The time we got to see President Nelson ALL weekend long!

We had busy, fun, service, and spiritual filled week!

First off... I have been grounded from the keys! I have lost the keys twice! The first time wasn't my fault! It was a few weeks ago. I looked down and the keys were literally missing! We never found them. So we made a copy of them. Well... This week I dropped them.... Down the crack to get on the elevator to be exact. So.... The keys are now at the bottom of the elevator shaft! It turns out we can't get them back until the elevator guy comes... And that's when he has to come to fix the elevator.  The front desk ladies were so kind to allow us to get another copy of the keys. Lucky Sister Cosper loves driving, so I won't need to touch the keys until she decides she doesn't want to drive.

On Monday we had a sweet experience to do some service. We were on our way out of the grocery store when Sister Cosper spotted a lady in the self checkout line with a cart FULL of food. Sites Cosper asked if she could help her and she said yes. Sister Cosper is pro at bagging since she worked at a grocery store before her mission.Since bagging was a one person job, I decided to talk with an old lady who was sitting on the bench. I found out that her daughter-in-law was the one buying her food. Right away I could tell she was from another country because of her accent. It was funny and cute because she was talking with me in English, then she suddenly switched over to Spanish. It probably took me 3 min to realize she wasn't speaking English anymore. I pretty much pretended I knew what she was talking about because she was so cute!

So we have this contacting challenge until January. We have been working hard to contact more people every day. It has been a great experience riding the metro more and getting to know people in a short amount of time. Once we got a high score of 11 in a day and on another day contacted 8 people within an hour! We are getting better at it and I'm excited to get more people contacted this week than last! Every week we will try to raise our numbers to be higher and higher!

We have this new deaf girl who we are teaching. She is turning 8 next year. She is super sweet and energetic! We played apples to apples and took breaks to teach her the first lesson. Her mom wants us to teach her all the lessons so that she can fully understand what we believe before she gets baptized. I loved being at their house and feeling this little girl's energy and excitement about life.

On Wednesday was our very first time teaching the ASL class all by ourselves. We and the whole class had a super fun time! I love it so much! I'm so proud of our class members! I'm excited for next week to teach them again. I'm sad because we are taking it off this week because of thanksgiving. But, everyone seems excited about us teaching. Sister Hill has done AMAZING job and we hope to match up to how well Sister Hill has taught.

Thursday night we got to help out at an interfaith concert. We had 5 different religions (including the LDS choir) and a high school choir group. My job was to escort the high school choir in. The other sisters had a flag to carry on that corresponds with the religious group. The high school choir didn't have a flag, so I had the easy job to just walk in when it was their turn to come into the auditorium. Being around the high school choir for a brief time made me realize how much I miss choir! It was a fun evening!

The next day we got asked to come help the Salvation Army with Thanksgiving dinner preparation. The dinner was for people in need. That was so much fun! We prepped apple pies, mash potatoes, and smashed boxes! It was a ton of fun! There were a lot of missionaries there that helped out. I just love service!

So last weekend was stake conference and Friday night was the 75th anniversary celebration of the Washington DC stake organization. President Nelson from the 12 apostles came with Elder Hallstrom to come to all 3 meetings. It turns out President Nelson came to the 50th anniversary too! He used to live in the DC stake, so he was able to name people he knew in the audience and those who had passed on. It was an unique experience! Sister Cosper got to shake his hand on Friday and he shook my hand after the Sunday Meeting. He said, "Thanks dear". He was referring to me interpreting for our deaf members. I only did some of the songs and the closing prayer. Sister Cosper did the rest with 2 other interpreters. Sister Cosper even got to interpret for President Nelson too!

Stake Conference was just amazing! There was such a good spirit there. Oh! And the main reason for stake conference was that the DC stake presidency was getting reorganized. Bishop Baird is now the new stake
president! He is such an amazing man and I will miss him being the bishop of the Rockkville Ward! He will do fantastic in that calling!

Well... I ran out of time again! I hope you all are doing great!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sister Parker

The time I had a frostbite scare!

Although I want to make you hang on to your seats about the frostbite scare and talk about the other parts of my week... I figured I should be nice and share this story first!


On Saturday Sister Cosper and I did metro contacting for a couple of hours. It was windy and SO COLD!!! It was about 30 degrees, so for sure not the coldest it can be. When we finally got back to our apartment and I took off my shoes, I looked down to see my big toe and the toe next to it was really WHITE! I NEVER seen my toes be that white. (I wished I taken a pic... Sorry! I was a tad freaking out at the moment!) so my roommate Sister Sundwall ordered me to dip my feet in cold water and slowly turn up the heat. I did that for a few min. Then I left my toes out of  the water and looked down to see that my toes was a grayish purple color. I called the sisters from the other room to get a second opinion. They got more freaked out and called the mission Doctor. He told us to warm up a towel for 5 min in the microwave. Sister Cosper must have forgotten he said a WET towel and not a dry one. So I got out the rag and did that.... I was reluctant at first because that didn't make any sense! But Sister Sundwall convinced me that I needed too. So I warmed up the towel.... 3 min in I figured I need to check the towel. When I open the microwave.... Smoke came out and even I could smell the smoke! Yes.... The towel caught on fire. Luckily it only had embers. While I was patting towel down and ran it through water, Sister Sundwall went out on the balcony to air out the apartment. She must have gotten excited and the smell got to
her..... Because she threw up! After that things finally calmed down my feet turned back to normal and we had a good laugh! 

So exciting news!!! We will start teaching a deaf girl who is going to be 8 soon! She doesn't have a full understanding about church, so we are going to teach her! She goes to a Ward in the Baltimore mission. We got to meet her last Friday and she has some sass!!! Haha. It will be a lot of fun!

At Why I Believe one of the ladies got up to bear her testimony and she is a part of the Rockville Ward. She did so great! I love her so much, she as such a powerful testimony. Afterwards I got to say good bye to Mark. He is a deaf convert and is leaving for his mission this week to San Diego!!! I'm so excited for him.

This week has been pretty good. We have this challenge to try to talk to 20 people a day! That will be hard.... But we can do it!!! Hopefully this will help us find more people to teach!

Today we went to see the White House with some the ASL sisters. It
was fun! We also checked out the White House visitor center for a
little bit. I want to go back and read everything there. It was really
neat!

I love you all! Hope you are doing well!!

Love,

Sister Parker

P.S Just in case you wanted a taste of my companion and roommates personalities... 

So a few weeks back I was leaning back in my chair..... I know not a
good idea. I of course leaned way too far and I fell! I heard a crack of the chair leg. I stand up and say , "I'm ok! I'm ok! I'm so sorry!"

Sister Sundwall: oh my goodness! are you ok?!?!?!
Sister Cosper: she just laughed her head off. And then said, "oh
ha.... Are you ok???"
Sister Capson: you broke the chair.... Haha

Sister Cosper, Carter and I taking a selfie!

Say what?!?!? Another transfer with Sister Cosper??? Yes please!

Yep! We have another transfer this week and we got the call that we are both staying together! We are soooooo happy and relived. We were worried that one of us was gonna leave. We got some good things going from last week to this week!  I am just so happy that Sister Cosper and I get to continue together for another 5 weeks. (It's a week shorter because the real transfer would have been on the 23rd of Dec and SLC doesn't fly anyone on that day. So this transfer is 5 weeks and the next one will be 7!) I'm counting my blessings I get to stay and still do ASL! Yay!

Ok, so we had a pretty good week. I think both Sister Cosper and I just wanted to hurry the week along so that we would know what will happen with transfers. It was hard when days were sooo long, but we finally made it to Saturday!

On Tuesday we had a special women's conference with Sister Cooke and the two sister training leaders. It was so good! Sister Cooke pulled apart President Nelson's talk about why women are needed in the church. Sister Cooke had us pay attention to whenever he says we need women, the men need women, and also when the church need women. It was quite fascinating to listen to this talk again with a new perspective.

On Wednesday we visited Jackie. Her boyfriend actually hung around this time. He usually hides in another room when we come over. It was great to see him and build his trust with us. He said he will join with us from now on! Yay! Although he said he was baptist and there is nothing we can do about it, I'm just glad he came to sit in to the the lesson. Haha. Then after the lesson Jackie helped me back up the car! This is her second time doing it! She is so cute. She pretends to be a police officer directing traffic!

On Thursday we finally got to meet Gloree and her husband David. She is not a member and David is. Gloree comes to the ASL class every week and she is the sweetest old lady ever! We have been meaning to set an appointment with her and we finally did! The most amazing thing we learned about Gloree is that she has been to all 7 continents. Yes... Even Antarctica! We asked her how that was and she said,"Very beautiful! Lots of ice and penguins!" Haha. She has also lived in Pakistan for 2 years. As you can image, her front room was FILLED with things all around the world! We are looking forward to going back to see them again.

On Friday we met with Charo. So there is something you should know about her she is VERY intoned with the Holy Ghost! Every time we show up she is either there to answer the locked apartment building door or her daughter comes. Well... this time there was a cray man right in front of the building. He was mumbling to himself and he didn't seem to be too dangerous. But.. I wanted to get inside ASAP. Charo doesn't have a working phone so the Holy Ghost does it for her. Well lo and
behold, there was her daughter coming right down the stairs to come get us! It is so crazy!!!

Earlier that day we had an appointment with S's friend but it fell through😟. We had Sister Hill in the car going to her house, but she cancelled last min. Hopefully this week will be better and get an appointment with her! Pray that this appointment will keep!

Ok to finish off, we had two miracles/ tender mercies. The first one was on Friday night. We were coming home from the day's work. We got on the elevator with another lady. She immediately realized we were from the church. She asked if we just went to church and we said no. We explained what we do and she said that she would love to talk with us! She said she has some questions and feels like we could answer them!!! So we got her name and number! This all happened in 30 sec! We then we gave the info to our roommates because our apartment is in their area! It felt so good to help give them a potential investigator!

The second one happened the following day! We were coming back from metro contacting when a man came our way. We said "hi! How are you?" Then he stopped completely and turned towards us!!! That RARELY happens and when it does you know you got a person who wants to listen!!!! He said that his friend is Mormon and he would like a "Jesus Bible". We handed him one and invited him to Why I Believe next Sunday. He accepted!!! He even said he is interested in learning more about our church! We still need to contact him and figure out where he lives. But.... We just MIGHT have another investigator. If not that's ok! I'm so glad I met him!

Well, I hope you all are doing great! I love you! Have a good week for me.

Love,

Sister Parker

We got a deaf investigator!!!

This week has been a good week!

On Monday we had our zone activity and it was so much fun! We were able to dress up so I wore my thing 2 shirt. We played a game where you tie a balloon around your ankle and you try to pop other people's balloons. It was so funny! Afterwards Sister Cosper had a eating contest with Elder Fisher, our zone leader. It's called bubble soup. It's basically little black and white squishy balls. It was really funny, but a tad gross. They chugged it down!

On Tuesday after our meetings we went to the family history center for Sister Cosper to find a name for the baptismal trip the next day. We found one name for her!!! I was so excited I yelled... Haha. Sister Cosper was like "Shhhhhh... You don't need to be so loud!" Then we had some fun time contacting people before dinner. One man reminded us exactly like the male version of Rose. He said he is spiritual, but not religious. It's so interesting how in general conference it talked over and over again how important church is. We have ran into a lot of people who said they don't believe in organized region because it creates separation. It's sad to me that people think this way, but comforting that the general authorities know what they are talking about!

On Wednesday was our baptismal trip as us sisters! It was really nice! I got to do 4 family family names. We went on exchanges afterwards and I got to spend night in my old apartment in Gaithersburg! That was really fun! Sister Whiteford still lives there and so we got to hang out that night. She cracks me up. My favorite moment that day was at our last door. The lady answers and said in a frustrated tone, "I am in a hurry!" And so I turned around and headed for the door. She followed us out, so I held the door for her. She said in a sincere voice, "I'm sorry". That was so touching to me that I could do that small thing and left a better impression on her.

Thursday..... Was my tired day! We had an amazing visit with Sister Hill. We talked about what we could do to help the work in the deaf group and ASL class to be better. We are going to teach the ASL class in a few more weeks until Feb! Sister Hill has been so stressed and over worked, she needs a break. We are both VERY excited to help out. Sister Hill does so much! Then we finally got our Video Phone set up in our apartment. We have been enjoying it very much!

Friday was the BEST day of our week! S is one of our deaf members in the Rockville Ward. She has been wanting us to meet her friend Char, but our appointments kept falling through! But, on Friday we finally got to meet her! S was able to even come with us too! Our lesson went SO WELL! We taught her the first lesson of the Restoration. She was so excited to read the Book of Mormon and to meet us next week to learn about the Plan of Salvation! Sister Cosper and I love her so much. She was so nice. That night we had the Ward trunk or treat. Sister Cosper and I got to pass out suckers to the kids. That was a lot of fun. Randy Finder was next to us (he and his wife is the ones with autism and they showed us out to the door when we tried to share a spiritual thought). He hid in his trunk and passed out candy. A lot of the kids were skeptical about this and we just had to laugh!

Saturday was an interesting day! One set of the ASL sisters needed our help to teach a single deaf man up in Frederick. It's an hour drive away. We had a pretty good visit with him... I guess. Haha. He told us from the start that he didn't see the reason to listen to general conference because he felt like they were repetitive. We still shared the conference talk, "faith by choice, not chance". I got bold and told him that if he listened to general conference, his faith would increased. He didn't like that very much. Then Sister Cosper said that God requires us to keep all of his commandments. In reply he told us that he has been apart of the church for 30 years and he knows how to build his own faith. He is just one of those people who think that he can pick and choose what commanders to be obedient to. Oh well.

Today we got to tour around the Kennedy Center.. That was so fun and neat to see!!! That is one place that I would love to see again! 

 

Well, there is more I want to say... but as always I am running out of time! Hope all is well!

Sister Parker