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