Dearest Friends,
We are still busy here in Lokeren, and it's making the time go quickly and impossible for me to keep things in my head. Seriously, my memory is the worst this transfer.
It was a week of all plans falling through. So, a pretty normal week here. But God sent beautiful little miracles to keep us going. We had to do some good door knocking, which I actually haven't done much this transfer (if you added up all the door knocking I've done this transfer, it would probably be less than the amount of door knocking that I would do in 2 weeks in my last area) We met the Catholic mom of a member in our ward and she let us in and now we are friends. :) And we had a great conversation with one of the nicest Jehovah Witnesses I've ever talked to (they tend to not care for Mormon missionaries much), and just these sorts of happy little things every now again. I love Heavenly Father.
April Fools: Kind of a thing here, but not really. Unless you're a missionary. Oh, were Sister Jones and I the April fools...
So we hadn't done anything out of the ordinary all day, and during dinner I said, "hey, let's just text the Sint-Niklaas elders something for April Fools real quick." Sister Jones texted: "Sister Johanson was just hit by a car. She's mostly okay, but what do I do now?" They didn't text back. We went to an appointment. During the appointment, they called us, sounding just a little concerned. :) Sister Jones held true to the end, saying just before hanging up, "oh, and happy April Fools day." Hahaha we got them so good!
But 10 minutes later, we receive a text, addressed to our entire mission zone, with information about me getting hit by a car! For the rest of the evening, everyone in the mission was calling us to see if I was alive! Gah! It was absolutely ridiculous. (also, I died at 8pm and the missionaries were asked to send condolences to my home in Utah, so if you guys get any good stuff, just send it to Belgium) We were getting so stressed and I felt bad that I Wasn't hit by a car, because everyone sounded so worried about me! I felt so loved. <3 Until we found out that the elders had really only sent the text to us, and then told everyone to call us like they believed it. Good grief. So we celebrated April Fools with half our mission :) You're welcome everyone. Now I'll be remembered as the sister missionary who died on April Fools. Splendid.
Easter was wonderful. All our plans fell through for the day, so we prayed earnestly, and just went out to work. Luckily, it was beautiful because it was Easter Sunday. so we didn't mind being out talking to people. After an hour and a half, we were heading back to eat lunch, and were about to contact this couple in our path, but they ended up being members of our ward! So they invited us for lunch, and I said a little prayer of happiness and gratitude to God. We also got to watch the Sunday morning session of General Conference that night with some of our favorite members, Jo and Linda, and that was wonderful. General Conference seemed so power-packed this year! Bold testimonies and strong doctrine. I'll just have to read the rest of it later. I hope you were all able to enjoy it.
It's not perfect out here, and you definitely feel the refiners fire hit ya hard sometimes, but just so you all know, I'm loving being out here and some days I really feel like I'm living the dream. I'm so grateful that I get to be a missionary. Love you :)
Love,
Sister Johanson
Note: I'm sorry I don't write much about investigators, but having a blog, you never know who will look up what you write. But we are teaching, and I've met some fantastic people, so just pray for that generally. :) Thanks!
Trying to dye eggs.... :)
My eggs!
Sister Jones and I with Belgian Easter eggs.
Lokeren
(their city animal is a bunny)
