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