Member Meals Out of the Whazoo!!

This week has been another good week! I'll highlight the best thing that happened everyday so I can hit every base :)

Monday: We had a thank you dinner from the people who own Madison fields. Mom... You might know Sister P! Anyways Doctor P invented a vaccine for SIDS I think. So, they are very well
off. They have a neat Library in the basement of their house. They even have the death mask of Joseph Smith, journals from one of the prophets, and any church book you want to read! If anyone wants to see where I have been serving at this past transfer, look up Madison Fields in YouTube and it should come up with the video that shows what the farm does for autistic children.

Tuesday: I had 2 dinners! Haha. One of them was a member meal. They have multiple gardens and at least two green houses. We got to snag a few cucumbers and tomatoes. Afterwards, our roommates needed help eating their second dinner member meal. (The hard life of Spanish program! Haha), This lady though was SUPER sweet and awesome. She knows English, so we could talk with her too. The spiritual thought was really powerful. We talked about digging our roots deeper into the gospel. I
said that accepting challenges from God is a way to get your roots deeper. I felt like choosing to go on my mission was the challenge I knew I needed to accept to get my roots of conversion deeper in the ground. Then we made the sad track up to my friend C's house. We were sad to say good bye each other. We must have hugged each other 3 times before I left! I'm really excited to stay in contact with her!

Wednesday: Transfer day!!! So here what went down! I am in a trio with Sister Brimhall and Ellsworth for two weeks in Sliver Springs until the 4 new ASL sisters come. It sounds like I'll be taking my trainee to Rockville and Sister Brimhall and Ellsworth will share the other 3
trainees. So, they will switch off having a trio and a companionship. I know weird huh? It will be fun though! So.... ASL has no boundaries where we can go! It's awesome! We cover 4 missions:
Richmond VA, DC South, DC North, and Baltimore! Also, as of right now there is no sectioned off areas within the ASL program. Pretty much... if you find them, you get to teach them! I don't know how I feel about that, but we will make it work!

Thursday: I had a super fun meal with the ASL branch President Van De Graaff. We had such great time with his family. We had lots of laughs. The funniest thing was when President Van De Graaff shared how every year on their anniversary, him and his wife would tell a different story to their kids on how they met. Like a Tarzan story or riding on a train, etc. The real story??? He was her teacher in the MTC when she was going on her mission! She said that he was a really mean teacher because he would throw things at the students to keep them awake!

Friday: I had a fun lesson with two investigators with Jason Hinds. (he spoke at last week at the Why I Believe seminar!) Jason was super bold and it was really powerful! We all hope these two investigators will continue to progress. One of them MIGHT be moving to China. We will hopefully get to finish teaching him the lessons before he moves.

Saturday: We got a surprise invitation to do some service! It was a lot of fun! A deaf lady was moving out of the house with two other kids preparing to go to college. So we helped her sort out all of her things and put things outside for the yard sell she had going on. It was touching to see how appreciative she was,. Thanked her for letting us come and she was like, " why are you thanking me?!?! You are the one helping me out!" For dimmer we went out to Buffalo Wild Wings. Can
I just say... I'm a baby!!! I got the least spiciest sauce for the wings. Guess how many cups of water I drank???? 4!!!! It was good, just the spice lingered. Anyways! It was fun because we had a member,
his son who isn't a member, and a recent convert! M, the recent convert, is getting ready to serve his mission! He should have his application in anytime now! I'm really excited to hear where he ends
up going!

Sunday: We had 2 investigators come to church, one for each ward. We cover the Deaf branch and the YSA ward. It was really neat to finally go to deaf ward. The coolest thing was the sacrament prayer. The person blessing the sacrament puts a little step stool in front to kneel on so that they can sign the prayer and everyone can see it! That night we had another fun member meal! They are from the deaf branch and they brought another couple over from the branch as well. The wife is pregnant and the husband was so cute about being so excited for his daughter to come! It was so adorable!

Monday: Today we went to the National Art Museum! I have to say I really enjoy the sculptures. I like seeing the dimensions and detail in each piece. One of my favorite sculpture was entilted, "God's Hands." I could stare at it all day!

Tomorrow we get to hear Elder Perkins from the 70 come talk with us. It's going to be a early start... We have to be there at 7.... And It's about an hour drive! Haha. It should be a great meeting though!

I hope you all are doing great!!!  I love you all!

Sister Parker

Very important updates peoples!

1.I'm training the next two transfers! Not only that.... I am training in ASL!!!! I don't know many gospel signs, but I'm sure I will pick it up just fine. To help me learn church signs, I been watching conference talks in ASL.

2. I'm a true runner now! On Tuesday I was jogging outside with my roommate. All of the sudden, I got shin splints on the back of my legs! I was sore the rest of the week. Getting out of the car was the
worst! It hurt so bad! And I walked with a limp the rest of the week as well!

3. Cheese club happened again after the meeting. Though, there wasn't any opera music :( But guess  who is the newest members??? President Cooke and his wife! They came to our meeting to give a presentation on service. It was quite fun!

4. We had some fun heart attacking a lady's door for her birthday! She is an investigator the elders have been working with. We hope she liked it!

5. Do you know it is possible to get blisters from weeding??? At the farm we had to pull these huge thick weeds from the ground! I think they were called Jackson weeds or something! We had to wear gloves because they hurt our hands from pulling! After we were done, I looked down at my hand and I found 3 little blisters on my middle finger! Haha!

6. C knows how to index now! We had a ward indexing party last Friday. It was a lot of fun. We were laughing way too much! We had a great time. I also learned want Ruddy means!

7. For the most fun update of all.... We have found my hair is actually curly!!! I love it!! Sister Whiteford has taught me the ways of drying curly hair. I loved it so much, I was excited to get up the
next day to do it myself! Is it weird that I even had a hard time sleeping as well because I was so excited! I'm still happy about it!

8. There is a new family that recently moved into our ward from Tennesee. They know Sister Dent! That was fun to hear!

9. The best news of all?!?!? We got a new investigator! He is so great! We met him yesterday when carpooling for Why I Believe. He met the Bethesda Sisters and they referred him to us. It interesting
because he has a Hindu background, so it is fun to answer questions about Christ and his purpose of his life on earth. I'm excited to hear from Sister Whiteford how teaching him goes. I hope we can set an appointment with him tomorrow before I leave the area!

Well Charlie Mike everyone!

Sister Parker

P.S. Charlie Mike means to continue the mission. President Cooke and his wife will say that to us from time to time. It comes from the military alphabet they have in the military to keep everything clear.

"Take me out to the ball game!"

This week was a good week. I just can't believe how much happened in 1 week. It feels like a month has passed! I am grateful that time seems to be slow so that I can appreciate my mission to the
fullest! I don't want time to speed up!

On Tuesday for zone/district meeting the most epic/strangest/confusing thing happened! After our meeting I saw an elder grab his box that he was holding the whole meeting. He starts laying out fancy things like the Maryland's flag printed on a table runner and a cheese slicer. The kind where you pull the handle and the wire cuts the cheese. Then....they put opera music on! What we were witnessing was the cheese club in action! I got to partake of French cheese on a tiny cracker with honey! I felt pretty fancy myself. Haha.

That night we had some fun and I got my hair highlighted with some blond. Oh the perks of having a companion and the sister training leader who did hair before the mission!

Thursday was a good day! We got to visit a lady who is coming back to church. She recently got a calling and she was over the moon about it! She is so excited to be involved in the church. It's so fun talking with her because she throws out words that you would hear from the hood. We give her a look and say, "what does that word mean?!?!" Then she laughs and tells us what it meant. haha.

On Friday we had great day! We had a day full of appointments. That morning we watched new Mormon messages. One of which was called "Lift". It's really good! It talks about how service is a way to refine yourself. It helps you to become unselfish and become more like the Savior. It gave me a new perspective on service that I never really realized.

Then Saturday was the day Sister Whieford has been waiting for her whole mission! President Cooke takes the whole mission once a year to the baseball game. When Sister Whietford came to DC last year.... She missed the game by a week! To make it even more upsetting they were playing her favorite team, the Philly's.  This time the Nationals were playing the Rookies.

Before the game, Sister Whietford wanted me to look nice, so she did my hair! It looked super cute and it took her like 5 min to do!

It was not too bad of a game. It had some exciting moments. It was fun to see all the missionaries together. I think the DC south missionaries were even at the game as well. At the end of the game is missionaries were shown on the big screen!! I was ALMOST shown! I was missed by 1 person!

 This picture below is my whole district!! They are a lot of fun!!!

On the way to the baseball game a sister missionary was talking to a guy on the metro. He said it was his birthday... So all of the Zone sang happy birthday to him! He loved it so much he had us sing it again so he could record us! That was a ton of fun!

Things are going really well! I'm excited to see what this week beings! "Why I believe" is this week. Jason Hinds is coming! He trained with Bolt, the Jamaican man that ran in the Olympics! I'm super stoked for that. We are bring cookies to the new families to the ward to invite them to "Why I Believe". It should be tons of fun!

I loooovvvveeee you all!

Sister Parker

P.S. I got a surprise letter from Sister Dent. She is serving a mission in Tennessee. It made me so happy! :) Grandma North, I also got your letter! I will be writing to you soon!

That one time when...

I have a few funny stories to share this week!

That one time when a pony made a move on me:

When we went to the farm on Wednesday, we helped clean up the barn. We took everything from the bottom floor to the top floor. You wouldn't believe how much stuff we had to haul up! There was TONS of chairs, tables, dressers, boxes, and just random things! It was hard work and it was HOT! I was pretty soar the next day. Haha. Then we went out to the field to pet the ponies! Sister Whiteford and I was petting a pony. It was so cute!!! The Elders was feeding the other ponies grass. All of the sudden, I feel a pull on my shirt. I look down to see a pony grabbing my shirt! I yelled "hey!" And gave the pony a little smack on the head. It let go without a problem, but we were all laughing so hard!

That one time when a dog wanted to play with our car:

We were coming home from a really great day! We were able to see quite a few people! One of which was a referral. We went to see if he was home and he was! He was sooooo cool! He is from Togo! He was so receptive and wanted to learn! We gave him a Book of Mormon to read that had about 8 different scriptures marked to explain different aspect of the gospel. He speaks French, so we passed him to the French Elders who is in the same ward as us. I'm excited to hear from the French Elders how it goes! Then we went to a members house for dinner. It was so good!!! The couple had 3 cute little children. The oldest is 7 and he is obsess with Star Wars! He wanted us to fight with him with light sabers! The couple were converts and it was so fun to hear about their conversion story! Then on the way home, I heard Sister Whiteford scream. I look up to see a Saint Bernard skipping around in front of our car. We braked hard and Tiwi (aka Jarvis) yelled at us in his disappointed voice, "aggressive driving" :( but we saved the dog's life, so it won't  matter. Then the dog ran away happily like nothing happened. It acted like it was a puppy, but it was HUGE. If we hit it, it would've done some serious damage!

The time when Candice went to the temple to do baptism for the dead:

This isn't funny, but it made me so happy to see her do baptisms for the dead. On Saturday we had a recent convert temple trip. She was able to be baptized for her great great grandma. And someone got baptized of her grandpa as well! I couldn't stop thinking why it was so important to bring recent converts to the temple. They have a year before they receive their endowments ( Which I can't wait to see Candice do that in a year!) so it is so important to build good habits to go to the temple. The temple is such a good place to be!

This week has been good and busy! I hope this week will be the same! I hope all is going well for you all!

Lots of Love,

Sister Parker

P.S. I got your letter Sister Garrett! Thank you so much! I'll be writing you back:)

The game plan for...NEXT TRANSFERS!!!!!!

I wanted to tell you all at once about what President Cooke told me in my interview last Thursday.... Wow that seems forever ago! Haha.... Anyways..... The very first thing that he said as I sat down was. I'm putting you in the ASL program. Annmndddd I'm training!!! Here is the crazy part. There are 4 new ASL sister missionaries coming on the 1st of Sept. (Happy birthday to you Garrett!) but there is only me, and two sister missionaries here that will for sure train. Simple math will show there is one missing person to train.... It was funny because it seemed like President was caught off guard for a moment! He isn't sure who will train the 4th sister. He is trying to ask SLC to send a sister out from the visitor center who already knows ASL. (At least I think they are coming from the visitor center) Then once I'm done training for the next two transfers... I will be kicked out of the ASL program. President said that he only needs 4 ASL sisters at a time, and by the 3rd transfer he will have 6!

The first two weeks I'll be with another ASL sister, then we will split off to get our new missionary. So, the ASL program will double in size! Do you know what I'm most nervous about?!?! Being lost.... Haha. Not only do we cover our mission, but also the surrounding missions as well. I'm sure we will split the areas up, but still that's a lot of area to cover! Funny note, the Baltimore mission President doesn't want us ASL missionaries to be in his mission because he want his own ASL missionaries. So, if you go in the Baltmore mission area, you have to go in secretly!

I'm a tad overwhelmed, but I'm glad that I have two weeks to get the reins on things before I actually train! In the mean time, I have a book I brought on my mission that has church signs. Actually the other day we had fun doing a little language study session! My companion and I have Spanish roommates and one of the Spanish Missionary, Sister Mecham, knows ASL. So, I started to sign the first lesson. Then Sister Mecham would say what I signed in Spanish, then Sister Luna Chico would tell Sister Whiteford in English! It was quite fun! It was funny to hear when I knew I wasn't clear and Sister Mecham would add or change what I signed to her! It was helpful to know I still have lots of signs I need to learn.

I am soooo excited to improve a lot in the next 3 months!  Hope you all are doing fantastic!

Love you all!

-Sister Parker