Elder Winters - June 25, 2012

Hello all, and welcome to a new companionship here in sunny California.  Our trio now comprises of three W's: Wang, Wang, and Winters.  After Elder Kim's departure last Tuesday, we are now taking on one of the branch's recent converts, Jason Wang, as a temporary full-time (?) missionary.  So, he will be with Elder Wang and myself 24/7 for three weeks.  To adequately describe how I feel right now, I have to throw in a Harry Potter reference: I feel like Hagrid getting asked a question a minute by two people that were recently Muggles and have no clue what certain things are because they are unique only to the Magic Missionary World.  All is well though, I am loving everything about it.  Both of my companions are superb and are ready to work, so there's nothing to complain about.  

This past week our branch held the traditional Dragon Boat Festival.  The actual history of the whole festival is a little macabre - from what I can understand, some Chinese poet got depressed about something, then consequently drowned himself in a river.  In order to save his body from the insatiable appetites of the ravenous local fishes, the local townspeople spent a lot of time carefully making these rice cakes filled with meat and rice and mushrooms, then threw them into the river.   And that's why it's called the Dragon Boat Festival.  Despite not being able to connect with the byzantine history of China, we had a good time and were able to meet some great new people.  One of our recent members even threw down a challenge to one of her friends to get baptized.  Great stuff going on down here.  

In spiritual news, we have an investigator that has extremely bad eyesight.  We were able to teach him part of the Plan of Salvation this past week.  When we talked about the Atonement of Jesus Christ, I had the opportunity to bear testimony that God gives us challenges because He knows we can grow from them, and we can always rely on Jesus Christ because "the Son of Man hath descended below them all," "that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities." I know the power of the Atonement is real.  Jesus Christ is our Savior.  He payed the price of our sins and went through all pain and discomfort in order to help us, His friends.  It's amazing and is something I'm grateful for every day.

Have an excellent week, everyone.

- EDW