JOHNSON, MEGAN: Post-Ida

Hola y'all!

BOOM another one!

On Monday we were still in lockdown in the Elders' apartment until noon. I called my family, actually responded to some people and played some card games. Then we found out that we could go to lunch at the church building at 1:30 with all the other Elders since we'd been stuck inside for 24 hours going stir crazy. The Elders were in charge of lunch and made chili dogs and nachos jaja but hey it was food. Then after lunch we played a quick game of chair soccer with everyone before the AP's kicked us sisters out. We went back to the apartment and decided to go shopping for more dresses and then we came back and chilled before going back to the church for dinner. Brother Green made us all Gumbo!! It was so good! I got to talk to some past Elders from the Monroe Zone which was fun but they're all serving in NOLA and were telling us how most of the roofs are missing, their stuff has probably gotten flooded then burned and flooded again...oh and there's a whale in Slidell...crazy stuff! It is so sad how much damage happened to the same people in New Orleans on the anniversary of Katrina (August 29). Then after switching name tags with people for fun (at one point I was Elder A'isea, the big Tongan dude in our district) we got to stay for the Elders' devotional. Elder Baxter conducted and I got to hear from some of my buds like Elder Cameron and Elder Hales. It was very spiritually uplifting and a great way to end the night!

Tuesday morning we woke up, packed up, cleaned up and headed out. We all went to Walmart (we went to 2 other Walmarts before finally figuring out which one all the other sisters went to...rip) to get the Elders a new supply of hand soap, toilet paper and stuff that we'd used up. Our companionship was in charge of bringing it back to their apartment and while we were there, the Elders came back so we got out and said bye. Then we stopped at Shipley's Donuts for breakfast and I sat in the same seat, at the same table as my very first transfer when Sister Farris had us come to the Shipley's in Alexandria before meeting President Amos! Crazy flashback of memories and one good custard filled donut. Then we made the 3.5 hours drive back to Collins. We didn't really see much damage or anything on our way back home which was good. When we got to our apartment it was 85 degrees! It looked like it had lost power for a while so we had to clean out the fridge and freezer a little bit then we basically spent the rest of the day doing studies and checking in with all our people to find out if they're doing good, and most of them were! T'was a nice relief from all the other times I've returned home after hurricane evacuation and my area looks like a war zone.

On Wednesday we didn't have transfers because they're postponed until next week so we were able to have an official last District Council as a district. It was good, I got to practice some Spanish with Elder Aldana (my first "Spanish teacher" in the mission jaja) and Elder Snapp (even though he speaks Portuguese) so that was cool and then Elder A'isea made us musubi, which is like sushi but with spam. Then we were still hungry so Sister Cropper and I went to Smoothie King and did our comp study there and then hit up Walmart for groceries before going back to Walmart-less-Collins jaja. In Collins we called a lot of people and then met up with President and Sister Sanderson (who we only met once our first week and haven't seen her since she got COVID) and had a little meeting with them for 2 HOURS! Man they can talk! It was all really good stuff and they are super missionary minded and are worried about this branch getting dissolved so they're trying to step it up and we told them how we can help. Then we came home and ate dinner and tried to figure out how we're gonna get to Hammond, LA for hurricane cleanup since all the members we called are either males, too old to work or don't drive in the dark. But I had the idea to see if the Hattiesburg Sisters could get us a ride so we messaged them and then like right after that our ZL's called us to tell us to do that and I was like "already done" so hopefully we can get a ride with them!

Thursday we had a stacked day that slowly got less stacked as the day went on. 2 of our appointments had to cancel and so only 2/6 lessons held. We studied in the morning then had a mission wide zoom call about all the Hurricane Ida cleanup logistics during lunch and then went up to Taylorsville for some lessons. The only one that held was Ora. We went over and as we pulled up she was in her car in the driveway and we thought she was leaving but then she just backed right up into her driveway again...kinda wack but Ora is a kinda wack old lady anyways so. We had a Restoration lesson with her outside and it just flowed so well into the lesson and was more like a normal conversation than a lesson which is always my favorite! Everything just led right into the next point and by the end we asked her to pray about the Book of Mormon and she said she already knew it was true! MIRACLE! Then we went to knock on Sandra's door, we met her brother last week who was super nice and chill and told us to come back. When we knocked, some lady answered the door and said she didn't know Sandra. We asked if we could share a message about Jesus and she said her and her husband "already know the Lord"...I'm 99.99% sure her husband is the brother we met last week and she was lying but whatever...then we drove home and went over to have a lesson with Grace but once again she was not feeling up to it and now claims that afternoons are bad for her (even though last week she said she doesn't feel good until late afternoon) ugh. But she gave us a cake?! Then we came home and basically just did weekly planning the rest of the night.

On Friday morning we helped our neighbor, Lynda, from California move some stuff because she's finally headed back to California. She drove us to her storage unit and opened it up and it was STUFFED FULL like from the floor to the ceiling with boxes and a bunch of other stuff this 60+ year old woman has acquired. I swear I moved like 15 boxes of just books out into the hall, along with a BUNCH of other stuff, only to have her then tell us to put it back into the storage unit...I was like "what?!" So I moved the boxes of books back into the storage unit but they weren't in the right place so I had to move them AGAIN...let's just say my back was dead by the end of those 2 hours, the storage unit still looked like a mess and this woman needs to start her library already jaja. She was super nice though and it was cool to see some of her old stuff like roller skates, an old TV, a dope traveling bag thingy, guitar, etc. Later that afternoon during my language study I decided to change my phone to Spanish which was going well until right after language study we did Ed app, which is just like some missionary training courses on an app...and it was in Spanish...let's just say I didn't get much out of it and my phone is currently in English jaja. Then we called some people and called Keith cuz I really wanted to see them again and we haven't seen them in so long. We'd never gone over in the evening though so we called and he said he was home, we asked if he'd still be home in 30 minutes for us to come over and he's like "hmm I imagine…" so we went over and they were home! Sometimes he's just a little stubborn, but I am too so it works jaja. We went over and taught them the Plan of Salvation and it was quite the interesting lesson...it was good but it wasn't great either it was just good...so here is what happened. We talked about our life before coming to earth and he thought that our life just started in the womb and read Jeremiah 1:5 to us. We explained our interpretation of that scripture meaning that God knew us before that as spirits. He was confused but I think he understood it after a while. Throughout the lesson I was pulling out so many Bible references it was crazy! But Keith really seemed to learn better from us explaining the scriptures and he had SO many good questions about everything! Then at the end of our lesson he asked us “what if someone accepted this plan but didn’t have the faith to get baptized?”...we were both a little shocked, thinking that he believed what we said but was scared to leave his own church. He is making some serious progress and I think he really likes what we have to say, even though he’s a little stubborn at times. Then we drove home, had dinner, packed up for our weekend in Hattiesburg and left.

Saturday morning we woke up at 4:30am to get everything ready for hurricane cleanup. We all got dressed, packed lunches and then loaded up in the truck to go meet the rest of our crew. The Hattiesburg YSA branch had organized everything so we met up in a Chevy dealership and decided who was going in each car. Us and the Hattiesburg sisters went with their Branch President in his truck. The dealership he works for let him take a new truck for hurricane cleanup that literally held like 50 gallons of gas and was huge! I had so much leg room in the back! And the weird thing was that I recognized President Tolbert...I think I was in a work crew with him last year for Laura. Crazy stuff! But he has done a lot of hurricane cleanup so they definitely had it down to a science! We drove to the command center in Hammond, LA to pick up all our equipment and work orders for the day then headed to the first one. Our first house had a massive tree down in the backyard. This first work order turned into 3 and we did both neighbors houses as well. Each one of them had giant trees covering their entire backyard. The dude on the left's house was so covered you couldn't get in past the front gate cuz there was so much tree everywhere and resting on his roof! Let's just say that we were there all day!! We did take a break for lunch and one dude did get the chainsaw a little too close to his knee (cut through his undergarments and everything! Luckily it was just a scratch and not bleeding too much!). We worked hard. After 7 hours of work we called it a day and headed back towards Hattiesburg. On the way back our crew picked up the Elders, Elder Aldana and Elder Kephart, since they needed a ride. Then President Tolbert took us all out for ice cream. We went to his favorite place in Columbia to get frozen custard all together. It was pretty good! Then we went and got some tacos from Taco Bell afterwards jaja yum.

Sunday we didn't have to wake up until 5am so that was nice. We drove to our meeting point at the dealership and had our own mini sacrament meeting which was very nice. Then we all headed out. We made the 2 hour drive straight to our first job site in Hammond, LA. It was for this dude that President Tolbert knew. The house got major flooded and stuff, he wasn't home so we didn't have permission to do a muck out but the neighbors next door were doing one (it's where they take out a couple feet high of sheet rock, all the flooring and furniture). We got a tree off the house and they tarped the roof. It kinda sucks because missionaries aren't allowed to be over 10 feet high so we couldn't get up there and help, but we sure did rake a lot of leaves! Then we drove around to a couple different places but nobody really had much for us to do. After a while we finally found a real job. We got there and had to take a lunch break first in the back next to the lady's pool. We ended up taking down a couple trees and one in the neighbors front yard too. After that we had one more work order then called it a day. Then we drove home, did our studies and went to sleep!!

Overall it was a pretty crazy week but it was so awesome that we were able to go down and do service for all those people in Louisiana who were affected by the hurricane. It reminds me of one of my favorite scriptures in Mosiah 2:17, “And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.” and that's exactly how it felt.

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,

Hermana Johnson

August Bike Mileage: 41.8miles

September Bike Mileage: 0 miles (just a little too busy with Ida)

Pictures!!!

1. Name tag switch with the Elders!

2. Shipley’s with Sister Cropper

3. Smoothie King

4. Visiting Grace