La Conferencia Se Acerca

Hellos friends!! How are you lovely people doing? This week was good, normal (qué milagro!), and a little slow. But I'll take it in comparison to the last couple of crazy weeks we've had ;)

We're working with a couple of new investigators who really have a lot of potential and we're excited to see where it goes :) one sweet lady who came to church is named Soraida. She's from Guatemala and she's, like, maybe as tall as my shoulder. Maybe. She's really little but also really sweet :) she's also got two adorable girls who're just as tiny as she is.
In other news it broke 100º the last 3 days in a row. The heat is suffocating. It just, like, ENGULFS you. Bleh. Also we ate only white people food this week? That was odd. We actually were given a salad with our dinner three times (basically unheard of, also a miracle). We also have a brand new elder in the district! Elder Chavarria is training Elder Davis. He's from Salt Lake (La Fábrica), is half Bolivian, and is going to be a wonderful missionary! He's already doing great and we're glad to have him with us!

But the highlight of the week and probs the highlight of this coming week is the fact that we have GENERAL CONFERENCE!!!! We had the women's session this Saturday and I was amazed, my friends. I am utterly and completely convinced that when we go into conference humbly, looking for answers, we will receive them every time. We can even receive answers to questions we didn't fully realize we had, or answers to questions we'll have in the future! General Conference is an enormous testimony-builder for me of the fact that A) God knows and loves me. He knows what I need, and B) these men and women who speak are ABSOLUTELY inspired of God. How else could they give such powerful and uplifting and hopeful messages? I am certain they they couldn't.

I'd like to invite each of you to ponder throughout the week what questions you might have, ways you can improve, etc, and write those things down! I promise that as you listen to the inspired words of these servants of the Lord you will receive the answers you need :)

Until next week,
-Hermanita Johnson

Mission Life Week 54--In Which I Dance Folclórico, Break My Bike (Again), and Officially Become Casi Mexicana

Hello one and all!! What a week! It was stressful, beautiful, and just straight up joyful!! I can't BEGIN to explain all of how we felt and whatever, but I'll try. SO, here goes trying to 'splain the more major events that went down.

For starters, after getting flat tire #4 (our luck though...) we went to Korean BBQ for dinner with Robert and Darlene and the elders and ate a collective 16 plates of food.... it was so good though!! Except the squid... yuck.
Wednesday something happened and my bike just kind of....died. Idk but the derailer busted somehow and so we were back on foot :P thankfully our lovely zone leaders were able to help us out with that whole mess! AAAND that night the elders' investigator got married to her recent convert husband!!! :D it was so awesome. We love their whole family so much <3
Thursday I ate the best sopes of my life. 4 of them actually. Courtesy of Hna Tehuitzil. If you haven't had sopes, you gotta try them. You're seriously missing out. Holy cow though, real Mexican cooking is to DIE for.
Friday! We had a member take us all the way out to Arcadia to get my bike fixed and *MILAGRO* they fixed the thing in like 5 minutes, didn't charge me anything for it (all the missionaries come to this bike shop, so they know and love us) #blessings. Buuuuut then Hna Christensen got ANOTHER flat tire and we were back to walking again. (That's the 5th flat, for any of you not keeping track.) Also on account of stress I decided to chop off a solid 4 inches of my hair. Whoops.

Saturday, my friends, was probably the best day of my life thus far. Lemme 'splain y'all why. (Don't worry Mom, my comp gets on me for bad grammar like that). That morning was the elders' investigator's baptism!! The wife and 2 kids were all baptized together. Christensen and I were able to do a musical number, and the whole thing was just so beautiful! They were all so happy ❤️ it made me so happy and so grateful to be here to see this. Even though they weren't our investigators, I have a very deep love for this sweet family :) their daughter Claudia is mine and Hna Christensen's new little sister basically and I just adore them all so much!! I can't wait for the day they get sealed in the temple :) it was such a hopeful, happy morning.
And then that evening we had the greatest activity of my life. So Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and El Salvador all have their independence days either on the 15th or 16th, and the majority of our members are from those countries. So, CELEBRATION!!! There was FOOD, there was DANCING, there was MUSIC. It was beautiful :') I think I was definitely meant to be a part of this culture! ;) and they let us participate! We were able to be in a dance with the Sociedad de Socorro. It's a traditional folclórico dance from el estado de Morelos (south of Mexico City) and it was SO FUN!!! Everyone thought we did really well :) it was just a happy fun night for everyone involved.

And transfers. Probably the reason I was so stressed this week. But Hna Christensen will be staying here with me for another 6 weeks!! :) and we get to share a car with the elders!! :D We're pumped (they're slightly less pumped.) And to top it all off, Lidia, Claudia and Justin (the fam that got baptized) were all confirmed on Sunday :) I couldn't be happier for the lot of them! So even though this week was harder than I thought I could handle, it was also so much better and happier than I ever could've imagined :) it's kind of neat to see how those opposites really do work and why opposition in life really is so necessary. But the more bitter life gets, the sweeter it can be too :) I definitely saw that this week.

-Hermanita Johnson

This Week Was Kind Of Just, Like, Exhausting

The subject line says it all. It was a good week, full of more bike problems, a lot of walking, a bit of tracting (which we generally don't do here), and some hardcore partying--hah jk, we all know I don't party. But it was a good week despite the road blocks we faced (namely the bikes being messed up again. Seriously, what are the odds???)

So in a nutshell, we had exchanges! I stayed here with Hna Schmutz, one of our STL's and every plan and back up plan we had fell through... Yikes. We had to take Christensen's bike into the shop to get fixed, again. No members could take us, so we took a 2 hour bus ride with her bike and the extra tire we had... Also our branch president, Presidente Tehuitzil, took us to this fun outdoor market thing to celebrate my year mark!! Can you BELIEVE I've been gone a whole year??? It was awesome though :) really good food... And then today we went to a buddhist temple in our area that apparently is the biggest one in the US! Super neat!

-Hermanita Johnson