Hello!So, before I go into this week and not torture you what this tittle means... We got the call outt Saturday night telling us if we are staying or going... I'm staying!!! I'm so happy! Also all of the ASL branch missionaries are staying.... But the ASL Rockville Sisters are going to see a change. Sister Ram is staying to train a sister called to English, to train her in the ASL program! This means that Sister Kucharek (my last companion) will be leaving. We don't know until tonight if she is going English or will be in a trio with one of us sisters in the ASL branch. We are guessing she will go English because it doesn't make a lot of sense to have a trio in the ASL branch. The crazy thing is the sister who is coming this Tues... Doesn't even know she is going to be in the ASL program! She did put on her papers that she knows ASL. That's why she is being put in the program until we have more ASL sisters called to the mission. I'm excited to meet the new missionary this week at our weekly ASL meeting!
This week has been a fun one and FULL of service! It has been good though and hearts are changing!
Monday afternoon Sister Carter and I wanted to get out of the apartment... So we went to the National Harbor! It was so much fun and relaxing to get out of the apartment. It's a fun place to visit! There was a cool metal statue in the sand that looks like Poseidon...but it's not! I think it's the founder of the Harbor or something like that. We also walked through the Peeps store. We didn't buy anything, but it was fun to see all the cute things you can buy there. Haha. That night we went deaf tracking. No luck with anyone knowing anyone deaf, but there was some nice people we got to meet! One lady was cleaning up her yard and she had this HUGE magnolia tree! We asked her if she needed any help and she said no. She also wasn't interested in learning more about our church... BUT she told us to come out back and get a flower from her tree to take home! The blessings of tracking come in many forms! That made our night to have a flower to take home!
Tuesday was a fun day FULL of service, traffic, and a missionary meeting with the Wardles. We spent a lot of time at Jan's house and made some progress cleaning her home. On Friday I was feeling discouraged not knowing if Jan would ever be interested in learning more about our church. I wanted our visits to go past just cleaning her apartment. So we went in faith and let God take control. We prayed that if God wanted us to teach a lesson to let us know how to sneak one in. Well... while cleaning up her coffee table we saw a card from the church's Easter video that the previous sisters had given her. We asked Jan if she watched it yet and she said she hadn't! So... before we left we showed it to her and Sister Carter was a boss and interpreted the video for her. The spirit was strong when we showed her the video and we were able to talk about the video afterwards and testify what it was taking about. She said she really liked the video and could feel the profound message it was sharing. I'm excited for this week to continue our discussion and make baby steps to ask her again if she would like to learn more. She also said she would like to come to Why I Believe! Pray that she come because this is going to be the BEST one yet because the Cooke family is going to be speaking!!! This is going to be their last Why I Believe as mission president! CRAZY!
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| The flowers we took home! |
On Thursday we had our district/zone meeting. Most of it was sharing our testimonies since it was the last zone/ district for the transfer and it was amazing! A lot of them were about God's love and how we can face our trials. One Elder said that most of the time, God won't calm the storm of life, but will comfort you and help you face your storms. It helped me realize that God never leaves us! It doesn't matter if we think we are strong enough to face our storms alone, He is always there to help us because we can't do this alone! I also love the imagery that God is always there to comfort us when we need help. After all we are His children! My favorite testimony was given by a departing missionary was actually my "sister" because she was trained by Sister Whiteford before I got here. At one point she said that in all honesty, we are going to be the one pleading with Christ to not let us go into the Celestial kingdom because we will not feel worthy to go in. He will comfort us and tell us we have done enough and that we are worthy to live with Him and our families. That really stuck out to me how true that will be! We will be extremely humbled and Christ will be our advocate to tell us we are worthy enough.
Friday was an interesting night... After being with Jan, we went deaf tracking 20 min away that had a Deaf Child sign. The good news is that we had 2 or 3 people confirmed to us where the little deaf girl lives, but no one was home. We'll have to try again this week! After trying the house with the deaf girl, we went to the next door neighbor to ask if they knew any deaf people in the area. Well... a lady opened the door and yelled at us and screamed no while slamming the door! We went off to the next house and Sister Carter asked me if we should go back and tell them we have a simple question to ask about the dead child sign. I wasn't sure if that was a good idea, but we figure worst thing that could happen would be them yelling at us. So we got brave and went back! Bad mistake!!! The husband answered the door and cussed us out and threatened if we didn't leave them alone, they would call the cops! We tried to explain ourselves, but he slammed the door. I was a bit shocked, but wasn't surprised that would happen. Luckily we met two Mormons who was selling pest control along our way and everyone else was super nice! Note to self... Don't go back when they slammed the door the first time! Haha
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| My awesome district! |
Saturday! Best. Day. Of. The. Week! Everyday this week was really good, but this day was special. We first went to Bob's to have a pass off lesson with the Arlington Elders. It went super well and Bob was willing to talk with the Elders too! We had a super fun time listening to Bob's crazy stories and we all laughed a ton! I was having a rough morning, but Bob cheered me up! We also showed him "Another Book of Mormon Story" and had the Elders lead the discussion to help Bob get use to the idea of the Elders teaching him. The spirit was so strong as we testified the importance of reading your scriptures and praying everyday. It's super hard for Bob to do this because he is hurting so much inside. I wished he could understand that these 2 things would give him the support he needs and allow him to know that he doesn't need to fight life battles alone. I'm excited to hear how everything goes with the Elders when we do officially pass him off. I think we are going to go over one more time to let Bob really be settled in and having new missionaries teach him. We still plan to visit him to allow him to have more people to talk to because he is so lonely all the time.Afterwards we went to check up on a former investigator, but she want home. Instead we went deaf tracking and 2 houses down we saw a man sitting on his front porch. He called out and said, "OH NO! Democrats!!!" We told him that we were just missionaries and told him that we were looking for deaf people to teach. We were still keeping our distance because we weren't sure if he actually wanted to talk with us. He then told us that he wasn't going to hurt us and to come closer. Haha. So we got to sit on his front porch with him and chatted about what we believed in for an hour! He was a talker, but he also listened to what we had to say so that was really nice! We talked about a bunch of things from family history to the Book of Mormon! We even got to share a couple of our favorite Book of Mormon scriptures. He was so appreciative of us sharing and bookmarked the scriptures we shared so he had a place to start reading. 😃 Before we left we asked if we could send missionaries and he said yes, as long as if they were sisters! Haha. He has a thing about Elders because they tend not to listen and are more hard headed. Hehe. Sorry Elders! So now the DC south sisters have his info to go see him! Hopefully we will see him at Why I Believe because he said he always wanted to go, but never got a chance to go. Stay tuned!
Afterwards we went to Stake Conference and was the only ASL missionaries there! It was a good thing we went because there were one deaf member that came! We and another member was the only ones who could interpret! Can I say accents are hard to interpret for! It was a little tough, but all went well! Sister Carter rocked it though and it was so fun to see her interpret. The meeting was really good. It was all about discipleship.
Sunday was the remaining of stake conference. There were some really amazing talks! I really enjoyed Sister Cooke's talk. She talked about the importance of not focusing on yourself. She directed her talk to her "surrogate children" as she calls us missionaries. 😃 She shared a story how her youngest son was in training to prepare for boot camp. His trainer told them that whenever they felt to giving up and had nothing more to give, look around themselves. As they look around, look for someone who is struggling more than they and reach out to help them finish the line. Her son had to do this when they had to bear crawl up and down a flight of stairs and then had to go around a swamp and back again. He found that when he focused his energy on someone else, he was able to find a pool of energy he never knew he had and was able to finish strong with focusing his attention on another person. I loved this because a mission is all about not being focused on you, but the people around you.
I'm excited to see what this week brings! I hope you all are doing well and happy! Let me know how you guys are doing and the exciting things you are up to!
Love you all!
Sister Parker
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