Festival of Lights: The End

What a month! We had 90,000 visitors at the Visitors' Center during Festival and over 1000 of them accepted missionaries.  I met people from over 50 countries, all of the sisters developed a real unity, and I could sleep for probably a year now.  Wow.  What a month.  It was fun to see familiar faces too! Every couple of days I would run into someone I knew from school, or home, or just my past life.  Teancum Light, the Wigrens, and so many others.  It was weird to see my mission and home world collide, but normal at the same time. What fun.

Today's will be short and random.  I love having time in the area.  All of my investigators are moving out of my area.  It snowed the past two days, but didn't stick.  It's freezing! And now for a story from Sister Wong.  We were role playing inviting Daniel (Young Single Adult, cynical, ex-Baptist, investigator) to church.  It's fun to pretend to be him because I can use all of my polysyllabic vocabulary (wow, that sounded nerdy), but he reminds me of Dale a little bit, so it's fun for me. 

Anyway, I was being Daniel, and a little difficult, and all of a sudden Sister Wong had this moment of inspiration where she said, I want to tell you a story.  She said, pretend you are a father that lives in a world where there is this deadly disease.  It's highly contagious, and everyone is going to get it and die a painful, horrific death.  Of course, people are trying to find a cure, so doctors world-wide do frantic blood tests on every family.  They test your family and discover that your son's DNA is pure and he has the only blood that can be used to make the antidote.  You, the father, have to sign the papers to allow them to take his blood, and the portion where it would say the amount of blood needed is blank.  You ask the doctor, "How much of my son's blood will you need?"  The doctor looks down and is very quiet.  "All of it," he says.  "Your son is the only person who can save the whole world."  As a father, this is the MOST difficult thing you have ever done, but your son agrees, and you watch as he is sacrificed to save the whole world.  Now every Sunday, you watch as people celebrate Him while they take the sacrament and remember His body and His blood.  You wish they would be more respectful, a little more quiet, and that more people would remember his sacrifice and come to church, but you are a patient, loving and perfect Father and are proud of the few who remember our Savior Jesus Christ.

Let me tell you, this "Daniel" had a very hard time not crying while she told me this story.  It was powerful and I'm using it with all of my investigators now.

I love you all.  Stay true to what is eternal.

-Sister Welch