The time the fire drill killed our lunch hour

Hello everyone!!! I had a fun, funny and amazing week! I'll get right into it because everyday had something fun or funny in it.

Monday: 
Sister Cosper and I went to a less active house that lives an hour away from us. Her ex husband goes to the deaf branch, so we have been trying to get her to come to the Rockville Ward instead. Well, when we got there, we saw her, her friend, her ex husband, and her ex husband's friend. When we asked for her cell number she wasn't happy with us. (We contacted her through the other ASL sisters' video phone). She told us she wasn't a member and that she was a Catholic. Also, she said she wasn't going to church, so stop asking to come back and left us with her ex husband, her son (who came in after we got there), and the ex husband's friend. The lesson turned to teach their son who isn't a member. He has a very scientific brain so he was asking a million questions about God and why we were here. He was a typical teenager. He would ask a question then pretend to fall asleep when we tried to answer him. It was frustrating, but we made it through! It was interesting because the friend who stayed was Catholic and he was agreeing with everything we had to say. So, in a way we were teaching him too without really
talking to him. To say the least it was a strange and tough lesson!

Tuesday: 
We had a better day than Monday! We wanted to get the number from the apartment computer lab to get a video phone. (Video phone or vp is like Skype but it's a land line for deaf people). Well, while I was trying to find the number, a lady asked Sister Cosper for some help to read a letter she typed out. We learned she was from Ukraine and she moved here 5 months ago. We had a wonderful conversation with her! We even got to invite her to listen to general conference! We told her if she went in with a question, her question would be answered. With that, agreed to watch conference!


Wednesday:
Sister Cosper and I was  just starting our lunch hour at our apartment when we heard a dinging of a bell. I checked the door... No one there. Then a voice came above us saying there was going to be a fire drill and to not panic! Ohhhh did we panic! Haha. We had a fun time running around the apartment while the fire alarm was going off. I never laughed so hard! We took a video too so we can look back on the time the fire drill killed our lunch hour.  

That night we went to the ASL class the Rockville Ward puts on to help hearing members learn ASL to communicate with the deaf members. The last two weeks they didn't have the class, so this was the first time I went. It was a lot of fun and I could feel the love these members had to sacrifice an hour to learn ASL every week. It was a lot of fun and I'm excited to go every week and help teach with Sister Hill.

Thursday: 

This was probably the best day of the week! Hold on to your hats cuz a lot things happened! Sister Cosper and I went to Sister Taylor's house for lunch. We go every week to teach her one on one ASL and she always feeds us lunch. She is the best and sweetest person I know! On the way there,Sister Cosper was calling the APs to ask a question. When they answered a little spider decided to land on her.She's screaming, the APs are confused, and I'm just laughing! In between laughing, screaming, and trying to talk, Sister Cosper was finally able to ask our question. It was really funny!

After having lunch with Sister Taylor, we went a less active home to help clean up her yard a tiny bit. One of the tasks she had us do was drag out statues for the Nativity. Most of the statues were headless! Sister Cosper earlier that week read about how John the Baptist died. So she exclaimed, "Why is it always the heads?!?!?" It was a traumatic experience for us. Haha.

Then that night we were going to go to the metro stop by our house. But we both had a stupor of thought about it. So we prayed and felt a hunch to do street contacting instead. Not long after we met a man that is from Iran. He was so nice and sweet. He was atheist but was willing to hear us out. We learned all about Iran and about him. We also compared beliefs and I could tell he was realizing how sad his beliefs were. We walked with him for an hour and guess what!?!?! We didn't pass by anyone else on the streets so we were meant to run into him! In the end he thanked us for not going straight into talking about our religion but took the time to get to know him first. We will hopefully get in contact with him this week to see if he is interested in learning more!

Friday: 
We helped teach a deaf lady with one set of ASL sisters. This lady has been investigating the church for at least 4 years, but she has a low understanding. So we went to help teach how God and Jesus were separate and how to pray. That was fun! She kept saying that God was Jesus. Once we felt like she understood they were separate, we
moved on to teaching her how to pray. We practiced and practiced. Sister Cosper even wrote it out for her. She wrote:

1. Heaven Father
2. Communicate
3. Jesus Christ name Amen

So this is what the lady signed: HEAVEN FATHER COMMUNICATE (we then were laughing because she was signing exactly what we wrote down) JESUS NAME CHRIST AMEN. We then had to clarify what we meant by
communicate and had her copy us for the closing prayer. It was a good experience in seeing how to keep things simple.

Saturday:
We had a mission wide food drive. Sister Cosper and I went with our roommates to Safeway. It was a lot of fun!! Then that night was Women's Conference. Wow!!! I loved all the talks!! They were all individually powerful. I'm looking forward to read the talks and mark them up! And... I bet President Uchdorf's talk will become a picture book! Haha. Some of my favorite things that were said:

1. One of the sweetest things the Holy Ghost can tell you is how much God loves you
2. Good friends focuses on your good qualities and ignore your weak ones
3. God didn't design us to be sad, he designed us to have joy!

Sunday:
This was a really good day! We had a less active come back to church after not coming all summer. She even came to Women's conference the day before. It was one of the best Sunday yet! God is a God of miracles and tender mercies! This lady is so sweet and has one of the most powerful testimonies I have ever heard. I love her so much!

The lady in the wheel chair is 100 years old and just went through the temple. She was baptized

in 2009,'which means she was in her 90s!

I hope you all have a great week! Congrats to those who are recently married or engaged! It's fun to hear all the big events happening in people's lives!

With love,

Sister Parker

P.S  This week is transfers and....Sister Cosper and I are staying together!!, I'm excited to see how long I can be Sister Cosper's companion! I hope it will be long cuz I just love her so much!

The time when an old man talked our ear off!

This week has been a great week of getting to know members!!! I have broke the record of having 10 member lessons!!!

To start off I'll share the story when the old man talked our ear off! We went tracking in the park. Of course it's always the first person we see who is interested in talking with us.... Little did we know he
talked for an our straight without us barely saying a word! He had cataract surgery that day and was very worried how to take care of his eye. Through our very intriguing conversation, we tried to invite him to the visitor center. It was very hard!!! Whenever we tried to say a word he rolled right on top of us! Haha. Finally we got our invitation out! He didn't seem interested but we did it, we got our
invitation out!

We had a really good day on Tuesday! We got to visit with a deaf less active member! She is SO sweet and she says she wants to come back to church!!! We will have another lesson with her next week at the visitor center. We are thinking to show her Because He Lives! It should be really good!! Then that night we had an amazing member meal!!! The Eskelesen family is sooooo cute!!! They have little kids ages from 11-4. Brother Eskelesen is so funny. He asked us these three questions to test our knowledge. I'm curious to know if any one knows the answers without counting:

1. How many books are there in The Book of Mormon?
2, How many books in the Old Testament?
3. how many books in the New Testament?



Answers:
1. 15 (count the number of letters in "the Book of Mormon"
2. 39 (3 letters in "old" and 9 letters in "testament")
3. 27 ( times 3 by 9 because "new" and "testament")

For the spiritual thought we had the kids help us teach the Plan of Happiness. It was very powerful hearing it from little kids. I LOVE how simple the Plan of Salvation is!!!  It was so good!

The next day we had dinner at the Ward mission leader's house... Though he was still at work. They have 4 adorable children!!! The second youngest is 2 and she is so sassy and so adorable!!! I can't
remember what she said but it was just priceless!!

On Thursday Sister Cosper got her iPad!!!

On Friday we had an amazing brunch with Sister T. She is in the ASL class and is trying to learn ASL with her oldest daughter who is taking ASL through the high school. We will be seeing Sister T every week to help her with ASL! I love her so much!!!

Yesterday was Why I Believe!!! It was so fun seeing the other ASL missionaries and Mark. Mark is a recent convert and was baptized almost a year ago... He is currently waiting for his mission call!! It should be coming this week.

The speakers from Why I Believe was John and Hannah Smith. John was a convert and he shared an amazing story!!! His mom is Ukrainian Catholic and he was raised up that way I think. Anyways, he went to college and he ran into some Elders. They asked him for his name and number. John accepted  and gave them his information.... Annnnnndddddd they never called him!!! Well, some short time latter Sister missionaries came along.... (The whole audience laughed so hard) and they called him! It turns out that the Elders didn't call him because they thought the name like John
Smith had to be fake! Haha... Oh elders! Anyways he was on lesson 4 and the Sister missionaries found out that Hannah (his wife now!) was in one of John's classes. So they asked her to join in on the next lesson and she accepted. The lesson went well and Hannah had this impression that John was going to join the church. Well, at the end of the lesson John said that his mom asked him to stop taking the discussions and wanted to respect her wishes.

Hannah was crushed. She went in prayer privately and still had the same impression. Hannah never gave up on John when the Sisters stopped teaching him. Finally after a school break Hannah asked John three important questions:

1. How is your faith? John said good
2. When will you continue finding more about the LDS Church? John said when the time is right
3. When will it ever be the right time??? In reply, John finished up the discussions and got baptized!!!

Here is the cool part though! At this point Hannah and John were dating, but Hannah wanted to let John go on his mission. In turn, she also an got inspiration go too! So together they went on missions. Hannah went to France and Sweden and John went to..... Ukraine!! Isn't that so cool?!?!

Afterwards I got to chat with Sister Whiteford for a second! She said that Sister N went to church last week!!! I was so happy. She also told me about another person we always saw at the store who now wants to come back to church!!! I'm so happy!

On a random note: President Cooke is so funny!!!When Mark came up to greet President Cooke, President Cooke tried to sign. It was funny and cute! The closing song was "Put your Shoulder to the Wheel". President Cooke said in sign that I could interpret that song!!! I saw President move his pointer in a circle and put his shoulder forward. We all were laughing so hard! 

This was a good week!! Many fun and funny times. I'm looking foreword to next week!

Love you all

Sister Parker

Speed Humps and Rumple Strips!

Maryland has a funny way of naming things! Especially describing the road. What normal people call speed bumps, they call it speed humps (Hard to break it to ya... there are "speed humps" here in Oregon haha). Litteraly the cation signs says speed humps, it gave me a good laugh. Another sign that took me by surprise is "Caution Rumple Strips ahead!" I was like what?!?! It reminds me of those veggie straw chips for some reason! Now for the life of me I don't know what people on the west coast would call what rumple strips are. These are the little bumps in the road to help you know to slow down. Also, what they call mountains here are actually hills!

Ok enough of that, now to my week full of stories!!!

This story happened the first week I was here at Rockville. I was too embarrassed to share it last week because... well you'll see! But I must share it because Sister Cosper makes fun of me all the time because of what happened. Ok, so we were member tracting to get to know the ward better. When we were at this one lady's house (her name is Barbra), it looked like she was the only one who lived there. So I knocked on the door and someone answered it. All we could see was one eye, but even I knew it was a man. For some reason I couldn't think of anything to say, so I ask, "Are you Barbra?" Then Sister Cosper laughed and said, "That's definitely not Barbra!" He then looked sorta mad (I don't blame him) and said that she was asleep and he wasn't a member. So much for first impressions!

Last Monday we had a huge tender mercy! We of course didn't have any teaching appointment's, so we decided to go in our back yard of our apartment building. It's a really nice park with a pond. Right before getting on the actual path surrounding the pound we passed by a lady. We said "hi!" and she said, "Hi! It's it not a beautiful day?!?!" We agreed and the conversation went from there! She was so interested in learning more about the church and agreed with us on how we view God and how important it is to have a relationship with Him. We ended up giving her a Book of Mormon and she said she would read it with a question in her mind to see if the Book of Mormon would give her an answer. We have yet to get a hold of her to see if she would like to hear more from the missionaries.

After we met that lady, we met another man with his labradoodle. He wasn't all that interested, but we have seen him 2-3 times since last Monday! It shows how important it is to remember what people tell you when you ask them questions. One night following we ran into him at the elevators. We asked him how his day was and about his work. He was impressed we remembered the details about his job. Then a couple nights ago we ran into him at the park while street contacting and got to talk with him on the way to the apartment building. It is great we are building a friendship with him, so we shall see what happens!

The most exciting thing of all????? WE GOT TO TEACH A REAL DEAF INVESTIGATOR ON TUESDAY! Her name is T. She awesome! We found her under the potential investigators and texted her to see if she was interested in learning more about our church. She said yes and we got to teach her! She didn't know a lot of gospel signs, so we ended up teaching her "The Gospel of Jesus Christ". It seemed to go smother after that because this lesson can be taught by a list. It was really nice to bear my testimony in ASL and testify how much Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ loves us all individually. What was the best part was having her say the closing prayer. She was able to list off everything that we talked about in the lesson!!! She even accepted to go to church! We gave her the option to go to the deaf branch or our ward in Rockville. She said she wanted to go to church at the deaf branch! That being said, we had to pass her off to one of the ASL sisters there because we are not over the deaf branch. I am excited to hear from them how everything goes with her! She is super sweet and I'm just happy that she is wanting to take the discussions!

On Wednesday morning we were enjoying our morning studies. Then I hear our phone go off in the other room. I answered and it was our district leader on the other line. He ask, "Are you coming to the stake center?!?!" And I was freaking out in my head thinking what meeting did I miss?!? I asked, "Why should I be at the stake center?" He then said, "It's the emergency drill! And we are being timed!"So with that we rushed out to go to the church. It took us 20 min to get to the church... so much for being responsive! Haha!

This next story is the funniest!!!! Keep in mind this couple has Autism. The wife is a member and she likes to help interpret for Relif Society. Her husband is Jewish, but he is VERY knowledgeable about the Mormons and he comes to church with his wife every week. We were having a fun getting to know each other. The wife actually went to the White House last summer to celebrate the ADA anniversary. I thought that was so cool! It's not everyday you can say you have eaten and been inside the white house! When we got to our spiritual thought about service, the husband said, 'Oh, my favorite scripture is Mosiah 2:17!" We replied, "We were going to share that scripture." He then goes on to explain why that's his favorite scripture. Then his wife perks up and says after that scripture it talks about being unprofitable servants. I got really excited and said, "We were also going to share that scripture too!" Then the husband says ."Well that wraps up the thought, lets say a closing prayer!" So his wife says it. They then got distracted and went on to talk about something else. Then we had one more chance to share our thought! So Sister Cosper was like, "Which brings us back to service!" Then without warning they laughed and the husband showed us out the door. Then I'm saying how wonderful service is as we are walking out the door! It was so funny and made me think, "What just happened!" haha  

On Saturday, we had an amazing opportunity to do serve ice  and direct people for the blind at a run/walk event. It was so cool because we saw a few deaf people there as well! Sister Cosper got to
sign with one of them for a few min too! It was so much fun! 

The last story I want to share actually happened an hour ago! Sister Cosper and I were food shopping at Gaints. I was down the aisle getting some butter and when I got back, I found Sister Cosper talking to this man. It turns out he and his wife was looking for a church to go to! He said that he would check out the visitor center and then would request missionaries there if he was interested. His wife even wanted to check out our church too! So I'm excited to see what will happens with that!

Tonight we have a lesson with a less active. None of the ASL missionaries met her yet. Supposedly her ex goes to the deaf branch, so she would possibly want to go to the Rockville Ward!!! So I'm excited to see how the lesson will go!

Well that pretty sums up my great week of fun!!! I'm looking foreword to this week ahead and seeing what lays in store for us!! I hope every one is doing well. 

Love,

Sister Parker

The time I got lost in a Japanese hotel!

All right every one! The moment you all been waiting for (at least I was!) my trainee is here!!! The first night having her here was an adventure of itself. So, we were suppose to meet the newbies at 8. We get a call in the afternoon asking if we could be at the stake center at 7. So at 6:30 we got in the beltway to go to the stake center. Right when we got on, we got a call from the APs asking if we
have left yet because they were running behind schedule. No matter, we still kept on going to the stake center and wait and waited! It was fun to talk and amp up our excitement about training. Just before the newbies came, the APs told us to not talk to them. We said ok. When the newbies
came in with Sister Cooke, Sister Cook exclaimed, "Why aren't you guys talking?!?! You can talk with each other!" Then bam, we were like puppies and we just were so excited to talk with each other! All the new ASL sisters and new Elder are so awesome! The sisters were so cute and I was so excited to have anyone of them. With no time at all, I finally got introduced to who I will be training. Her name is Sister Cosper and she is form Alpine, UT. She is so great! I'll tell more about her after this story.

meet my new companion!

So we then made it safe to our apartment building. (Reminder: I am white washing Rockville, which has a deaf group.) I was so glad I didn't get lost on the way there! So we grabbed a load of our things
and headed into the apartment building. Right away I felt I was in the wrong apartment building. I been to the apartment building once for 4th July and it looked different. I thought to myself, "maybe they moved apartment buildings, but I don't know why they would move." Anyways we go to the 17th floor. This is what we saw: two hallways with two doors in each end. Then there was Japanese decorations. What I didn't see??? Our room number! So it was until then I was like, "NOPE, we are for sure at the wrong place!!" I felt so bad for Sister Cosper! She only had 2 or so hours asleep. It turns out our real apartment building was next door.

We had a tender mercy though! I was worrying all night that we were going to be towed because the lady at the front desk told me to make sure I parked in the visitor parking lot or I would be towed. I
couldn't see where I was suppose to park and I was too tried to really care. So, after a restless night.... our car was still there!!! Though, we had a nice little note saying if you ever parked there
again, we would be towed. Yay for warnings!

A little about Sister Cosper: she has interpreted for deaf people at church before. She is super talented! This is awesome because Rockville has a small deaf group and so they need interpreters. Sister Hill has been doing most of the interpreting and so she is excited to have us help out! Sister Cosper also went to Ghana last year for 2 months to help teach at a school for the deaf! She also has.... DLF. Aka demented leprechaun face!

Even though this week has been a tad slow and frustrating trying to find people to teach, we had some good times! On Saturday we had a Ward Party at the park. Every year they have a feast of the three main crops of Maryland: watermelon, corn, and tomatoes! It was fun getting to know Ward members. One member was giving Sister Cosper the hardest time! He went to American Fork and he had his 60th high school reunion recently. He asked Sister Cosper if she could remember her high school fight song for Lone Peak.... For the life of her, she couldn't remember! He then goes and sing his. It was hilarious!

Yesterday we had a fun time street contacting while knocking on Ward member doors to get to know them better. While walking down the streets, 3 young adults yelled hi to us. I was going to pass, but I
was like, "Wake up! They are willing to chat with us!" They had 4 dogs between the three of them. Ones of the dogs was a 5 month old Corgi. It was sooooooo cute!!! We had a really fun time talking with them and when we invited them to go to the visitor center, they were like we know Mormons. So, they may or may not be interested to learn more, but it was really nice have a fun time talking with them.

Well, I hope you all have a good week! Pray that we will find people to teach.

I love you all!

Sister Parker

Watch out world cuz this chick is now a East coast driver!!

Yep! My training wheels of being the passenger is officially off! (You aren't allowed to drive the first 12 weeks of the mission) my first time driving was yesterday! Boy, am I glad to to have the GPS! The roads here are confusing and you HAVE to pay attention! They have weird rules like at certain times of the day can you take the left turn or the straight ahead lane turns into the left turn lane! Haha. I was quite nervous to drive, but it actually felt really good to be behind the wheel again!

My week was good. It had a low point or two, but that's the missionary life! The lowest point was having an investigator tell us he wouldn't be able to be baptized because he is possibly moving in China. Apparently if you are a member of the LDS church, you can't be promoted at work. The hardest part was hearing him pray to God in the closing prayer. He apologized to God that he wouldn't be baptized anytime soon. We had a member, D, from the YSA Ward help us out in the lesson. It was a good lesson, but our investigator wasn't ready to go forward. After everyone left, we took some time to cry and talk it out. Then... D called us up to meet us at Rita's so that he could buy us some Italian ice cream. It was soooo good! I got mango ice cream with vanilla custard.

Another low point actually turned out to be one of the highest point of the week. We had a lesson fall through so, we do what every missionary dreads.... we tracked. (Though, I like tracking, but it is the last thing on my list of ideas what we could be doing) It turned out to be a good thing because we got to talk to a number of people about our church! This is a rare occasion because people hardly ever answer their doors. It was quite refreshing to have such a tender mercy!

On Monday we had a fun little treat... Dad, you would be so jealous! We had aged vinegar mixed with olive oil for our French bread! It was very delicious and sweet!!!

Our meeting with Elder Perkins was really good!!! I was reminded on the importance of asking questions. You can't receive revelation if you don't have a question! The meeting also focused a lot about having the Light of Christ shine through us. This will help others notice our light and want to hear us out why we look so different from other people. We do this by being obedient to the mission rules!

On Sunday, we had a few hearing visitors come to the Deaf Branch. So, Sister Ellsworth and I took turns interpreting for them. That was tough!! Luckily though, ALL of the speakers spoke their talks. So, a lady got on the stand to interpret for the branch. :) After Church we had an awesome 1st lesson with a young man. We have been wanting to contact him for a while and we finally got to teach him!!! There was such a strong spirit that was there! He is willing to have us come back next week for the next lesson!

So... Tomorrow I get my new companion from the MTC! I will be transferring once again up to Rockville. I will be white washing. (meaning my companion and I are both new in that area) So... This week will be interesting and fun! I'm sad to leave all the investigators I have been teaching these last two weeks, but it will all be ok!

Well, I love you all!

Sister Parker