Late Christmas Packages finally arrived!

Family-

It was so awesome to see you all! No worries about the tears, I loved it. I was just trying not to cry myself haha. I was a little bummed because I kind of wanted to talk just to mom and dad about the panic attacks, but I knew that wouldn't really go over well with the rest of the fam so I just counted my blessings and moved on. But then mom devoted a whole email to it, which was awesome, thank you for helping me with my struggles. I really wanted your advice, so thank you for sharing with me. President Wall has also been super supportive (he used to have panic attacks too about elevators after he got trapped in one - he used to not used an elevator if he had to go to the 10th floor or less. Then he started carrying a crowbar in his briefcase so if he did get stuck he could open the doors and escape. He said that he will be my crown bar and i can call him whenever I need to. What a gem! I will think about the medicine thing too because that could be another "crowbar" haha)

So me and Sister Lucherini's packages got there on Thursday, the day after christmas, and we had a fun time opening our presents. Thank you so much for the clothes! Everything you sent is freakin' amazing - you have awesome taste! Everything fits and I feel so pretty in everything, thank you thank you thank you!!!! I'm also loving my jammies - I've been sleeping in them every night since Christmas. Thanks for the gift cards and the claritin and the letter writing stuff, it was needed and will be used! You all are seriously the best. My birthday package got here on Friday or Saturday, I can't remember which, and I opened it and I almost cried when I say the balloons in there it was so cute. I can't wait to open everything tomorrow!

So I have to tell you about one of the most joyous moment I've had so far on my mission. It was so amazing I seriously almost started bawling haha. 2ish months ago we went to the M's for dinner and, under the direction of the Spirit we did this like puzzle with them and their 13 year old ADD son about why it's important to read scriptures and we invited them to start reading the Book of Mormon as a family. We never followed up with them so I assumed they never did it, and I left feeling like Br. M didn't really have a testimony, he just came to church because his wife made him. We went back over there for dinner last night, and when it was time for the lesson, Br. Maggio said, "Are we going to do that puzzle again?" And I was so shocked that he remembered what we had done and I said, "No, we got something else this time. You remembered that?" And he said "Of course haha." So we played this game about becoming perfected in Christ by doing the little things and gave their son his own chart to check off when he does the daily little things that will help him to become perfected in Christ. And then we asked the parents if they would support their son in the challenge. And Br. M told me that they had actually started reading the Book of Mormon as a family since we came over last time. And he told us that he has never read the Book of Mormon all the way through in his whole life, how he's struggled with doubts, but things have started to click more for him over the years, and now, on the days when he reads the Book of Mormon, he can tell that he is more patient at work, that things don't get to him as easily. On the days when they don't read, he gets grumpy easier and is more irritable. As he was telling us all of this, I just had this immense joy in my joy and I felt like I was either going to explode with happiness or start crying or both. And we pointed out that what he was feeling was the Spirit - in Galatians it says that the fruits of the Spirit are joy, peace, love, patience, temperance, long suffering. He had said earlier that he's never been hit over the head by the Spirit, so when we pointed out that he was feeling the Spirit because he is reading the Book of Mormon, he got this puzzled look on his face like, "Huh, interesting, I'm actually feeling the Spirit." Man, the whole experience was so cool. I totally misjudged Br. M, but he is a rockstar, and we ended the lesson by asking if he would share his conversion experience with C, an investigator that we are working with, and if it's ok, could we teach her in their home. He said, "yes, absolutley." It was freakin' amazing. Please pray that things go well on Friday - we are going to visit C with Sister M and then Sister M is going to invite her over to have a lesson at their house. So great. I'm just humbled, blown away, so happy that the fact that I followed the Spirit led to somebody feeling the Spirit and increasing in their testimony. There seriously is no better feeling. I felt like I could hear the angels cheering in heaven. :)

Well family, keep fighting the good fight! I love you and I'm so so so thankful for you. Love you more than all the sheahorshes in the shea! :)

-Johanna

Panic Attacks

Hello to my Mama!

Man, you are just amazing - off rescuing everyone, braving the bad weather, and getting a college degree in the process. No worries about last week, it's all good. I'm so excited to see you on Wednesday! I think it's going to happen around 2pm. Sorry to make you wait so long but I'm trying really hard to put others first this Christmas because it just feels so dang good :)

Glad you got the package! You can open it - everything inside is wrapped. I feel bad because I didn't get Gramps and Nana anything - didn't know they would be there. I did send them a Christmas card in the mail. Hope you can smooth that over for me :/

So, I have to update you on one thing and then the rest we will just talk about on Wednesday. So I had another panic attack last week and it was the worst one I'd had in about 6 months and the third I'd had in 2 weeks. So Sister Tiller (one of the Sister Trainer Leaders in our zone) convinced me to call President Wall even though I didn't want to /didn't think it would make a difference/didn't want to bother him, etc. So I did call and this is what he told me:

"You are going to learn to deal with Panic Attacks on your mission. The one you had on tuesday will not be your last one and the next one will probably be a little worst." And I was like, oh great, thanks a lot President, that's not what I wanted to hear haha. But he gave me coping strategies to use, told me to keep working, and make sure I get the rest I need at night and on P-Day. Also, that I need to take 10-15 power naps. He also said not to spend time analyizing triggers or trying to avoid the triggers of a panic attack. Good advice!  But really, I'm so glad to have a mission president that would be honest and up front with me. Who would tell me that I CAN do hard things, and help me face the problem instead of run from it. I really like this quote from President Monson's talk in conference:

" Good timber does not grow with ease,

The stronger wind, the stronger trees.

The further sky, the greater length.

The more the storm, the more the strength.

By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In trees and men good timbers grow.8

Sinces Tuesday, I've been studying trials and chastening, and I've realized that when you are being obedient and bad things happen, it is evidence that the Lord loves you and is taking the time out of His busy schedule to refine and purify you into who you can be.

So basically, right now, I am feeling like, "bring it on. I am in the Lord's service, He will not fail me nor forsake me, and with his Help and mercy I can overcome all things." I'm thankful that I had this attitude, because then on Sunday, another bad thing happened. This is from my letter to President this week (I meant to put it in Dad's email too but I forgot so you'll have to let him read it too) -

 "After going through a really rough time on Tuesday with the whole panic attack thing, and feeling the aftershocks, and then talking to you, I was feeling humble, apprehensive, but determined to press forward with the work here. Going home simply is not an option for me any more. I've burned that boat and I will press forward to the end, no matter how hard things get and no matter what struggles come my way. The Lord can depend on my to serve my full time in Louisiana and to give my all while I am here. That resolve was then tested on Sunday - we had a lesson with two of our investigators, twin sisters whose mom is inactive and whose stepdad isn't a member. I walked out of the lesson feeling devasted - my heart literally felt like it was breaking. The girls hadn't retained anything we'd been teaching them and they had told me that they feel bad when the missionaries come over because they never keep the commitments we give them. I left feeling with a mix of guilty, discouraged, asking why, frustrated, and distraught. I was so disappointed in the girls mom - we had kind of stepped back from teaching the girls because we realized that without their mom's support, the girls would never progress or progress extremely slowly, and so we started working with the mom, trying to help rekindle the flame she felt when she was baptized 20 years ago. And so when we started working with the girls again we found that the mom hadn't done anything and the girls had slipped backwards from where they were two weeks ago. Like I said, I was pretty devastated, and I started thinking about just calling the mom and saying, "D, please call us when you are ready to get back into the Gospel. Until then, nothing we do to help your daughters will make a difference." As I was thinking that, though, the Spirit whispered to me that that is a lie, that what we are doing IS making a difference. And so during studies this morning, I read talks and scriptures with this family in mind, knowing that we need to continue to work with them, but having no idea what else we could do. And as I studied, the Spirit again whispered to me that we need to teach D about what it means to endure to the end, an angle I had never thought about before. So we texted her a few verses that the Spirit led me to and she said she will read them. President, I feel like if I had not been becoming more converted, this experience would've shaken me and a few months ago I would've given up on this family. But I've learned that true diligence is never giving up on anyone. As long as someone will still let you into their house, you keep going over there, and if you have the Spirit with you, you can't go wrong. I feel that if as a mission we hadn't been working on being more Spirit -led, I might've missed the subtle promptings as to what to teach D or I would've accepted my negative thoughts as truth. I have come to know that the following quote is true:

"...The acorn of honest inquiry has often sprouted and matured into a great oak of understanding."

-President Uchtdorf

This morning, I was honestly inquiring about what to do for this family who I love so much. And now I have the beginnings of understanding as to what to do to help them. I don't have everything - all the answers, all the lesson plans, all the words to say or commitments to extend - but I have enough to keep going. And I feel myself becoming more refined in the process. The gospel is truly a gospel of change, and as we help others to change we become new creatures ourselves. And of course, this is all through the Atonement of our Savior."

The gospel is just the greatest thing, and I feel the Atonement strengthening me and helping me keep on keeping. I truly would not be here right now if not for the strengthening power of the Atonement.

So family, that is it all the nitty gritty of my experiences this week!  Love you more than all the snow in Wisconsin!

See you Wednesday!

-Johanna

Christmas is coming!

Oh man, I'm so excited to talk to y'all on christmas! And I'm just excited for Christmas in general! It is a season of love, giving, light, and happiness. I just love it. This week we did service at the Catholic food bank putting together the boxes of food that they are giving away for Christmas, and it reminded me of when we used to put boxes of food together and ding dong ditch them at peoples' houses. Thank you for setting such a great example and tradition of anonymous service. :)

So the plan for Christmas Day is as follows - we are going to visit this lady named Miss R (a potential investigator) at 10am. She is poor, lives alone, and at first didn't even want to talk about Christmas with us because she was sad and bitter that she will be alone on Christmas. But then we said "We are all alone on Christmas too! Can we come over and celebrate with you? We have a few boxes of jumbalaya and some sausage that we can cook up together and we can sing Christmas songs and read the Christmas story in the scriptures!" and her face changed and she said, "Yeah, I think I would really like that." So that is first on the agenda on Christmas. Then at 1pm we are going to the Tyler's a member family  in 1st ward and they are feeding us lunch and letting us use their computer to Skype. Sister Lucherini's family doesn't have Skype, so she will call while I Skype with yall. I am thinking it will happen around 2pm. Hope that's ok. Also, this time around we only get 40 minutes (last time my Trainer was a little less than exactly obedient so she told me we could have longer than we actually get...oops) but that is way better than nothing at all!!! I am so excited!

Me and Sister Lucherini are getting along well. We are both kind of quiet around each other but slowly we talk more and more.  But it's all good, she is really level headed which helps me a lot. I tend to be a firecracker when I get passionate about something but she helps balance me out and bring me back to the ground haha. I had exchanges with Sister Tiller again this week (she is one of the Sister Training leaders in Denham and this is the third time we've gone on exchanges together) and we are going to be best friends after the mission. We are both pretty convinced that we made promises in heaven with each other to serve as missionaries together and help each other when we struggle. It's awesome. She goes home in March so I''m really going to miss her. Sister Jones and Sister Tuft, two of my favorite sisters, went home at transfers, that was a crazy cry fest. It's amazing how much stronger your friendships become when you are together in the service of the Lord. I think I'm coming to understand better how Alma felt about the sons of Mosiah.

Your weather sounds crazy! It's weird to NOT have snow - yesterday was almsot 80 degrees and today it is 45. Not a flake of snow in sight. Weird. That was so nice of you to snow blow the neighbors driveway. Way to go!

K, I love you lots! Here is an update on D and the W's from my letter to President. Please continue praying for D. I love this family and I'm hoping if you guys come down to Louisiana sometime you can meet them one day. Also, our second lesson with C was kind of a train wreck haha. The member we took, Sister S, got waaaay too deep into the PLan of Salvation (she pretty much recited the Endowment movie to her, oops) and poor C was pretty confused. We went over Sunday and C invited us to come back on Tuesday to learn how to make seafood gumbo. She is hooked on Mormon Messages, and hopefully we can get her to read more of the Book of Mormon. Our upcoming goal is to get her to come listen to Elder Perry when he comes to the stake, but she doesn't do well with crowds so maybe stake conference won't be such a great idea. We need to talk to her about it. Miracles of the week:

-We contacted two people and gave them Joy to the World Dvds, and one of the people gave us her phone number! Woot!  We are all trying to get better at talking to everyone.

-E came to church! He is like 6'5" and has lots of tatoos, so he kind of stuck out, but he came and stayed all three hours. We have set January 11 as his baptismal date. Conveniently, Elder Perry will be here that day, so maybe he will come :)

K, love your guts!

See you Wednesday!

Happy Christmas...almost!!!

Hey Mom and Dad! Glad to hear that you are back safe and sound in Wisconsin and that your trip went well.

Things are good here - Sister Klein got transferred and now I am with Sister Lucherini - she is from Logan Utah, 22 years old, and has been out for 3 months. She is awesome and we both come out of shells more and more each day. :)

First of all, so sad to hear about Gordon Meier. But happy for him that he got to go home after living such a wonderful life. He will missed, but I know he will be busy on the other side.

Don't have a ton of time today, so just some highlights-

-Started this 40 day purification thing where you fast and ask the Spirit to tell you what you need to eliminate so that you can have the Spirit as more of a constant companion. And you make a list of 10 things you are going to stop doing or start doing, and then you covenant with Heavenly Father to not do those things for 40 days. It's this cool thing that Elder Gene R. Cook talked about when he was mission president and is now spreading around our mission.

-Started teaching C. Please pray for her that she will understand the Plan of Salvation and that she will have the desire to come to church. We are teaching her the PoS tomorrow with a member. Our first lesson was kind of random and spontaneous, so hopefully the second lesson goes well. I think it's going to either make or break whether we keep teaching her.

-I'm buying a scale today. After talking with Sister Wall, I have decided to try to lose 1 pound per week for the rest of my mission. I have about 40 weeks left, so I will be able to lose everything that I gained while I was here and then some. I'm excited!

-I got our car stuck in the mud yesterday. I was trying to turn around on the grass so my companion wouldn't have to back, but it had been raining a ton and the ground was really saturated, and we got totally stuck. Mr. Albert, the nonmember husband of this less active lady in 2nd ward tied a rope to our hitch and to his van's hitch and pulled us out. It was awesome. We gave him some muffins as a thank you and promised that we are going to fix the hole we made in  his yard. Oops.

-The zone leaders are now the elders in Denham 1 and I freakin love them. They are so fun. So nice to be with elders that I don't have to struggle to like. :)

-We get to skype next week! Still not sure what time. I'm thinking maybe 11am? Is that ok? We still haven't talked with the family that agreed to let us come over - they have been out of town for 3 weekends. Yikes. I will let you know for sure what's up next week.

Other than that it was a pretty quiet week. Hope all is well at home. Know that I love you so!

-Johanna

You are in Florida???? Woot woot that is so exciting! Glad to hear the weather is nicer over there than it is over here - all the tights you sent are really coming in handy!

So Transfers are actually tomorrow (we had that huge shuffle with Sister Alvine and Sistre Lyons and SIster Klein early because the temple square transfer schedule is two weeks earlier than ours is in Loosiana) so here is the transfer update- Sister Klein (from Brazil) is getting transferred tomorrow and I am staying in Denham Springs. So sad that she is leaving, I stinkin love this girl, she is so great. Not sure where she is going or who my new companion will be - I didn't get a call from President so I won't be training or in leadership, so we will just have to see what comes! Also, our district is getting pretty much destroyed - both of the North elders are getting transferred and one of the south elders is getting transferred. So me and Elder Smith will be the only ones left in our district, crazy. It's funny because of all the Elders, Elder Smith is the one that I still struggle to get along with - all the others I learned to love and get along with and see their strengths, but the one that I still have a hard time with is the one that is staying haha. I guess Heavenly Father wants us to keep working together until we learn how to get along lol. I'll keep you posted on how that goes...

So highlights of the week include:

Finding a new, pretty much golden investigator! E is the cousin of M, who is an active young woman in 2nd ward who is getting ready to go on a mission. She comes from a less active family who recently had to move in with E and his family because M's house in Baton Rouge burned down, so sad. But her and E got to talking about the gospel, and he felt the Spirit really strongly as she taught and testified, and the next day when we came over to work with Miranda on practicing teaching the Preach My Gospel lessons, he came in the room and said, "Hey can I sit in on yalls' lesson?" And we said of course, and we ended up teacing him the Restoaration and he just ate it all up. I felt impressed by the Spirit to invite him to be baptized on January 11th, and he said yes! Crazy sauce! But the Spirit was there really strong, and it was just awesome. Please pray for him and his family - he really wants to invite his mom and sister to hear what he has been learning about but is worried about how they will take it.

Lastly- we get to Skype in 14 days, woo hoo! I can hardly believe it! So exciting! You guys are just the best, I can't wait to see your faces!

Also, this last week we had our "A Night in Bethlehem" christmas party in 1st ward this last week. We were shop keepers at the craft shop, we also helped to decorate and set up the shops. It was a great event - almsot 225 people came and there were lots of nonmembers there. It was awesome. I'm attaching a picture of me and Sister Klein - we had some pretty cool costumes because Sister Wall is on it and sent us some super cool robes. Cintia Mallett took pictures of us too and said she would send them to you.

Well , I love you so much!  Love you more than all the camoflauge pants in the  Bass Pro Shop!

-Johanna

December Doings

Hello family! I love you and miss you all! Here is a copy of my parts of my President's letter. Just wanted you to know what's happening down here in the bayou!

"Insight into the Christmas story-

So this past week during media time, I watched the 9 minute Bible video about the Savior's birth and it shows the shepherds and the wise men and everything. And I had an interesting thought - both the shepherds and the wisemen came unto Christ, but they came in different times and in different ways. The shepherds came on the night of His birth- they came to the Savior right away to see and worship and to go and tell. I think that these are like those golden investigators- they have some experience or a life time of preparation and then when the message comes they come immediately to the gospel. But the wisemen took a bit longer. In the Bible video, it shows the wisemen coming to see the Christ child about two or three years after Christ's birth. But they still came. Their worship and gifts weren't counted any less than the shephereds' worship just because it took longer. They still came. And this really hit me - I always need reminders to be patient with the "wisemen investigators" - just because they don't come right now doesn't mean they are not coming. It is humbling to realize that each child of God will come in his own way and own time, and I need to have patience and trust in the Lord's timing. I know it's kind of a stretch but it's an analogy that really hit me. :)

Being Spirit-led-

So guess what? This week we only taught 15 lessons, but we were working so hard to be Spirit-led, and despite the numbers, I feel so good about our work. It feels like we really taught people, we loved them, and we tried to focus on their needs instead of numbers or quotas. I really feel like I am coming to truly love the people of this area. I mean, I loved them before, but this week, as we tried to listen to the Spirit as we planned for them, taught them, and prayed about them, I felt even more loved, and the Spirit was present much stronger than before, touching their hearts and ours. Sister Klein, who struggles to be brave enough to share a scripture that comes to her mind, shared a scripture in almost every lesson. And I was able to have the courage I needed to follow promptings. Some of those propmtings resulting in teaching opportunities, but I really learned that Heavenly Father doesn't care about our numbers. He cares about His children. I learned this when I followed a prompting to go try to see a less active who is barely ever home. I thought maybe we were supposed to go to her house because maybe we would find an investigator along the way, but no - when we got to her house, she was home, and awake, and in need of help - she was running late for a single adult potluck in Gonzalez, and she needed to get dressed and do her hair and everything but she had a glaze that she was making for her sweet potato casserole that needed constant stirring, and she wasn't going to have enough time to get dressed, do hair, put on make up, and stir the glaze for 25 minutes. So I stirred to glazed and made sure it didn't burn. And Sister Klein did the dishes, which she wasn't asked to do but it needed doing. And we didn't get to teach her and it didn't contribute to our numbers, but this sweet sister said, "You showed up at just the right time! I didn't know what I was going to do! Thank you!" and it was as if Heavenly Father was saying to me "Quit worrying about numbers. I don't worry about numbers - I worry about my children, and I care deeply about the details of their lives, and that's what I need you to do - care. Care about these people and their lives, and help Me to help them feel of my perfect love." It was a really humbling, amazing experience.

The Book of Mormon-

Lastly, I want to share with you my newfound desire to feast from the Book of Mormon daily. It was a really hard week emotionally for me. But I realized it was because I had been neglecting my spiritual and physical welfare. I had gotten lazy with exercise, I had gotten lazy in my studies, and I had failed to take care of my most basic physical and spiritual needs. And the effect was obvious - I struggled to maintain my focus and stability. So, I just want to say that I am back! I am back to doing the little things, and recommitting to the time-tested devotional practices. I want to get more out of my studies, I want to put more heart into my prayers, and I want to take seriously the care of my physical body. I need the Book of Mormon in my life daily, and I need all the other small and simple things we do as missionaries to help me have the strength I need to keep on keeping on. We can't rely only on the enabling power of the Atonement - we must do all we can do and THEN He makes up what we lack."

Love you all and hope your Christmas season is as wonderful as you are!

Hugs!

-Sister Chausow

Happy December

Hello to my parents who I love so much! 

Loved hearing from you and all about your Thanksgiving fun! I was thinking a lot about ya'll too on Thursday and on Saturday, wondering if you went to get the Christmas tree. Maybe not with Dad on call?

So sad to hear about Gordon Meier. Man, that stuff is just not fun. Please tell him that I'm praying for him and his family. Can you send me his address so I can send him a Christmas card?

Soooooo, crazy updates:

Monday afternoon we got a call that Sister Alvine was leaving on wednesday morning and there would be two temple square sisters coming, so one would be going to Albany with Sister Lyons and one would come to Denham with me. Man, that phone call was not fun - I thought I was going to spend Thanksgiving with my two current best friends, and then two seconds later, nope! Change of plans. I was not very pleased, but the Lord helped me get over it pretty quick. Tuesday night we all went out for dinner with President and Sister Wall and Elder and Sister Olsen, the office couple. We went to a seafood restaurant inside Bass Pro Shop, and I was a little skeptical of eating in such a redneck place, but it turned out being freakin delicious. If ya'll come back to Loosiana with me to visit, we should totally eat there. Anyways, we dropped Sister Alvine off at the airport on Wednesday morning (she was bawling, it was really sad and hard), and me and Sister Lyons went back to Denham to clean and get ready for the new sisters. Then that afternoon we went back to Baton Rouge to pick up the new sisters at the mission office, but we had to wait for like an hour and a half because one of the sisters left her insulin in Salt Lake, so as soon as they left the airport, President took them to CVS pharmacy to get some insulin. Finally, we got our new companions, and I am now with Sister Klein from Brazil! She has been out 6 months, she's a life long member, and she's diabetic. I freakin' love her. It took a little while for her to open up, but she is so funny and just fun. She is not your typical sister missionary - she used to play video games a lot, and she likes Metallica haha. I love it. And she isn't too serious, which really helps me. We spent Thanksgiving driving around to our appointments, eating too much and loving up the members. It was great. I'm so happy to be with her, and I'm kind of hoping that President leaves us together for a transfer or two. President said I might be training though, so we will see. We will find out next Monday.

Speaking of which, next week is transfer week, so I won't be able to email until Tuesday. Transfer week is weird one that is always a little off. I'll keep you posted on who goes where :)

So I also wanted to tell you about my interview with President. Every 3 months, we get to have a one on one, 30 minute interview with President, and this time I felt like I didn't have anything big I needed President to help with. In the past, I've gone in really struggling because of my companion or district issues or whatever, but this time I felt pretty okay, I just wanted to ask President how I could have a little more courage to follow the promptings of the Spirit. 

And guess what - he started peeling me apart like an onion. I just started bawling, because he helped me to see some struggles that I didn't realize that I'd been having but that he had discerned from my weekly emails. He said that I am one of the best missionaries he has, but I don't realize it. My confidence is kind of low and he said that I am so competent, but I let my lack of confidence get in the way of my competency. And he was right, I doubt myself a lot.   President said that I have a really clear picture of what I think a sister missionary should be, and when I don't measure up to that, I beat myself up really good for it. 

And I need to QUIT! 

I guess I knew that I was overly hard on the elders, but I didn't realize that I was being so hard on myself. I thought it was good, but I didn't realize that it can be really damaging. So my goal right now is really just work on loving myself no matter what. If I make a mistake, I will repent and move on. And I will thank God for my weaknesses because they allow me to rely on my Savior. When I get home, I really want to be able to know and appreciate who I am. I'm excited :)

So I need to update you on some people you can pray for:

H and R - We gave them the Baby Jesus story cutouts that you set for them and they were so excited. They are going to teach us the story of how Jesus was born on Sunday and Martin's parents are going to be there. I'm a little nervous to meet them, but hopefully it will be good.

K, gotta sign off, I'll write you a letter.

Love you tons!