Familia y Amigos,

Well this week has been an exciting and eventful week. There have been a lot of big changes leading up to this transfer. On Tuesday of last week during fundamentals we all received a paper that told us there were going to be a lot of changes this transfer to prepare us all for the new wave of missionaries coming into the field. The changes are, next transfer is going to only be 5 weeks making my scheduled return date July 10th.The week before transfers on Wednesday, if you are going to be assigned to be a district leader or zone leader or training, you will receive a phone call. Thursday, the next day, you will go to a meeting for training. Monday the week of transfers is a regular work day and Monday night we get transfer calls, Tuesday is Pday on transfer week and Wednesday we will all meet up at a chapel and do transfers all at once. Then we all ship out and go to our new homes.

So how transfers worked out for me:
Wednesday night i got a phone call telling me i am going to be a District Leader. Thursday i went to training. Monday we got the phone calls and I will be staying in Hollywood and be district leader here in Elder Walker's Place. Elder Walker is going back to our old zone in south bay to be a zone leader so I'm gonna miss him a ton! He was a great District leader and probably my best friend out here in the mission. I'm excited to be staying in this area for 5 more weeks. If I'm lucky maybe i can just finish my mission here haha. :)

Well, that was all the news and excitement for this week. Besides that we have just been looking and looking for new people to teach as well as keeping up on all of our referrals. We had a confirmation scheduled for this Sunday but the investigator was running late so we will be doing it this next week for sure.

The weather has been warming up a little bit more this week (not that it has even gotten cold yet) so we have been doing slack lining at the park in Hollywood and last week was the first time. I picked it up pretty well! I made it almost all the way across, but when you get like 10 feet into it you're in like the middle of the line and it is a lot more squirrelly, so i always fall off there. I am determined to make it all the way across this time tho so I will send you pictures. :)

This will be another good transfer with Elder Palomino so look forward to buenas noticias.

Love you all!

Elder Channing Winterrose

Hey there friends and family!

Well first i gotta apologize for not sending a letter last week it was kinda hectic and i will try to make up for it this week! we have a cool zone goal this month where we all play Moroni Kart. each of our companionships is together in a cart and throughout the week we do missionary tasks to get items to use in the game. Due to our baptism we get a star which means invincibility, double rolls and you knock back everybody you pass one space for 3 turns! We're gonna smash them this week. :)

So last week we had a crazy time getting everything ready for the baptism. We spent most of the time getting everything figured out for it which, if any of you are RMs, you may know what it is like making a program for a baptism when the people on it change every 12 hours or so, haha. We had a lot of editing to do so the final copy was done right before i had to teach elders quorum!

We had a weird experience this week, one of our investigators fell off of the map about 3 weeks ago after looking really sick at church and telling us he was ill. When he showed up to church he looked yellow like a lemon. the other elders and I realized those are the signs for liver failure and we weren't sure to tell him or not. Well, the zone leaders went by and checked up on him. we received bad news. By talking to his brother they found out he had passed away on the 27th of December and that is why we haven't heard from him in so long. we all kinda felt bad about it cause jokingly whenever our investigators disappear it's for unknown reasons and we might say something like they probably died, cause literally there is no way of contacting them - it's like they don't exist anymore. anyways, it was definitely one experience i didn't think would happen to me out here. At least we got him started in the gospel.

It has been kind of lonely getting no mail lately, haha. I realized that the only people i am writing have never met me in person and all the people i knew before my mission must be busy and on to other things by now. crazy how things happen while your gone.

It was a pleasant surprise to get the message from dad that he was down here at the visitor's center. Crazy how small the world is! :) I got the planner cover britt. it's pretty cool! It's a little big for my back pocket now so i'm still figuring out the best way to carry it lol.

Attached are some pictures from the baptism and our zone goal. hope you all enjoy them!

Love Elder Channing Winterrose

No letter this week.  :(

Dear family and friends,

Another good week!

Well it's the new year and that brings a few changes. we now have church at 9:00 and as always when church gets earlier people take a little bit to adjust. so we showed up on time Sunday and there was like half the people there, haha. Luckily our investigators showed up as the rest of the ward trickled in to fill the chapel.

This year also brings new meetings called fundamentals. For the next month or so we will be meeting every Tuesday and Friday and going over fundamentals based on helping us apply ourselves to the work more efficiently. Although I'm not a fan of extra meetings I'm excited to see the successes come out of them in the next couple of months.

Man that's crazy Britton is turning into quite the acrobat. I don't get much time to be crazy but on the occasion I will do a back-flip just to remind myself I'm fearless. :) I guess just living in LA isn't enough for me anymore.

It sounds like things for everyone are slowing down again as they get back into the daily grind. That's kinda like back here were really slowing down but we will pick up the pace again here soon once we get everything figured out for this next baptism. Hopefully we will get it all figured out before the 20th!

Anyways thank you all for the New Years wishes and for reading my letters! I appreciate the letters as well! Muchas gracias!

Con cariño,
Elder Winterrose