We are learning more and more that God loves all of us.  He loves us no matter where we are on our path to find Him. No matter where we came from, no matter what our skin color is, no matter what mistakes we've made, He loves us and wants us to come to Him and to Jesus Christ.   If we can love more like him, our world would be so much better off.   We are trying to love more like him.

Family News:  We are so excited that Chris's sister and her husband are entering the MTC Monday.

Missionaries are funny

So one day this week there were a couple of Elders in my office visiting and one said he needs a hair cut really bad.  The Sister missionary out in the other part of the office yelled:  "I'll cut it!." I figured that's a perfect solution.  He can get his hair cut by someone who knows what they are doing.  So I drove home and got my hair cut stuff.  It took a long time, but it didn't look too bad.  This kid has the thickest red hair.  The next day someone asked Sister Francis about her hair cutting skills and said how great it is that she knows how to do that.  She says, "Oh, I don't know how.  That was my first time."  What!?

How many missionaries does it take to...….

 Life on a Mission

The Fort Smith Spanish Elders have had a rough couple of weeks.  We can't renew our lease because they have had bed bugs twice.  So I've called lots of apartment complexes and finally found them an apartment.  However, it's a new construction and wouldn't be ready till August 1.  I've called the landlord every day for two weeks as we've tried to get things worked out and make sure the apartment will actually be ready, even hoping we could move in 1 day early. But no.  They had to move out of their apartment the last day of July.  So I told them they had to find a place for all of their furnishings and a place to stay overnight.  They'd have to find someone with a truck and trailer to help them.  We have some senior missionaries in Fort Smith and they have a garage.  So everything went in their garage.  I think they stayed with the other missionaries.  Then the next day they were able to move in.  I called the missionaries pretty much every day and reminded them to clean out all the junk in their apartment.  DON'T MOVE JUNK!  Pretend you are me so you can tell what junk is.  At first it was yeah, yeah.  Then they finally caught the vision and called me one day, "Sister Johnson! We're doing what you said!  We're cleaning out all of the junk.  We're walking around pretending we are you!"  The day they moved they called me to say they had everything moved and all was well.  They didn't want me to worry about them.  Then I said, "Are you glad you threw away all that junk?"  Boy, are they glad!

This isn't the end of the story.  During the week, I had someone call me from the Oklahoma City mission and give me a referral for Fort Smith.  Her last name was Provencio so I figured she could be Spanish.  I gave the referral to these same Spanish Elders (p.s. they teach Spanish, they aren't Spanish).  They said they'd go visit her.  I got a text from them yesterday that they visited her, she is Spanish, and she's going to church this Sunday.  I felt immediately that this was a gift from God.  They had a pretty rough two weeks cleaning out an apartment and getting ready to move.  They had to find someone to help them move all their stuff, lots of adult decisions and actions.  God blessed them with this referral to brighten up their week.

Chris had to ground a sister missionary from driving this week.  She just has too many violations.  This is the note she brought in.

One of the things that's really amazing here is that trees and bushes bloom all summer.  There's always some new tree blooming.  We're used to....trees bloom in the spring.  Not here.  And now that the deer can't eat my bird seed anymore, I like them again.  There are some babies that like to come visit right outside my bedroom window.