Delicious to Me

My delicious breakfast! Pancakes with an egg cooked in the middle of it. Mom you would be proud of all the cooking we've been doing! This last week we made fajitas! Ya I know right. And they were actually good! We are getting so good at cooking that we've decided that we will bring chili to our ward trunk or treat and Chili Dinner this Friday! We may or may not just buy a few cans of chili from Wal-mart and warm it up in a pan but hey, I'm sure they'll be impressed. We just started a new tradition that hopefully sticks. Free quesadilla Thursday from the Elders! I know the name doesn't flow but Thursdays just work best for our schedule. We live right next to Moscow High school so every day at lunch time we see tons of students leaving the school to go get lunch. So we're gonna start giving free quesadillas out on Thursdays. We'll just start by inviting members from our ward but if there's free food involved I'm sure they'll invite their friends. Our greatest cooking adventure however since Elder Holmes and I have been together is our invention of the Chicken Nugget Bean Burrito! Its basically exactly what it sounds like. Tortilla, beans, Chicken Nuggets (we prefer the frozen dino nuggets from Wal-Mart) and cheese. And you can add hot sauce if you want. When Elder Holmes first came up with the idea my thought was probably the same as yours is now, Thats disgusting! Though I didn't believe at that time that it was good I had nothing save a desire for it to be good and I exercised a particle of faith and experimented on the word and found out that it did indeed become delicious to me. (Alma 32:27-28) The mixture of chicken bean and cheese was very complimentary.

Well now that you are either inspired or disgusted I invite you to act accordingly.

The missionary work is going great too! We are teaching some really great people right now. We had another meeting with the Pikarella family last night. It was inspiring to hear their stories about how God had given them answers to their prayers in their past, and we taught about how God can give them answers to their prayers about the Book of Mormon today.

This week I've been learning more about having Faith all the time. I've really learned through experience that Satan wants our lives to be miserable. He wants us to be uncomfortable and to worry. He wants our minds to be in confusion. He wants us to react to fear rather than act in Faith. He is always putting thoughts into our minds that make us doubt in fear and make our life uncomfortable. Faith is the firmness of mind, the trust in God, that make these temptations from Satan loose all their power. This week I've been practicing having faith every moment and never allowing fear and doubt to creep in. I'm far from perfect, but as I've been working on it I have felt a lot more peace in my day to day life and I'm all around more happy.

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

Jiffy Lube and Kitchen Garbage

Today we had a sweet miracle. We had to take our car in for an oil change. As we were walking up to the Jiffy Lube a worker's head pop out of the underground area and yelled, "Hey Elders! I need to get you my contact info before you leave?" It was sweet! As he handed us his name and phone number he said, "I've been less active for quite a while now and its time to come back!" 

Last night we were walking around downtown moscow with our ukelele and we saw across the street there was a couple walking and the guy was strumming a guitar. So I purposely strummed really loud to get his attention. We both looked at each other and were like hey! So they came over. We played I am a child of God for them and he played a song for us it was sweet!

Yesterday we had a less-active show up to church out of the blue! It was very surprising!

All I can say is at least the garbage is in bags and not all over our apartment :)

We're havin lots of fun and I'm learning a ton right now! But I'm also out of time.

Love ya!

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

Elder Holmes

Well life's been pretty good up here. My new companion's name is Elder Holmes! Here's a picture of him.

This week we had some great lessons with Justin and Danya. But it was also pretty stressful because I was adjusting to having a brand new missionary and also trying to prepare for zone training that happened on friday. But things are pretty smooth now. 

This week I've also been searching diligently to understand more about how the spirit gives us an answer to whether or not the Book of Mormon is true. I've learned a lot as I pondered my own experience as well as read the scriptures and PMG. This is what I've come up with so far. As we read the BofM certain passages with ring true with us, this is the Light of Christ. If we ask God through prayer if the Book is true then read a passage that rings true to us, then we recognize that God is communicating with us and giving us an answer to our question. (The Holy Spirit works through the light of Christ. PMG Chap 4) That feels pretty cool to realize that the creator of everything is communicating with us personally. It builds our faith. The fruits of this realization are "love, joy, peace" etc. (Galatians 5). When we have this experience we naturally want to repent. I have seen many investigators read the Book of Mormon and experience the Light of Christ. They like the Book. They think its good. But they often don't realize the ways that God is communicating with them. Without the personal connection to God their faith is not strong enough to influence them to repent.

Well Love yall!

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

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BTW: There are two great ways to follow the events of the Washington, Spokane Mission:

Facebook Mission Group Page: Washington, Spokane Mission - President Dymock
Blog: https://washingtonspokanemission.wordpress.com/

Love ya!

Doug (the spaghetti squash)

Well transfers are tomorrow. I will be staying here in Rolling Hills and training another new missionary. Elder Morse is going to CDA. I'm gonna miss him a ton! We had some good times. As a tribute to some of the good times we had together we will attach one of the songs we made up together. 

Well my guesses about conference were completely wrong. But thats ok I still sustain them anyway! 

Conference was sweet! Elder Holland's talk is definitely true! I am a living testimony of that! My Mom stuck with me, bore my sorrows, and carried me through the 2 most difficult years of my life. I definitely couldn't have done it without her! Love you Mom!

This week we found a new investigator named Katrina. She is friends with some members in our ward. She is awesome! Most of her friends growing up were Mormon so she went to activity days and Stake Dances. 

Once upon a time Elder Morse and I were given a Spaghetti Squash from this lady that we helped with her garden. We loved this squash so we named it Doug. And we drew a face on him. This is his story. (p.s. I love life cereal. I eat it every morning)

(Note from Lane: The audio clip he sent was not understandable)