6 months!

I am officially ancient in the mission. Haha not really but 6 months has passed by super fast. Its crazy how fast it really can pass by. It has been some of the most frustrating, most tiring, most fun, and most rewarding 6 months of my life though too. I am grateful for each minute that I have of this experience. I have, up until now, 1- been called gringo about a million times 2- been compared to spider man a million times 3- asked "what?" more than a million times and a bunch of other stats too. It has been a great time though and super rewarding.

But not much happened this week. Bella and Marilu wen tto church again but aren´t really completing their commitments and reading and praying so we might have to move their baptismal date back if they can´t do that. But they are still doing well. Emelinda had to be let go this week. She didn´t really have desires to progress and to be baptized so its kind of a waste of time to keep visiting her. I think we might try one more time a little later on.

Last thing is that this last week we talked with a member that had a lot of trials in and out of the church and asked us why that is. We gave her an answer but it made me think too. I studied that topic and I found that we have trials as part of the plan of Salvation. We were sent here to progress and to have joy. The trials are there to allow us to be humble, to help us learn, and to make us capable of feeling joy. The worse trials that we have in our lives, the greater our capacity to have joy. Each trial has an ending and if we can endure, we will find more joy than we had before. That is a brief summary of what I learned while studying.

But I hope each of you have a good week and Keep enjoying your lives!

Love Elder Parker

Save your soul!

Hey everyone! Not a lot happened this week thats worth getting excited about. But Bella and Marilu did come to church yesterday which was pretty nice. They are still on track to get baptized the 26th which will be great if it actually happens.

Also, Emelinda is doing okay. This week we passed by and told us that she isn´t really super interested in listening anymore because she has already been baptized once and doesn´t want to again. We had a lesson with her and addressed that concern but we aren´t sure that she is going to be an investigator for a lot more time.

We also had a conference with a bunch of Missionaries this week in which we just learned a lot about goals and things and why they are important and if we are going to reach our potential as sons and daughters of God we need to put goals to help us. So go ahead and put down some goals in your lives to help you out and reach your potential. 

Really not much more happened this week so here are these photos. We found a cross just on the side of the road that says "save your soul" we thought it was pretty funny so we took a few pictures. The Catholic Church runs South America. Love you all and have a good week!

Elder Parker

Act in faith

Whats up everyone? How are we all doing this week? Im glad for the opportunity to write you guys this week because it was a pretty good week actually as far as the work goes. Things have cooled off a little bit and that makes things a lot more pleasant. Im sure though in a couple months when it starts to rain non-stop, that I will want the sun back.

But to start off, we had a conference on Wednesday with all the missionaries in the area South America, South. David A. Bednar gave the conference and it was super great. I was able to learn a lot about faith and the relation that it has with helping us in our personal lives and especially in the work. When we pray we need to act. 100% of the time or we are truly asking in vain. We really should tell our Heavenly Father what we are going to do and only ask for his guidance and direction and after we have started is when it will be made clear to us what we shoudl do. Elder Bednar wrote a talk about it called ask in faith which is super good and I encourage all of you to read it.

But also we have three main investigators that we are working with right now. Two of them we found last night and were able to put them with a baptismal date for the 26th of March. It is a mom and her daughter named Bella and Marilu, that live alone and are super excited to be able to receive the Holy Ghost as part of a baptism. The other is a lady named Emelinda who talked with sister missionaries about 10 years back who is pretty good and has good desires to just know for herself. Hopefully we can commit her to baptism today.

Also, we had planned a ward family night for Saturday and no one came for some reason which was really lame but we ended up watching mormon messages and things for about an hour with our bishop and his counselor which was a good time. It was lame though that no one came.

But thats it. Hope you all have a good week! Say your prayers and all that stuff.

Love Elder Parker

cambios!

Suprise! Im not going anywhere. Neither is my companion. There is actually only one change in our house. An Elder is leaving and his old companion is going to train. So we are going to have a newby in the house which should be kinda fun. Besides that, the cambios were pretty average. Not much changed in my life. Cambios are like Christmas for missionaries. You all wake up excited even though you know that there is about a 0% chance that you are leaving to go anywhere. 

But more than that, nothing really happened this week. We have found a few people to teach but they are pretty lame and not very willing to progress so we might have to let them go and not waste our time there. We did have a way good lesson with a member this week actually in which we talked about how trials help us to progress in our lives and how God lets us have trials to show and and help us. The member compared it to a child who breaks his toy and asks for help from his dad to fix it. The dad starts but the kid starts to complain that its wrong. The dad gets tired of hearing it so he gives it back and tells the kis to try for himself then. The child obviously doesn´t know how so he tries all he can and then returns to the dad to ask again. But this time he is humble and he has tried everything in his own power and has no other option. It is at this point that our heavenly father takes over for us and gives us just enough knowledge to do it ourselves or he does it for us. If we remember in the story of Joseph Smith, it was just barely before he was about to give in to Satan that the light began to shine. We are given trials to help us to be humble to eventually be able to progress. But only after all that we can do. 

That lesson had a lot more than that in it but theres too much to write it all. That lesson was the highlight of the week and just about the only thing that is worthy of writing about haha. Oh and also my companion and I were talking with a drunk dude yesterday and he asked us, "what would you do if I pushed a knife to your throat?" he was kidding but it was kind of exciting. At the end we ended up getting his name and address and hopefully we can have a lesson in the future. 

It was a good week that went by fast!

Love you all and have a good week

Elder Parker

Happy Valentines Day!

 Me and Elder Calle

Osvaldo's baptism

Whats up?Hows it going everyone? Hope you all enjoyed Valentines day. It isnt a very big holiday down here and its totally the same as missionaries. I actually forgot that it was Valentines day until this morning. Things are pretty normal here except that it was a little bit cooler this week which was a great blessing. Its really hard to get excited to go work when its like 105 degrees outside haha.

But the first and most important part of the week is that Osvaldo was baptized on Saturday and I had the opportunity to dunk him. It was an awesome experience and the Spirit felt was super strong and great. He has turned around completely in the past three weeks and is in a way better place now in his life. His baptism was a rare thing too because usually no one is baptized three weeks after meeting the missionaries. They have to go to church three times before being baptized and be living the commandments for two weeks before. With his drinking problem and his situation it is a miracle that he was able to turn his life around this fast but it is incredible.

Also, I got sick this past Tuesday from the lunch we had. We ate at the house of a less active family and these people have 12 cats and 4 dogs which live inside or outside. Those animals bring about 1 million flies too so its no wonder that I got sick. So yeah that was fun. We also had interviews with our president that went well. We are this week entering the last week of the cambio so next week I could have a different companion even though I think that we are going to be together for another 6 weeks.

But I hope you are all doing well and having fun in the snow. Love you all and wish you the best!

Love Elder Parke

Count Your Blessings!

Whats up everyone? Hows it going? Things are pretty normal here which is good but nothing exciting. We have walked a lot and talked with a lot of people but haven´t been able to find too many to teach.

Osvaldo is doing great though. He went to church for the 3rd time yesterday and is doing basically everything on his own now. I have never met someone as prepared as he is to be baptized. Yesterday he told us that he was going to go bear his testimony in sacrament meeting but he didn´t. He seriously is doing so great and I am almost positive that we will have a baptism this Saturday. Great guy.

Also, we had a mini cambio this week and I went to a little town called coihueco which is right up against the mountains about 30 minutes away from Chillan. I was with another Peruvian Elder for the day and we had a good time. We argued with a group of Jehovah´s witnesses for a little while and then went to an appointment where the Lady complained that there was too much friendship in the ward and that they should be there for the gospel and nothing else. That was by far the most ridiculous thing I have heard on my mission.

As members of the church we forget all too often the blessings that we have because of this gospel and turn to complaining way too fast. I have seen that on the mission and its one thing that I never want to do myself. I want to encourage each of you to count your blessings. But not temporal blessings, spiritual blessings, that have come from the church. Whenever there happens to be a moment that you want to complain, think about that. The people of this church are not perfect, the church is. We have no reason to complain with all that we have been given.

Thats all though. Have a good week in the snow!

Love Elder Parker

volcanos erupting!

Hey everyone how are you all doing? Things are great here in Chillan except that it is really hot every single day. It makes it hard to get excited to go out and work every day but you still have to do it. Especially when its a day with zero appointments and you are just going to be walking all day. We sometimes go out and are walking for 6 and a half hours straight. Thats rough but you just have to find ways to have fun doing it.

But the biggest news of this week is that Osvaldo is doing awesome. He is doing better and better every time we meet with him and he is changing his life through the atonement. He is such an awesome guy whose life has been changed 180 degrees over the past three weeks. Right now he is still on track to be baptized the 13th of February which will be awesome to see. I wish you guys could all meet him.

Also, the volcano that is about 30 minutes from our sector is erupting right now which is really cool. Yesterday there was a big lightning storm because of it at night and it looked super cool. We also had a ward family night this week which went well. It was funny because two guys from our ward are in a band and they brought their guitars and stuff and performed on the stage in the church. I felt like I was in an Evangelic church clapping and stuff. It was weird but fun.

Nothing else really happened so I hope you all have a good week and are loving the cold weather!

Love Elder Parker