July 14, 2019 La Carlota

Maayong aga sa inyo tanannnn

what a crazy week! we have been so busy!! but its been such a good week of miracles and crazy dream stories and hard work and lots and lots of rain

but first off my dad had a birthday this week!! everyone go bring him some caramel popcorn and chocolate covered almonds and celebrate him!! i got to call him on his birthday while they were eating his birthday dinner. pancakes and eggs hahah.

but this week we did all sorts of fun things. 

-on tuesday we went to a couple different district councils and trained the missionaries in binalbagan and hinigaran. i got to see some of my pals! 

-and then on thursday we did exchanges in hinigaran! i got to work over there in their area with sister miner which was way fun. we visited someone who had just gotten baptized in their area, and he had just written a whole song about how the gospel has changed his life. he gave a full on concert in the pouring rain in the middle of his chicken farm. gotta love it

-then on saturday the rain was SO crazy. we have to like scale this cliff/hill every few days to get to one of our areas, and lets just say its pretty much impossible to do in the pouring rain when it just turns into straight mud hahahah. we both ended up sliding down half into the river at the bottom and showed up to our next appointment dripping wet and covered from head to foot in mud. only in the philippines hahah

but there were also a couple really cool experiences we had this week!

We have been teaching this woman named Anne lately. She is the daughter of Sister Rose, who was just baptized a couple weeks ago! She's around 30 and has 2 cute little kids. She's always been really nice to us but was never really interested in anything we had to say. Once Rose was baptized, we started gearing our lessons more towards Anne. She told us that she is confused because every church you go to says that they are the true one. But they can't all be true, and we agreed that only one of them can be true. But then her question was which one is it? And so we shared about prayer. That is the only way to know. No matter what person you ask, you'll get different answers. But with God, He only has one answer. She committed to pray that night and sincerely ask God if the Church of Jesus Christ is true. And then later that night, she had a dream where she was somewhere that she could only describe as paradise. She was kneeling and praying in her dream and she said she's never felt so much warmth and love in her heart. And then in her dream, her mom who was just baptized said the word "kabuhi" which means life. she said she said a few other things too but the word that really stuck out was kabuhi. and then she woke up! she said when she woke up, she didn't really understand what it meant and she was kind of doubting if that was an answer from God or just a dream. And so she tried to read the Book of Mormon for the first time and see if she could find anymore answers. And she found a verse that completely lined up with what her mom had told her in her dream. And she just cried as she told us that there was no way that is a coincidence and she found out for herself where the true church is! It was such a cool experience. 

And then we were teaching this woman named Redora the other day! We were teaching her about temples and how inside, you can be sealed to your family for time and all eternity! Which basically means your marriage and tie to your family doesnt stop at "till death do us part," but it lasts for time and all eternity! we invited her to pray about what we shared to her later that night. So when we came back the next time, she shared with us that she prayed to know if she can really be sealed to her father even though he's passed away already. she  had a dream too! She said in her dream she was in a beautiful place and her entire family was there including her dad!! she said she couldn't describe her dad's happiness as they all were gathered together. she said her dad has never smiled so big in his life. she told us afterwards that she knows that what we shared is true and that we can reunite with our families in the next life. 

im so grateful for my mission! i love getting to have these cool experiences every week. i love the philippines and all the people in this country. ill never know how i got so blessed to come live with them for a year and a half.

love you all have a good week!!!

sister johnson