How in the world did I lose a dozen of Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts?!?!?

Hello Everybody!!!!

I promised you on epic update last week and I am going to give it to you!!!! Yay!

So the person I really wanted to introduced last time and I didn't get to was L. We received her information as a referral to go for a missionary visit. When we went to go meet her we asked her how she got interested in learning more about the church. She surprised us by saying, "Oh, I am already a member." It turned out that when she was younger she was taught by the Elders and she was baptized in the church. She was the only one in her family that converted and so it was really hard to go to church and go home to a different environment. When she was 16 she fell away.

She told us how amazing these Elders fought for her to get baptized. Her mom didn't want the Elders in the house, so they had to teach her in the park in the middle of winter. Keep in mind… This is VIRGINIA WINTER!!! They even bought her a Christmas tree with their own money because she never had a Christmas Tree before. She sadly never had contact from these Elders since then. This made me so sad. I will personally do my very best to keep in contact to those I meet and teach. 

Years went by and she continued to have huge trials come her way, but she pushed through with the strong faith she has. She contacted us because she wants to be active again in the church. She has a 7 month old son named T. He is adorable!!! Needless to say, we are enjoying going over to her house to teach her the lessons. She came to church and really pushed herself to get to know the ward. I am so proud of her!

We had another great lesson with C! She is doing super well! We invited her to come to a convert baptism, but she had to help her brother move. So…. I don't know if she will get to see a baptism until her baptismal day. We will have to see what we can do!

Last Monday I went on exchanges down in West Chapel. It is more south in the mission field. The funniest thing that happened down there was visiting Sister Stubs. She is in her 80s and she isn't quite all there. She was doing really well until the very end. Haha. She claimed that she has already died and has been resurrected! It was quite the experience. 

On Tuesday we were on our way to a member's house for dinner. The clouds were really really scary looking. It was so dark! We knew it was just going to pour down on us! We saw lightening first then a minute past it just POURED DOWN on us! We almost got to the house when we stopped short…. In front of us was a tree that had fallen right on top of the power lines! The member we were going to have dinner with them then called us and said they didn't have power, so they couldn't have dinner ready for us. We are like, "Yah, we know exactly why you don't have power." We had to turn around and eat dinner at our place. 

On Wednesday I had my first zone conference. The conference was mostly installing and introducing a new system in our car. Meet Tiwi!!! He will tell you to: slow down, buckle up, and even when you are driving too aggressively. We call him Jarvis like in Iron Man! Haha! It is pretty scary when he talks. It sounds like a robot! Haha! If you fix your speed right away, it isn't recorded. But if you drive aggressively it records right away and is sent to the President. We luckily have been driving really well! (But I wasn't worried… Sister Whiteford is a great driver! I promise!) Any who, Elder Scholer, the one who is over the cars in this mission field, even made a point that President Cooke has this system as well! I am pretty sure he is the only Mission President that has this system. He had to get special permission from Salt Lake! He wanted to do what we are asked to do. President Cooke is one amazing man!

On Thursday we got to see the Mormon Tabernacle choir at the Strathmore ! Believe it or not, I have never seen them live before! It was such an amazing concert. Alex Boye even came to sing a couple of songs. My favorite songs were the hymns. It was so great! 

Friday was a fun day! We brought E (she got baptized with her mom!) to a less active member's house. The less active is from the Philippines and it is hard for her to understand Engilsh. E was able to talk with her in Tagologue. It was such an amazing thing to see. She was so flattered and happy that someone could talk to her in her language. E even invited her to church on her own! The less active accepted the invitation! 

Later that day we were coming home from a primary baptism. We got a call from one of our less actives. She told us that she was in the hospital and wanted a blessing! So, we rushed over and meet the Elders there. The blessing was short and sweet, but the look on this lady's face was priceless. I treasure these moments when you can see people feeling the Holy Ghost. She was so grateful for us to come in her time of need. We will hopefully visit her soon once she is out of the hospital. 

Saturday was a good day! As I mention above we had a convert baptism. My district leader and his companion have been teaching them from the start of the transfer. E and her mom (aka Grandma) lives with her sister's family who was baptized 3 years ago. It was so touching to sing "I am a Child of God" for the opening hymn and see E tear up. It was also neat to see them enter into the waters of baptism. Afterwards we had a great feast of food! Grandma LOVES to cook, especially for the missionaries. 

This 4th there isn't anything planned. We were told not to go into the city. Which I was planing to do! :( I am all good with that though. I want to be safe, so we will have to see what fun things we can do instead! It will be a full P-Day, but I am sure the next time I e-mail will be next Monday. Bro. G (the one who got licked by a tiger in the war) told us there is actually a good firework show near our house that we could watch from our apartment! I am excited to see if we can watch a little bit of fireworks. 

I hope you all are doing amazing!!! Let me know what you are up to!!!

Lots of Love,

Sister Parker

P.S. To answer how I lost a doz. doughnuts! The roommates thought it would be funny to hide them and try to blame on me that I lost them! I was lazily trying to run around the apartment to try to find a big box of doughnuts. I was thinking, "Only me would lose something as big as this!" It was quite funny.  

Some pics for the road!

Target is 2 stories so it has an escalator just for carts!

The girls are all or have once been doing ASL on their mission. That was a fun P day to go to Gallaudet!

I will try to get a pic with my companion and send it next week!

We Got a Baptism!!!

Hello everyone!!! 

This week has been fantastic!! I don't have a lot of time so I will give an update on C. Just know there is about 5 other people I wanted to talk about!!!! I had an amazing week!

C: She is doing fantastic!! We taught her 2x this week. Yesterday we went to the temple visitor center to teach the Plan of Salvation. If you don't know what that is. Look it up on lds.org!! The lesson went super well! My favorite part was going to the exhibit about Christ. They had pictures of Jesus Christ all over the room to summarize his life. Then they shared with us the #BecauseofHim video. It was super good!!! C has a baptismal date for July 12th!!! It is super exciting!!

Sorry I ran out of time!!! I will promise to make next week the BEST email ever!!!!

Love you all!

-Sister Parker

P.S. I got to go to Galludet for P day!! I LOVED it!!

Here's the link to the video we showed to Candice:

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-00-1420-because-of-him?lang=eng

Holy Shomolly I have 1 month down!

My week has been the best yet!!!!! The highest point was on Wednesday!  We met a girl named C who referred herself for the missionaries. When we met her she shared her story of why she referred herself to see the missionaries. She basically had divine revelation about this church and the next day her revelation made more sense to her. She was going to see her orthodontist and needed a GPS to get there. Her GPS kept taking her to a stake center. After some research, she found about our church and knew she had to meet with the missionaries.

She is so hungry to learn! When we challenged her to read the Book of Mormon introduction page, she told us "oh, I already started reading. I am in the second book." I was like, "You mean 2nd Nephi?!?!" She said yep!! It was so amazing!!! She wants to see the visitor center (near the temple) so bad, so we will teach her the 1st lesson this week at the visitor center! Today she texted us asking if we could drink coffee!! She was fine that we said we didn't. She wants to now read D&C and Pearl of Great Price!!! But, she knows she needs to keep reading the Book of Mormon. I couldn't believe that I would be able to meet a girl like this!!! We are going to even teach the lessons at the church because her dog isn't friendly. 

After meeting C we met a less active and his wife. Bro G told us story after story about being in the Military. It all started when he was 15 when he joined the Marines!!! His crazy uncle signed his consent form for him. After a little while his dad found him and drugged him off the boat! The craziest story was when he was in the Vietnam War. He got shot and he went to go hide in some trees. After fainting and waking up, he found a tiger licking his wound!!!!!! He thought, "I'm going to die!" and fainted again. After waking up again he was able to escape safely!

The next day we got to meet with B who is a member referral. What a wonderful lady she is!!! We won't be able to teach her though because she is out of our area, but the elders in our ward and the ward she will be going to is going to teach her. We might tag along with the elders to teach her. She is also very ready to hear about the gospel. We taught her about the restoration. Sister Whiteford said, "Now, I know this seems crazy, but I can testify that this really did happen." I loved B's response. She said that it's wasn't as crazy as what happened in the Bible and she could believe that the first vision could happen. I am so happy that we could to meet B and I am excited to hear her progress from the Elders! 

So, the lady we were going to meet on Friday that was crying on the phone…. didn't answer her door :( We still have not heard from her. Hopefully this week we can get in contact with her! We have 3 other people who want to meet with us in the near future!! One of them will actually be this Friday! I will let you guys know how that goes! She is a member referral from the Young Women's President. We are actually going to eat with the YW president tonight, so we can have more of an insight what is going on there


On Sunday we had Stake Conference to reorganize the Stake Presidency. Elder Teh came with another person from the 70's to call the next Stake Presidency. It was a really good meeting. That night we went to the visitor center to see "Night of music and inspiration". They have it every month. 2 of Sister Whiteford's past companions sung and our roommate Sister Luna-Chico. We had a less active come to see it as well! She really enjoyed it. All evening was missionaries (every month the missionaries are the ones who do the music) singing in their mission language! The first song had ASL, English, French, and Chinese! The funniest moment was when one of the converts got up to share his conversion story and decided to do it in Spanish. I look over to the ASL interpreter (ASL missionaries are the interpreters!) and he was like, "I don't know Spanish to interpret it in ASL!" A Spanish Elder popped up and went down to tell the Elder in English what was being said so that he could sign it. It was so neat to see it happen! I was too far away to see the signing, but I could see how smooth it all went!!!

After that, I got talk with an ASL missionary. She is deaf and she commented how good my signing was! She really wants me to come to the ASL program. I really hope I get a chance to at least for a transfer. I learned that 4 ASL missionaries are leaving (including her!) within this and the next transfer! There are only 2 or 3 other sister ASL missionaries! She told me that they would differently be using me in the near future! We shall see!!!

So, my mom has been wondering and I as well if there are fireflies here in DC. And there are!!! I have been seeing them at night flying about. I will have to see if I can get a picture of some sort of them There isn't a ton, but you can see them! 

So I told a few people about this but the temple visitor center does an amazing event every three weeks. It is called "Why I Believe". The Navy football coach Niumatalolo is coming to talk!!! if you aren't familiar with this name you should watch "Meet the Mormons". He is featured in it. It should be an amazing night! We are inviting everyone to it! 

On a more less missionary side note, I am having a blast with my companion and our other 2 roommates. The other night we had some EPIC nerd gun wars in our apartment! Once the bullet landed just in my shirt! I have a picture for you to prove it! Also, once one of the bullets landed in the toilet! We are having a little too much fun with the guns!!! It's great!!

Oh! And I tired Mexican Corn this week! It is Mayo and chili powder. It wasn't very hot. Sadly I dropped it, so I only ate 1/4 of it! I'll have to get another one cuz it was tasty! 

Man, there is SO MUCH to say. Sadly, I can't say it all! Well, I hope you all have a fantastic week!!!

I love you all!!

Sister Parker

God is so Good to Us!!!

I had a really good and busy week!! I went to the Washington DC temple for the first time last Wednesday. I get to go another time this transfer because I'm new. After this everyone gets to go once a transfer! That's every 6 weeks to go to the temple!!!! It was very nice. 

I have meet people from India, Nigeria, and even Jamaica! One lady that's from Jamaica is a convert that joined the church 3 or 4 years ago. We had a really nice visit with her. I think you would call her "active-less active". But, man she has soul! I could feel of her testimony. It was very refreshing!

So, I think this is true of all of DC, but my ward has a big turn over rate. There is about 13 families moving away!!! The ward isn't big to start with, so it will be very interesting to see if there will be LDS members coming to replace them!

One of our member meals was at the Nelson's. (Well it was only Sis. Nelson and her adorable baby because her husband was studying.) Why is this so amazing?!?! It turns out her cousin is Christian Broberg!!! 

Last Thursday we had our first service day as a zone. We went to "the farm" that was about 45 min away. It was so much fun! We got into groups of three to help Autistic children ride on horses/ ponies.  There would be one person in front  to lead the horse then 2 people on each side to keep the child on the horse!  There was one younger group in the morning (about 5 years old) then an older group after lunch (about 8years old). It was fun to see the differences in the the two groups. The latter was so much more brave and could control their bodies more easy on the horses. The boy I had kept commanding "FASTER!" It was loads of fun! This zone goes to "the farm" about every transfer. It is rumored that we will go there as a mission on the 4th of July. There is a senior couple that  lives near by and all of us sisters and elders will sleep sleep over there... 10 miles away from each other:b 

What are everyone's plans for the 4th? I would LOVE to hear from families and friends!

Funny story: The other day I answered the phone when our zone leaders were calling us. After hanging up on them like 3x, I answered, "Hello this is Elder Parker and Sister Whiteford." I tried to roll with it, but everyone was laughing so hard!! That night I got mail and a package…. Lo and behold, the zone leaders crossed out "sister" and wrote "elder". Haha. I have photo evidence!

Also, I have this amazing chair that only has 1 arm. Don't let this fool you! It leans so far back and very comfortable to sit in. I ONLY fell out of it once when I was leaning back in it! 

This weekend we have Stake Conference. The Stake Presidency is being reorganized, so we have 2 general authorities coming. One of which is Elder Teh. I have heard him speak at UVU devotional. It should be a nice meeting. 

Some thoughts about Repentance:

- You will be judged on what you become NOT what kinds of sins you have made on this earth life. Repentance really means changing to become a better person. 

Ok for the reason for the title!! We had somewhat of a miracle happen yesterday! I fasted for those who were ready to hear the gospel would be put in our path. I also fasted to know how to be the missionary the Lord wanted me to be. So after church, we were studying and our phone starts going off in text messages and phone calls for like 15 min. We have been trying to contact the same 5 people from referrals we have gotten from church headquarters and ward members all last week. All but one contacted us and told us to come over sometime this week!!!! I am so excited to meet new people and teach! We have been working with a lot of less actives, so it will be really nice to finally be working with investigators! I love less actives, but I  haven't gotten to share the missionary lessons really. Just a lot of spiritual thoughts. So, I am excited to see what this week brings!!

One of the ladies that called that Sunday was crying! She was so excited and we could hear the hunger in her voice to know about this church. We will meet with her this Friday. Keep these people in your prayers that they will still be interested in hearing about this gospel. 

I love you all!!! I hope you are doing well! Feel free to send me a letter and I'll get to you when I can! 

-Sister Parker

"Getting to Know You...." Again and Again

I first want to ask a special request. I need your prayers. My body has decided to be a bit sick every morning. It tons better now. Luckily in the mornings I sit a lot, so it helps my body to settle down and be ready for the day!!

Last week on my flight here, I sat with 2 people from the MTC, but none was from my district. One of them is an Elder who is speaking French. I actually met him in the MTC. He is now in my ward. There is 2 sets of elders and us sisters! That's a lot of missionaries to feed! We are working on building a good relationship with the ward members. We need help! We have a few people to teach, but you know how it is. When we stop by people's houses 90% the time they aren't home or it's the wrong house.  PLEASE HELP YOUR MISSIONARIES IN YOUR WARD TO FIND PEOPLE TO TEACH!! 

Sister Cooke and President Cooke are amazing!! They will  and are taking care of me!!! Pray for Sister Cooke. Her father passed away this past week. 

A little about my companion Sister Whiteford. She is from Deweyvill, UT. It's 30 min away from Logan. She has been on her mission for 10 or 11 months. She is super nice and chill. She is helping me a lot adjust to missionary life. She actually has 2 hard of hearing sisters back home! And…  one of them is named Marissa!! haha. I am actually teaching Sister Whiteford some ASL signs as well to our roommates. I LOVE my roommates! They are Spanish missionaries. They are so cute and fun!! Sister Whiteford's favorite phase is "YOUR'E THE WORST!" We are all getting a long really well!

The first thing that President Cooke told me at the airport is "You know ASL?" and I like "YES!!" and he said that he will definitely be using me. So, we will see when I get transfer to ASL. 

At first we kept teaching these old ladies. It was quite funny. Some of them didn't even remember who Sister Whiteford was.The thing is... She has been here for 7 weeks. We had to drop them because they weren't very receptive to what we were saying. 

One of my favorite moment this week is teaching Sister Nutter. She is a less active. I shared my favorite conference talk from last conference. It was called the Prodigal Son. She told us that she wants to go back to the temple and church! Sister Whiteford said that she has never said that since teaching her!!! That was so cool for me to see :) Pray that she will come back to church this week and that she will read the Book of Mormon!!

There is lots to say, but my roommates are getting hungry! haha. I will try to write more next time! Please send all mail to the mission office!!! It will get lost if it comes directly to me. I get mail once a week!!! You all are in my prayers :)

Note from Michelle: Here are pictures she sent. These were taken while she was at the MTC. 

The 2 elders behind me are here in DC with me. And Elder DeMill (the guy directly standing behind me) got called on the spot to speak in French during transfer meeting!! I am excited to hear how he does!

And one more news!! At the MTC a girl in my zone who came a week after me was Sister Barfuss!!!  So I asked her if she had any family from OR. And she said YES!! She is from Canada and her distant family lives in Oregon :) 

Till next week!

Sister Parker