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

JUNE 29, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, we had a super awesome week! Even though it seems like I blinked and it was gone.

Monday we taught Paul in the morning, it’s become our Pday routine to put in numbers then go teach Paul at 10, it’s been nice. He is progressing pretty good, he came to church and is doing good. Then we had dinner at bishops, it was tons of fun.

Tuesday we had our Zone conference with Elder Katcher of the Seventy. It was really good, he focused a lot on working with the ward and individual ward council members. I feel like we finally got some solid action items to help us work better with our units. Then that day we went to the Brough's for dinner, he is the Elders Quorum President, they have 4 little kids, lots of fun.

Wednesday we went on exchanges, so I was here with Elder Gibbons from the Cape May branch. We got to teach Brother Eble, a less active man. It was really good. Then we saw Lee and Tiffany. Tiffany is a returning member and Lee is her nonmember boyfriend, it was a little weird because it was the first time I was meeting them, but it went well. Then later in the night we taught Pauline, she is doing really good. She read the first 5 chapters of the Book of Mormon and accepted a baptism date for in August. We are hoping to get her to church this week.

Friday we taught the Anderson's, it was really awesome! She is a recent convert and her 12 year old daughter is investigating. We almost had to cancel because we couldn't find a man to come with us, but we found one at the last second and then when we got there her non member sister and niece were there! It was a really really good lesson and the spirit was strong. We will be getting to meet with them again in a few weeks! After that we went and had a lesson with the down stairs neighbor of a member. His name is Sonny and he is pretty awesome. Brother Versteg also fed us Friday, we had super good crab cakes. He is awesome, he is also feeding us tonight.

Sunday was so great! We went to church and were talking with a member in the foyer, and this man walked in wearing shorts and a polo with his Wawa coffee, guessing he was a non member we walked over to him and he told us he found the church online, watched a bunch of the churches videos on YouTube and wanted to come to church and get Book of Mormon! So he came to church and stayed all three hours, we taught the restoration during gospel principles and we will be seeing him (Mark) on Wednesday again! It was great! We also had 4 other investigators come to church. We also got to see Major on Sunday and went over Abraham chapter 1, it was an interesting discussion... But it was good, he is a really deep thinker. Then we had dinner with the Subblefields, they are a great family. They moved here from Lancaster and we know a couple of common people from my time in Reading, their kids are great, they love the missionaries. After that we went with another member, Brother Bliss to teach a man I met with Elder Kofford, Vinney. We had an awesome lesson with him and his wife Robin. They live by and know Bishop Bird. It was really good and we will get to see them next Monday night.

We also saw Tyler and Linda this week, they are doing great! No concerns have really come up yet.

This week we get to have Zone Training, so it should be interesting, we have been spending a good chunk of time preparing for that, it should be good! We found a great talk that we are having everyone read beforehand, I'll forward it to you, it’s great!

That’s about all that happened this week that was exciting, I could definitely see the Lord's Hand in this week, it was truly amazing!

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

Love,
Elder Parker

JUNE 22, 2015

Dear Family,

First, Happy Father's Day! Hope it was great!

We had an awesome week! I really love this area.

This week we went to Ocean City for a little bit to follow up with some people, it's a crazy place! Imagine a vacation city, on an island! It's awesome. This time of year there are tons of people that come to the shore at Ocean City.

We had the assistants double in to our area this week, it went pretty good. I drove with one of them to Cape May, to do a baptismal interview for the Elders down there.

Tyler, who is the fiancé of a member, is doing super well. He has a baptismal date for early August after their wedding. Mike, who we haven't been able to teach because of his work, called us today and really wants to meet with us, his schedule has cleared up so we will see him tomorrow, he also has a baptism date for next month. Then we saw Paul today, he is doing really good. He is also dating a member, he wasn't at church this week, but he is doing really good.

We forgot our meal calendar last week, so it was a little scarce on meals, but Elder Wilson, who just went home came out for a baptism with his dad and they took us out. It was tons of fun to see him. He and Elder Soon and I were in the same district in Milford for a while.

This week is looking to be really really awesome. We have a lot of appointments with solid investigators and members and are being fed almost every night. I am super excited!

Tomorrow we have a zone conference in Cherry Hill, Elder Katcher of the seventy is touring the mission, it should be really good.

Church was really good yesterday, we had a slightly strange meeting for Father's Day, but it's pretty typical East Coast. But for the 2nd and 3rd hour we had a combined meeting to talk about the sabbath day. It was really good, we watched segments from the General a Conference Training that they had in April. I wish I could get the full version of the talks, it was very inspiring.

I also just got a crazy haircut from this man from the Dominican Republic in Atlantic City... It was interesting, looks good though! He barley spoke English, has been here for like 5 months. He shaped me up with a straight razor and then talc powdered my head, he even shaped up my eyebrows with a straight razor. So funny!

Also, Atlantic City is like a mini Vegas strip. It's pretty dirty, especially compared to the Alcohol free Ocean City.

I hope you all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Parker

Elder Parker and Elder Soon

JUNE 15, 2015

Dear Family,

Well, I was transferred, and now I am in the Cherry Hill Stake, and I
am at the south End of New Jersey by the shore. The ward I am in is
Linwood, it's awesome! We live in Egg Harbor Township, which is about
15 minutes from Atlantic City and like 20 minutes from Ocean City.
Such a nice area!

My companion is Elder Soon, we served around each other when I was in
Milford and we trained our Goldens at the same time, he goes home the
transfer after me in October. We have been having a blast.

The Zone is pretty awesome, we have some super good missionaries here
right now. Elder Harris, who came out with me is actually training
right now in the zone, it's fun serving around him again.

I have been able to meet a few of the people we are teaching, they are
all super awesome. One of them, Tyler has a baptism date for August,
who is getting married to a returning member. Then we taught Paul this
morning, he is dating a member of the ward, he owns a restaurant in AC
(Atlantic City), he is way awesome! He is doing really good. We have
quite a few people we are teaching who are progressing really well.

The ward is awesome, they take pretty good care of us, our bishop is
great, Bishop Bird. He is pretty much the stereotypical south Jersey
man, whenever he knows where you are going with something he responds
with "ya ya ya" it's pretty funny, ward council was hilarious.

I am loving the Shore and being in south Jersey, it's going to be an
awesome transfer.

My new address is
6825 Old Egg Harbor Rd. Apt. 62B
Egg Harbor Township, NJ
08234

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


Love,
Elder Parker
I failed to mention that I got to teach Michele the day before I
left Exeter. We went just so I could say goodbye and we taught her for
an hour and a half resolving concerns. And it happened to be a lot of
the random crazy stuff Elder Riche and I were studying... It went
super good and she was talking about having me come back out to
baptize her in the future and visiting me if I went to south Jersey,
so hopefully things progress there well, but I think she is going to
come around.