Hasta Ver

Hello my friends! How are all of you? :) I hope you're doing well wherever you're at.
We're doing great out here in Glendale! Well... yeah. It's been tough lately, pero está bien. We're still seeing miracles every day. It's been really interesting because in missionary work, nothing happens until you find someone to teach, right? Well, we've been having SUCH a hard time finding people. It's the weirdest thing. I can't tell you how many times we knocked on a door, heard someone inside, and still no one answered. I don't know what the Lord is trying to teach us... maybe that I need to perseverar hasta el fin, but like, the VERY fin. (Sorry, spanglish). Poor Hna Green though keeps asking if my whole mission was like this or if this isn't normal. Well, when you start the mission in the fiery furnace, it can only get better, right? She's a champ. I adore Hna Green. Either way though, we're trying hard and I just have to remember that success as a missionary doesn't always come in the form of "good" numbers. Sometimes success is when your dinner appointment gives you LITERALLY a WHOLE chicken to eat (a whole one for EACH of you) and you FINISH the thing. True story, that happened Saturday.
Sometimes success is getting a text Sunday morning an hour and a half before church saying "we need you to give a 15 minute talk on the obra misional today" and it turns out the only other speaker only talked like 7 minutes so you're left with like 25 minutes to fill and you DO. That, my friends, is success (and another true story from yesterday). And also it was TOTALLY a miracle. Longest talk of my life in puro español. I never thought I was capable of that! Jokes, I'm not. But the Lord takes what we give Him and makes it enough.
Sometimes success is feeling love towards someone who straight up rejects you. We saw a lot of that this week.
And sometimes success is praying (literally) for an elote guy to be in your camino during the day and then the Lord answers your prayers and there IS and you get yourself some of the best dang elote ever.

So I dunno... I'd say we had a successful week even though our numbers would say otherwise. Hna Green and I had a heart-to-heart and decided that really, the Lord has a hand in how many people we can or can't find. We think He knows exactly who needs His Gospel and where they are. And we think that He'll lead us to them... when He's ready and when they are. Until then we just keep working and keep showing our love for Him through obedience and our willingness to work. This ward will see miracles soon :)

Well... I suppose I ought to address the fact that this will be my final email home to you all.. 18 months, 7 companions, and 4 areas later, here I am at the end. I can't begin to explain the joy I've felt and the endless miracles I've seen in the time I've been here :) I feel so blessed and privileged to have been the Lord's servant in this small corner of His vineyard. I've seen countless lives change, including my own. I've seen testimonies grow out of completely unexpected places and flourish into a beautiful conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Quiero que ustedes sepan que he hecho todo que podía; estoy feliz con todo que hice. Quiero que sepan que amo a mi Salvador Jesucristo y a mi Padre Celestial. Yo sé que es por Ellos que soy lo que soy (1 Corintios 15:10). Es gracias a la expiación de Jesucristo que todos tenemos la oportunidad de empezar de nuevo y no puedo expresar suficientemente mi amor y gratitud por esa oportunidad.

Les quiero mucho :)
Hasta ver

-Hermanita Corynne Johnson
California Arcadia Mission

Of Floods, Shamrock Shakes, and Baptismal Dates

A rainy hello to you all!
As you may (or may not) have heard, California is trying to make Noah's Flood 2.0™ happen and they're doing pretty well out here! We've been receiving flash flood warnings and stuff all week. It's nuts! Thankfully, we live at the top of a big hill, so we're fine ;) no flooding for us. Though the rain does slow us down a ton. There have been lots of accidents and we've heard a whole lot of sirens the last few days. But all is well in Glendale. (Brownie points because that rhymed.)

This week we were on a quest to find a McDonald's and try their "shamrock shakes." Hna Green swears by them and I've never had one, so obviously we needed to get some. We did it, obviously, and it was great! I understand where she was coming from now ;) We also got Hna Green her FIRST EVER PUPUSAS!!! :D (this is what parenting is about my friends). It was fun and so yummy :) that was on Valentine's Day, which is also Sister Ti'a's birthday! We celebrated and made heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast <3

Also this week we were able to set a baptismal date with our investigator Maria and her daughter Daniela!!! They're set for March 25th :) which is weird because I realized I'll be gone by then... But please pray for them to be able to make it!! I have faith that they will because they're so so open and they were the ones who brought up baptism first! That like, never happens and it was awesome! :) I LOVE them so much and literally I'm just so excited for them to receive the blessings of living the Gospel :)

Then to end the week, on Saturday we had exchanges, which enabled my GLORIOUS return to the Promised Land: PASADENA!! :D I was SO excited to be able to go back, even if it was just one day! <3 El Molino still has my heart and always will.

Pasadena City Hall <3

Oh and today all us hermanas in the zone got together and went to Forest Lawn, aka a super famous cemetery wherein Walt Disney and Michael Jackson, among others, are buried. We found Disney's family plot, so that was neat! And the whole thing was super pretty too :)

And one last thought for this week. I've been thinking a lot about a scripture I found in Nehemiah lately (where the heck even IS Nehemiah??). It's chapter 6 verse 3 and says "...I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?" Each of us has a truly great work to do. We cannot come down until it is finished!! There will always be distractions, temptations, and excuses. But the Lord has given each of us a great work to do in His kingdom. We can't afford to come down in the least bit (lookin' at you Lehonti) until our work is finished. Being at the tail end of the mission, I've realized that it doesn't matter how much time is left--I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Not until the very end. Otherwise I would be failing to live up to my responsibility as a representative of my Savior Jesus Christ.

Anyway, that's all. Hope y'all have a good week!

-Hermanita Johnson

And also just look how cute my kid is ;)

Las Tiernas Misericordias del Señor

Hello my friends!!
If you remember, last week was an epic struggle. This week, thankfully, was a heck of a lot better! :) we had a few neat experiences I'd like to share with y'all!

Primero, we received this referral who lives waaaaaaaay out at the edge of the area/mission, nigh unto Burbank. Which is like, hecka far. And at this point we still only had our bikes. So we took an hour-long bike ride out to hunt her down--and turns out she's a member! Who'd've guessed? She's less active, but still. It was cool to find her :) she was super sweet and loves the missionaries and the church and told us all about how her grandkid or nephew or someone was getting married in the temple soon and she was so excited :) anyways, on our way to our next lesson (which was another hour of biking) my chain just, like, broke?? Not good. So we were standing there on the side of the road trying to figure out what the heck just happened and how to fix it and randomly this car pulls up behind us and this like 15-year-old girl and her mom hop out. I guess they'd seen us, realized we were missionaries, and went around the block to come back and help us :') so sweet. They're from another ward in the mission, turns out. And the girl pulled out her phone and was like "my dad's good with bikes" FaceTimes him, and sure enough he talked us through fixing it in like 5 minutes!! Those sweet members were such a blessing 😊

Thursday's milagro: we got our car back!!! Tears of joy were almost shed. The ZLs texted us saying "hey hermanas you guys home? You want your car back? Come outside!" And boom, there she was :') and the ZLs were just as happy because they felt so so bad about having to take our car--especially with all the craziness that followed it! So it was a happy moment all around :)

And Friday we had a super cool experience with a referral we received! We went to teach her, her husband, and their 11-year-old daughter (that, in and of itself, is a miracle because I've never really had the chance to teach a whole family during my mission). We had a solid restoration lesson, they committed to coming to church and reading the Book of Mormon, and then at the end the husband looks at us and says "so what do you want to eat?" Because it was dinner time they just, like bought us 2 pizzas and we had a cute little family dinner all together!! It was so nice, especially because A) family dinner!! Always makes me happy :) B) we would've been on our own for dinner otherwise which probably would've meant either ramen or McDonald's and C) it was raining like crazy and I didn't wanna go outside yet... 😂

Then yesterday was stake conference!! Oh my holy goodness it was awesome. I got to see SO MANY of the people I love from both East LA and Pasadena because we're all in the same stake!! :) It felt so good to see people I loved so much who actually remembered me and were EXCITED to see me too! These wonderful people are such a blessing in my life <3 I dunno what I ever did for the Lord to bless me like this, but I am SO grateful!! Dang the mission is worth it. It is so worth it. It's worth the exhaustion and being uncomfortable and it's worth the cruddy hours and the sadness and the heartbreak and it's just WORTH IT. I'd do it all over again if I could, just for these people :) except I think I'd literally die because physically I can't take much more of this 😅 ah but there ain't nothing like it. Nothing compares :)

-Hermanita Johnson

Getting to see the Salcedo's again was beautiful <3

Trials of Faith

Hello my friends!
This is gonna be a fairly short one because I don't feel like writing much 😅 sorry.

This week was a STRUGGLE and a half. First off, the Zone Leaders' car had to go to the shop, so they took our car??? We use our car all day, every day. So that made things difficult... especially because we also don't have my bike yet, as the ZLs in my last area haven't been able to get it over here yet. So that means walking everywhere because we also don't have TAP cards (how we pay for the buses). That was an exhausting struggle and also a massive waste of time because there aren't very many people just out and about that we can contact while we're walking. Bleh. We were finally able to borrow Hna Parr's bike (she's in our district) and later Sister Ti'a's when she got hers (because it's more my size than Hna Parr's.) Unfortunately, after we got the bikes, it started raining for the rest of the week. So in between all of that biking and rain and walking we tried to work as hard as we possibly could. Transportation was a huge issue, but we sorta figured it out. Kind of.

Anyway, almost every single set lesson we had fell through and I can't even tell you how many doors we knocked this week. We worked as hard as we knew how to and still saw almost no success. Like, bummer!! On top of that, Hna Green crashed on her bike--she flew over the handle bars and everything!! Thankfully she's okay, but it's really been a struggle.

To tell you how sorry and rough our week was, the literal two best things that happened this week were seeing a ginormous Godzilla lizard in some guy's window. And then the other was after Hna Green crashed on her bike, we went to this lesson we were supposed to have and she wasn't home. So this was in a pretty sketchy part of our area that we've been told not to go to at night if we don't have a set lesson there, and it was getting dark at this point so we didn't know what to do. Anyways, we were just kind of done and we literally prayed for an elote guy to show up, since they're usually around this area anyways. LITERALLY within 2 minutes we heard the horn down the street (they use these cute little bike horn type things so you know they're there) and chased him down for some corn. It was a blessing, and also my baby's first time trying elote! Oh and actually another blessing was that the other hermanas in the ward have been so nice and given us rides to the important things like church and zone meeting.

Here's hoping we get our car soon!!! We were supposed to get it back today.

-Hermanita Johnson

Little Armenia is White Already to Harvest

Legitimately, it says "little Armenia" on google maps and that's, like, right where we are.
I LOVE my new area! Life here in the Arroyo area is amazing and I didn't think I'd love it as much as I do :) When I got transferred over here last week I wasn't so sure I'd like it. But things like this always remind me that the Lord knows what's best for me and I usually don't!!! So I'm loving life and the work is good :) It's also a lot of fun because I'm living in an apartment with two other sisters who are fantastic. There's Sister Hobbs who's from New Zealand and goes home with me, and then her trainee Sister Ti'a who's Samoan :) living with them is a hoot.
Anyway, it's really beautiful here, with weather currently in the low 70s 👍🏼 qué bendición! You wouldn't believe it, but there was FROST on our CAR earlier this week. What the what??? It's not supposed to get that cold here ;)

I'm really excited because the Lord's work is HASTENING. We had a world-wide missionary broadcast this week and some changes were made to the schedule of how we'll do a typical day. Namely we get to choose when to do our studies (instead of having a huge 3-hour block in the morning) and planning for the day will be in the morning and not the night before which is beautiful and also a miracle. Any RM can tell you that nightly planning is the worst because you're just so tired from everything that day and you don't really wanna put in the effort to really figure out what you're gonna do the next day. So I'm looking forward to that!! Wish they'd've change it a year ago though ;)

We found some really neat people this week, one in particular named Rosy :) she's so sweet and she's been taught a lot before, but after our first visit with her she said (mostly to herself) "something has to change..." it's so neat for us to see the Spirit working in people. I know Rosy will go far. She has a lot of potential :)

So that's life on our end! We also broke into our apartment after locking ourselves out. hope you're having better luck than we did! ;)

-Hermanita Johnson

Transfer Trash

In our mission, we have a term that is well-known but not well-liked because of what it entails... That term is "transfer trash," which is when a missionary going into their last 6 weeks of the mission gets transferred to a completely new area. It's generally looked at as "unfair" because it's nigh unto impossible to really get to know an area or the members of a ward in only 6 weeks.
And I, my friends, and the latest and greatest transfer trash! I've been called to finish a new missionary's training out in the Arroyo area--literally the absolute furthest I can get in the mission from where I am now. But! It's also right next to Pasadena #promisedland, and this means I get to have another kid!! :)

So obviously, I have a lot of mixed feelings. On the one hand, it's going to be really hard to leave my dear child Hna Zohner and all of these amazing members who've been my family these last 6 months. They're all mad I'm leaving because they wanted me to finish out my mission there. Many have even threatened to talk to Presidente Villanueva about it 😂 but they've also all invited themselves to my wedding and expect me to come back here ASAP, which I'm absolutely planning on. I love all these people so much. And it'll be hard leaving my investigators here.... but I'm also very excited :) I'm so happy to be back in East LA, especially because that's where I'll have spent the majority of my mission (a whole year man!) and I'm going to be serving around some really amazing missionaries :) and like I said, I'm excited to have another kiddo too! And as much as I truly love La Puente, it'll be nice to have a change of scenery. It's easy to get burnt out and start to lose ideas of how to help an area when you're there for so long.

Last goodbye with my Los Altos family <3

In other news, the heavens have opened and a torrential downpour has been unleashed upon us. I haven't seen so much rain in a long long time. It freaks me out and makes life hard. But at least our apartment is dry!! ;) and everything is so green too, which is kind odd for it being January. I guess things are different outside of Utah.

But yeah! My new hija is Hermana Green from Colorado :) I'll be serving in the lovely city of Glendale, CA which is, like I said, really close to El Molino (still my favorite area). I'm so excited even though the change will be hard.
The way I see it, I'm needed over here for something and the Lord trusts me enough to do it :) sometimes when missionaries get "transfer trashed" they make it an excuse to not work as hard your last transfer. And that would be really easy... you're already getting trunky for home and it would be pretty easy to just hang out and have fun instead of work as hard. Plus, you can't really get to know anyone or any of the area in such a short time, right? That's a fairly common mentality among missionaries who get trashed... But again, I think the Lord trusts me enough to keep working hard even with the enormous temptation to go easy and give up a little. With this being my last though AND having a cute new missionary to train, there's no way we're taking this easy!

Incidentally, Hna Blanchard (blue shirt next to me) and I are just trading kids!

Here's to a great 6 weeks :)

-Hermanita Johnson

When Your Ox Is In the Mire

Hello my dear friends and family! Boy am I excited to tell you 'bout my week 'cause it was something' else...

Primero, I'd just like to start with a quote from Elder Richard G. Scott that goes "Just when all seems to be going right, challenges often come in multiple doses applied simultaneously. When those trials are not consequences of your disobedience, they are evidence that the Lord feels you are prepared to grow more." That is what we faced this week!!

First, we had MANY lessons set up and a few members ready to come help us, but despite our best efforts, very very few of those lessons actually went through. Part of the problem was the excessive amount of rain. Apparently it hasn't rained this much here in over like 40 years, so everyone is freaking out and there's been lots of flooding and it's a mess. No one likes the rain even though they need it so badly. So everyone hides inside and doesn't wanna talk to a pair of soaking wet missionaries. Bummer :P

Then we had a real surprise about 2 AM on Saturday... I was happily asleep when I woke up to the weirdest noise (seriously that sound will haunt me forever)... It took me a minute to really wake up and check it out, but it turns out a pipe in the bathroom ceiling busted and water was just pouring in through the light fixtures. By the time I figured out what was going on, the whole bathroom had a solid inch and a half of water, and it was quickly spreading throughout the rest of the apartment. That's when Hna Zohner woke up (she said at first she thought I was in the shower and was just really confused...). And then the fire alarm started going off because the water was really hot and creating lots of steam, because winter and cold. We scrambled to throw the windows open and get the thing to shut up, which thankfully it did. And then we called the manager who--miracle!--actually answered his phone at 2 AM. He came and turned the water off and fixed the pipe, but not before the entire house was flooded. We did our best to run around and get important things off the floor so they wouldn't get ruined. So we were exhausted and couldn't get back to sleep until like 5 because that's how long it took him to fix everything.

By lunch time we didn't have a table to eat on anymore...

Then we spent all of Saturday making calls to the zone leaders, the housing coordinator, and Hna Villanueva and then packing everything up because the floor was ENTIRELY ruined--meaning we'd have to move. It was such an exhausting day, especially running on my grand total of like 4 hours of sleep. :P

Then Sunday we were in a real pickle. Because of how bad the flooding was, we needed to move ASAP, but with it being the Sabbath we didn't want to move--preferably we'd wait until today. But the apartment was SO messed up we just couldn't stay there. Our figurative ox was seriously in the mire (which is actually a fairly good word to describe the state of our apartment!) So after stake conference--which PS was amazing, we had an investigator come and it was super great--we did what you do when your ox is in the mire: get it out. We called the troops together and went to work. Major shoutout to our zone leaders, Elders Patterson and Low, and also Moises--a young man from the ward. The were incredibly helpful and went above and beyond to make sure everything was okay. Those boys are a blessing. And we managed to get everything moved in about an hour, and now everything's okay :)

Here's to life in #2 now

Throughout the whole ordeal we saw a TON of blessings and tender mercies. For one, there was another apartment in the same complex that was available for us to move into (which honestly is probably the biggest blessing of them all). Also, nothing was seriously ruined in the flooding aside from the floor. Plus we received all the help we needed (and more) to make everything work out okay. We definitely we able to see the Lord's hand in a lot of ways :) I'm so grateful we were protected in all of it and that we were able to fix everything so quickly. Blessings, my friends. Blessings. :)

....here's hoping it never happens again though! ;)

-Hermanitas Johnson and Zohner, who somehow aren't dead

Also, funny story. Zohner forgot her tag and took mine, so I took Sister Oh's extra one. I'm Chinese now