miss all the crazy, weird, quirky people of Wiggins. That night we were all waiting for Sister Smart to go to bed (because it's her birthday the next day) so we could decorate the place with birthday decorations (and I'm talking 2 things of streamers hung from the living room ceiling and hallway, like 40 balloons, a birthday banner and seriously more streamers than there should be room). Usually she goes to bed early but that night she stayed up late so we were all like "where are you going to bed?" as we each tried to stay awake jaja...I think she eventually caught on lol.
To finish this email off I just wanted to talk about the hope that we can have in Jesus Christ. In the Book of Mormon it says in Ether 12:4 "Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety of hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God." I really like this verse because to me it means that when we put our faith in Christ, there will always be hope for better days. We may be going through some hard times, but Christ has walked through those hard days already and knows how to help us. He also knows that it won't always immediately get better the next day, but that's what Jesus is for! I know that He provides us with the peace and comfort we need to endure to the end when we turn to Him.
Have a blessed week!
Smile because God loves you and I love, love, love y'all too!!
Oh and remember that "we did not come this far only to come this far"!
Love,
Sister Johnson
July Bike Mileage: 36.6
Pictures!!!
1. ZDay district pics from last week
2. ZDay zone pic from last week
3. Me after patching and replacing my bike tube
4. Comp picture in front of giant Dr. Pepper can
5. Quad dinner at Ronny Kilgore's and Sister Kilgore (his sister) came too
6. Comp selfie in the car
7. Snuck a selfie with our Branch President Francis
