Hey there everybody!

Well, transfers were this week and I have to say I'm pretty pleased with them. My NEW area i will be covering is called Fairfax..... but the cool thing is, I didn't get transferred! I'm still with Elder Shannon who will, after this transfer, be landing in the Pasco airport! If you all wanna give him a huge surprise show up and welcome my companion home! :)  We are still covering this area but we lost two elders out of the eight in the ward so we gained their part of the area. I am pretty sure it will only be temporary while we don't have the Spanish missionaries available to cover it this transfer and we will probably get more Spanish greenies this next transfer to fill the area. It is a HUGE blessing. Now we have 1/2 of the ward in our boundaries and we will never have to look hard for work if we do this right. Yesterday we had a great turnout at church. we had three of our investigators show up and two just popped in to visit the church for the first time! so now we have a great teaching pool of people who are amazing, aka, they keep commitments. :)

Man, speaking of commitments, i know i have been a real loser at writing people lately and I hope it isn't held against me at the last day cause this week i am gonna repent! hear me! i just gotta get me some more stamps hahaha.

This Sunday we had the great opportunity of speaking in church for 5th Sunday lesson.  Two other elders and I were asked to share our testimonies. I was really impressed to talk on the missionary work that goes into preparing missionaries in their home ward. On Saturday morning one of the members in the ward went through the temple for the first time. This guy has been the greatest help to our mission work in the last couple months as he has been preparing for his mission in Ohio. I don't remember what prompted me, but that morning i was sitting there with elder Shannon and i looked at my watch and thought to myself, "Holy cow! God is preparing another missionary right now!" while thinking of this elder.  At that moment i really thought about what i just thought. God is preparing every person who has been conferred with the gift of the Holy Spirit for their own missionary opportunities EVERY DAY.... When i thought about that, the number of missionaries in our ward just jumped from 6 to like 160. This was a bit of what i went ahead and shared at the pulpit that day - that really, each and every one of us has a great potential to be the missionary Heavenly Father has appointed us to be. As sons and daughters of an Eternal Father, we have been blessed with so much! 
Just like it says in Doctrine and Covenants Section 82:3

"For of him unto whom much is given much is required..."

It is sooo true. like really i cant think of a better way to say it. With all of this said, I have to say when i hear the stories of all of your missionary experiences i wanna be fist pumpin' like a champ. but i can't cause i'm in a library and that would be a little weird. I am so so proud of those stories.  It makes me wanna get out there in the heat and preach. :)

I love you all so much and i pray for you all every day. Even those who aren't of this faith. I have had so many people bless my life in different ways and i thank them all in my prayers to my heavenly father.

With this week coming up we have the wonderful opportunity to listen to a living prophet of God speak to us concerning our eternal salvation. We will be given much in these conferences. Thus this is my invitation, INVITE EVERYBODY. Just one simple thing to do; invite those you encounter this week to listen to a Prophet's voice and I can promise you that you will feel an increase of the spirit in yourselves, your home, and your family.

I love you all and thank you for taking the time to read these letters.

Love,
Elder Channing Winterrose

Hey there family and friends,

This week has been pretty good and we have had some good successes and a lot of referrals coming in from the ward.  I think i can attribute that all to the efforts that we have been putting into training/inviting the members to really pray and look for people to share the gospel with. It has been a really fun and productive area so far and I really hope i can be here with Elder Shannon at least one more transfer. we hopefully have 2 solid baptisms coming up. I say hopefully because one doesn't quite live in the mission yet but has plans on moving in soon. we are duke-ing it out with pres to be able to teach her here until then. I hope it all goes well.

We have a bunch of people to teach now after a lot of work.  It feels way nicer to worry about what to teach rather than where the heck were gonna find people to teach. haha. It was extra difficult, seeing as our brains were fried most the time from the over 100 degree weather. The heat has been killer but we put our shoulder to the wheel and got a bunch of people to visit. This week has definitely gone by faster and felt easier too.

Well, this week i heard some cool talks that kinda made me decide i have to vote. i heard them in this order. the first one was henry b eyring in the 2010 october 4th session Trust in God, and then go and the second one was President Monson, the 3 R's of choice in that same priesthood session. If you listen to them you will feel the same.

Well, really not much is new since the last Wednesday, just another day, another blessing.

I love you all and wish the best of luck to all you rm's out there, just don't forget what your purpose is and the lord will take care of all the rest.

Con cariño,

Elder Channing E. Winterrose

haha, yeah this was a pretty eventful week, like you said i did get the opportunity to meet Miranda and it was pretty cool. her Dad actually isn't a member and we gotta talk to him for a while. he works in our area from time to time but unfortunately he didn't know anyone who speaks Spanish haha. Besides that this week i have been trying to get my toiletry bag that was lost in zone mail but when it finally arrived (after being lost for 4 weeks now) it was empty except for my razor and shampoo! so I got a hold of president and he helped me out so i could find out where the rest of my stuff went. It seems it went to the wrong zone and an elder got it and decided to throw away everything he didn't want. I'm not gonna ask why i am just happy to find out what happened. I told him if he payed me so i could get new stuff then it would be all fine. Oh well at least it is all done and over with.

This week we have also been battling with over 100 degree weather and on bike it sucks. You are dehydrated most of the time for one, and two you have like nowhere to escape the heat if nobody lets you in. :/ so that has been kinda crazy. I took a look at my shirts the other day and they are the nastiest ever. hahah. i think i am going to send you all one i have worn so you can believe me. like some days the sweat manages to make it all the way across the shirt in the front and back and it gets through the whole collar. Gross right?

We have managed to see a couple of blessings this week through all of our efforts and we now have some good investigators coming through the woodwork. We also got the awesome opportunity to have stake conference this last Sunday and i got to see a bunch of the people from bell gardens ward including my buddy Chris. We had a couple of general authorities there, the area seventy over the stake as well as elder Johnson. Elder Johnson gave a great talk on how when trials come we usually don't recognize the blessings until after they have already passed. It was a great talk to soften the blow of the news we received. That the Huntington Park West stake was going to be dissolved and that the first ever Spanish stake in the united states was going to no longer exist. it is going to be a big adjustment as they are also changing the wards to have Spanish and English youth programs combined. They said the reason was to prepare them to be great leaders of the church and i believe it will do just that.  This should be a cool change and i am super excited for it.

Well, I love you all and thank you for all the support. If you have been waiting for a letter, well, I'm a loser and need to get better at writing them. but i will do it soon promise.

Con carino,
Elder Channing E. Winterrose

Hey there Family,

Well this week has been kinda crazy. We had splits twice so i wasn't in the area for two days. We have been doing a lot of work but we still haven't really found anybody who is "prepared". :/ So the search goes on. I bought some new cleats with my birthday money because we play for like a couple hours each week. they are pretty sick and they should last a pretty long time. they're the orange and silver mercurials with the laces covered. now i think i might get some new basketball shoes cause mine don't have any tread.

I took the ACT after splits on Saturday morning. Dang that is a long test! it was pretty cool though. they told us we had 5 hours to do it and we can take as much time on each of the sections we want. I think it really helped with the study book too because on the questions there is a bunch of crap you don't really need to know and i just cut right through that. Hopefully one year from now i will be hittin' up byui or even better byuh.

Well, besides splits the week has been a lot of work that hasn't lead really anywhere. Were just riding around Hollywood planting seeds for now. We are actually doing a lot of work training the members on how to better share the gospel. I hope it starts paying off soon.

One thing that really helps is we kinda explained to them that they don't have to be ready for baptism because that is kinda what we do haha. its also good to remember that when they start asking questions STOP answering all of them and just INVITE. because a lot of the time we get in the mode of answering all of their questions then they're left there satisfied and you still haven't invited them to do anything. so, i invite you all who read this to try and apply that next time your getting interrogated. :)

Jase, Congrats vato you dominated that mission.

I love you all and hope you take care,

Elder Channing Winterrose

hahaha, i see that the brothers have been having fun shooting lately. I just hope you all aren't blowing through all your money puttin' lead to the dirt.

This week has been pretty good, i have been super busy and we have been trying a lot of different stuff in an effort to get a big teaching pool. Today we went and played soccer with a bunch of the men from church and it was tons of fun. one thing you will never see in LA though is grass on a soccer field haha. It was lots of fun and a good way to get to know some of the returning members in the ward. I am really liking this area and there is always an abundance of members willing to help us.

man, I can't believe daino is already in high school! what is it like man? is it all you imagined it would be? i hope it is tons of fun. just remember it all is going to count later on so make sure you make good choices and work hard.

Preparing for the ACT has been pretty easy. That little book has a lot of information in it and i think it will help a boat load. I am a little more than half way through it and should finish it in time. I am gonna make sure i got everything ready for it so it will be a breeze. A lot of it is just strategies on how to manage your time and stuff while testing and i already knew how to do that. most of the actual questions are pretty easy though.

Well, this week we haven't really had anybody to teach but we keep looking. it is so dang hot here it is dreadful to just walk around and contact but, hey, what else can we do. we are gonna try and get an activity to get people ready for conference so they can use it as a missionary opportunity. this ward is pretty organized and i cant wait to have some investigators so they can really start helping us out.

Well, I miss you all a ton but try not to let it distract me. I am really hoping for more work to make it easier to focus, so if you can all send your prayers our way we appreciate it.

I love you all and send my wishes out to the cousins. :)

Take care,

Elder Channing Winterrose

Man, the things you see in Hollywood... I never thought i would see so many things till i came here hahaha. The other day we were walking to an appointment and as we were walking someone rounded the corner in front of us wearing a playboy bunny outfit... LIKE SERIOUSLY, "Ma'am it is about 2 in the afternoon could you possibly choose a weirder outfit????" So we avoided the scene until she walked into the same building as us and when we walked in she like stared at our name tags and said, "What are you??" Hahaha, like we were dressed up too! I was freaked out and almost asked the same to her! I blurted out," Missionaries!" and we ran away down the hall. ugh, sometimes this city can be super gross. yuck. anyways there's also ton's of the most awkward billboards all over the city. but you get good at ignoring them. This next weekend the MORMON musical is going on Broadway in our area. We drove by and took some pictures. there's a 50 foot banner that says I HEART MORMON. it was kinda funny. :)

Well, this week has been really weird. It is quite an adventure with both of us not knowing a single soul and trying to remember all of the faces, and names as well as constantly add more to the list. We are getting everything really organized and i have never in my mission had to rely so heavily on the Area Book, but it is truly serving as a real blessing and we are doing some good finding through it.

This ward is also a huge help. They are very supportive and i have gotten multiple cakes and they are always looking for ways to serve us which is like super awesome. Today we are losing the car as well so we will be on bike and definitely can use the help of the members now.

Well, besides that we have a few good investigators and i don't wanna count my chickens yet but i think they are pretty good eggs. :) this last week Elder Shannon started teaching me how to play piano. I can now actually play Nearer My God to Thee. and hopefully when i get home i will have a lot more learned. it is a super nice talent to have especially on a mission. Ahh, i don't have a lot to report besides what has already been said. Today we are going to go check out this place called the Bronson caves and it should hopefully be worth the short drive. :)

I love you all soooooooo much and I really appreciate the letters you all send me. If i have been a little slow i apologize and i will catch up soon! it has been a little busy lately but i haven't forgotten you! :)

Cuidense mucho,

Elder Channing E. Winterrose

Hola Familia!

This week was a little crazy and unexpected, I am sure you all wanna know how my birthday went but first I got some news!

I got Transferred! Even better my companion is Elder Shannon! And he is from none other than Kennewick WASHINGTON!!!!!!! He even used to work at the DQ down the street on Gage and he graduated in 2010 from Kamiakin! Small world eh??? haha we Both are given the awesome assignment of whitewashing an area that covers Hollywood. it goes from la cienega in the west to western in the east and the top of the mission in the north and Santa monica blvd in the south. it is a pretty sweet ward too. it is LA 4th ward and it holds a pretty good reputation of being the best one out there. So far it has been a blast figuring out the area with just an area book and a map and the members are soo great at missionary work. i really hope we can dominate this area so we can fulfill their expectations of the new missionaries. It was a little weird moving into the new area right before my birthday but after meeting a handful of people we already had a party set up!

Thank you all soooo much for the birthday wishes and I am so glad for the package. Pootie boy, the toys were super cool! The only thing is I either have an impediment and don't know how to use a kazoo or those things were kinda broken hahaha. they made for ton's of fun though. :) We got to have a little fiesta after church at this awesome member's house and it was super nice. I even got a cake! I am super excited for the changes that have happened and all the new work we will have to do.
The only cool stories this week would be that Elder Shannon and I are like super Engineers and made a pipe/HVAC looking thingy to pipe cold air to our bedroom. haha i think the pictures will show that better though. Also for our dinner list we made a "sunset" picture out of a few we took and cut and pasted together. it goes great cause the name of our area is Sunset.
Well, i love you all and gotta run!

I hope you all remember to look for opportunities to serve and share the gospel.

Love,

 Elder Channing Winterrose