The time Sis. Kucharek scared me so bad!

Me and Aggie!

Alright, so we had another productive and busy week! It wasn't as crazy as last week, but we were plenty busy! We were so busy, we didn't do weekly planing until yesterday! It was a fun and great week all around.

So on Monday we got snow and we couldn't leave our apartment. Instead we played card games ALL day and evening long! I think it was about 9 hours sitting in the floor playing different card games with our roommates. That was a lot of fun! We ordered in pizza for dinner and we were the last order for delivery! Talk about a blessing!

On Tuesday we went to the ASL branch president's house for dinner and had a meeting to talk about our deaf members and some questions we had in general. On the way there we ran out of gas! So we pulled up the nearest gas station we could find on the GPS. We drove through a town and realized we were in McLean! Sister Kucharek used to live in McLean about 7 years ago. That was fun to hear her say what she recognized and didn't recognize. The meeting went great and we had an awesome dinner!

On Wednesday we had interviews! We were 10 min early and NO one was there. Not even the zone leaders that usually gets there super early to set up. So we called the zone leaders at 8:15 to see if we still had interviews. They said yes and that they were just running late. Whew! Interviews went great! I have no idea what will happen next transfer...haha. I might be going English to rotate everyone through, but I'm not sure!

On Thursday after our meetings we went over to Aggie's apartment for her lesson. We meet the Amharic Elders with their recent convert who is also fluent in Amharic. The lesson went good! Aggie is sooooo cute and nice. She gives he best hugs! We aren't sure yet if the Amharic elders are going to teach her or not. Aggie seemed to be amused to have the Elders come and try to speak her native language, but we aren't sure if she sold on being taught in Amharic.

For dinner that night we went up to Georgetown to visit a lady who goes to the Brunswick deaf group in the Baltimore Mission. We had so much fun with her. She is super sweet and nice! I'm looking forward to meeting up with her once  while in a to see how she's doing. She loved having us visit with her because none of the missionaries know ASL to communicate with her!

That night getting ready for bed was a fun event! When I came into the bedroom after done getting ready for bed, right away I noticed Sister Kucahrek was gone. I had a feeling she was hiding in the closet. I put that thought aside and I zoned out. Then... BAM! Sister Kucharek jumps out of the closet and screamed really loud! I bend over and yell, "GALL, DANG IT!!!" We couldn't stop laughing! Apparently Sister Kucharek LOVES to scare people, so this week will be interesting to see if she decides to scare me again! Haha.

Friday was a good day! The best part was seeing Sister Thacker. She's a member and she wanted us to come do family history with her. We left way too late from institute and was really late to our appointment with her. She only had 20 min with us before she had to leave to get one of her kids from school. So we got right to work. With a few attempts we couldn't find a record to prove where one of her ancestors was born. Sister Kucahrek got a prompting to check where his parents were born and died. So we did and they both were born and died at the same place. So we were able to infer that the son was born in the same place since back then people didn't move unless going over seas completely. After putting that information in she was able to request the son's temple ordinances. That was a sweet experience. She was so excited that we were able to find a name for her to take to the temple. She told us "I'm going to recommend you guys to everyone in the ward! That was so much fun!"

Saturday was our Fredrick day. We saw Elisa and had our last official lesson with her! We talked about getting baptized and confirmed with her. Then we played a fun game to illustrate how the Holy Ghost works. I have done this with talking, but we had to do it with vibration (since she is deaf), so she could feel where she needed to go.

My favorite bowl broke!

So we first had her look away and we set up a little maze for her. Then one person covered her eyes while the other person stomped where she was supposed to walk without running into chairs and tables. She had SO much fun doing this! We all took turns being lead and leading. The funniest was when she lead her older brother up the stairs! Elisa was being really goofy and tricked everyone where she really was! What a goof ball :)

Sunday was another great day and full of miracles! Church was awesome and we had the Lagos come to church! That was nice to finally have someone deaf come to church and we could interpret for them. During young women we did a pep talk to help the young women get excited to do missionary work. That was weird and fun to be in young women opening exercises again. As a part of our pep talk we read parts from President Nelson's talk to share how important we as women are in carrying the gospel forward. I felt like it went really well. 

Ok so for our miracle! So since this last transfers there is a new rule for Why I Believe. If we want to go (which every one does cuz it's amazing!) then we have to bring an investigator, recent convert (that's has been a part of the church for 6 months or less), or a less active member. We had someone lined up, but they backed out after church. So I kept thinking of different people to invite. The first that came into my mind was Aggie, our investigator from Ethiopia. So we called her and she said she would love to come, but she needed a ride. We called around and found a ride for her with a part member family. The Finders are so awesome! They are so willing to give people's rides no matter the distance. We also saw Gloree and her husband at Why I Believe! Gloree is Jewish and has been going to church with her husband for 25 years now! She's so sweet, but very stubborn! 

Why I Believe was amazing! Fiona Givens was the speaker. Her husband did it last time. She did an amazing job. She was also very funny. We felt like we were in a lecture hall and she was teaching a class on religion. She talked a lot about Adam and Eve and the nature of God.

Here are basic points she covered:

1. God heart beats sympathetic to our feelings. 

2.We are eternal beings who lived with God

3. God has the power to save the whole human family

4. Heaven is a preservation of all our living relationships 

I hope you all are doing great! I love you all so very much and can feel your support! 

Your missionary friend,

Sister Parker 

Some people call me Murph!

Sister Kucharek and I with Elisa! 

Alright! We  had a CRAZY filled week with appointments! Having Rockville South has been our redeeming grace to keep us so busy. It has been such a huge blessing!!! We get to see some amazing people and it has been great work with the people we have been working with too. In all, we taught 23 lessons this week!!! 

Monday we had dinner with the he bishop and his family it was so much fun! We talked about how we can move the missionary work along. He gave us a new part member family to work with! We are going to teach them the missionary discussion to practice with. We met them on Saturday and they are so sweet! They are the Dugan family. We only met Bro. Dugan and his daughter who are members. His wife isn't a member and she was out of town. We didn't get to teach the 1st lesson because Bor. Dugan wanted to wait until his wife was home to give her the chance to listen to the lessons with him. It will be exciting to see what happens!!

While at the bishop's house, Sister Kucharek was trying to figure out the law that everything that could go wrong will go wrong to explain what happens to me. The bishop's wife said that was Murphy's law. So now Sister Kucharek calls me Murphy!

Then on Tuesday...  We tracked for 4 1/2 hours! It was great.... Except I for some reason thought it was summer and I didn't wear any leggings! My toes were so so so cold! So now I'm making a rule to always wear leggings until it's March! The first place we went to we chose by looking at our map. We first prayed and then chose an area and keep choosing an area until we narrow it down to a certain street. It was so awesome!!! 2 people said we could come back later... We checked up on them later that week and they weren't home. But we will keep trying to catch them again. Then we also met a man who told us to come back whenever we were in the neighborhood again. So we went back on Saturday and he was shocked to see us again. Haha. He said, "Wow! That was fast!" He let us in and we met his wife. They were extremely nice and let us share a scripture with them. They said they weren't interested, but they were super nice!

So... Wednesday we got a surprise text from one of our less actives. She has been not letting us come over for a long time now and she texted us to asks if we could come see her! It was really great to see her again!!! Hopefully we can keep meeting with her and get her and her husband back at church!!! Her ultimate goal is to be sealed to him, so let's see if we can make that happen!

Alright so we picked up an interesting investigator. He has been dropped before because he is a tad hard to get a hold of. He's homeless, so this will be interesting. He's super nice and chill. He already read our chapters we assigned to him to read and we had a good dissuasion about them. We shall see where that will take us!

Church yesterday was so good! In gospel principles we talked about the Fall of Adam and Eve. Our amazing ward missionary leader, Bro. Lee, taught it. My favorite thing he said was that in his opinion why God gave the choice to Adam and Eve when to officially start the plan in action was because he wanted to let them decide how long to be "comfortable" before having to experience the harsh world. I was so touched with that perspective... It's like God didn't want to force them to do something they weren't ready to do yet. Then in Relief Society we talked about prayer. It was super emotional hearing all these amazing stories about people's experiences with prayer.

This week has already started in an interesting way! We worked up to some more snow! It has been snowing lightly all day and now has stopped recently. We aren't allowed to leave our apartments again! This will be exciting to see what will happens tomorrow! I love you all!! Hope you have great week!

Much Love!

Sister Parker

Happy Valentine's Day!

The time I allowed a car to leave my sight!

Hello everyone!

Alright so I got cut off last week by our lovely 6:00 curfew, plus our time was short to email because we went ice skating for our zone activity. It was TONS of fun! Yes... I did have one epic fall. You got to have at least one when ice skating! Luckily I didn't hurt myself though....haha. Then we went to th church to have Costco pizza and
hanged out for a bit. Then I went shopping and emailed as fast as I could!

Anywho! I was going to tell a funny story from last Sunday. So shortly before we left for our dinner appointment Sister Kucharek looked up the definition for lost to determine my quirky personality of losing and stealing things. Haha. (I ONLY still pens ok! Well...and sometimes pretzel thins that were left on the counter 😜) Any who, the definition of loosing things is allowing things to leave your sight. I thought this was an adequate description of exactly what I do when I lose things! I simply allow it to leave! Now fast ward to when we were on the road to our dinner appointment. We needed to make a left turn and I heard Sister Kucharek yell, "He's in idiot!" and swerved into the other turn lane. It took me a sec, but I saw a car miss the right lane completely and was now coming up the wrong side of the road! I said, "wow! That took me a second to see him!" Then sister Kucharek says, "Well, it's a good thing I'm driving!" Then I exclaimed, "I didn't see him though!" Then she exclaimed, "That's even worse! You make it sound like its a good excuse you didn't see him!" Then I said, "I allowed him to leave my sight!" We laughed so hard! Hahaha

So the biggest news this week is that we now have the Rockville south area on top of the ASL area we had already! The pervious RV south sisters both got transferred out. This means that we now have A LOT of people to work with now. Most of this week was meeting with everyone and trying to get to know them better. It is such a blessing now to be really busy with having a hard time finding people to teach the pervious 5 months of being on Rockville.

Friday was a really fun and good day! We had one of our members come to institute at Gallaudet and 2 potential investigators! We meet them at the deaf blind meet up last week. One of them even stayed behind so we were able to have a member present as we talked about the Book of Mormon. The spirit was so powerful as I testified that this Book is true. It hit me that the Book of Mormon is truly a gift from God. He loves us so much that he gave us 2 books to show why he loves us! We have the Bible and the Book of Mormon. It was a great lesson! I don't know if these two people are still interested, but it was really nice to meet them at least! We will keep trying this week to see if they will come to institute again!

Saturday was also a great day. My favorite thing we did that day was going over to Sister Browns house to help clean up her kitchen. Her husband is gone a lot because of military and school. So we will be going over there to do service and get to know her more. She is so funny! I love her so much. Then she took us out to 5 guys! I have
forgotten how much I LOVE the burgers there. So good! For our spiritual thought I shared Alma 26:16. It talks about how we can not fully express how much God loves us. Sister Brown shared with us what her husband said about this. He thinks that when we get to see God again, we will all be so shocked to know how much God really does love us. That really touched me. I think we all will be so shocked and humbled to know that God really does care and loves us more than we could ever imagine. This has become one of my favorite scriptures here on the mission! Read it please!

Then yesterday night was a lot of fun! We went over to one of our member's house to do family history! They are the Lloyd's. I just love this couple so much! Bro. Lloyd can cook and bake! He went on a mission to France, so he likes to bake French food! We tried some bread that was like French toast... It had a fancy name. It was so good! Anywho... It was so fun doing family history because we added names and it has  been fun to see their excitement in doing family history. Added bonus... They have names to take for the ward temple night this week! Yay! They want us to come back sometime to do family history with them again! I'm so excited!

Tonight we are eating dinner at the Bishop's house with all the missionaries. I am so excited! I love our bishop so much! It should be a fun night!

Well... I love you all so much!!! I hope you have a fantastic week.

A big hug from DC,

Sister Parker

I get to rock in Rockville one more time!

Yep! We got the call out last Sat and both Sister Kucharek and I are staying! I am really excited. I feel there is a lot of of potential here and I'm excited to act on it!

We had some fun things happened this week and some tender mercies!

On Tuesday Sister Kucharek and I went over to Mary's house (she is the investigator that we thought was a less active member!) to help her neighbor, Penny. Penny is paralyzed and needed us to shovel out her drive way. That was a lot of snow! Luckily as time went on, more neighbors came to help out. That was such a great experience to see neighbors helping another neighbor out. It was a lot of fun talking to everyone and getting to know them. We ended up teaching a girl who was there shoveling snow back at Mary's house. Her name is Ashley and she is so cute! She is interested in learning more and she loved our message about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Yay!

Thursday was so much fun! After our meetings we went to Ann Black's house to shovel the rest of her driveway and her front walkway. (She is both blind and deaf) After we shoveled out snow, we ate dinner with her. She is so cute! She told her friend that Sister Kucharek and I were her adopted daughters. 😀

Saturday night was the best one yet!!! We went to Panera Bread for a deaf blind event. It was so so so much fun! With seeing Ann every week, I have gotten used to chatting with deaf blind people. Sister Kucharek and I only sat in one place all night and we STILL chatted non stop with deaf blind and deaf people! Out of the event, we got 2 contacts! :)  It was so fun to learn about deaf blind culture. The most important thing is to constantly touch each other so that they know you are looking at them.

After church on Sunday Sister Kucharek has finally analyzed who I am! I am a kleptomaniac negligent person. We looked up the definition of lost and it came up with "allowing things to disappear".

I have one more story to share next week! I ran out of time sorry!

Love you all!

Sister Parker

P.S On a random note: I'm taking on a challenge to not eat PB and honey sandwiches for
a month. ALL of my companions so far make fun of me of eating a PB and Honey sandwich every day. So here is to real food and meat sandwiches for lunch! Haha