JANUARY 27, 2014

                                            Elder Parker and Elder Zolman

Dear Family,
Man this week has been crazy! I will see if I can remember everything that happened.
On Monday not much happened, typical P-Day stuff and we were able to see Yousef.
Tuesday we had a massive snow storm. We left our apartment and went to the church to get on Facebook and then we got a text that we couldn't drive because of the snow. So we finished up after teaching an investigator on Facebook, and we drove home. Couldn't really do much, so Elder Thomas packed all his stuff (It was a lot of stuff....) And we re-did basically the entire area book for about 4 hours.... It was crazy. They also moved transfers to Thursday.
Wednesday we weren't able to drive in the morning and it was like 5 Degrees outside, we walked about half a mile to the Morris Library (the campus library) where we discovered they have free computers! Here we were messing around with trying to get library cards for 4.5 months and the library across the street was much better and had no time limit or restrictions. So we did a few things on Facebook and eventually we were able to drive to a dinner appt. with some new members, the Grants that just moved in. It was really great. Her father is President Winn. He was the mission President for the Salt Lake City mission.
Thursday we had transfers and we got a ride up with a member from our stake. Elder Thomas got transferred to West Philly! The Hood! I am excited to hear his stories. Lol. Elder Zolman is my new companion and he is the district leader as well. He has been out for 6 months. He came  here from Easton, PA. He was trained there, then trained a golden there and now is here in Newark. He is from San Diego, CA and is a super great missionary, very upbeat and positive. Knows what he is doing. It’s great to have a fresh set of ideas for the area.
Friday not much happened. We had district mtg and did weekly planning. We saw Brother Manchester and had a great lesson. He has a hard time believing in God. Or any type of greater creator. He is a Unitarian Universalist. He has been an eternal investigator for a long time... But he committed to pray to Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ every morning and night for this whole week. I am excited to talk to him about being baptized, because I know he will receive a confirmation that this is true.
Saturday was good. We were finally able to meet with Rex again. He seems to be doing well, which is good. He got the Priesthood last Sunday and is now a Priest and seems to be pretty happy/content. We also met with Brother Dunsmore, he is looking for a better job and seems to be doing well. Hopefully he will keep coming to church!
Sunday was great. The ward had a missionary return. Ben Wendt. Great Elder. Did a door approach role play in his talk with the bishop to talk about faith. It was really good. Brother Brandt came out with us in the evening and even though we had zero appointments, we met with a part member less active family and a less active family; the Woolseys and the Arnolds. Miracles happen when members come out with the missionaries.

This week was great. There were a lot of scary new experiences and a lot of trials, but having Elder Zolman here is great and I am looking forward to this transfer full of new experiences.
I love you all and hope you have a great week!
Love, Elder Parker

JANUARY 20, 2014

Dear Family and friends,
This week has been really good. I can’t really say that there was a big moment this week that really stuck out to me. But there were several times throughout this last week when I could feel Heavenly Father was teaching me something.
Earlier this week we were pretty far out in our area in a neighborhood that we know fairly well. We had stopped by a few people and no one was home, we were about to walk back to our car when a woman yelled out to us asking us if we were "Mormons". We walked over and talked to her and found out her name, she told us that she has known the missionaries for a long time and she met with them when she lived in New York and when she lived in Philadelphia. We set up a time that we could come by later that week. When we went back, we taught her and her 8 year old niece the Restoration. She committed to be baptized. They were both taking notes and we learned a lot about her and some of her past trials she has gone through. She has really been prepared for the gospel throughout her life, and because of the good experiences she has had with missionaries and members of the church, she has gained a great respect for the church and feels that if she is going to go to church, it will be ours. We have plans to meet with her again this week.
I feel that at that time I finally realized that sometimes I will just be planting seeds. It’s hard to see the bigger picture or the effects of what I am doing, even the little things. But in that moment, I came to a better understanding of how people can be prepared for the gospel.
Just last night I had another great teaching moment from Heavenly Father. We didn't really have any appointments for Sunday, we planned to do some stop-bys of some less actives and a few former investigators and we wanted to do things that would help us meet our goals or get closer to them. While we were out though, we had very little success. No one was home and we felt the entire time that something was just off. I feel like we definitely got down on ourselves for not being able to find anyone. We did talk to a mother and her son from the Caribbean who gave us their number, so we had some success. But overall the night felt slow. Something wasn't right. We stopped by one last person, who didn't answer and as we walked away from the door, it clicked that we hadn't learned what we were supposed to that night. We were being taught humility. I realized that we needed to ask Heavenly Father what he wanted us to do more often. It took me several hours to learn it, and I still have a long way to go, but I know now that Heavenly Father puts me in situations to help others, and myself. I hope that I will be able to internalize this principle as I get a new companion this week.
I look forward to the teaching moments I will have this week, and hope that I will be able to find them more quickly and apply them to my service.
Love, Elder Parker

JANUARY 13, 2014

Dear Family,
Thank you all so much for the many great letters and gifts that you sent me this week for my birthday! I cannot express the gratitude and love that I have felt. I am blessed to have so many great family members and friends. I may not be able to respond to you all this week or even in the coming weeks. But I want you all to know of my gratitude for you and the sacrifices you make. Thank you!
This week has been a really great week. I have seen the miracles that come with setting goals that stretch us. Even though we did not meet all of the goals that we set this last week, we were able to rely on the Lord as he helped us to meet those goals.
We have been working with a less active family in our ward a lot recently named the Dunsmores. About two weeks ago Brother Dunsmore brought his friend Roger to church as well. He was excited to be there and committed to be baptized. He doesn't have a date to be baptized yet, but he is praying about one. This week we had an appointment with Brother Dunsmore. We had set a goal for a member present lesson that day(a lesson that a member sits in with us), and it was 8:00 at night and we didn't have a member present lesson yet. We went over to teach Brother Dunsmore and to our surprise, Roger was there. We were able to teach him the Plan of Salvation and continue to talk to him about baptism. It was a miracle provided to us by Heavenly Father because of the faith that we had as we set our goals and plans the night before.
Recently we have been praying for families that we can teach. We met a family from Nigeria that we have met with a few times. Because of their schedules, they are hard to teach all together, but they are a family that has been raised with great faith. Their mother has been out of the country so we have not had the chance to meet with her yet. On Saturday we taught two of the children in the family; Toby and Melody. Toby is 19 and Melody is around 15. We had taught Melody the Plan of Salvation, but she wasn't there when we taught the Restoration. We decided to teach her the Restoration. Once we started and explained that we lived with Heavenly Father before we came to earth, she got up to go get a pen and paper to take notes! She told us that she had been talking to a friend about the Book of Mormon and how it was another testament of Jesus Christ. During the lesson she just soaked up all the information we gave her. It was amazing to see how Heavenly Father had prepared her for the message of the Restoration. They committed to come to church next week, but they want to wait to commit to baptism until after their mother gets back and she can meet with us.
This week has been a great time for me of learning more about the Savior and about the Book of Mormon. Something I have started doing is to just read one chapter of the Book of Mormon a day, so that I can go more in depth with the scriptures and really understand what is being said in that chapter. It’s amazing the things that you can learn when you take time to ponder the scriptures.
Love,
Elder Parker

JANUARY 5, 2014

Dear Family and Friends,
This week has been a great week, with the New Year I have spent a lot of time thinking about this past year, especially the last 4 months that I have been on my mission. I have been blessed to be here in Newark Delaware with Elder Thomas. I have learned so much in such a short amount of time. Often in my life I have taken for granted the many blessings I have received and these last few months have been a time of great reflection on those blessings. I hope that I may take better advantage of the time that I have while I am here.

Lately I have had trouble relating everything I study to missionary work, this morning though, something happened, not really sure, well it was the spirit, but I was able to look at things in a different way. I read an article out of the most recent Ensign about a man who felt like he wasn't fulfilling his purpose in life because he wasn't married. He was preparing the sacrament and notice little tiny holes in the bottom of the cups. They would slowly drain as they sat there. He thought about what that cup needed to do, hold water, and how there were many things that could have been wrong that wouldn't have prevented the cup from fulfilling its purpose. It could have been misshaped or the wrong color. But it would have held water. When I first read it, I didn't think a whole lot about it, it was good and I had felt I understood it, but nothing stood out to me. Then when we went to companionship study, Elder Thomas wanted to just share things that could be used in the work. I was worried as I realized that my studies were ineffective. I just started talking about this article and words came into my head. I have recently been thinking a lot about fulfilling my purpose as a missionary and have struggled with my imperfections. I see others around me that seem to have no trouble with the things that I do. As I thought of this talk, I thought of what the results of those imperfections are, do they prevent me from fulfilling my purpose? Is it something that I should be as worried about as I am? It comforted me to have those thoughts and to feel at peace with myself. Something I hope to do is to effectively improve myself, to focus on those attributes that are most needed, mainly the Christ-like attributes.

We have recently been working with a family from Nigeria, there are four children. Sam, Toby, Melody, and Treasure. Sam is 21 and Toby is 19 and Treasure is 10. We met them trying to find a less active member who lives next door. They have come out and played basketball with us on Saturdays and we have taught them twice. They are a great family, they pray together every morning. We have not met the mother yet, as she has been traveling for business in Nigeria and their father still lives in Nigeria. They asked their mother if they could be baptized, and she told them they already have been and can’t do it again. We look forward to this week, when we will get to meet her and help her to feel the spirit that her children have felt. It has been great to see this family grow in the gospel together.  I can testify that the gospel is best learned in a family environment.

I know that this New Year will bring much success in this area and in this mission, I pray that I may continue to be a willing and worthy tool in the Lords hands.
Love, Elder Parker