Katie's Farewell and Open House
It was Sunday morning when it really hit me that Katie was leaving. Chris made Christmas Breakfast and we enjoyed Family Church and then Mike took a few pictures of us before we headed to church. Our last family picture for awhile.
It was pretty special that Katie and Daylee were assigned to enter the MTC on the same Wednesday and that they could share both their farewell and their open house. A tender mercy for sure. Katie spoke first and did a great job. Daylee did great as well. It was fun to talk to so many people after Sacrament Meeting — even President Rogers was there to hear the girls and meet with them afterwards.
Katie’s talk - Choose you this Day
Good morning! My name is Katie Johnson. I am serving in the Florida Tampa mission and I could not be more excited. I leave for the MTC on Wednesday. I thought this week would never come and it is finally here.
Daylee and I are actually the last 2 out of our group of 7 best friends from BYU to leave on missions so it is very special for us to be here getting ready to finally join them in the mission field. :)
I was asked to speak on the scripture Joshua 24:15, which says,
“Choose you this day whom ye will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
I love this topic and it is a very popular scripture especially in the South where I am going so that is fun.
I first wanted to share a little bit about how I decided to serve a mission: I have known for a while that I wanted to serve. Throwback to when I was 12-- I feel like that is the age that I really started to grow my own testimony. Between youth firesides and devotionals, young women’s and mutual and learning so much from my parents and siblings at home, I felt that this was the true church. Because of that testimony, I read my scriptures and prayed and did my best to do what was right as a teenager.
I remember getting the impression to serve a mission a few times. I remember one specific time I was a sophomore or junior and I was reading scriptures on my bed and I just had the thought that this was something I needed to do. I just knew I was going to serve a mission. I remember feeling peace and feeling really happy and excited about that decision and I actually wrote on a sticky note by my bed ‘I’m serving a mission! :)’.
I am grateful that I had been growing my testimony ever since I was young so that I was trying my best to keep the commandments and I was in the right places at the right times to be able to receive that revelation that I needed. I am also beyond grateful for my parents, who decided early who they were going to serve. They have been the best examples and biggest supporters.
—My life has already been SO blessed by choosing early to be on the Lord’s side.
What does it really mean to Choose to Serve the Lord?
I think it means to use our agency to follow Jesus Christ and help with the gathering of Israel. {I am so grateful that we have agency so we can make these decisions for ourselves.}
From the talk Choose You This Day, Elder Renlund says, “We need to choose whom we will serve. The magnitude of our eternal happiness depends on choosing the living God and joining Him in His work.”
I also found this awesome scripture… 2 Nephi 31:13 says,
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, I know that if ye shall follow the Son, with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent, repenting of your sins, witnessing unto the Father that ye are willing to take upon you the name of Christ, by baptism; and then can ye speak with the tongue of angels, and shout praises unto the Holy One of Israel.”
You’ve all heard the phrase, ‘the early bird gets the worm.’ I think this kind of goes along with this topic but in this case, because of the Atonement, there is a worm for all of us when we come unto Christ. However, we will be hungry longer if we wait. So it is to our benefit to come sooner. ...more on that later.
One thing that really stuck with me from seminary—and anyone who had Brother Goss can agree— is that we alwayyys talked about how we need to choose to act and not be acted upon.
I think about that all the time now. Satan wants us to be lazy and not take the steps to follow Christ. I love the idea of doing the spiritual work and acting.
Elder Renlund said,
“So, choose faith in Christ; choose repentance; choose to be baptized and receive the Holy Ghost; choose to conscientiously prepare for and worthily partake of the sacrament; choose to make covenants in the temple; and choose to serve the living God and His children. Our choices determine who we are and who we will become.”
If we do nothing, we will be acted upon and Satan will be able to get to us. Let’s act and make a conscious choice to follow the Lord—I know it will take some work but it will be so worth it.
In his talk, “Choose You This Day”, President Monson gave a formula to guide us in making choices. It is…
Fill your minds with truth, Fill your hearts with love, Fill your lives with service.
I love how simple that is and that we can know if we are doing these things we are definitely choosing the Lord’s side.
Not only should we choose today, but we should choose every day to follow the Lord.
President Eyring said,
“a morning prayer and an early search in the scriptures to know what we can do for the Lord can set the course of a day. We can know which task, of all those we might choose, matters most to God and therefore to us.”
Doing our scripture study and prayer in the morning is a great example of choosing to follow the Lord each day. I have noticed when I do those things in the morning, I am more confident, I have the Spirit with me, I am more Christlike, I have more opportunities, I make better choices, and my day usually goes better.
President Monson said,
“Whenever I have a difficult decision to make, I have looked at that picture [of Christ] and asked myself, “What would He do?” Then I try to do it. We can never go wrong when we choose to follow the Savior. Some choices may seem more important than others, but no choice is insignificant.”
So choose this day to… serve, repent, prepare for a mission, develop strong relationships with your family, do Come Follow Me, and put yourself in as many positions as possible to feel the spirit to solidify your testimony. We all remember last general conference when President Nelson told us that, “time is running out.” We need to strengthen our testimonies now because with the second coming fast approaching it is only going to get harder to discern right from wrong. Now is the time to choose which side we are on.
Choosing to serve the Lord now will also make our lives easier.
One time my uncle was driving through the mountains and it started snowing. The roads were starting to get bad but he wanted to get home fast so he kept going. Some patrol officers were pulling cars over and telling them to put chains on their tires. My uncle pulled over but then decided he would just keep going and that he was fine to drive. So he kept driving with no chains. ...He eventually made it home but it took him a lot longer to get home than it should have. He was stressed out during the drive and his car kept sliding. His journey home was very difficult. And the thing was, he had the chains in the back of his car the whole time. So if he would have just heeded the patrol officers advice, he would have had a much easier and safer journey. The same goes for following Christ. If we choose now to follow the Lord and keep His commandments, we will have a much easier and safer journey throughout this life.
I’ve made and still make mistakes all the time, but if I hadn’t decided to follow Christ until later in life (or put those chains on) I would have had a harder time learning from those mistakes, repenting and I’m not sure if I would’ve been prepared to serve a mission.
I also want to note that we aren’t the only ones affected by our decisions - it can hurt those around us if we choose to take the more dangerous path.
The wonderful thing about this gospel is that we can always come back and repent. I am so grateful for that. But if we decide now to not make those bigger mistakes we will save ourselves the longer and harder path back to God. We will still encounter hard things, but the sooner we choose the Lord’s side, the more blessings we will receive andthe more we will have the spirit with us. We will have more peace and joy and our lives will be happier and easier. And most importantly, we will make it to our goal which is returning to our Heavenly Father in the Celestial Kingdom.
Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ want each of us to come unto them and they are waiting to bless us.
President Henry B. Eyring promises us that if we choose to serve the Lord this day we will
“feel His love … and grow to Love Him more.” He says, “You would not want to delay receiving that blessing.”
One of my best friends at college is Annie and she recently left on her mission to Uruguay. Our parents were actually also best friends at BYU. A few months ago Annie said to me “ I bet we could get our moms to take us on a girls trip before we leave” so we started a group chat with our moms that night asking about a girls trip but thinking it wouldn’t end up happening. Sure enough, we just went on a little trip with our moms to California right before Annie left on her mission and it was so much fun. Her brother Spencer who is also at BYU with us and is Ryan’s roommate, later said ‘how come mom doesn’t take us on a trip like that?’ and Annie said, “You didn’t ask. We just asked and they said yes.”
Similarly, Heavenly Father really really wants to bless us, He is just waiting for us to come to Him and ask.
Recently when my family was doing Come Follow Me, or as they like to call it “family church”, something we talked about really stuck with me--we were talking about how Jesus wants us to come unto Him and He wants to help us. We just need to take action and make sure we are keeping the door wide open for Christ so we can receive His help in our lives. I love that imagery. This has stuck with me as I have been trying to do things each day that will push that door wide open. The sooner we choose to let Christ in, the happier we will be.
To close, I want to read two verses from one of my favorite hymns, Come Unto Jesus.
Come Unto Jesus; He’ll surely hear you,
If you in meekness plead for is love.
Oh, know you not that angels are near you.
From brightest mansions above?
Come unto Jesus from every nation,
From every land and isle of the sea.
Unto the high and lowly in station,
Ever he calls, “Come to me”
I have so much to learn and I am so excited to grow on my mission. But I do know that this church is true. I know that Heavenly Father knows everything about us and our lives and He loves us all no matter what. He truly cares about what we are going through and he is anxious to bless us!. I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and died for all of us. He loves us and wants us to come unto Him. When I put in the work to come unto Christ, I see a huge difference in my life. I know that if we choose now to follow the Savior it will be so worth it. I am so grateful to have the opportunity to serve a mission. I’m anxious to serve the Lord and the people of Florida. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
I got a few of the Seven Sisters pictures printed for the Open House and put them together on my dining room table. So many people commented on them or asked questions. It was so fun to tell them all about these amazing and supportive girls. So proud of all of them. : ) Excited for Daylee and Katie to finally join the ranks.
Ryan headed back to Provo after church. I wish he could have stayed longer but he couldn’t miss any more classes.
We had salmon, cauliflower rice and roasted vegetables for dinner and then played a few games before getting ready for the evening.
We hosted an Open House for Daylee and Katie on Sunday night from 6:00-8:00. It was so fun to talk to everyone who came. We are grateful for so many friends who love and support Katie. She is one very loved girl. Fun to see the Jacksons, Theurers, Pattersons, Seaquists, Gaskills, Hammonds, Eddings, Harveys, Nielsons, Egberts, Kirkhams, Richins, Hansens and more. And fun to have Grandma Johnson and Mike and Carly here as well.
We had several friends stay until 9:00. After they left we played another round of Fibbage — Enough About You and then some Hand and Foot with Grandma, Mike and Carly. It was fun.
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On Monday Mike and Carly headed back to Utah. Chris and I helped Katie go through all of her things and organize them into college bins, hand me downs for the girls and mission stuff. We got a lot accomplished and I’m glad we tackled it today instead of waiting until Tuesday. At 12:30 we headed to Target with Grandma and the girls and accomplished some pre-mission shopping and some pre-trek shopping simultaneously — which was nice. Then Grandma treated us to lunch at Biaggi’s. Katie and I were able to shop for a bit and figure out the last of Katie’s needed mission pants. We ended up getting most of them at Banana Republic. I hope they work!
Monday night Katie wanted the Jacksons, Theurers and Richins to come for dinner. So fun to be together. Of course our Katie girl wanted nothing more than a couple parties before she left. Before the Richins left we sat in the family room and each of them took a turn to tell Katie what they loved about her. They are such great people and I love their example and love for my kids. Lizzy, Andrew and Sarah did a great job expressing their feelings — and it was wonderful and a little emotional to hear Scott and Amy share their feelings as well. We have such wonderful friends.