Subject Lines are Hard and So is Change. Bleh.

This week was a whirlwind of stuff! Whew!
It started off weird with Monday not being p-day. What the? But we met a super cool family who we hope to start teaching :) On Wednesday a lady we know from the place we always do service at had the bus driver wait for us! We still had to cross the street and he would've left if it weren't for her. It was so nice and we appreciated it so much. Especially since it would've been a 30 minute walk uphill :P It was a really sweet thing for her to do :) I love getting to serve these people too. Then Thursday I made brownies for the district meeting. That was fun! I'm known in the district now for my baking of cakes, cookies, brownies, etc. It's awesome ;) not a bad reputation to have at all. And Saturday we gave a lady a baptismal date and she accepted!!! Her name's Cristina and she's so prepared :) the only potential problem will be helping her get to church--a lot of people don't have cars here or can't drive themselves.
Then yesterday. Yesterday was the weirdest by far. For one, a couple of us missionaries sang together in sacrament meeting! That was more fun than weird, but still :) haha. I do love getting to do that though. However, none of our investigators with baptismal dates came :( less fun. And then we found out that 2 of the elders are getting ET'd, or emergency transferred. Which basically means pack up all your stuff immediately and be ready to go in a few hours (tops). They're both being switched to a different area, so we'll have to split their area down the middle between us and the other elders who're still left here. So now we have an even more hugenormous area to cover... I'm not sure how that'll work out. Plus these elders are like our best friends, so we'll certainly miss them. I know it'll work out though :) clearly they think we're capable of handling this. And on the plus side, we get literally the coolest place I've ever been to in the whole mission. P-day will rock ;)

Anyway, I learned a lot this week. But I think the biggest lesson was learned last night when I was freaking out about taking over half of the elder's area and having to pick up their investigators. For obvious reasons I was incredibly stressed and just completely overwhelmed. But I realized that this is an enormous opportunity for me to grow. The Lord always gives us challenges when He wants to help us grow and learn and when He knows we're ready to take them on. He'll NEVER give us a challenge we can't handle. We just have to remember to trust in Him and do our best :)

-Hermanita Johnson

Good Week!!

So! This week's been pretty great :) I'mma keep this short though, 'cause I don't got a lot of time.
We found some really neat investigators this week and we really hope we'll be able to extend them baptismal dates soon. It's been really neat to see these people pop up miraculously when we find ways to be more devoted to the work. Cool stuff :)

Anyway, yeah. It's our p-day today because we went to the temple!!! My goodness it was so lovely. I miss it :) y'all need to go to the temple. Even if it's just to hang out on the grounds. Just get to the temple this week and I promise you will find peace and answers :)

-Hermanita Johnson

Darn El Niño

So it rained like half the week... Darn El Niño. Oh well! I have a really big umbrella, so life is good!
In other news, we had a great week! We've been working really hard on finding new investigators and we found some really cool people this week :) hopefully we can pick them up and baptize them!
On Tuesday we had the STL's come hang out with us for a couple hours to just work on contacting people (it's hard) and we had a great time and learned a lot from them. They're so great and so much fun to be around :) Hna Diaz and I met some pretty neat people (but unfortunately they actually turned out to be not interested). That night our branch president took us all to dinner and we got to meet the new elders: Elder Marsh and Elder Saunders. They're both really cool and a lot of fun :)
Wednesday was service! Woohoo!! I love service :)
And starting Thursday it rained. And rained. And rained some more. Up through Sunday night. Ay caray!! But it was all good. Cali needs it really bad. My MTC district jokingly told me before we all left that Cali would have their wettest year like ever this year because I don't like rain/being rained on. I think they might be right ;) oh well! I'm having fun jumping in puddles.
Saturday night I baked a cake! Nuff said.

We're starting to see the fruits of our labors now and it's amazing :) I can really see that when we work hard and seek to do the Lord's will, He'll make our efforts enough and He'll provide a way for us to accomplish our goals. It's a huge testimony builder to me of His love for us :) I've seen it again and again and again, and I know that'll continue throughout my life as I strive to follow Him.
I know He loves each of you as well, no matter what :) it reminds me of Elder Uchtdorf's talk from this last conference, "He Will Place You on His Shoulders and Carry You Home." Y'all should read it :)

Ciao.
-Hermanita Johnson

La Conferencia

So this week!! Tuesday was rainy but good. We got to see some members who are really cool and teach them a little about the Gospel. Also Hna Wells had her first Slurpee ever! Fun stuff ;) (I made her stop and get one when we passed a 7 Eleven and she said she'd never ever had one.) Wednesday was service like always and one of the other people who volunteers there brought a cheesecake she'd made to share with us! Ah it was so good... I love cake! :) and that night we went to the Salcedo's for dinner and got to take the Hna a birthday present! She's so cute and we LOVE her :)
Thursday we had a great (and last) district meeting for the transfer! And we got to have Chick-Fil-A for lunch which was totally awesome. I miss that place... Then we got to see Vicenta, our now recent convert :) Let me just tell you, she's amazing. I swear she was literally glowing and she just looks so much different! She definitely has changed a lot and I'm so happy she's a member of this amazing church now :) Friday, April fools, we did nothing because we're boring ;) nah but we spent a lot of the day weekly planning.

Then, CONFERENCE!!! :D it was SO good. I have like 40 pages of notes (they're sorta smallish pages, but hey). How blessed are we to be able to hear form such amazing men and women who are ABSOLUTELY called of God to teach us and direct us! It's so fantastic :)

Also I hit my 7-month mark this week??? So crazy how fast the time goes out here!

With so many loves,
-Hermanita Johnson