Week of Miracles

Hello all ye friends and family! :) What a crazy week we had... Phew! Lots happened and by George I learned so much.
Some quick highlights: we made confetti-filled eggs and gave them to two of our elders to smash on the other two. That was super messy, but lots of fun and also hilarious! :) Then miracle#1--I ate fish and I didn't even die! ;) yeah, a member fed it to us for dinner and it was super gross... I ate about half of it before one of the elders (being the champ he is) took it and finished it because I was starting to feel really nasty. Props to you, Elder Clark. Bless you. But the members also gave us cake after, so it worked out in the end ;)
Saturday we helped clean the church and then our branch president took us all to In-N-Out!! Yum! And then that night we were able to go watch the general Women's Session of Conference! It was SO good!

And the best, most miraculous part of the whole week was Friday. Know why? Because Vicenta got BAPTIZED!! :) that was the most stressful thing of my life. Here's why:
The service was scheduled for 6, k? So at like 4:30 we called Vicenta to make sure everything was all good still, but she didn't answer. Called again at 5 and then 5:30, still no answer. So we were freaking out a lil bit. In the middle of all that, we got a text from our branch president saying he got a flat tire and wouldn't make it on time. Crappers. We can't have a baptism without a member of the branch presidency. So we called the other two and they both said they couldn't come??? By this point we were both super worried, so we decided to make a pray (that's how one of the cute recent converts from Peru says it because she's still learning English). We realized that there was literally nothing we could do at this point to make the baptism happen except have faith that Heavenly Father would make it work somehow.
Like 5 minutes later Vicenta showed up! :) buuuut she forgot a towel. But! Then we found one stuffed in the bottom of the closet with all the baptismal clothes. And then Hno Romero, one of the counselors in the branch presidency, showed up!! Sweet! We could proceed at this point. And everything went perfectly from there :) The Spirit was so strong and it was really beautiful and I'm so blessed to have been able to be a part of it!

So yeah, that whole thing was one miracle after another. It was really interesting, though, to see how hard Satan was trying to keep this thing from happening, and how literally the only thing that could've made it work out like it did was direct help from the Lord. So that was really neat, though far too stressful for my liking ;)

Anywho, Easter was awesome too :) First, Vicenta was confirmed!! Yay!! And then a member of the Seventy randomly showed up in sacrament meeting which was kinda cool, and we had a lot of great Easter-y lessons in church. How blessed are we to have a knowledge of what our Savior did for us! :) I'll be forever grateful to Him for that.

-Hermanita Johnson

Pascua

Buenos días a todos! :) Cómo están?
What a week... Ay ay ay! This week we went looking for a lot of people, and most of them weren't home or didn't want to talk to us :( it was a bit of a bummer, but nothing we couldn't handle :) we got our weekly dose of service at the food pantry in, which was awesome. I love helping out there! And then St. Patrick's Day! Our silly goose elders didn't even wear green to district meeting. What are they even doing? ;) haha nah. It was a great district meeting though and we learned a whole lot. Later we went to find more people and ended up having to drop quite a few :/ that's always hard because we grow to love this people so much. But if they're not willing to do what it takes to progress, there's nothing we can do...
Friday was my old companion's birthday! Shoutout to Hna Hernandez! ;) We also got to see our investigator Benjamin. He's super cool but is having a lot of trials right now that are keeping him from really focusing on the Gospel and on changing. It's a struggle.
BUT! Then we had exchanges with our sister training leaders (STLs)!! They're both so cute and SUCH good missionaries. Even though a lot of our plans for the day fell through, I learned a lot from them :) Sunday was fairly normal. Wow! ;)
Yesterday was zone conference! My goodness it was so good! I really learned so much a bout how I can improve as a missionary and it made me want to do my absolute best all the time (it's realy hard because it's easier to be lazy). And after that we had FHE with the branch and it was awesome! We hid lil Easter eggs around the church that had scriptures (and candy obviously) in them about how we can find Christ in our lives :) it was really good. Props to the elders who put it together!

So this upcoming Sunday is Easter :) I hope y'all are excited! I love Easter so much. As it approaches, I encourage you all to think about what Easter really means to you! What significance does it have in your life? There's a lot more we can learn from the Gospel when we relate it to ourselves :) and if you haven't seen the Easter video from the Church yet, go watch it!

-Hermanita Johnson

Week of Learning ❤️

What a week!! It was so good. We had lots of meetings and I learned a lot of things. So some of those lessons I learned:
On Wednesday we were walking and saw some people, but decided to keep walking. We stopped and looked at each other, and started making excuses about how it would be so awkward if we went back to talk to them. Lesson #1--when Satan tempts you to makes excuses and not do something, you better do it! These people were amazing and so sweet and they needed to hear what we had to say :)
Thursday we taught a guy named Benjamin who is amazing and also we taught Vicenta. Lesson #2--the Spirit prepares these people. It is merely our privilege to guide them in the learning process. They will make the necessary changes when the Spirit does the teaching.
Friday is was POURING rain and it was so windy the rain was going sideways. Walking to the bus stop we went under an overpass and a car up above passed the same time we did, sending a massive wave of water down on top of us, splashing and soaking us pretty good. Lesson #3--we can always choose whether to be happy or upset in any circumstances, and lesson #4--laughter can ALWAYS make any situation less of a bummer.
Saturday we had a mission-wide meeting and Elder Hamula of the Seventy came! That was amazing. He decided to make the whole thing a Q&A and not say any of what he'd prepared. Lesson #5--Heavenly Father knows what we need and provides a way to get it to us, often through His inspired servants (so pay attention to conference coming up!)
Sunday the Church's new Easter video came out! All I can say is WOW. Go watch it, k? It's #Hallelujah. Lesson #6--We can all find new life in Jesus Christ :)

So there's what I learned this week :) Love y'all!

-Hermanita Johnson

¡Otro Bautismo!

What a week! It went by much too quickly.
Some highlights from this week: we met a super neat guy called Emeterio. He's awesome and he's totally prepared to receive the Gospel! He told us he loves reading his Book of Mormon (given to him from another set of missionaries) and basically as soon as he can figure out his work schedule so he doesn't have to work on Sunday, he'll be ready. :) super cool! Tuesday we found Girl Scout cookies! Always a plus ;) Then Wednesday was our weekly service (love it!!) and my 6 month mark (???? Where did the time even go???) and Moises had his baptismal interview! Moises is a 14-year-old kid whose mom was less active for quite a few years. He's incredibly shy, but he's great :) and he and his mom have been coming to church ever since we started teaching him. It's awesome!
On Friday Hna Wells felt super nasty so we had to stay in for a while which was a bummer, but I had a few extra hours to just study the scriptures :) my goodness there's so much to learn! I LOVE the scriptures <3 we also got to drive over a cool old bridge that's apparently fairly famous and was used in the Batman movies (!!!)

Saturday Moises was baptized!!! Ah it was so great. His uncle got to baptize him and it was so awesome. We're so proud of Moises for choosing to take this step :) Right after his baptism we had to book it to a meeting for the whole mission at the office in Arcadia, and then we squished weekly planning in after that. So it was a good start to the day, but then a reeeeeaaaaaally slow end to it. Oh whale. But Sunday Moises was confirmed and now he's a member! Woohoo!! :)
It was such a good week :) I love love LOVE being a part of this work and being able to see the light of the Gospel fill peoples' lives. It's truly a blessing for me to be an instrument in the Lord's hands in bringing about this great work.

-Hermanita Johnson