June 25th. 2014

Hello everyone!!!
Sorry for such a crazy short email last week, the time really got away from me somehow!

This week has been absolutely nuts!! So transfers are tomorrow but the good news is that both Sister Jensen and I are staying! We were so excited because things are super good and we have so much fun together! I have learned so much from her already and I am so excited to just keep learning more!!

Updates
Midge/Victor- We taught them the Word of Wisdom and committed both of them to baptism. They both agreed so now we just have to help Victor quit smoking! He has already done it before but is having a lot more trouble this time. But have no fear, I know he can do it with the Lord's help!


Erick-He came to church again!! It has been really hard because his girlfriend is being really difficult and they are having problems. We taught him the Law of Chastity the other day and he agrees with it and appreciates it a lot. The hard part is he is currently living with his girlfriend who he does not want to marry, he has just stayed with here all these years for their 3 kids they have. It was hard because Erick knows he needs to live the law of chastity and he really wants to be baptized so now he has some really big decisions that need to be made. He is doing so great though and has a super solid testimony of like everything we have taught him. He is just so amazing and we absolutely love teaching him!


John/Nicole-Unfortunately we haven't seen them for awhile but they still like meeting with us and love coming to church. They just aren't making it a big priority right now but we will help them with that!


Rebecca- She is new. The Elders found her the other day but technically she is in our area so they gracefully handed her over. We met with her yesterday and she super duper awesome! She really wants to come to church this Sunday and is excited to learn more from us! We are meeting with her tonight so hopefully things will go well!!


Lisa Morris-She is the wife of a member. She really wants to be baptized. Unfortunately she has to quit smoking and has been struggling but lately she has been staying fairly strong and we are doing everything we can to help her with that. She is also having problems with her husband because he is abusive so she has some big decisions to make but she loves us and I am so grateful to be able to be there for her when noone else really is. She is super awesome and I really want to help her finally get baptized! We are re teaching her the lessons and so far it is going great!


Becca- She has been meeting with the sisters for quite a while! Unfortunately her husband won't really let her get baptized but we have still been meeting with her and keeping her strong. She has a super solid testimony of the Book of Mormon and she surprised us by coming to church a few weeks ago. The other day, she said she is seriously considering baptized and she is just praying super hard that things will work out with her husband and that she will be able to be baptized soon!


Billy Wayne- We met him the other day and he was super duper interested. He said he has seen missionaries his entire life but none have ever stopped to talk with him, we were the first ones. He is a single dad of a 7 year old and he said he really found his relationship with God when the mother of his child took off a few years ago and all of a sudden he was alone. When things get hard or he gets frustrated, he goes into the other room to pray and that's what gets him through.

When we taught him the first lesson, he cried at the end because he felt the Spirit so strongly. He just kept thanking us for our time and our Spirit and our knowledge. He basically already believes all of it and is super excited to read the Book of Mormon and come to church. He is just super nice and sincere and I am so excited to teach him. He is one of the most prepared people I have ever seen on my mission!! :)


Tracy-We are still working with her. Unfortunately she has been receiving a lot of anti lately from everywhere and she has had a lot going on in general. She is super sweet though and needs us so badly!! I love her so much because she is strong and she doesn't even know that much about what we believe in but she stays strong and ignores all the anti because she likes us and likes the Spirit we bring with us! It's the coolest thing ever and I love being able to help her and be there for her!!


We have a few other people but those are our top ones and I am running out of time!!

Things are super duper good lately! I have been learning so much it's ridiculous but I absolutely love it!!!

I love you all and pray for you frequently!!

Love always, Sister Britni Johnson :)

Clippers game

 We made Elder Paulsen (one of the elders serving in our ward) a birthday candy bar card!

Brother Baber- our ward mission leader 

Our awesome investigator, Erick

Banana ice cream pops that you can peel!! 

The joys of painting!!

Tessa and Brandi came to visit me and we had a picnic. 

This is me and Noelle swinging together!

Waiting out a horrible rainstorm,
 trying not to get completely soaked!

That same crazy storm

 My awesome quote wall! Primarily thanks to Grandma Bentley! :)

June 16th, 2014

Hello!

This week was crazy!!! Things are so good!!! :)

 Brandi Chatterton, the one who I taught in Xenia, her mom and brother were baptized this last weekend and I was able to go and see it! It was super awesome and I am so glad I was able to go! :)

I don't have a lot of time! But things are still great!! I love you all and I will write more next week!!

Love, Sister Britni Johnson

At clippers game

At Brandi's baptism

June 9th, 2014

Hello everyone!!

Happy Father's Day Daddy and Gramps!! I hope you both have an absolutely wonderful day and I love you both immensely!! :)

This week has been absolutely crazy!!

Things are just going so great right now!! Also this week is mini missionaries. So basically any youth within our mission boundaries between the ages of 16-20 can serve a mini mission which is where they live with us and are set apart as a missionary for a week. We got one on Saturday. Her name is Sister Whitted and she is 16 and lives in New Albany OH which is about 2 hours east from where we are. She is super fun and we have had so much fun already in just these last 3 days!! We had a zone fun day today where we all played some sports and the mini missionaries seemed to have a lot of fun at that as well! 


Updates
Patty/Dave- Unfortunately they dropped us on Tuesday because they have had a lot going on and just can't take it all but we both had a really calm feeling about it so I know everything will be ok and I firmly believe sometime in the future they will be baptized!

John/Nicole- They didn't come to church this week but when we went by, Nicole had purchased some of the living scriptures DVDs so they had a few bible ones and a Book of Mormon one about the story of Nephi. It was awesome! And we spent the entire time talking about how much she loves coming to our church and how she really wants to read the Book of Mormon and keep meeting with us! :)

Erick- He is doing so great!! We taught the Plan of Salvation and the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he loved them both so much! We were able to explain the Atonement in a way that he has never heard before and it helped him so much! He really wants to repent and be baptized. So now this week we will be teaching the word of wisdom and law of chastity and he smokes and lives with his girlfriend so that will be fun but he is so eager and willing that I don't think we will have a huge problem helping him quit and live the commandments.

Midge/Victor- They are doing so great! They came to church again and loved it! Last week they were going to come to stake conference but their car wouldn't start and church was over by the time they got it started but they came over to the the church anyways in the hopes of finding us and explaining what had happened. Unfortunately they couldn't find us so they left a note on what they thought was our car but it was actually someone else's. It was just so precious! They really do love church and meeting with us! :)


I love this work and this gospel!! I love everything I am learning and becoming and yet all the things about myself that I love and am still keeping!! I love the Spirit that leads and guides my life and I know Heavenly Father plays and large part in my life and everything in it! I know He has never and will never leave me or any one of us alone and I know that from personal experience! No matter what I am going through, I feel His love in my life and His hand guiding me every step of the way!!!

I am so grateful for my mission and everyone that made it possible for me to be out here learning and growing so much!! This gospel is true and I know it is the only thing that bring us true and everlasting joy and happiness if we allow it to!! I love you all and I hope you have another wonderful week!! :)



Love always, Sister Britni Johnson :)

June 6th, 2014

Hello everyone!!

Another long, busy, crazy, awesome week!! We had so much going on and I have no idea how we stayed afloat but we did!

Updates

Patty/Dave- We taught them the Word of Wisdom and the next day Patty had quit drinking tea and Dave had cut his cigarettes in half!!! They are doing so awesome!! We put them on a baptismal date of July 19th to make sure that Dave has time to quit smoking! 

Erick- We had an incredible chapel tour with him and he basically already knows it's all true! He comes to the church to play basketball with some of the men every Tuesday and Thursday and he loves everyone and everything about the church! 

John/Nicole- They came to church again this week which was kind of a miracle and they loved it! They really enjoy church and I am excited to see what happens this week with them!

Midge/Victor- We had an amazing chapel tour with them as well! Midge said after we watched the Restoration that she felt all good and warm inside. They weren't able to make it because their car wouldn't start and when they finally got it started, church had ended but they came to the church anyways to try to find us and explain why they didn't come but they couldn't find us so they left a note on what they thought was our car but it actually wasn't. It was so precious though and they really wanted to come to church!

We have a lot of other people we are working with but they are all still pretty new so I will wait to talk about them! :)

We had stake conference this last weekend and it was super good! I absolutely love being able to hear from our leaders! :P

Anyways, things are going fabulous here and there is so much going on, it is such a blessing! We are having a blast and just meeting so many absolutely amazing people and I love it so much! :)

I hope everything is going well for all of you! 


Have a great week and talk to you soon!!

Love always, Sister Britni Johnson :)

P.S. All the pics this week are at the Air Force Museum, we went to an activity today! :)

May 27th, 2014

Hello everyone!!!

The work is absolutely on fire here in good ol' Fairborn!! I don't know what happened but things kind of exploded this week!!!

Update

We had 9 new people come to church and every single one of them absolutely loved it! Most of them have already invited themselves back for next week.

So first off is Patty and Dave-They have been meeting with us for a few weeks now and Sunday was their first week at church. Patty absolutely loved it! They are middle aged and they don't have a lot of friends so she loved meeting all the new people. She said she felt so peaceful and comfortable that she will be going to church every Sunday from now on. Yesterday she said that she wants to get baptized soon so hopefully in the next few weeks! Dave has to quit smoking but we will get him there and he will hopefully follow shortly after Patty! I love them so much! They are so ready and accept everything we teach them wholeheartedly!!

Next is Erick-He is a 32 year old he is absolutely incredible! He is an amazing dad and he truly has a desire to be a good person. We met with him on Tuesday and gave him a Book of Mormon and 3 days later he had already 15 chapters and was absolutely loving it. We are helping him to understand the Spirit and God's presence in his life. I love teaching him because he will have a question and we will start to answer it and we can tell it's clicking for him because he gets this little smirk/smile on his face and he is just amazed by all the answers we have for him. 

We got him to pray for the first time after church and it was so simple and beautiful. He was 1 1/2 hours late for church because things were just trying to get his kids ready and everything but Sister Jensen and I just couldn't lose hope that he was coming. He walked in halfway through Sunday school and I almost cried because I was so happy! We later found out that during priesthood he commented and said that when everything seems to be working against (him coming to church) it must mean that you are doing something right and you can't let it win! He brought all of his kids to the memorial day picnic yesterday and they all had a blast! I am so excited because Erick is so ready and loves everything that we teach him and share with him! The only trick is that he is living with his girlfriend so we just have to get them married and then we are good to go!! :)

Next up is John and Nicole- They are super interesting. They have 2 little boys and they are super nice and friendly but both of them smoke and drink a lot and they love to cuss. We honestly didn't think we would get super far with them because it's hard to get them to focus. But last week we watched the Restoration DVD with them while eating dinner and it was super spiritual. They both liked being able to see it and said they were able to relate to Joseph Smith and the questions that he had. 

They came to church on Sunday for the first time and absolutely loved it! It was kind of a miracle because John does not like organized religion at all and Nicole doesn't like church because she had bad experienced growing up. But they liked it and said they are going to try to come back next week before we even said anything about it. We are meeting with them tonight to have a bonfire and read a chapter from the Book of Mormon and talk about it so we will see how it goes! :)

Next up is Midge and Victor-they are a cute little old couple both in their 70's. They aren't quite as solid as the rest of the people but they came to church and really enjoyed it. They thanked us for getting them there and they said it was different but a good different. They like us coming by so we will see if we can get them to progress a little bit!

Tracy- I wrote about her last week. She's the one that has ADD and is bipolar. We met with her last week but it was a bit of a mess because we met with her at a park to avoid her pot smoking roommates. And in the middle of our lesson, a huge storm came through and their was a tornado warning so we had to run to our car and drive to dinner before the storm hit hard. It was crazy because there was like 3-4 feet of flooding in some parts of Fairborn from that storm but fortunately we were safe. Tracy wasn't able to make it to church but we are meeting with her on Wednesday and will make sure she gets there this Sunday! :)

Last but not least is Elizabeth and JR-We knocked on Elizabeth's door on Friday and she was super nice and talked with us for about 20 minutes. She said we could go back the next day so we did and her fiancee was home as well. It happened to be his birthday giving us the perfect excuse to wish him a happy birthday and get to know him as well. Pretty soon both of them were listening to us teach them about the Book of Mormon. They both are excited to read and really want to meet with us! We have an appointment with them tomorrow and we are going to teach them the restoration and get them to church this Sunday!! I love them both and I am very excited to see where this goes! 

We have a few other people we are working with but these are the main ones right now and they sure are keeping us mighty busy! I love it so much though, it is a great problem to have! It has been super cool because Sister Jensen and I have talked a lot about why the work suddenly took off so much and things have been so good and we concluded with the fact that we just had unwavering faith. 

With everyone that we meet and everyone that we are teaching, we have complete faith in their desire to learn and them actually doing what they say they will. If they say they will come to church, we expect it and do everything in our power to make it happen. We are kind and loving to everyone and give everything we have to each and every person we meet. We have full confidence in the message that we share and the power that the spirit can have on those that are ready and we put the rest in the Lord's hands and just trust that everything will work out! It is truly incredible to see the difference in the work, in our area, in our companionship and even in myself as we have filled ourselves with faith, hope, confidence, diligence and joy in everything that we do and everywhere we go!! 

This work truly is amazing and the Lord is in it every step of the way. There are so many miracles right and left, we just have to look for them!! I know this church is true and I love seeing what an incredible difference it can make in so many people's lives. The light and happiness that the gospel brings is truly remarkable and one of a kind to members of Christ's true church once again on the Earth!! I love this work and I love this Gospel!! :)

I hope everything is going well and I can't wait to talk to you all next week!! :)

Happy Memorial Day!! :)

Love always, Sister Britni Johnson 

The eye of the storm but there is always time for a picture! :)

Beautiful skies after the storm!

Yay for fires and smores