JULY 27, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, it’s been a pretty good week. Monday and Tuesday were pretty much spent eating food with people all day while Elder Soon said goodbye and took pictures. It was lots of fun.

Elder Soon ended up back in his first area in West Philly, he was pretty excited. My new companion is Elder Thomas, we served around each other in Reading, we trained at the same time. He is from Provo.

Paul is doing well, we just taught him today, he is still trying to figure out what he needs to do.

Tyler is doing great, they have their wedding this Saturday, so that will be great, but he is still progressing really well towards baptism.

Pauline was able to make it for most of sacrament meeting, she is doing well, we just trying to solidify a few principles for right now.

I was able to teach Mike this week, because of exchanges and his schedule I was never able to teach him last transfer, but he is doing great! He has been meeting with missionaries for about 2 months and is in Alma 2! He loves everything about the gospel and is just working on getting Sundays off so he can come to church.

Everyone else is doing pretty much the same, it’s been a good week.

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

Love,
Elder Parker

JULY 20, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, looks like I will be staying in Linwood for my last six weeks, sadly I will be getting a new companion though. Elder Soon is being transferred.

We had an awesome week, everyone we are teaching is doing super well, I was on exchanges out of the area for Wednesday and Thursday, in Spanish areas both days. It was pretty interesting, I usually just nodded my head and smiled :) haha.

This transfer will be great, we have 3 baptisms lined up with some solid people, and we also have a wedding!

This week is looking to be really good, we have Transfers Wednesday, so tomorrow we have 4 meal appointments. We have a brunch, then lunch with bishop, then dinner at Paul's restaurant, then dinner with Tyler and Linda and sister Jackson. It’s going to be a crazy day.

Not much out of the ordinary really happened this week, pretty much the same old stuff.

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

Love,
Elder Parker

JULY 13, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, we had a really good week. Tyler is doing well, they are getting lots of things prepared for the wedding and so far he has been soaking up the gospel. Pauline is doing well, we taught the Word of Wisdom and that went really good, we are just working on getting her to church now.

Paul is doing awesome! This whole last week he abstained from alcohol and fasted every day! We will be meeting with him tonight to see how it was and what revelation he received and the direction he wants to go in the future.

We also got back in touch with Mike, we will be setting him with a new baptismal date and hopefully getting him to church this week.

I was also able to go on exchanges to Atlantic City with Elder Hillstead this week. It was tons of fun, even though I seemed to sweat more than ever before! It was crazy. Then I was on exchanges with Elder Harris's golden, Elder Winstanley. We had a great time and it was really good, he is already a great missionary.

We saw Sonny again this week, he is doing good, we had a great lesson about baptism and the priesthood and restoration. It seems like things might be starting to click with him.

We also saw Sister Anderson and her kids. We are going to start being a little bit more bold with some invitations, so hopefully things get moving here in the future.

This week is going to be great. I will be on exchanges in both Spanish areas one from Wednesday to Thursday and the other one from Thursday to Friday. Then we find out about transfers on Friday night. We also have dinners every night this week, which will be great! I am really hoping that Elder Soon stays, it seems we are getting into our groove.

I also gave a talk yesterday. The topic was on the talk of "Choose to Believe" by Elder Whitney of the Seventy. It went pretty good, other than the fact that the two speakers before me left me about 3 minutes... So I scrambled and summarized and bore my testimony, haha. It was fun.


I have been thinking recently of how great it is to have a living prophet today, we don't have to rely wholly on ancient revelation, because we receive it today! I am also grateful for the Book of Mormon and the truths it teaches. Sonny always corrects us when we ask him if he read the Book of Mormon, he tells us "well, I read it, but I didn't study it" I hope we can all take time to "study" the Book of Mormon.

Have a great week everyone!

Love,
Elder Parker

JULY 6, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, we had another great week, it was tons of fun to be down here for the 4th of July! Lots of stuff going on with everyone. It seems that this was the vacation spot for the weekend with all of the people that came in from out of town. We probably had almost double at church on Sunday.

We taught Mark this week, he had read the whole book of 1st Nephi in 2 days, he has pretty much fallen of the face of the earth since then though. Hopefully we can get back in touch soon.

Linda and Tyler are doing well, we taught the Word of Wisdom and it went really good, we also did service with Tyler at a members home for a little while.

We taught Paul last night, it was really good. He is going to live the Word of Wisdom this week to try it out. It’s been great to see his progression.

Pauline is doing well, she came to Sunday School this week and then had to leave. But hopefully we can get her there for the sacrament this Sunday.

We had Zone Training this week, it went pretty good. We had a theme of "Learn it, Live it, Share it." We used the talk that I emailed last week to teach about "Learn it" and how the savior prepared for his ministry and how we can prepare for the various things we do. Then we had the STL's(Sister Training Leaders) train on teaching like the Savior. We ended by talking about working with Members in missionary work and had a role play that went pretty good.

Saturday we got to spend a lot of time with Members. We went to the Howell's for a cook out and pretty much the whole ward was there. It was fun. They live in Upper Township and we stayed down there and watched fireworks, it was a lot of fun. Then on the drive home on the bridge we saw Fireworks from Ocean City, Atlantic City, Margate and a few other townships on the coast, it was pretty neat to see. Thankfully we beat all the traffic and made it home in a reasonable time.

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



Love,
Elder Parker

(Left to right)

Back: Me, Elder King, Elder Thompson, Elder Soon, Elder Chapman, Elder

Crane, Elder Hillstead, Elder Gibbons, Elder Harris, Elder Winstanley,

Elder Harren, Elder Winegardner

Front: Sister Ballard, Sister Johnstone, Sister Wilko, Sister Jensen,

Sister Beard, Sister Jolly