Blog: Leap Year

This week was kind of a blur. We didn't have a ton of lessons so we
did A LOT of finding, but it was actually really great we saw some
really cool miracles! We talked to so many people particularly the
first half of the week since we didn't have any lessons until  Friday.
We actually did have one Monday but she ended up dropping us that
lesson. So we packed up our Book of Mormons and set out to find Gods
elect! And we knocked, and knocked, and knocked. And weren't able to
make return appointments. Met a lot of nice people, but it's Japan
they're all nice people (mostly). Then Friday we invited two of our
investigators to be baptized. One was very confused and the other said
she couldn't decide right now. Nooo! So Saturday we had junkais,
splits, and Sister Beautichofer (spelling?) and I went high into the
mountain of Kumamoto and on our way met a wonderful young Mom who made
a return appointment!! Then on Sunday my companion (who was very sick)
and I went and dendoued and we found Steve who is an athiest, and
wants proof of God. So we are bringing him an English Book of Mormon
next Sunday :D! Then that night we had a shokuji at the Semba family
who just got called to a service mission that day to the next area to
be part of the branch presidency. She made us pizza and shared so many
stories of how the gospel has helped their lives. They are truly a
couple who relies on God and have seen so many blessings because of
it. It was so good! And the pizza was so good! That was pretty much
this week. Sunday we also read one of my favorite talks by
President Uchtdorf "Summer with Aunt Rose". We met a lady on the
street who was 83 and the genkiest (enegetic) lady I have ever met and she was
talking to us, not much about the gospel, mostly about her rich
grandchildren and hot springs. But then she said something that
reminded me of Summer with Great Aunt Rose talk she said, "The secret
to my genkiness isn't in anything that I eat, or exercise it is all in
the heart. Humans are all about the heart." And hit me so hard. We
face so many challenges and happy times, but if we don't let joy,
hope, and faith direct and guide our lives we can never trust in God,
who is a God of joy, hope, and faith. I hope you all look at the
pathway you're walking in life right now. I hope it is filled with
bright colors, and peaceful sounds. We can choose to be happy
eventually, or be happy now. Even in snowy mountains, and pouring
rain, God's hand is in it all.
Happy leap year everybody!!!! Thank the crazy lady!!! She also told us
she goes on walks with her Mom. Yes, her Mom. She is a 104 year old
lady in Hiroshima, haha!!!
Love,
Sister Johnson

Us taking a selfie at the Semba's house. Masters shimai, me,
connett chourou, spencer chourou, semba shimai, semba kyoudai

Us by the ume tree in bloom :)

Sister Beautachofer shimai and I on splits

Hey ya'll! This week was amazing!! Full of challenges and miracles!!
I think on Monday we just relaxed on P-day. Now I need to start
pulling out my planner to even remember what happened during this
week. Then we had a lesson with our investigator mitsuyo-san who is a
very kind and interesting woman. She is not sure if she can enter the
church at this time, but we committed her to read and pray everyday so
that she can feel the love and power of God and help her along her
path little by little. She also asked our joint of she was pregnant,
not pregnant, whoops! But the joint is super cool, so we dodged that
bullet. But one of the less actives in our wards wife is actually
pregnant (and she is a non-member ;)) and we went and visited her on
Sunday and gave her snacks for her other two kids and prayed with her.
She said she was going into the hospital on Friday and when we were
waiting for a PI at the bus stop we see her walking down the street,
and still very pregnant. So we were like "Why are you here?" Very
logical question to ask. And she was like, I am going grocery
shopping, I went to the hospital today but they said to come in
tomorrow and I am going to have the baby and rest there.  And she
wouldn't let us help her... classic Japanese. But one of our members
ended up calling her and the baby was born safely, so we probably wont
visit this week, but the next :)
Then this week we had one of the area presidency visit. Elder
Yamashita. And it. was. amazing!! Him and his wife are SO sweet! And I
learned so much from the taikai! We learned a lot about how to get
baptisms, and thinking big. It was so inspirational and I felt the
spirit so many times. I have been reviewing my notes, and it was just
WOW!! I wish I was better at describing this, but maybe it is just
something you have to be at. I learned so much and truly know that
these people are called of God!
Then after that we had junkais. Which has been changed up a bit in the
mission. Now the sisters come to our area to go on splits. So sister
Willson from Australia came over and we saw so many miracles!!! Had a
lesson on the spot with this man/woman (dont know the gender quite
yet) who prayed so fervently that their work would go better and
thanks for introducing him/her to the missionaries. It was awesome!!
Then we met some P.I.'s. Unfortunately on Sunday though, all the
people we had committed to come to church didnt show up :(. But God
gives us miracles to outweigh our trials! On Sunday night when we were
dendoing we went pretty far out about an hour away from our apartment,
and we got lost so it took us like 2 hours. But when we got there we
were having no luck. So we prayed and werent feeling the area and went
down the hill closer to the main street. We felt this other apartment
on the otherside of the road and dendoued it until about the last
floor. When we knocked on Sakamoto-sans door. Who invited us in talked
about English and his family then told us he loved Christ and we told
him our message was centered on Christ. He said fantastic! But he had
one problem... too busy this month. But we are so excited to visit him
in March!! #JesusinJapan! Then when we came back it took even less
time so we had some extra time to dendo prayed and felt to go closer
to the college. And we felt this one apartment, again the last floor
almost the last door and met Hikari-san! Who prayed with us and made a
return appointment!! So many miracles!! Trials and miracles!! It's a
heavenly combination.
That pretty much makes up our week. We also had a sandwich party.
There was corn bread. Not that kind of corn bread. It was corn,
mayonnaise, and bread, toasted. :) We thought it was very funny.
I know the gospel is true and missions are the best!!! The Lord is
truly blessings his servants and moving his work forward!! Serve
someone around you!

Love,
Johnson Shimai

Us getting ice cream for breakfast before the Yamashita taikai!

I got this from Masters shimai. I thought everybody would enjoy it.

Add caption

Us on junkais!! (me, sato, masters, weller, willson, millet)

Dear people of the Americas!! This week was really crazy! First off to
start the week we made a goal to teach 20 lessons this week. Which
before we averaged about 7 a week. We called members, we looked
through less active books, we planned totsuzen lessons. And....
through the mercies of God and the atonement of Jesus Christ we made
it!!!! The last lesson we were scrambling around all day yesterday to
find, we taught a lot of totsuzen lessons but couldn't make return
appointments from them so they didn't count as lessons. So finally we
decided to visit the only close member to our apartment about 15
minutes before we had to go home. We knocked on her door... nothing.
So we started heading back decided to knock on her neighbors door. And
lo and behold she walks right out of the elevator!! God really pushes
to the end. I can definitely testify of that, but he always helps us
grow and see miracles and I can also testify of that!
We had some really good lessons this week as well. We have these three
friends from China that we are teaching. We taught them the message of
the restoration and I can tell mae yori mo..(more than before?) that
they have a stronger belief and testimony of God. We are trying to
help them find a stronger desire to want to learn more about this
message right now. So I am going to try and write down my testimony
about things so I can promise more specific blessings and they can
understand how it will bless their life.
We also taught Kiyomi-san who is this older woman with a handicapped
daughter. Her life has been a bunch of ups and downs until this point.
And she doesn't have a lot of confidence, but she has a desire to learn
more and to have that faith. And we are really going to try and help
her gain that faith! We were able to visit her twice, and finally able
to enter into her home instead of just teaching her outside, which was
awesome!
Also funny story this week. We were housing and ran into this
obaa-chan (old woman) and we could not understand a word she was
saying (Old people Japanese sounds a lot different than most peoples
Japanese). But she invited us into her home, and we found out that she
could barely walk, so we spotted her over to her couch where she just
like flopped down and she talked forever!! She asked where we lived
like 6 times and kept telling us her age which gradually got larger.
So she is somewhere between the age of 83-90 we think. And when she
talked some food came out of her mouth and landed on my companions
cheek. We couldn't stop our laughter, we are terrible people. But she
was super cute and although her timing wasn't in this life, I really
felt God's love for her.
This week has been a faith builder and a miracle manifester. I hope
you all know that you can't save a single person. Not a single one.
But I also hope you know that God takes care of His children, ALWAYS.
And I hope you understand that you need to be better than you are to
help people to reach a potential of being better than they were :)
I love being a missionary and I know this work is true!! Eat some
Chocolate on sale!!!
Love,
Sister Johnson

Blog: Happy Valentines

 This week was pretty crazy. We were on splits for most of it. So on
Monday we had p-day and mostly just walked around this giant shopping
center and ate McDonald's :)
Then Monday night Sato shimai (STL companion) went up to the Kumamoto
apartment and stayed the night so we could go up to MLC on Tuesday. We
took a really early bus up to honbu and had such a great meeting, but
my mind is so scrambled I will have to look at my notes to know what
we actually talked about, haha! But it was so great.
Then Wednesday Sato shimai and I mostly did planning, then we had
Eikaiwa that night which started out super awkward, but then ended up
being great! We played this game where we drew clothes on these model
people, haha.
Then Wednesday we had zone meeting, where Sato shimai and I talked
about Hope and activities :) Love learning about the Christlike
attributes. Then we went and ate indo curry! It's tradition!
Then this weekend we had some lessons and mostly dendo which went so
good. We are teaching these three Chinese friends, and sometimes it is
hard to get them to focus, but we watched the Hope of God's light and
it was super silent and they were still kind of joking around and
teasing each other but they answered the questions more seriously and I
could see the spirit working in them, and that was amazing. Then we
had another investigator who we made a baptismal date with, but it
turns out she lives in the other sisters area, so we passed her and
she came to church!! Yay!! Then I got a little sick Sunday but
slept it off and dendoed that night. It was super great week! Hope you
all have a wonderful Valentines day!!!!
love,
Sister Johnson

Kumamoto zone!! I wish I knew all their names so I could tell you
:) Ganbarimasu! (stanger nelson, delapaz, ishizu, young, hassel,
ngatai, connett, spencer, gorski, tofu, proudfoot. Sisters\ masters,
me, weller, sato, parmley, burnside, beautichofer, white)

Our zone again :)

Our zone again!!

Only half our zone...

Our Eikaiwa classes beautiful drawings :) The topic was clothing

Sister Masters first blackthunder ice cream

Blog: Transferring

This week was quite an eye opener for me. It started off really great. And like every other week has its ups and downs. First off, I would like to let everyone know I am transferring to Kumamoto, and am so excited, but extremely sad. Transferring always brings a broken heart, which breaks open to allow more love to fill it in. 

This week we had a really cool miracle. A new family just showed up at our eikaiwa. The Frank family. We actually don't know their last name, but we know the dads name is frank. Yes, he is from America. And he has 5 beautiful half children. And guess what, he wants his kids to learn the deeper meaning behind morals by learning about Jesus Christ! Although I will not be here to see it, I am so excited for my companion Lai-shimai and her new companion to teach them. To be honest, when the mission president called me, I felt really down-trodden... (I really couldn't think of any other word). Because I felt like I had not loved the people here enough and had done nothing for them. Then I heard the small voice in my head whisper, you can never love them enough. Which sounds so depressing, but isn't it so true. As being mortal in this life everything is full of limitations. But the things that matter the most, the things that truly have worth, have no limit. They are eternal and no matter how much we have it will not be enough. God and Christs love is unlimited to us too, always, when we choose to accept it and let it fill our lives. And although I am not sure what will come of my work in Kurume, but I know that my love can continue to grow for these people, and God`s love will always be here. So is it really so hard to leave the ones we love in the trust of the one who infinitely loves them. Of course it is, but I know I can do it with full purpose of heart because I love God. And He loves me even more. Important lesson learned. Hopefully I don't have to learn it again. 

I hope you all know I love you too. And next time I email it will be among my other brothers and sisters in Kumamoto, whom I love. :)

I hope January treated you well and cold! Cant believe it`s February already. Love you all!!!

Love,

Sister Johnson

This monk we found in the snow and stopped him and took a picture. His umbrella was broken. Haha only in Japan