Katie's Mission - Apollo Beach - Transfer 2

Apollo Beach - Week 10 - September 23, 2019

FLAMLY IS FOREVER

Companion: Sister Bingham

First week of transfer 2 done! The biggest change is that we have elders in our ward now!! We are excited to make the work in Apollo Beach progress even faster! Elder Gottfredson speaks Spanish so that will be really nice as well. We had lots of people flake out on us this week but we also set up lots of appointments!! You win some, you lose some. But here's some we won..

First, the miracle family of four that we found last week.. we are teaching them! The daughter is in her 20s and she is especially interested but her parents are always there to. They loove having us over and say we can come over anytime. We had two lessons with them this week and have another tonight! She has class on Sundays and can't make it to our church but we are going to try to get her to the YSA ward in Tampa. She has been reading the Book of Mormon a lot. She is awesome. Please pray for her!

We found this old Polish man at the park one day. He was playing tennis alone so I asked him if he needed someone to play with and told him Sister Bingham could play! HA! She plays tennis though so she did awesome. He kept saying "beautiful, beautiful" when she hit the ball.

The highlight of the week was probably church. The meeting had just started and I was conducting the music. Then this lady walks in and Sister Bingham mouths "Is that Debbie?!" And it sure was! Debbie is this hilarious lady we are teaching who talks about God and Jesus alllll day long and has 37 Bibles around her house! She was taught by missionaries a while ago but didn't want to be baptized because she has already been baptized in a different church. (Its not the same!) But we are trying to work with her again and we are so glad she came to church because the members have helped sooo much! Right after Relief Society, Sister Tortosa came up to Debbie and introduced herself. And then invited us and Debbie to her house for dinner on Friday. Debbie was a little taken aback but accepted. Then Sister Hedin came up and asked when our next lesson is and if she can come. We didn't actually have a lesson planned but Debbie just looked at me so I planned another lesson with her on Wednesday! There is no way we could've gotten TWO lessons with Debbie without the members so woohoo!

At night we went to Come Follow Me study and dinner with the older single adults in our ward. I love the members in our ward they are sooo funny. We had great conversation about how Christ can strengthen our weaknesses and how it is hard to kneel down and pray when you only have one and a half knee caps haha.

One day when we were tracting, we started asking people what they were grateful for so they would write in our our grateful poster. We knocked on this one door and it was a cute family and their little girl came over and wrote FLAMLY. It was just adorable I'll add a picture. And we got an appointment with them this week!

Also if you haven't watched the first Book of Mormon video, GO WATCH IT! There is a new one coming out every Friday so we are super pumped. I love the Book of Mormon!!

Well life is good here in the sunshine state! Still very hot but people tell me it will cool down soon.

Hope y'all have a great week!!

Sister Johnson

Apollo Beach - Week 11 - September 30, 2019

I Saw The Ocean!!

Companion: Sister Bingham

Hello hello!

This week was full of miracles and awesome lessons. It was our first week of full bike which was an adventure! There is a shortage of sidewalks in Florida so we had to try to bike next to the crazy Florida drivers. Pray for us haha.

Also I finally saw the ocean. We live soo close to the water but I never see it so that was pretty exciting.

We saw some cool things this week:

MINO... we went to a neighborhood nearby to try to visit our friends-who-are-interested-but-literally-never-home and one of them was just sitting outside! His name is Mino. We randomly knocked on his door several weeks ago but haven't had much contact since then. So he tells us a lot of his family are members. And then he tells us that he was actually baptized when he was little and he wants to come to church! And THEN he tells us he wants to set up a lesson to teach his girlfriend too!! Wow! His records aren't in our ward so we had no idea he was baptized. We are excited to have our first lesson this week.

KAT... we had been biking for a while and were pretty far from home. We tried to visit some formers with no success. So we ended up stopping in the shade on the road in front of this lady's house to figure out where to go. A few minutes later Kat comes out and says she has been looking for a church. She also opened up a ton to us about what she is struggling with and she said "I don't even know why I told you that! Thank you God for sending them!" She is super excited to learn more.

CHRISTINA... last night we went to this suuper nice neighborhood in our area that we haven't really been to before. It is sooo cute and fancy y'all should all retire there. They all have little boats on the water behind their house and big porches with porch swings.. anyway we were stopping by a bunch of members we don't know and we stopped by Christina's house. She was home and let us in! She was so nice and we met her two little girls. She told us she was baptized when she was little but hasn't been to church since she was 12 and she wants us to teach her and her girls so they can come back to church!

SINDY... she is the 20 something year old from the family of four and she is on date to be baptized! We brought Luis (our recent convert who was baptized one month ago) to one of our lessons and he helped so much. He was able to relate to her really well and brought up how amazing his baptism was (yess!) We went over a lot of the commandments with her and explained how they are all from God. There are no random man-made rulea. She thought they all made a lot of sense.

I love that the commandments are really there just to help us. Imagine a world without commandments. That would be so hard! We wouldn't know how to live! I'm so grateful we have commandments to provide guidance and protection. The gospel is perfect and it really does make perfect sense.

Well we are counting down the days till general conference!! Hope everyone has a great week!

Sister Johnson

Apollo Beach - Week 12 - October 7, 2019

VLOGG

Companion: Sister Bingham

Hi! Hope everyone is doing great!!

This week we had zone conference AND general conference which was the best.

ZONE CONFERENCE was amazing as usual. It is so fun to see the Hollingsworths and all the other missionaries. They are the best! One thing I loved that was talked about a lot was helping people have experiences that will strengthen their faith and help them progress. After the lesson, we don't evaluate our teaching, we evaluate their experience! We want to help provide spiritual experiences to help them personally. ONE BY ONE.

& then GENERAL CONFERENCE too! Whenever President Nelson spoke I felt the spirit testify again and again that he is truly the prophet of God! & I don't know about all of you but I am pumped for next conference already. Let's go!!

My favorite lesson this week was with Christina and her 5 yo and 3 yo little girls. Christina was actually baptized when she was little but hasn't come to church since she was 12 and she wants to come back now. When we pulled up, the girls were waiting by the door. Christina said they have been so excited all week and kept talking about how pretty we were. & during dinner they kept asking when we were going to have a lesson. How cute! When we sat down they both brought their blankets and squished in between me and sister Bingham. We taught them about the Plan of Salvation. They liked that they could be with their family forever but I think their favorite part was helping us lay down the Plan of Salvation cards on the ground. Haha. Christina has so much faith and a huge desire to change to be in line with God's will. She is an amazing example! We can't wait for our next lesson.

One thing that helped Christina come back to church was that members of the church have always been there for her family. I have had so many people say that they haven't seen a church that is ALWAYS there to help like our church is. So keep being who you are and serving people like President Nelson talked about. That is the best missionary work we can do.

We also helped one of our recent converts move (out of our ward - sad) on Saturday. She is the one with the three little boys. As we were driving to the new house we sat next to Junior in the back. He took some cute selfies and vlogged a little bit on our phone. It was adorable! In his vlogs you can hear him explaining that we are the missionaries and we are nice people. & he turns to me and asks "should we tell them about the God book?" I am like "the Book of Mormon?" And he goes on to talk about how much he loves the Book of Mormon. He was soo sad to leave this primary but we promised him there is primary in his new ward too which put a big smile on his face.

Yesterday we knocked on this one door and let's just say I hope everyone is as happy to see us as the guy who was anxiously waiting for his out-of-state relatives to arrive. Haha sorry dude!

One more miracle.. we were all out of peanut butter (which is a huge deal if you didn't know) so I literally prayed for peanut butter and guess who sent some in a package? my amazing mother of course. Moms are in tune!

Love you all!

Sister Johnson

Apollo Beach - Week 13 - October 14, 2019

What Color Are You?

Companion: Sister Bingham

Hello!! BYU came to my mission this week to play USF. Luis the recent convert kept rubbing it in our face that he was going to the tailgate haha. Instead we helped people move all day and Sister Bingham and I repped both teams. We heard it didn't end well for the cougars:/

It must be October because Sindy is ghosting us! She has gradually stopped answering our calls and texts. We've brought her brownies and invited her to her favorite German restaurant. She was doing SO well before & we need to have contact so we can help her with whatever her concern may be. Please pray for her!

Other than that, it has been a good week. Sister Bingham and I gave a training in district council about managing stress on the mission and it was awesome! One thing we told them to do is ask their companion what color they are (green, yellow, orange, or red) so you can help then stay mainly in the green zone. There are actually cartoon pictures that show that the green zone missionary is happy and handling his stress well. And the red zone missionary is pulling his hair out and has his tie around his head and only one shoe on. Now all the missionaries are always asking each other what color they are haha.

We were on the phone with a member one day about a lesson and it ended up being super long. I was talking the entire time and at the end of the call she said "and say hi to Sister Johnson." *face palm* Haha everyone thinks this is Sister Bingham's phone even and we always tell them that we share a phone!

We went to Come Follow Me study with the older folks again this week. They are just the best. Whenever they refer to the past and say something like "..20 years ago.." (which they do a lot) brother john says "WELL HOW OLD ARE YOU?" and they all start cracking up. It is so funny.

We were talking about how God answers prayers and sister betty goes "I lose things all the time but I just pray to God. It always takes 15 minutes and then I find it." and another lady says "AND it is always in the place you left it!" The way she said it was soo funny Sister Bingham and I tried to not laugh out loud for the rest of the meeting.

We had a few recent convert lessons this week which was great! But we are kinda having a hard time meeting with new people. It can be exhausting to work so hard and not have anyone text back or keep appointments. But we are trying to trust in the Lord and we are finding joy in the the work! I loved how so many General Conference talks were about JOY. Even through trials and tribulations, we can find joy as we focus on the gospel of Jesus Christ. One quote by Elder Christofferson is "Joy comes from keeping Christ’s commandments, from overcoming sorrow and weakness through Him, and from serving as He served."

The gospel is so real and I'm learning so much! Have a good one y'all.

Sister Johnson

GOOD NEWS we have the car full time now since the other sisters got a new car. So we took them up to Tampa to get it and it was so pretty driving back.

Also we did some fun family history finding this week!

Apollo Beach - Week 14 - October 21, 2019

We Met the Pope (ft. Sister Hurley)

Companion: Sister Bingham AND Sister Hurley!!!

Yep, you read that right! My MTC companion and bestest friend got emergency transferred to Apollo Beach and we are now in a trio!! A series of events led President to pray and find out that Sister Hurley needed to come here. It was an answer to prayers for all three of us. I am so grateful for a faithful mission president and modern day revelation. My testimony has been strengthened that God is AWARE of us. He seriously knows how we are and what we need. He always has something better in store. I love the picture where Christ is taking the little teddy bear from the child but he has a huge one behind his back that the child can't see. Just when things get really hard, God gives us exactly what we need. One of my favorite scriptures is Mormon 5:23 which says "Know ye not that ye are in the hands of God?" God is good:)

He also just handed us new people on a silver platter. We met a family of 7 as we were walking around who said they would love to come to church. The dad has actually been taught before and read the Book of Mormon. They even named their son Mosiah! And they asked us if we do baptisms... YES THATS WHAT WE DO. We are excited to teach them!

We had a lesson with IRISH which went amazing. Her husband is a member and she has been coming to church every other week. They are a young couple and cannot wait to be sealed in the temple. Irish is soo excited to be talking the lessons. She loves the church and feels the Spirit so strong. She told us whenever she is having a hard day, she looks at pictures of temples. She feels so much peace and she has never even been there! I thought that was amazing. The spirit was so strong.

Sister Hurley and I celebrated our 3 MONTHS on Thursday! We went our favorite-family-ever for dinner. They are Catholic and their son is actually dressing up as the Pope for Halloween! He wanted to show us his costume and made quite an entrance down the stairs. We got to shake his hand and get a picture. It was awesome. They are coming to church with us next week!

Trio life is the BEST! Both of the Apollo Beach companionships are actually in trios at the moment so we had 6 missionaries at church on Sunday & the ward loved it haha. Christina and her little girls came to church! They loved primary. We also had a lesson with them that night and little Austyn remembered from a few weeks ago that I love the movie Frozen so she ran and brought me a Frozen blanket to keep me warm during our lesson.

Made my life.
Love you all!

Sister Johnson

Apollo Beach - Week 15 - October 28, 2019

One for the Sisters, Zero for the Elders

Companion: Sister Bingham AND Sister Hurley!!!

What a great last week of the transfer! We just got transfer calls and we are all 3 staying here. I love my companions and I love my mission and I love the people here in Apollo Beach!!

We taught a part member family we are working with. We are teaching the kids, Krisley and Kaiden, every week. We love them! It is pretty chaotic at their house with a whole bunch of family living in one house but we were able to get some time with the kids. I really got to know Krisley. She is 11 and the coolest person ever. We talked about how she was feeling about baptism and I explained why we do it and the blessings available to us. The spirit was so strong as I explained so many truths to her. She is getting more excited about the church. For their commitment, we made a cute chart with something for them to do every day this week. They loved it. (thanks mom, my chart skills are coming in handy!)

Wednesday we had zone service where we painted a food pantry facility and then had exchanges right after. Sister Hurley and I went to LITHIA with SISTER BALL! It was so fun and we learned so much. It honestly felt like a girls trip. At the end we kept saying "aw our vacation is over." Their area is struggling since they just white washed. We found a bunch of new people which was great!

We had interviews with President and Sister Hollingsworth! It was one of the best parts of the week. We always look forward to talking with our mom Sister Hollingsworth and President even tap danced for us.

We also had our ward trunk or treat & chili cook off this week. It was awesome because a lot of people brought their family and friends who aren't active. We are meeting with some of them this week!

The people in ward council think it is a competition between us and the elders. We have been handing around a ward missionary book to encourage members to have and record their missionary experiences and the people in ward council go "one for the sisters, zero for the elders" haha sorry elders! They are being transferred out of our area this week though so I guess we won. (on the other hand they were supposed to give talks next week so we'll see who they ask to replace them🤦‍♀️ haha)

We biked a lot this week and worked really hard with little success but it all payed off on Sunday night. We found so many families and people who were interested in our message! There is one super cute girl who just moved in and her name is heaven spelled backwards! (Nevaeh) she is super interested in coming to young women's and meeting with us. We are excited to teach her:)

I am so grateful for the Atonement. It is the best thing to teach. Jesus Christ is truly the center of everything we do. We can find peace and hope through Him. I am so grateful for Jesus Christ and I try to be more like Him every day. I am trying to keep my teaching centered on Christ because that is the message we share. I loved elder Holland's latest talk about that.

Happy Halloween everyone!! I know you are all freezing but here the problem is that the candy melts before you can eat it. Rip.

Sister Johnson