Return To a Familiar Land

I hope you all had a great Easter weekend with a chance to reflect on the reason for the holiday.  Christ and his Resurrection, his return and conquest of the grave. A victory which provides for us the assurance of a resurrection, of being able to live forever in perfected bodies.  How great is that?  I love it so much!  I am so grateful again for the chance to reflect on the Gospel, on Christ, and on the Atonement.  How much these things do for us!  I am so grateful that Heavenly Father has a wonderful plan in place to help us and that we have a loving brother, Jesus Christ, who is willing to sacrifice for us just to give us the chance to come back and live with him.  And he still gives us that choice.  The choice to follow him or the choice to pass it up.  And I am so grateful for the chance I have to help people learn about this choice, and the great blessings that can come from following Jesus Christ.  I love it so much!

This week has been awesome!  We met with Cassiel and Victoria, and they are doing stellar!  So happy to see the progress each is making in the gospel, in learning about Christ and coming to understand his role and to accept him as Savior.  Victoria in particular we have been working with to help her understand the nature of the Church we represent, as the Church of God once again on the Earth.  The only church authorized and holding the priesthood power, the power that brings salvation to the souls of man.  It was great to have Spencer, a recently returned missionary that was good friends with another friend of mine from home (shout out to Colton!) for the lesson with Victoria.  Spencer is such a great missionary!  We love working with the members here and to see their desire to share their testimonies, and to help people receive the blessings that have come to them.

This next week is also has General Conference!  Super excited!  We are setting up a Mandarin version at one of the churches here!  Last chance for me to watch it on my mission!  Which is crazy to think, but I am super excited to here the amazing messages that these men and women of God have to share with us!  Thanks for reading!  Love you and hope you're doing well!

Elder Ethington

 Here are some pictures from my last couple weeks.  Fruit Ninja in the snow, and then exchanges with Elder Elliot.  Also, I forgot to explain the subject line. I'm being transferred. Back to Bonnie Doon!!!

Pi Week!

Happy belated pie day!  Yesterday was pie day, and it was celebrated
with some delicious apple crumble pie.  All pie aside, this week has
been a great week of missionary work, salvation-spreading, and
gospel-teaching.  Elder Decker and I have been doing some great work
to help the people here in Edmonton Canada to learn of God, of Christ,
and of the gospel.  This week we met with Holly again, and talked
about the 5 steps of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: Faith, Repentance,
Baptism, Receiving the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and Enduring to the
End.  We read out of Book of Mormon with her as well, and she seems to
be doing really well.  We are planning on asking her this next week
when we meet about how she expects the Holy Ghost to feel or speak to
her, and what she feels she will need to feel or know in order to
accept baptism.  We are pretty excited for that, we think it will
really help her progress and help us understand how better to help her
towards baptism.  We also had the chance this week to go on exchanges.
I am no longer district leader, but Elder Decker is, so I had the
chance to spend a day working with Elder Mathewson again. He's a good
guy and a good missionary, and I enjoyed the time I got to spend
serving with him.

This week in Edmonton is starting to bridge the gap between Spring and
Winter.  Earlier weeks were warm, and I thought winter had ended.  But
a few days of good snow proved me wrong.  But this week has been
moderate, with lots of snow melting and chilly but acceptable
temperatures as the norm.  So spring is coming!  And now it stays
light out a lot longer - mostly due to the Daylight Savings change we
had Sunday night....  But it's getting there.

Alright, thanks for reading!  Hope you have a good week!

Winter Returns

Hello!  How are you doing this week?  This week has been good here in Edmonton, Canada.  Doing the Lord's work and helping people to come to know Christ and the miracle of his Atonement.  Again this week, I have really come to appreciate the gift of the Atonement.  In his love and mercy, Christ descended below all things. Why?  So he could lift you and me.  I love that.  I love that the Atonement has so many blessings for us.  Not only does it cleanse us from sin, but it also heals is and let's us grow, get better, and become more like Jesus Christ.  And that opportunity for growth, that chance to be better than I can be on my own, is something special. A lot of people may not see the need for that.  But I can tell you that I have learned that through the Savior, through his Atonement and obedience to his commandments, he can help us do more than we can do on our own.  And I can promise as you seek God and ask him about these things, he will tell you they are true.

This week has been good for work in Edmonton.  Elder Decker and I have seen great blessings as we've worked hard and we are so happy to see our friends here progressing.  One of our investigators, Hannah, who has a goal set for baptism in a couple weeks, has moved recently, and this week we will pass her to another set of Elders who work with people in that area.  Kinda of sad to not be teaching her anymore, but still excited for her progression and for the opportunity she has.

Also this week, we've worked with the Greenfield Ward Sister Missionaries, meeting a few families in their ward.  They're great missionaries and are great support to us as we try to work with Chinese people.  For some reason, some people respond better to two young women coming and inviting them to church than they do to us two, not nearly as smiley young men...  So it's great to be able to work with them.  I love to see a harmony in missionary work, with members, other missionaries, or the people we teach.  Just helps assure me we are in the Lord's work.

Well thanks for reading!  Hope you're doing well!

Elder Ethington

Sister Kirts, Sister Lacno, Elder Decker and Elder Ethington posing in the Chinese way

A Week In The Life

Hello all!  How are you doing this week?  Elder Decker and I have been having a great week!  The work here in the Riverbend Stake has been moving forward strong and we are excited for harvest that has begun.  We have been able to meet with some of our great investigators.  We are super excited for Hannah, who has accepted an invitation to be baptized this month.  We are still working with her and hoping to prepare her and make sure she is ready for baptism at that time.  One thing that got sorted out this week is her baptismal interview.  Since she is new in Canada her English still needs some work, and our zone leaders were worried about being able to effectively communicate and make sure she was ready.  Fortunately for us, last transfer one of the Mandarin was called as our Assistant to the President.  So now he will conduct the baptismal interview for her.  We are super excited for that.

This week we also met with Holly, who opened up to us and we had a great conversation with her and her fellowshipper.  Her fellowshipper is awesome, not just as a friend, but he also does blacksmithing.  So I think he's pretty sweet.

Finally this week we have a new investigator!  Her name is Casiel, and she is a young woman staying in the home of a family in one of the wards here.  We visited with them before, but at that time Casiel wasn't really ready to start learning about the Church yet.  This week, she was ready.  We are super excited to start meeting with her.  I am so glad for the members that she lives with as well.  They are super awesome and great friends and support for her and are loving her so much.

One of the awesome things that happened that we didn't get to be a part of was one of our investigators who helped with a dinner put on for seniors in the area.  The dinner was Broadway themed, and she is a great violin player, and she played I Dreamed A Dream accompanied by a member of the YSA Ward.  Although we weren't there, we heard it was super good and she played super well.  Hopefully we are going to be able to have her play a special musical number in Sacrament Meeting in the next couple weeks.

I hope you have had a good week.  I know I have, and I know I have seen the hand of the Lord in my life.  Love you all!  Have a great week!

Elder Ethington

Elders Decker, Bergeson, Ethington and Rich

Walruses

This week has been awesome!

This week Elder Decker and I have been working with some great investigators: Hannah, Holly, Victoria, and Tina.  Probably the highlight of the week is setting a goal for baptism with Hannah.  Such a great experience to help people as the prepare to make sacred covenants with our Heavenly Father and to see the blessings that flow into their lives.

This week we've also worked with a few less-active members in the area.  It just reminds me of the cultural differences between Western Culture and Asian Culture.  Its amazing to see the difference.  And sometimes it is difficult to understand these differences, but they are really ingrained in people, so we have been spending lots of time to try to understand different thought processes and how we can best help our investigators.

Thanks for reading!  Sorry its short, Love you all!  Hope you're having a good week!