FEBRUARY 24, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, it’s been a pretty awesome week! Everyone we are teaching is doing well. They cancelled church again, because of the weather. It wasn't that bad though.

The Markers are doing awesome, we kinda tore a huge hole in the ceiling to help move in some furniture... That was fun.

Finally got in touch with Michele, just some casual conversation, but at least we can stay in touch now.

Carmen and Iran will be moving this weekend to NYC, we are hoping to stay in touch and they will still be meeting with the missionaries. It’s been amazing to see the changes in them over the last few weeks and to see how the Gospel has changed them. They are completely different people now.


Probably the biggest part of this last week was yesterday. Elder Evans of the 1st quorum of the seventy and Elder Allen of the 5th quorum of the seventy spoke to our entire mission. It was all about missionary work in the digital age and our digital devices. It was an inspiring meeting and was the first time in at least 5 years the whole mission has been in the same place. It’s going to be an interesting few months as we go through a few changes. They talked a lot about how this is not only to help with missionary work but to prepare us for the rest of our lives. They talked about how the best filter we have is ourselves and that we need to be ready for our post mission digital lives. It all just made a ton of sense and was a reminder to me that we are led by Prophets and Apostles today!

I hope you all have a great week! I love you all!

Love,

Elder Parker

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, we had a really good week. Alyssa's baptism went really well,
other than the water being super hot, so we had to dump in bags of
ice... Haha. It was great. The next day, Sunday, was -27*... Yep
negative 27. It was crazy cold.

Overall we had a pretty chill week, nothing to crazy. It's been really
cold and snowing occasionally.

We found out that we will be having a mission conference next week on
Monday, we have two 70's coming and for the first time ever the whole
mission will be in one place for it. Not sure what it will be about or
anything, we don't know too much. So I will be emailing on Tuesday
next week.

Hope you all have a good week! Love you all!

Elder Parker

Elder Roberts, Bishop Stapley, Alyssa, Elder Parker

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

Dear Family and friends,

Well, we had a really good week. Alyssa is doing really well and is still on track for her baptism this Saturday. The Markers are doing really well in general, Jon starts his new job this week and both him and Kim got callings and Jon blessed the sacrament! It was great.

Pretty much everyone we are working with made it to church, we are getting to the point where we might have to start opening the curtain because there isn't enough room for people.

Oh, Elder Lee's new companion is Elder Lundburg! He was my zone leader for a while when I was in Milford. It’s been fun having him in the ward.

Carmen and Iran are doing really well! They are pretty close to baptism, they just have to get some things sorted out so they can get married.

Also, Michele dropped us this week, Sister Stapley told us she had been watching some things about the temple on YouTube, but Michele called right before our lesson and told us she didn't want to meet anymore... pretty sure she was just overwhelmed with info and has a lot of questions. Hopefully Bishop and his wife can keep in touch and she will want to meet still in a little while. Feels like a part of my heart was removed... it’s been pretty hard.

But other than that this week was awesome!

Hope you all have a great week! Love you!

FEBRUARY 2, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow…
And Elder Parker and Elder Roberts get to stay for 6 more weeks! So we will have spent 3 transfers together.

This week was great. Everyone is doing really well. Jon got the priesthood and they visited the DC temple visitor’s center. Alyssa is set to get baptized on the 14th of this month. He also got a full time job and gets all Sundays off now! They are doing super well! His other daughter, Haley Marie is staying with him on the weekends and bore her testimony on Sunday. She also wants to get baptized so we are looking at the 14th of March with her.

Michele is doing really really well. She has invited all her friends and family to her baptism on the 29th and had one send her some anti in an email. She told us she has received her answer and isn't going to let anyone get in her way of getting baptized. We got to meet her husband this week, he is really awesome. Not interested in the gospel right now, but he supports his her.

Veronica and Dakota are doing really good, they didn't make it to church this week. But they are looking forward to their baptism on the 7th of March.

We also got to meet with a part member family and his soon to be wife wants to get baptized! Keshla is really awesome. So that should be on the 8th of March. They also have the cutest little 2 week old baby boy.

We should have a pretty great coming transfer. Hopefully we can get down to the temple with the Markers to do baptisms as well.

The massive snow storm pretty much missed us. Well…completely missed us.

Elder Petersen is going home today... crazy! We are going bowling today with a couple of missionaries in the area, so that will be fun.

Well, I hope you have a great week! Love you all!

Elder Parker