OCTOBER 27, 2014

Dear Family,

Another great week here in South Philly, we were able to stay really
busy and help a lot of the people we are working with start to
progress. I’ll just give a run down on how the people we are working
with are doing.

Mary, Anita, and Arlene are doing well. We amped up our
visits this week trying to help Arlene overcome her concerns with
baptism. She is progressing now and has been reading and praying and
we seem to have gotten to the root of her concern. She also came to
church this week for the first time in a long time!

An Hua and Thianxu - Both of them are doing so well! We saw them this
week on Thursday with Sister Su and the Clarks. We taught about faith and
repentance. They had read 2 Nephi 31 beforehand and understood it
perfectly. The Su's also had us and the An's over for dinner on Sunday.
It was so much fun! The An's had spaghetti for the first time, and we had
Red Hair Balls for the first time. Such a weird fruit... I will send pictures that
Elder Pintor took.  Mr. An told a story about the weirdest food he has heard of.
So we are just sitting there listening, it’s in Chinese, and then he squealed!
Everyone laughed and he kept going and did it again! Then a third time.
So sister Su translated and it was about how people would eat newborn mice.
It’s called the 3 scream. They scream once when you put it in the bowl, twice

when you pinch it with chop sticks, and a third time when you chew it! Lol, so funny!

That’s about it for people we are really working with. Small progress
with people like Fortune, Moe, Kimmy, Chris, the Tomlins, Caramandi's,
Xuan, Froggy, and the VanHorns.

Thanks for all you do! Hope you have a great week!

Love,
Elder Parker

South Philly Elders at the Ronald McDonald House:)

OCTOBER 20, 2014

Dear Family,

It was a pretty great week here. We were able to see a lot of our
investigators with members and more of them are progressing now. We
are now teaching the Tomlins cousin, Kesha, who has a baptism date as
well. We also had dinner with a part member family. Lilly is a member
but her husband John isn't. He is an awesome guy! Even though he isn't
super interested in the gospel, it’s great to be around him. We both
have similar interests. :)

So we helped (tried) An Hua to find internet for his apartment. We
ended up standing in the AT&T store for about 45 mins and then the
Verizon store for about an hour. So crazy to try to translate
haha..... it was comical. Might be more of that this week. It’s fun to
be with Mr. An. Speaking of which, the lesson this week was great, Mr.
An said the closing prayer, so awesome. Mr. An also came to church!
And he presented a great way to do 2 good things. Thianxu has to do 25
hours of service every year and they don't know of anywhere else
except the church that he could do it. So we are going to have him
help with a food drive, help clean the church, and play the piano for
various things during the 3 hour block, Which means.... he has to come
to church! It’s a round about way of getting him there, but it will
work.

Wayne Tomlin came with us to see Mary, Anita and Arlene. It was great,
he is an awesome member with a strong testimony.

I had exchanges this week with our Zone Leaders. I went to their area
which is in south west Philly. Man, is it a different world! First, we
took the wrong bus to get there... and ended up spending around an
hour at the airport..... ya. Then we finally got back and took a
trolly to our first appointment. Everyone they teach is an African,
not African American, but African immigrant. Its sooo hard to
understand what they are saying, but they are pretty solid
investigators. It’s just crazy to me how different it can be less than
10 miles away.

I think that is about all that happened this week. It was a great
week, lots of little miracles and tender mercies.

Thank you for all you do! Love you!

Love,
Elder Parker

OCTOBER 13, 2014

Dear Family,
Man, what a crazy awesome week! South Philly is great right now, so
much going on and so many miracles. We saw some really awesome people
this week and we were able to get a lot of members out teaching with
us, which helps a ton. We even added another super solid Chinese
investigator to our teaching pool!

First, we saw Pricilla this week, she is doing well, seems sincere, and has a baptism date for in December, but wasn't able to make it to church and hasn't answered our calls.
Hopefully everything is all right.

We saw Carmen this week and set him with a new baptismal date, for in
December. Lots of struggles but really does want to be baptized, just
need to get him there. He is loving brother Harrison at the lessons,
so that should help a ton in the near future. He also has had some
really good spiritual experiences with a blessing we gave him.

We saw Moe! Finally we saw Moe. He is in the hospital now, which is a
good thing... Now that he is in the hospital for some crazy infection
in a wound in his ankle, (Pictures were narley!) he can't get away
from us! He is stuck in a bed, lol, so we saw him Saturday and had a
great talk about baptism and what he needs to do to get there, he was
pretty excited to get baptized and wants to do it ASAP, he just needs
to be more consistent in meeting with us and actually come to church!
Really cool experience though with him. Sometimes I think that some
people are invincible or have no feelings or things like that, but I
witnessed this really really big built black man break down in tears
because of guilt he feels in his heart. It was such a tender moment
and was great to testify of how baptism and repentance can erase that
guilt. Then next day, Sunday, we took the Harrisons to see him. He was
in really high spirits and we read the Book of Mormon together and
taught about the Plan of Salvation. Moe kept telling the Harrisons how
much we helped build up his spirit and it was great to see him doing so
much better. I have very high hopes for Moe in the near future and
hope to work with him a lot more.

We also saw Thianxu and An Hua! Super awesome lesson. We had sister Su
there translating and then the Clarks. Sister Clark went to Curtis,
the school Thianxu is trying to get into, for the harp. It was such an
awesome lesson about the Plan of Salvation. So good! We were able to
answer a lot of their questions and they loved the Clarks. The best
part though was how we could feel what they were talking about in
Chinese even though we didn't understand, I felt that I could follow
the conversation pretty well, which is awesome! The spirit is amazing!
Then at the end we had Thianxu say the prayer, it’s the first prayer he
has ever said! He said it in Chinese but the sprit was so strong!! It
was awesome! Sister Su later told us he was very straight forward and
asked God to tell him if what we have taught him is true. So great for
a first time! Then An Hua came to church and really loved it. They are
both so awesome and are meeting a ton of members. So good!

We are also teaching a new Chinese woman who is a referral from Temple
Square. So I might be too emotionally attached already, because It’s
reminding me a TON of Susan. We meet with her at a park in center city
and she just asks golden questions and is so open to learning. She
wants to know how to deal with sorrow and stress and grief and wants
to know who God is. So great! And she isn't moving back to China soon!
YES!!

Also, we were able to see Meet the Mormons at a Zone Conference this
week, it you have not seen it, go, like right now. It is super
awesome! I was laughing in the first 5 minutes and was inspired by the
end!

God loves you! I love you! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Parker

OCTOBER 6, 2014

Dear Family,

Crazy week here in South Philly, with General Conference we thought it
might be a slower week because of how much time conference takes.
Could we be any more wrong?.... Which is a great thing!

I will try to give a little update on those we have been working with the most.

We were able to see Hua An and Thianxu this week, it was really great!
We taught the great apostasy and the first vision and the Book of
Mormon. They seemed to really understand it and said they would read
the Book of Mormon, they also then attended General Conference for the
Saturday Morning session. Now, we all know that God's hands are in
this work, but it was especially evident this week. The session they
attended happened to be one where for the first time ever a member of
the seventy spoke in his native tongue, cantonese! Even though they
were watching in Mandarin, it was a testimony builder for me! They
loved President Uchtdorfs talk by the way. After the session Thianxu
played the piano with a member of the branch for about 30 mins, I
might send some video of it. So awesome! So Thianxu played a movement
of a song on the spot from memory for about 15 mins! Then the member
played something for about 3 mins, Thianxu asked how he had such great
memory! lol, so funny.


We were able to see Pricilla a few times this week, she has been
reading and is progressing well, she didn’t make it to conference
because she was ill, but it seems that she has great desire to do what
is right, which goes a long way.

We saw a less active this week with her none member husband. Her name
is Yen and his name is Froggy, ( not really, it’s a nickname). We had a
great lesson, he is still trying to find if there is a God, but when
we taught simply and related to things he understood he made
meaningful progress. Hopefully we can help her come back and be an
example for her family.

We saw a less active family who we have been working with, they are
super close to coming back to church, they both have health concerns
but we found out they will be moving soon. Which is good, it will be
much better living conditions.

We saw a less active named Sister Dickerson this week, super solid
christan who has had some hard times in her life and is recovering
from cancer. Still not sure what her concern with church is as she
still reads the Book of Mormon and bible frequently. She enjoys deep
doctrine lessons... sigh, this week it was the three kingdoms of glory
and why the bottom two exist. It was fun.

We have started meeting with a less active named Cham, it is actually
Yen's (above) brother. He is super awesome and is making tons of
progress. He brought his girlfriend to our most recent lesson.

We saw a less active named Fortune, he also has had some health
problems recently and really wants to come back to church, hopefully
he can make it out before the weather gets really bad and keeps him
inside all the time. Great man.

We saw Carmen this week, it was about the same as always but this time
we brought Brother Harrison with us. They made a really good
connection and Carmen really liked him. It might be the type of thing
that will eventually help Carmen make the right steps towards
preparing for baptism

We saw Anita, Mary and Arlene this week and taught them about
Conference. It was great. I mean none of them came, but it was still a
good visit. Mary just got out of the hospital and we were able to
check in on her.

So we have been working a ton to try and meet with this woman named
Kimmy. Ever since I have gotten her we have been trying to teach her,
she lives pretty close to us and we have had 1 kinda lesson with her.
Super nice and prepared. Well she came to the church with her fiancé
after the 2nd session on Saturday and we were able to have a lesson.
So get this, we told her to read Helaman chapter 5, specifically verse
12. She lost her Book of Mormon, but sought out lds.org and got to the
scriptures on her phone, then read it to her fiancé who we hadn't ever
taught. They both cried as they read it and felt like they were going
to need to be witness of something. When they told us this, we taught
baptism using Mosiah 18 and D&C 20:37 and taught of being a witness
for God, they both cried as we extended baptismal invitations and they
will be getting baptized on December 14th! They also came to
conference Sunday morning and felt that the apostles were speaking
right to them! They loved it so much and loved all the members of the
branch that they met.

It was such an amazing week here, the last three weeks have been so
awesome! I am looking forward to this week where we will have a zone
conference and we have a bunch of appointments set up.

Thanks for everything you all do! Have a great week! Love you!

Love,
Elder Parker