Elder Winters - January 7, 2012

Hello everyone.  Really short email coming.  Let me sum up the week:

1) Exchange with the zone leaders.  In the English program.  I think this was my third time being in English.  My temporary companion was Elder Wadsworth, the missionary that came into the field with me and who was until three weeks ago in the Vietnamese program.  That got me thinking if I was ever switched out of the Chinese program for more than a transfer (6 weeks), I would cry.  Plus, the English speaking world has much more crazy people than the Chinese world.  Like we met a guy that has played chess for over 40 years and looks like that Pixar short guy...Gerry?  I don't know, but it was kind of intimidating when he asked me how many years I had been playing chess.  If he was at all interested in our message, I might have let him destroy me, but he wasn't.  Or maybe I should have let him destroy me and then he would have been interested in what we had to say.  And!  Second crazy person.  I saw this woman and I felt, "Yeah, go talk to her.  She's solid.  Trust your feelings, Luke.  I mean, Elder Winters."  So I was all like, let's do this.  So we start out and go talk to her and it turns out she was a witch!  She's like, "It's okay, I'm a practicing Wiccan.  Or, as you might know us, I'm a witch."  Several minutes and three heart attacks later, we came to ourselves and then the jokes started.  It turns out Elder Wadsworth also loves quoting movies, so the resulting dialogue was all out of Harry Potter and Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

"Good thing she didn't cast a spell on us! 'Wingardium Leviosa!'" "It's 'Levioooosa', not 'Leviosaaa', honestly." "She's a witch!  She turned me into a newt!" et cetera, et cetera.  

Sorry, long tangent.  That was fun.

'nother thing - 

2)Tracting into a legit family.  There is still more follow up to be done, but these people are legit.  I will definitely keep you all updated.  The funny thing was that our companionship was discussing earlier that day with another companionship about how caffeine can be against the Word of Wisdom because it prohibits any addicting substances, and then when the family invited us in they gave us a Coke each.  Not wanting to be rude I drained it in front of them.  Instantly my spiritual power reading dropped a notch.  Not really, but I thought it was funny.

So, that's it for this week, I really have to go, but all of you, wherever you are, keep it classy.  I have a number of friends preparing for missions right now, and I would love to say to you get ready for the most life-changing experience ever.  The work is true, I'm loving it, and anyone that has desires to serve will love it just the same.

Have a great week, everyone.

- Elder Winters