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

Brandon and Logan!

Brandon and Logan got baptized! I know it looks like I'm disgusted. Its just one of those pictures. It was an awesome service!! The Spirit was very strong. They're good little kids. They were super excited that morning to finally get baptized. They were running and jumping around everywhere until of course their Mom calmed them down.

Another cool phenomenon we woke up to this week was "frog" all over the trees in Moscow. Frog is the nickname for frozen fog. It's pretty incredible. It's basically just a really thick frost. And the other incredible thing is it has stayed for 3 days now. I thought it would melt away the first day.

Love you guys!

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

15 Years

I appreciate all of the letters of support from family this week due to this week being the 15th anniversary of "The Accident" I don't know the full effect that that event had on my life personally as well as on my family. I often experience things that I figure are probably tied back to it. I'm sure I will continue to find more as I grow up. But I do know that this is true: John 16:33 

"These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." 

Crazy things happen in this imperfect fallen state that we are in. But Christ has overcome all the Pain, sorrow, and confusion that we carry. I also find comfort in 2 Ne 2 which explains why we have opposition and the eternal role it plays in our lives. With knowledge of both of these things it helps me to develop an attitude described in Mos 3:19

"...submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

I don't know all the reasons why this event happened. But I do know that it happened for a reason. There are a lot of different emotions tied to this experience. Deep grief, sorrow, and despair. Anger, fear. But also Happiness and love in my new family as well as deep exquisite joy and empathy from moments of healing from deep wounds. But ultimately I think my greatest peace and excitement comes from my faith that there is a reason for every experience I go through in life. Good and bad. They all have a purpose for helping me to be what god wants me to be. 

This week has been pretty awesome! A few of our lessons this week were focused on recognizing the Spirit. I learned a ton about how simple it really is to feel the Spirit. Moroni 7:16 says it pretty clear. If it invites and entices you to do good and believe in God than it is the Spirit of Christ. That can be as simple as helping someone, then feeling good about it after. Or it can be the simple feeling of peace and excitement I felt yesterday as I sang a Christmas song for ward choir. It was really cool to see some of the people we are teaching as they realized that they were feeling the Spirit. And that that was God communicating with them.

Some may feel as I have before that yes this is a small way of feeling the Spirit, but I want to feel it stronger. I want it to be a powerful part of my life! How to get to that point is simple. 2 Ne 28:30 

"I will give unto men line upon line... For unto them that receiveth I will give more, and from them that shall say I have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have."

If you want to have a powerful experience with the Spirit start by recognizing the small simple workings of the Spirit within you and it will grow. Usually surprisingly quickly. In my experience its immediate. You don't have to wait a day, or an hour, or a minute. But the moment you recognize that you are feeling the Spirit your awareness and sensitivity to the Spirit dramatically increases.  Yesterday as we taught Tom, when he recognized that he had felt the Spirit he got super excited. You could see it all over his face. It does something to us when we realize that the God of the universe is communicating with us.

Sorry for all the preaching, but I'm a Missionary, its kinda just a habit. And its exciting to me because I just learned this.

We found another prepared person the other day. Recently as a new finding tool we have been boony tracting. It just means tracting all the houses in our area that are out of town in the boons. There was a certain house that we had driven by many many times in our adventures in the boons but never tried. So this last week we went out and knocked on the door. There was a super awesome lady there who just recently converted to Christianity like 2 years ago. She was really excited to share all of her experiences about how she came to know that God was there and that Jesus Christ was her Savior. We will start teaching her after Thanksgiving!

We've got two 10 year old twins getting baptized in our ward this Sunday! We're pretty excited for it!

Love Ya!

-Elder (Andre) Johnson

Getting a grandson

Hey family hows it going?

Transfers were yesterday! We're both staying which I'm pretty happy about. Elder Morse my son who is in Cour D'Alene is a district leader and training! That means I'm getting a grandson. Yay.

This week we were tracting and giving out invitations to a big Christmas activity our stake does. We came across Nancy who with out us doing anything said, "You know I just got back from a trip to Utah and I'd really like to meet with you guys sometime to find out what you believe." It was sweet! Except she wants to meet at a coffee shop. Haha we'll figure it out.

We had a great lesson with a couple we met last week named Asia and Parker. They're awesome! They are excited to read about the Book of Mormon. But we won't be able to finish teaching them because they aren't in our area.

My Nephew Ethan was born! That's pretty exciting! This is the 3rd baby I've missed since I've been out. Please hold in anymore babies that may be trying to get out until I get home! Thanks.

-Elder (Andre) Johnson