Tender Mercies

Hello Family!

Missionary work is the best and I love being out here! Sometimes life (and missionary life) can be crazy because there are so many ups and downs all the time, am I right?:) But overall, it's always good! And I totally have a testimony of that! Satan tries to throw us for a loop and throw in hard and negative things, but if we pay attention, there are always little lights and tender mercies that Heavenly Father sends our way. For some reason I feel like it's a lot easier to remember the negative things, but as we remember the good things throughout our day, it makes everything so much better:) I have a calendar for the year of 2017 and every day I write 1 or 2 little tender mercies or miracles that happened that day and it's so amazing to see that Heavenly Father really is aware of us and he is helping us in the work!

Monday night we planned a family home evening that we invited a bunch of member, investigators, and less actives to. We planned a lesson, activity, treats, and everything. But for some reason everyone ended up not being able to come and they had to cancel on us. Me and Sister Nielsen, the Elders in our ward, the senior couple missionaries, and a member couple ended up being the only ones there. So we decided to still just have a little FHE lesson. We talked about prayer and ended up having a really great discussion with them. Their insights were really great and I learned a lot from everything they said! While they were talking it dawned on me that the reason no investigators or less actives showed up for FHE was because Heavenly Father knew that I needed an FHE about prayer. That was something I had been trying to work on for a long time, and I really felt like what I needed was what our members said. It was a testimony builder to me that Heavenly Father loves me and is aware of me because he planned a family home evening just for me:) It was powerful and I am so grateful for that tender mercy and answer to my prayers.

Crazy miracle story! We met a girl in the elevator and just talked to her briefly. We got off to look someone up but they werent home. We felt bad that we didn't talk to her more so we went to the floor she got off at. We had no idea how we would find her because on each floor there were 15 or 16 different apartments, but we felt like we needed to try anyways! We said a prayer and felt we should knock on a door that we heard voices in. We knocked, and IT WAS HER!! We talked to her and her mom, but her mom speaks Spanish. So we set up a time for the Hermanas to see them and so far it's been good and they really want to come to church!

Another miracle story! We met a lady coming out of a building that we were trying to get in to. She had a saxophone case so we started talking to her. She had to go but gave us her number. For some reason it didn't save after she left so I tried to remember what her number was and wrote it down from memory. We ran after her to try to get it again but she just said she would call us and she said we could meet at the church on Friday at 7:30 (the church was super close to her). So Friday we went to the church and she didn't show up. We had the number I tried to remember and guess so I figured we might as well try. Either it would be her or we'd just call a random person that maybe needed the gospel! So I called and guess what... IT WAS THE RIGHT NUMBER!! Haha! We couldn't even believe it! The spirit really does bring things to our remembrance.

We also had an amazing zone conference this week that I learned so so much at!

When we look for the good every day, it's always there. Promise:) Try it and you'll be amazed at how often the Lord's hand is in your life! I'm grateful for this time to represent Jesus Christ here in New York and see all these tender mercies and miracles in His work! Make it a great week by seeing the good in every day! I love you all and know that Heavenly Father does too!

Love, Sister Johnson