Happy MAY & Happy TEN MONTHS!!!!! Double digits….yes it’s quite weird, definitely bittersweet, but all in all very exciting :)) We have also entered my favorite month of the year so this Taurus is thriving!!!!! SO this week was FULL of hard times & MIRACLES. They seem to always come when things get super hard. Funny how life works like that right? The highest highs & the lowest lows always accompany each other. There’s a lesson in that ♡
So this week started off pretty average, but then flourished into one of the most successful weeks of my mission! We were able to make a TON of new friends from our Finding on Facebook. Through this Finding, we had a particularly huge miracle. Some would call it a coincidence; others may say divine intervention. Basically to keep a long story short, Sister Sellick & I had both friended separate people on Facebook (for the sake of this story & the privacy of our friends I will use placebo names: Jim & Whitney) SO Sister Sellick added Jim & I had added Whitney and we were both talking to them individually a few times. On reflection, they were both so prepared!! We then had an appointment with Jim over the phone and there was a woman talking in the background who was super interested in our conversation and Sister Sellick and I were over the moon about how well the lesson was going! Jim mentioned Whitney’s name over the phone to us & it sparked a crazy thought in my head that maybe it was the same Whitney I had been messaging all along! So we did some major digging after the phone call ended and while doing this, Whitney messaged me asking if that was ME on the phone conversation we had just had with Jim. OF COURSE I SAID YES!!! OHMYGOSH, WHAT A SMALL WORLD. Moral of the story, God is real, He is aware, and there are prepared souls out there ready to hear all about the beauty found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Small, cute, secluded Barrow-in-Furness is seriously BOOMING. I feel so privileged to have seen this area grow from the very beginning back in November. A lot of hard work, effort, tears, and countless prayers have gone into making this area what it is today. I am so grateful the Lord has trusted me to carry out His work in this blessed land!!!!
On Friday I had the wonderful opportunity to chat with my brother Ben for his 30th birthday!!!!! AHHH I know! Soooo exciting! Everyone stop what you’re doing right now and go tell him Happy Birthday. He is a legend!!! I even got to witness first hand over our video call the delivery of the emoji-shaped cookies my mom sent to his New York apartment all the way from good ole California. Blessings ❤
Another miracle from the week is that we were able to start talking to a man who actually lives in London! We had referred him over to the England London missionaries that live in his area, but after a couple of weeks, no one had reached out to him. (We suspect that because of the Corona there may not be missionaries serving in that area for the time being). Anywho, after talking to him on the phone we realized what an answer to prayer we were for him without even knowing it. He talked about how he used to be taught by missionaries in the past, but then lost touch. More recently, however, he wanted to get back into things, but still felt hesitant about it all. He prayed to God for a sign. THE NEXT DAY is when we sent him a message over WhatsApp (because we had been messaging every contact in our phone since the lockdown!!!) SOOO we are thrilled to stay in touch with & teach him until the missionaries in his area are available. There are going to be some very happy London missionaries out there real soon 😉
The rest of our weekend was spent inviting the WHOLE WORLD to join this month’s “Why I Believe” devotional. As always, it was spectacular. Over 20,000 people joined to witness this event live. LIKE WHAT!!!!! It was truly incredible. We had been praying so hard for all our friends, returning members, and members to be able to tune in & have a spiritual experience. AND THEY DID. Y’all know Alice & Shane??!!! My most favorite people ever?? Well, yeah. So they watched it and it once again changed their lives. Shane has always struggled with religion and believing in God because he “needed proof”. Then as their family was watching the devotional, one of the speakers spoke about not needing proof in order to believe. As others spoke about the priesthood, he was even more intrigued. He decided afterwards that he was interested in getting the priesthood and wants to sit down and learn everything there is!!!! WE COULD NOT BELIEVE THIS, I WAS SPEECHLESS. We just continue to be in more & more awe-some wonder for the amazing miracles happening in this family. Alice was on cloud 9 afterwards and just kept telling us about how the spirit was filling their whole home!! Here is a text she sent to us that night:
You are both my absolute angels. Because of your beautiful souls my family can now learn how to come closer to our Heavenly Father together. I am forever grateful to you both and to Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father who I truly love and know that he loves us all no matter what we have done”.
~Alice
Speechless??? Because, Same.
Well this email has officially gotten LONG so I will just leave y’all with that gem^. And also how privileged I feel to serve in the EMM! (England Manchester Mission). Our Mission choir sang at the virtual Fireside. This time it was the EFY Medley “Sisters in Zion/Armies of Helaman.”
I hope you’re all noticing Spring—a wonderful time of year, noticing all the blessings God so freely gives to us. I invite you to pray to see the world with spiritual eyes & I can promise the Lord will show unto you amazing opportunities that He has in store just for you. I LOVE YOU xx
All my love always,
Sister Johnson
“Part of enduring well consists of being meek enough, amid our suffering, to learn from our relevant experiences. Rather than simply passing through these things, they must pass through us and do so in ways which sanctify these experiences for our good.”
– Elder Neal A. Maxwell
Let’s Get Real Segment: 8 weeks of Lockdown Feels
^ Proud of those Ukulele calluses 😉
Called to Serve... 