Hot Chocolate

I feel old. My Ward Mission Leader's Daughter's family, the Leavenworth's are in Bowdish ward, my old area. I would have dinner at their house pretty often. I remember Sister Leavenworth always talking about her daughter who was on a mission who had six months left. Well I got kinda freaked out yesterday when my Ward Mission Leader said that his granddaughter got home from her mission that day. The last 6 months just flew by! But the experiences I am having are amazing! Some of them are super exhilarating, spiritual, and motivating. Some are bland, tiring, and difficult. But nevertheless they are all amazing. I am learning from the good and the bad. I feel like no moments are wasted. I feel like they are all preparing me for my future. 

Here was one of those great experiences. Elder Bowring and I didn't shop very well this week so some times it was hard to decide what to have for dinner. I used a skill I learned at a very early age. Look in the pantry, find nothing, go to the fridge, find nothing, go to the cupboard find nothing, go to the pantry, find nothing, go to the fridge find nothing, go to the cupboard find nothing, go to the pantry and lower your expectations. Eat. This is what I did. What I found in the pantry was six different kinds of Hot Chocolate. So I decided that for dinner I would discover which of the six brands of Hot Chocolate tasted best. I made every cup exactly how the ingredients directed me to. I had a glass of water to drink in between every cup of hot chocolate to renew my taste buds. It was a great learning experience for my life! I discovered that Stephen's Candy cane Hot Chocolate is to die for! I also found out that Western Family hot chocolate is also to die for but in a different way. 

One of the highlights of this week was we convinced Bob, a hard hearted old cuss that lives in Sprague to come up to Cheney for a church tour. We drove all the way down to Sprague, met Bro Thompson. Woke Bob up. Told him to get ready. Then we all drove back up to Cheney in Bro Thompson's car. Did the Church tour. Drove back to Sprague. We visited a few people down there then came back to Cheney. Needless to say we invested quite a bit into this church tour. But its because we have faith in this stubborn old cuss. We have seen his countenance change from the first time Bro Thompson introduced us. He has lots of questions about the Mormon "cult" but each time we go over his heart gets a little softer.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you Mothers or prospective Mothers!

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-05-01-to-every-mother?lang=eng 

Here's a cool video about you. Plus its a plug for family history.

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

Kimberlie Baptism

Kimberlie Got Baptized!!!! It was awesome!!!! The service was really powerful. Lots of ward members attended and the spirit was really strong. Both her and the parents cried at different parts of the service. They're next. They don't know it yet but they are. 

There will be a picture just like this but the parents will be in white and Kimberlie won't.

The other cool thing about the baptism was that Bro Thompson got to baptize and confirm her. I've written about him several times. He's the one that just got baptized last June and he used to be a Nazarene Pastor. He has worked really hard on helping this family accept the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It was his first time baptizing someone (at least with the proper authority). It was a powerful experience to see two people new to the gospel participating in ordinances that bring them closer to Jesus Christ. 

Well that was definitely the highlight of the week. 

Love ya!

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

Transfers!

Transfers!!! Man I always try and make the email after transfer dramatic but it doesn't really work. So I'll just tell you without any exclamation points. I'm staying. Yay. I'm happy. Elder Bowring is also staying. I was pretty surprised that I was staying because I have been here for 6 months. But I am glad that I am staying.

Kimberlie Westfall is doing great and planning on being baptized this saturday! (oh man I used an exclamation point. I had to. It's exciting) 

Yesterday we had a lesson with Felicity. She's the one that asked us if she could be an investigator last week. We had an awesome lesson about the Restoration. We were planning on doing a lesson on the Book of Mormon next time and giving her the book then, but she asked if she could have one. We can't say no. She said, "I love to read. I'll read it all before next time we meet" We're meeting with her in 2 days. Ha ha we'll see how far she gets but the fact that she is excited about it is pretty cool. 

Anyway I know this is a short letter. This week I will pay more attention to the miracles I see so I can write a more exciting letter next week. 

Love Ya!

-Elder Johnson

Two pretty cool miracles

Hola de muchacho de queso de espanol de las casas!!!!!

We had a pretty good week this week! We went and saw the Westfall family. The family was originally on date for this coming Saturday but because of Word of Wisdom issues the parents won't be able to be baptized on that day. But Kimberlie the daughter is still set on being baptized. Unfortunately we had to move the date back to April 25th because of scheduling reasons. We will hopefully be putting the Parents back on date soon. 

This week we saw some pretty cool miracles. 

1. We went to go visit Travis a less active member at his apartment the other night. He answered the door and we saw that he had a few friends over that were playing a board game. We asked a few questions about the game they were playing when out of nowhere the girl that was sitting there asked, "Do you guys come and knock on his door very often? Because I live downstairs and you never knock on my door." We explained that we usually don't knock on people's doors till we know them but we definitely can come knock on yours. She said that would be great. So we're going by tonight! Her name is Felicity. This happened at the end of a long day of rejections. We had talked to A LOT of people that day but we didn't have much success. Then at the end of the day God just gave us a new investigator without us having to do anything. 

2. We were walking around and we saw this lady that always stands outside her apartment complex in the same place everyday to smoke. I've tried to talk to her like 9,000 times since I've been here but she always just blows us off. But the other day Elder Bowring who has never met her went up and started talking to her and for some reason she opened right up and now she is a new investigator! I was amazed! When I saw him going up to her I had no faith but I was rebuked soundly. Which I was ok with. 

We had a mini missionary this week. Thats a highschool kid getting ready for a mission that stays with you for a few days. That made things kinda fun,.

Well I love yall.

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

Elder Bowring and the ax

You know its really hard to come up with something new and fresh to write every week when you do the same thing over and over. 

Guess what! I talked to random people on the street! I taught the gospel to lots of people! I probably participated in over 20 prayers everyday this week! I did laundry on Monday! 

Don't get me wrong, I love doing these things. I just don't know how to tell you how exciting they are when I've already told you like 95 times. 

That being said there were some exciting things that happened this week that I'll tell you about. 1. We moved! Missionaries have been living in the Basement of Bishop Oldham's house for almost a year, however the Oldhams will be moving this summer to Alaska. So we knew that by the end of this transfer we would need to find a new place. Well on Monday we talked to our housing coordinator and discussed some ideas. On Tuesday we got a voicemail from him saying that we would be moving tomorrow! So we did! It was a looooong day. Good thing we had a truck though! HA HA I Love my truck! Because we've been swamped with missionary work we haven't had much time to unpack so for this last week we've been living in a very messy apartment. Surprisingly the mess is growing on me and its starting to feel like home in there ha ha. 

This week we had another cool experience. Our vision for Cheney is to baptize the entire city so we decided to start with the previous mayor who will mostly likely be the next mayor. Figure if we can get him everyone else will follow. Ha ha (false doctrine. See the Story of Zeezrom for proof of that). Well whether the rest of the city follows or not we are working on him. He is the neighbor of one of our members. We went over with the member and offered to help him take out a bush stump in his yard. He was delighted for help! We went over after conference on Saturday and dug it out in about 35 minutes (Elder Bowring's good with an ax). He was very grateful. We talked to him about the gospel and he became a new investigator! He also told us that he had read the entire Book of Mormon before! I pumped to go back and visit him!

We dug another hole on Saturday for one of our investigators named Scott. Cool thing was we got some delicious BBQ chicken from it! Boo Yah! He is a really humble nice guy. He's single and raising 3 kids. 

General Conference was Powerful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well those were some of the things that happened this week!

Love you!

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

Sweet Miracle

I've been doing this awesome study on The Holy Ghost for the last few months. First I got one of the Cheap book of Mormons we hand out and I read it and marked every verse that mentioned the Spirit. I also wrote down the reference and a short description on a sheet of paper. While doing that I determined several different Characteristics and roles that the Spirit plays in our lives. Now I am going through the scripture references and grouping them with others that teach us similar things about the characteristics of the Spirit. It has been super rewarding. I've learned a ton!

Miracles:

Monday night was sweet. It was p-day so we started proselyting at 6:00. We were on foot that night. First we stopped by this potential investigator I have talked to several times throughout the months that I've been here but nothing had ever come of it. Well for some reason he was really receptive this time. Now he's on date for baptism and reading the Book of Mormon! That night we recommitted to talk to everyone we possibly could. We ended up getting 5 new investigators that night!

Well I know its short but I need to go. Plus sometimes its nice to have a short message that lets you know that I'm still alive but doesn't occupy half the day to read. 

Love you!

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

Exchange with Elder Maguet

A few days ago I had the chance to go on exchanges with my old companion Elder Maguet! It was pretty fun to walk the streets of Cheney again just like old times. We had a pretty cool experience with this couple named Damien and Brooklyn. There is a bit of a back story for them though. When I very first came to Cheney they were referred to us by the YSA Sisters here in Cheney. We talked to them several times in the parking lot of their apartment complex but they were never seemed very interested and we could never get an appointment with them. Then when Elder Leavitt got here we decided to visit them one more time before we stuck their names in the area book. We knocked on their door and surprisingly they opened it up and let us right in. We had a sweet lesson with them! I think I wrote about it before. They were put on date for baptism and things were looking good. Well we lost contact for a few days and when we saw Damien it was apparent that he had been exposed to some anti material. Well we resolved some of his concerns but we knew that Brooklyn still had some. 

Well for the next 2 to 3 months we've been stopping by here and there but they have been super hard to contact. Eventually about a week and a half ago we talked to Brooklyn. At first she said that they had talked about it and they just wanted to go to a "normal" Christian church. But by the end of the conversation she was very interested in looking more into our church. And she said she would talk to Damien about it. Well a few days ago on exchanges we stopped by and Brooklyn was the only one home. She said that she really did want to look more into our church. Then Damien got home and came up to us and said, "ya we just want to stick with a Christian church" We could see Brooklyn in the back uncomfortable because she had just barely told us that she wanted to look into our church. Ha ha I was laughing pretty hard on the inside. But we had a good talk with Damien and by the end of it I think he forgot what he said at the beginning because he said he felt really good as we were talking to him and he really wanted to come to our church. So we were pretty excited. We'll see how it goes with them! Its obvious that the Lord has been working on them for quite a while now. They have been looking for a church to go to.

We had some other cool miracles that happened this week but it takes to long to write them all. It was a crazy week to though. We had two meetings that we had to set up for which is a pretty difficult process because we have to haul tables from one church building to the other and every time we use them we have to ask someone to borrow their truck. Although on the bright side we just found out that our car will be replaced with a truck! Boo yah! We are going to go pick it up in about 30 minutes.

The week was also crazy because we did two exchanges in a row. From Thursday to Friday night I went to Spokane 2nd ward and Then from Friday Night to Saturday Night Elder Maguet came to Cheney.

Well I got to go now. I love yalls

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

This is Elder Bowring and I

This is Sprague