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