Training

Last Monday morning I got a horrific phone call from President Newman that made me panic and cry. "Well Sister Johnson, you think it's time for you to train?"

Me after about 17 minutes of silence "Are you kidding? Absolutely not."

Him after chuckling "I think you can do it."

Me, "Did you pray about this President?"

Him "No, I don't pray about this type of thing cause if I'm wrong I don't want to know I'm wrong."

Me, "I don't know if I can."

Him "Yes you can. I think you can and the Lord thinks you can."

And then it went back and forth like that for a while and then when I hung up the phone I burst into tears. HELLO?!? I can't do such a thing as train. But alas, on Thursday morning I got up extra early to meet at the building in Mandrin to pick up my new little missionary. During the new missionary/trainer/new DL and ZL meeting president made me share my testimony. I was already a mess from worrying about how I'm going to mess this poor girl up all week long so I just got up there and bust into tears. It was lovely. Imagine a room full of 30 19-year-old boys staring at a crazy Sister Missionary. It was really a lovely experience. It is too bad that we didn't get it on film. I am sure that everyone would love to see that one. Anyway, so I got my new missionary Sister Pedersen and away we went. She is super cute and SO excited for the work. She has the brand new missionary fire that I had. She is sweet. I am going to work SO hard to be as good to her as Sister Wipfler was to me. And I'm going to work on getting that fire back in me. She is just so excited and pumped and has the strongest desire for EVERYONE we see to hear her message and come closer to Christ. She is sweet. She talks A LOT. ha ha. We are still working on the door approach. That is probably the hardest and most frustrating thing for me right now. I have to stand there and let her struggle at every door without trying to "Save" it. I have learned a lot of self restraint :). I have also more fully realized that it's not really us that does anything. it is all the spirit. You can get up there on someones porch and ramble on about this and that, but as long as the spirit is there it won't matter what is being said. I have also learned a lot a lot a lot about prayer. Somehow it has changed from those selfish me me me prayers into a prayer for someone else. I pray so hard every morning and every night and all throughout the day that I can help her become all that she needs to be and that I won't mess her up too much. And then at every door I pray that she will relax and calm down and bring the spirit and that the people will feel and understand what she is trying to get across. Needless to say, the last 5 days have been like one big continual prayer. But it has been good. We have already had so much fun together and I am feeling so happy. I feel joy again which is so nice to have. I hope you all are feeling it too!