Headed to Hayden Lake ID

Transfers were this week. I am getting transferred to Hayden Lake ID. It is right by Couer D'Alene (I  still have no idea how to spell that). My new companion will be Elder Olsen! He came out with me so that's pretty exciting.

Elder Holmes will stay here in Rolling Hills with Elder Griffin who has been in the Moscow YSA wards. I'm bummed to be leaving Rolling Hills but I'm sure the new area will be fun.

Thank you for all of the awesome gifts! I really love them!

Christmas was tons of fun! We almost got hit by a car as we were chasing down a hobo to give him handwarmers as a gift. Then he declined them :( Then we gave the handwarmers to this guy in our ward who has to ride his electric wheelchair around everywhere. He was very grateful but informed us that he has electric gloves. I think God is trying to tell us that we are going to need those handwarmers.

It was lots of fun to see many of you over Skype!

This is the Deobald family that we were teaching. I'm sure going to miss them!

Love you guys!

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

Pictures from Christmas

Lots o' presents

I look really good!

My new sunglasses

Yes, those are panty hose :)

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life is going great here!

This is our Christmas tree. Its more like a Christmas branch. We found it on the side of the road. In fact we had to swerve to avoid it. After seeing it we quickly pulled over and put it on top of our car and drove it home. We're pretty sure it was a branch cut off from a tree that probably fell off the back of a trailer because there were a few other branches in the road as well. Its looking pretty good though. The Members donated ornaments and lights. We also decorated it with a few #asaviorisborn pass along cards.

Lots of investigators, and Less active members showed up to Church for the Christmas Program! It was great! One of our new investigators Kristine showed up for the first time. She accidently came an hour early. Luckily we were there for a meeting so we just sat there with her and looked through the hymn book. She really likes music so she enjoyed looking at our music.

Well I'm out of time. Love you!

-Elder Johnson

Awesome Week

This week was awesome! 

Wednesday night we were helping out at the Nativities around the World event that our Stake does every Christmas. We were helping out the live musicians transition on and off and helping the get Mic'd. One of the performers didn't show up so the lady asked if we could play for a bit. We were nervous because we didn't have any of our music or any time to prepare but it turned out pretty good! We only had sing for about 10 minutes though. But we played every Christmas song we knew. Its a good thing we did that on Wednesday because we realized we were going to need to learn a lot more songs for our 30 minute performance the next day. So we did! And it turned out great! We invited a nonmember family the day of to come and watch us sing and they all came! We also had a few other investigators go. 

Last night at about 8:00 we were struggling for some ideas to find new investigators. Its a pretty tough time to go knock on doors. But Elder Holmes remembered this nice older couple we had met a few weeks back and sung too. They said we could come back and sing to them again. So we knocked on their door and they let us right in. We played a song and the spirit was there. After we asked if we could share a short scripture. They said, "sure why don't we sit down?" So we shared 3 Nephi 27:16. They were much more welcoming than I was initially expecting so we just started teaching the restoration. They were very attentive. At the end they said that they would read the Book of Mormon and they agreed to have us come back! It was sweet! 

A few weeks back we lost all contact with one of our investigators. We knew he worked at Les Schwab tires so this morning we went there and asked if we could talk to him. He took us to the back of the store and we had a brief discussion. He said that he had heard some stuff about the church regarding recent events on policies on homosexuality. Luckily most of what he had heard were misconceptions that we cleared up. He agreed to meet with us tomorrow!

Love you!

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

Nativities Around the World

Things are getting pretty exciting with Christmas coming up! Our stake has a huge Christmas event every year that is attended very well by the community. Its called Nativities around the world. What they do is they have hundreds of different kinds of Nativity sets all set up in the cultural hall so you can walk through and look at them. There is also live music going in the Chapel. The doors are open so you can here it but they hang a see through sheet from the ceiling to make it feel more like background music but if you want you can go sit in the chapel and listen. There are also a few other rooms in the church that they use. They have a room all about Jesus Christ. Then they turn the primary room into a living room. It looks amazing. Its a place where kids can go and draw and do other activities. They also have a room where you can dress up in nativity clothes and get your picture taken. It looks really realistic too! The event is 5 days long! Anyway Elder Holmes and I jumped at the opportunity so we will be performing 30 minutes of the live music with our Ukelele. I'm pretty pumped! 

Tom and Michelle who are friends with our Stake President that we've been teaching came to church on Sunday with their two daughters!

Murry Christmas!

-Elder (Andre) Johnson