The time I learned how to whistle with my hand!

Hello y'all!

It's been another busy, crazy, fun, and fast week! 

Last Monday we had our Zone activity! We did black light dodge ball It was a ton of fun! Today we got to crash another Zone Activity.... Well we did get invited to come since there isn't a lot of sisters in the Sutherland Zone. We played capture the flag with water balloons. It was a lot of fun!!!

Tuesday night was a fun one! We went to one of our member's house, the Spanbauer's. It was so much fun getting to know their kids better since they never come to the ASL branch. They have 4 sons. I'm excited and happy to keep working with this family. It sounds like Sister Spanbauer is going to need our help with service projects and maybe even her friends too!

Wednesday we helped the Paynes move out of their apartment. They had two other people there helping them move out who aren't members. Bro. Payne got them to promise to come to church with us! I know one of them is suppose to come nest week! Stay in tune! Then on Saturday we helped the Paynes' daughter pack up her things for her new home. She came in the night before with her brother from AL. Then the day of she was deciding what she wanted from the house as we were packing things for her. Then they left the next day! It was insane and I can't believe they made it out.... Not my kind of idea how to pack, but I guess it worked out for them!


Thursday we had zone conference! It is the last one for the Cookes 😥. It's crazy to think that next month we are going to have a new mission president! Zone Conference was super good! It was so fun because ALL us ASL missionaries interpreted for our 2 deaf elders. I got to do Sister Cooke's talk! She talked about corundum and how it relates to
us. Corundum is colorless mineral, but once the sun shines through it, it will become Rubies or Sapphires. This is like us, if we let the "sun", or Christ, shine though us we can become our true potential. She related this to Ether 12:27. She also talked about a change of heart and how it ties to repentance. It was a really good talk!


Friday night was fun!  We drove to President VDG house to pick up one his daughters and Michai, who is a recent convert and is preparing to go on a mission! On the way there we got stuck in traffic. So what did we do?!?!? Sister Carter taught me how to whistle with my hand!!! I was so proud of myself. I haven't been able to whistle since, but I'm still working in it! We then went to Shanice and Gwen's house to take Shanice out to get Italian ice cream! It was so much fun! It was great to walk and chat the whole way!

Sunday was exciting because one of the ASL elders had an investigator come to church!!! It's so fun because all 8 of us are a team and we support each other in our successes. She seemed to enjoy church pretty well. Sunday School was nuts though because it was combined and it was gospel doctrine. The teacher decided to go deep into the Book of Mormon... Poor girl! What we were dicussing probabley went right over her head! Hopefully next week it will go better and we can go back to the investigator friendly class of gospel principles. 😀

Ohhhh and I hit my year mark in the field this week. So crazy! Time
has gone so fast!It was a great and fun week! I hope you all are doing
well and are happy! I can't believe Summer is starting!

Love you all!

Sister Parker

The time I gave a talk in ASL!

Hey all!

Bed bugs! Yikes!

This morning started off to be an interesting one! The last few days I have been noticing bug bites all over my arms. Sister Carer hasn't been getting any. So... We finally checked my bed and with a little looking... We found a bed bugs! These are gross little creatures! So, now I'm in the process doing laundry and doing what I can before the pest control comes. 

So other than that... My week has been pretty good! At the start of the week we had a fun time making our beautiful map of our area. We cover all of Southern Maryland and almost all of Virginia! We luckily have a VA map, but we needed a MD map of the streets so we could mark up where we tracked and asking people if they knew any deaf people. 

On Tuesday night Sister Carter and I made enchiladas together to share. They were so good! It was a fun dinner. We then made enchiladas again with Sister Carter's things on Saturday night. We now want to to this every week to make meals together so we can have little fun together and give variety in our diners. 

On Wednesday afternoon we had a lesson with Brandon. His mom is deaf, but is not interested. Instead we teach Brandon ASL to help him communicate better with his mom. We ended up teaching him about prayer when we asked if we could say one before we left. He even was willing to say it even though it's been awhile. So that was cool that happened! Afterwards Sister Carter and I went deaf contacting. No one was interested, but one man said he works on Gallaudet campus and asked if we could give him anything. So we gave our card with the church address and our phone number. It would be so cool if anything comes of it! When we marked up where we went on our map... It was a tad depressing! Haha. It made like 2 dots on our big map of MD. We will conquer though and cover that map with red!

Our dinner we made together! 

Thursday was full with meetings! We even got to teach the 12 weeks meeting where the new missionaries and their trainers come to be trained how to be a good missionary. It was so much fun preparing for that class during personal studies. It was neat to have our two studies combined to make the outline of the class. We talked about the importance of having the Holy Ghost in our lesson and what His role is in helping us teach. It turned out pretty well.

After our other meetings we weekly planned at the church to focus more. Towards the end we saw that Sister Cosper and Sister Ellsworth left us a sign mail. We opened it up and all we see is Sister Cosper sitting in the dark staring at us for 30 sec, then she jumps out at us. So.. We naturally wanted to call them back to see what's up. Well, we did call back and Sister Cosper was in a scary mood! She was pulling all theses creepy faces while in the dark. We were laughing so hard! It was a great way to end weekly planing! Haha

Friday night I got to meet Sister Parnes! She is a professional interpreter who goes to a ward down South. We went to her son's birthday party and it was a blast! The theme was mind craft and it was so creative! Everything and I mean everything was related to mind craft tone, shape, or form. It was so cool! I love Sister Parnes and her kids so much! They are all so nice and funny! Hopefully soon we can go to their house and practice ASL! Sister Carter says that Sister Parnes helps a lot! Also... We met a member who is neighbors with Sister Parnes and said she would love to join us for our practice sessions. She wants to learn ASL because she is a personal trainer at a gym right nest to Gallaudet. That being said... She has around 7 deaf clients. So that will be so cool to help teach her and see the progress she will make. Eventually I think it would be cool if we could meet the deaf people she works with too! We shall see!!!

I'm going to skip to Sunday because that was a fun day! I gave a talk in ASL! I was really proud of myself because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. I talked about having desire to believe and how to increase testimony and faith. It was so neat to study how faith, testimony, and desire are linked together. I talked about Aggie and Candice and how they had a desire to be taught the gospel. It was so fun to look back and reflect on the amazing people I have met on my mission. 

Dan is on the right and Sandro is on the left :)

That night I got to go to Dan and Sandro's baptism! They are the twins I got to teach for my last 2 weeks in Rockville! They are so awesome! It was great to see them and all the Rockville members. The spirit was so strong while the talks were given. Dan and Sandro was so so so excited to be apart of the church and already looking foreword to have callings! They are going to be naturals being Mormons! Haha!

Well... It's time for me to go. I hope you all are doing well!!!

Love you!

Sister Parker

The time when the bug exterminator steals Ariel's heart! Awww!!!

Hello All!

This week has been really good! I'm adjusting quite nicely to the ASL Branch. I love the people we get to work with and are still meeting new people this week.

Monday night was so much fun! We FINALLY got to have dinner at the Lawrence's. Sister Cosper and Ellsworth was there too, since the Lawrence's live in their area to work with. Sister Cosper and I met the Lawrence's way back when Elisa got baptized in March. We had a BLAST at their house. The ASL Elders go over there once a month and had NEVER told the Sisters about them to keep their favorite family a secret.... Bad move on their part! The ASL sisters are their favorites now! Bwhahaha! We even got a picture with all the Sister Missionaries and Sister Lawrence to prove it! They said they want to print out the photo and put it up when the Elders come for dinner at the end of the month! We all put the photo as our screen savers too, so they are pretty jealous already! Haha!!

Tuesday evening we went over to a lady who's deaf but isn't interested in learning about the gospel at the moment. She was a referral from one of members. She instead wants us to help teach her teenager son to learn ASL. So, we went over and did that. That was a lot of fun and good finger spelling practice. We would finger spell a word, then he would sign it back to us. While finger spelling I realized my pinky is super short and so it has a hard time staying straight! Haha

Wednesday was our miracle day! We went to go see Gwen and visited with her. We asked if she wanted to go to Why I Believe and she said she did! The only problem was she needed a ride. She mentioned that she would probably take the Uber. So that was cool! Afterwards we went to meet Robert, who is a member but never seen him at church before. We asked him what he does for work and he said he is a Uber driver!!! Sister Carter and my eyes lit up and we asked if he would like to come to Why I Believe with us and he said he might. Then we told him if Gwen used the Uber to come to Why I Believe if he would be willing to pick her up and join us. He said he would! That was a tender mercy that these two appointments were back to back to have the Uber fresh in our minds. Robert ended up not coming to Why I Believe, but Gwen was still able to get a ride from the amazing Wardles instead! 

On Thursday we got to eat at the Filiatreault's house for dinner and it was a ton of fun! We had yummy green eggs and ham! Their 3 kids are so fun and cute! On Friday we had our ASL meeting to discuss our efforts the past week. Can I just say... Our ASL missionaries rock?!?!? We are doing a lot of communicating and making sure everything is getting done. Also... We are helping each other out and very supportive of each other. It is amazing what progress we have made with meeting members and less actives these past two weeks. It's going to be a great transfer! Afterwards we went to go see Bob. This man just melts my heart! He is such a sweet and amazing man! I love being able to see him every week and share a little spiritual thought with him. It has been tough for him with his wife being ill and his back hurting. 

Saturday was a fun day! So... Earlier in the week one of the ASL elders called us and told us that some elders in the mission found a deaf sign for us to check up on. . We arrived the area they told us and Sister Carter says, "Umm... I hope we can find the sign easily..." Then BAM we see on the pole with big sign that reads "Deaf Child Area". The first door that we went to ask if there were any deaf people in the area answered, "Oh... He lives right next door." So we went to the next door... And no answer! But we go to his other neighbor and they said the same thing. It was funny because the lady told us that he lives to the right.... Well we knew that already, so we went to the left to go ask the next neighbor just in case if there was more deaf people on the street. Well... The lady saw us go left and she yelled out, "Hey! No.. I said he lives on the right of me!" So... We had to go back again and still no answer. We ended up asking two more people who said the same house was with the deaf man. So we ended up leaving a card and told him to text us. Then we told he Elders to check up on him that night, since it was in their "deaf area" to work in. The man still wasn't home, so they switched out our card for their card! Still no word if he ever got a hold of the Elders. It was such great feeling to know that we had 4 witnesses to tell us where the deaf person lives. I really hope the Elders can get a hold of him soon!!!

Sunday was probably the BEST day out of our really great week! Church was awesome with great speakers and lessons. Sacrament was especially good. One of the high counsel men came and spoke about Grace, the Atonement, and a lot of topics! He talked about Brad Wilcox's talk called "His Grace Is Sufficient" ... I love this talk so much! He also talked about how life is so hard sometimes and sometimes it hurts a lot. But through the Atonement we can know that God is trying to help us become better and help us become like Him. It was such a powerful talk and I wished I took notes! Then that might we had Why I Believe! It was sooooo good! Sandra and her husband Josh Turley came to speak. Sandra was in  Les Miserables on Broadway in NYC! She and her husband were so funny and great speakers! President Cooke introduced them and shared how they met. Sandra was Ariel at Disney World and Josh met her there while being one of the bug exterminator. When Josh got up to speak he said ,"If I can pick up the Little Mermaid while being a bug exterminator, anyone can do it!" haha! Sandra sang couple songs and her 4 little kids from the ages of 3 to 10 sang a song too! The 3 year old girl was SO cute!!! She kept running back and forth from the mic to her mom while her older siblings were signing the verses. It was adorable!!! Then afterwards their dad got up to speak, but the 3 year old wouldn't leave his side until he got her candy! Haha. He explained that he promised them candy of they did a good job. Sandra has an amazing voice! It made me cry hearing her voice, it was so powerful! 

Today we woke up super earlier to be in the city at 6:30 in the morning. You might ask "WHY on earth would I do that???" That way you can take pretty pics of the monuments and not have a ton of people in your photos. Also... The cloudy sunrise was really pretty!

So... This week is going to be an exciting one! This Sunday Dan and Sandro are getting baptized! They are the twins Sister Kucharek and I taught in Rockville! Well... That's all I got for now! hope you all have great weeks!!! Love you much!

Until next week,

Sister Parker

The time I got to Skype with my familia for the LAST time!

Me feeding the geese!

Hello everyone

I hope you all enjoyed your Mother's Day. I know I did! It was great to see all of my family for a few min before Skype decided to turn off my camera! Me and technology don't get along well. haha!

So... Excited news! My new companion is Sister Carter. It was unexpected because we thought Sister Ellsworth would be able to go to Rocville Ward, but...she is still in the ASL branch with Sister Cosper! It has been so much fun working all together as the ASL branch missionaries (all 8 of us!) try to conquer how to move forward with the missionary work in the Branch. There are more less actives than members... And there's about 20 strong families that come every week! So... It's a super super small branch compared to Rockville. On Sunday there was only 3 families that showed up on time. So... That was crazy!

Monday and Tuesday was spent saying good bye to as many people as I could. We even got to feed geese rice as we meet up with Mary Knight to say good bye. That was fun! On Wednesday was a world wind of a day! After unpacking and eating lunch we went to our first of many ASL meetings. Then we went to Gwen's house. She one of the members we are going to be working with and she is amazing and so kind! The Elders came with us to give Gwen and her daughter a blessing. That was such a unique experience to see how an ASL blessing is done. The person giving the blessing steps away to be in front and signs the blessing and then steps toward to put their hands back on the person's head to finish the blessing.

Thursday was a dat full of meetings! We had a freak out moment while having our ASL meeting. We sisters wanted to run around outside for a second because we had been sitting for a really long time. Well.. We set off a silent alarm because the building was locked from the outside. So we had to call one of the bishops to ask what we do... But no worries... It happens all the time and nothing ever happens. Then we got Chipotle with Sister Cosper and Sister Ellsworth to finnish up the day of meetings together. We had a TON of fun during our dinner, chatting it up  and laughing
a lot!

Sister Carter and I!!

Friday I got to meet Bob for the first time! Bob is our only hearing investigator. His wife has Alzheimer's and President Van De Graaff wife takes care of her. Bob is such an amazing man. One of the first things he said us was, "Did I ever told you that I broke my spine 3 times??!!" Sister Carter said she knew that. Then I was like, "Wait... Hang on! What happened?!?!" He told us one of the stories how he broke his back. He was training a three year old Stallion and it decided to fall back on him. He then gets up and decides to drive 80 miles to pick up his girlfriend and drives 80 miles back home. Only then when he walked through the doors of his home he passes out! He then told us all these crazy stories about having a plane and his wife asking for a pit stop to see family in Iowa.  She would just wait for him to fly her there sitting in the plane with her magazine. Haha. The way Bob talks about his wife, Lee, is the most adorable thing. He truly truly loves his wife. Both Sister Carter and I want a husband that talks that way about us.

On Saturday we had a fun time metro contacting! We even met a man who parents are deaf, so he knew ASL... Though he was only interested in taking Sister Carter on a date. Haha. We even tried to see if his parents live around here, but all he said was that his parents weren't in his life anymore. Oh well!

This week was pretty good. I'm still adjusting to the new area, but it should be a good transfer!

I love you all

Sister Parker

We have baptisms dates.... For twins!!! #twinpower!

Remember last week we said that God was pouring us with blessings out of the bucket??? Well... There has been 2 more buckets of miracles! These two buckets represent Sandro, Dan's twin, and Matthew! It is feeling like I'm at the water park and the HUGE bucket of water is being dumped on us! I am so blessed to have all of these amazing people coming to us and asking for us to teach them! I also had a fun week with working with Aggie too!

Aggie and Us at the Temple!!

Wednesday night was such a good night! It first started off with taking Aggie to the youth temple trip to do baptisms for the dead. Aggie first gave us a heart attack because she said she didn't have her temple recommend. Well... It turned out that the bishop didn't give her one at her interview because her membership record wasn't in yet. Luckily the bishop was way on top of it and sent the 2nd councilor to come early to fill out a temple recommend for her. Phew! Aggie was so cute doing baptisms for the dead! She kept not plugging her nose, so she was coughing up water by the end. We will have to make sure next time she knows she can plug her nose! She's a tough little cookie! Confirmations was really neat because they just changed the policy that now people can wear their Sunday clothes. This way we are in the same clothing that we walked in with. It made it feel more real and personal this way. Being at the temple was an AMAZING experience. The whole time I was thinking about all youth temple trips I've been to and how blessed I was to have my mom and/ or dad to be there for almost if not all the temple trips. So many sweet memories back in the Portland temple!

Afterwards we had a lesson with Feng! He is such a funny guy. When we were asking how his day was he says, "... Oh.. I was worried you were going to ask how my praying is! Haha. My day is good." We then of course said, "Well.... How is your praying???" He said he hasn't yet, but he read the Book of Mormon for 30 sec!!! That's a miracle in of itself! Feng has a super hard time getting the courage to pray when he's not even sure if he
believes in a God. We then had a FANTASTIC lesson about the gospel of Jesus Christ. He asked a ton of questions why there is a Bible and a Book of Mormon. The spirit was so strong as we testified how much God loves us and why he wanted to give us two records testifying of His Son. Both books are a witness of Christ and those in the Bible didn't know anything about the people in America, so their testimonies are even more strong in testifying of the same Christ! And... At the end we got Feng to say the closing prayer!!! He did a fantastic job! The next task is to get him to church.... It looks like he is going to be stubborn with this too!

Ok! Now to the most exciting news of the week! So... When we met with Dan in the past, he kept saying that his twin brother joined the church 7 years ago in Las Vegas, but lost in contact with the church when he moved away. You can imagine our excitement when Dan told us that his brother, Sandro, was going to join us for the next lesson. Our lesson was at a member's home and the husband graciously offered to give the brothers a ride to his house. The VERY first thing that the member said was, "Sandro was just telling me that he met with missionaries before, but never got baptized and I told him that we could seal the deal!" Both Sister Kucharek and I were busting with excitement in our heads! We then had an amazing lesson with them and the members we had the lesson with was an amazing help! We taught about the Plan of Salvation and focused a lot on the Atonement and the Spirit World. The spirit was so strong as we and the members were working together to answer all of Sandro's and Dan's questions. At the end of the lesson we asked if they would be baptized on the 21st of May and they both accepted!!! My heart was melting the rest of that night!

Now about Matthew! Last Sunday we got a referral from the visitor center to contact Matthew. We called him up that night and set up an appointment to meet him on Friday. When we got there, Matthew told us why he was at the visitor center in the first place. He has driven on Beach Drive (it's the road off where the temple is at) multiple times and had always wondered what the HUGE white building was. So he asked his dad if they could go check it out and he said yes! So they went into the visitor center and they got taught by sister missionaries. They were even invited to go see the DC Mormon Choir and so they went down to watch them sing! Matthew is very curious about what other religions believe in and so he had some fantastic questions for us! He wanted to know how we joined the church and why are we still in the church. I got to tell about Grammy Parker's conversion story and how Grandpa got re-activated by the missionaries. It was such a sweet moment to share that with him. Matthew's sweet mom came in towards the end of the lesson trying to get us something to drink and brought a tray full of snacks! We had to tell her we had to get going, but we appreciated the offer. She then says that she would love to join us on the next lesson with Matthew next week! Also, Matthew said that he thinks his dad would like to join too!

We had our language meeting on Saturday to discuss the ASL program. All this week and even into the first 20 minutes of the meeting, I was confident that I was going back to English this next transfer. President Cooke even said at the start of the meeting, "Sister Parker, I keep forgetting that you weren't called in ASL!" Well... As we got into the meeting President Cooke says," I think we are going to flood the branch with all of the ASL missionaries and still keep a companionshipin Rockville." After the meeting my head was exploding with not
knowing what was going to happen! Luckily call outs were 4 hours later! I'm not sure what I would do if call outs were the following week! So... BIG NEWS ARE HERE! I'm am LEAVING and Sister Kucharek is STAYING! All of the ASL sisters companionships are being split up. There is a 90% possibility that I'm going to be with Sister Cosper again in the ASL branch! Soooo excited! If not, I'll be with Sister Carter in the ASL branch. Either way it's going to be an exciting transfer ahead of us! We will find out tonight where and who we will be with exactly. So
crazy!

Yesterday was another CRAZY Sunday! Maybe even more crazy than last Sunday. We had Dan and Sandro come to church. Then we had a surprise and saw Matthew after sacrament meeting. So, Sister Kucharek had to

The Jackson's Family!
Cutest baby alive!

herd them to Sunday School while I helped Aggie talk with a member in the Ward. After our meeting with the member we went over to Sunday School and it was PACKED with investigators and members! It was such a good feeling having everyone come together. Afterwards I was showing Aggie the bathroom before Relief Society started. On the way back, a man from a different Ward stopped me and asked if I could help interpret for a deaf women. I was so caught off guard that I was like, "Let me ask my companion what we can do. So I got Sister Kucharek's attention and said this man wanted us to interpret for a women. We got to outside of the chapel and we met with Sharon. She is such a sweet deaf women! We don't know her full story yet. All we know is that she is from West Virginia and a friend in the Rockville Ward told her husband that they should come to the Rockville Ward since we have a deaf group. They didn't know what time our church started, so luckily she was willing to go to Relief Society with us. It was fun to have Sister Lagos and Sharon to interpret for in Relief Society. I hope Sharon comes more! So that was our crazy Sunday!

I didn't get the chance to tell anyone that I was leaving because we were so busy with investigators and having Sharon show up! I did get to go over to the Jackson's to say goodbye. This family is my favorite! Brother Jackson is our amazing Ward missionary leader. We had what's called Tim Tam Slam. It's a chocolate covered waffer cookie, filled with choclate. You bite a small corner on the opposite corners and dip a part of it in the cup of hot
chocolate and suck through the bite! I kinda failed, but it was fun to try!

I can't believe Mother's Day is this week! I'm so so so excited to see and talk with my family! Happy Mother's day to everyone! Shout out to my cousin Sarah for getting married last Saturday! I'm so excited and 


happy for you and Kody!

Love you all!

Sister Parker