June 18, 2012

The weeks tend to be going by faster now. This week especially since
we had a lot of meetings this past week. While two meetings were the
regular training meetings, the other meeting was a special one because
our guest speaker was Elder Ballard! It was cool because Elder Scott
was suppose to come but got sick so Elder Ballard came in his place.
He talked a lot about dealing with hardships through the mission. He
gave us some advice on what he usually does when times get tough for
him. He remembers the atonement of Christ, His suffering in the
garden, and the pain He went through on the cross. He mentioned that
doing so always gives him strength and he promised it would help us
during our missions/lives too. Another subject he talked about was
missionaries being called to Utah. He told us how missions started
here. It all started when nobody could answer President Kimball's
question as to why there weren't any missionaries here in Utah! Haha
so yeah with the new missions forming here in a few weeks there will
be 800 missionaries in the Salt Lake City area. Elder Ballard told us
that were are special missionaries because we have to bring a lot of
inactives back into the Church in order to strengthen Zion in Salt
Lake. Our mission president also said that while Elder Ballard was
walking out, he wouldn't stop talking about how well and obedient we
looked so our mission president was very proud of us.
  With this week being filled with meetings, we didn't exactly find
many new people to teach. However, with this young couple we are
teaching, the divorce papers are finally coming through! We are
helping them prepare for their wedding and baptism this coming
weekend!
  I gave my first talk in sacrament meeting yesterday in spanish! I
went for about 8 minutes talking about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Everyone told me that I have very good pronunciation and many say that
I don't even have an american accent in spanish (for me that is a HUGE
accomplishment!).

Elder Parks

June 11th, 2012

Dear Family,

  Well, not much to report on this week. With the loss of some progressing investigators and some baptisms, we've been looking a lot recently for new investigators. We must have talked to over 100 people this week and didn't have very much success. We knocked many doors, talked to a lot of former investigators and contacted many people. My companion though told me that when this has happened in the past, the next transfer in that area will usually be very fruitful. So there is hope! Oh and news regarding next transfer, my zone leaders told me to memorize the area and learn Spanish fast....I'm 99.999999999% sure that I will be training.
  Mom, I'm good on everything in my apartment. The landlord gives us everything we need and more.
 We do have sister missionaries they just aren't in our district. Our district leader covers half of our Spanish ward (one English stake) and the sister missionaries cover the other half of our area. So we sent referrals to both companionships.
  Had an interesting experience yesterday with a Hindu lady. She was gather grass clippings (???) in her yard when we tried talking to her. As we approached her, she ran into her house and looked at us through the partly opened door. This process repeated for about 15 minutes before we left.

Thanks for all you're doing and all the support. Love y'all

Elder Parks

June 4th, 2012

Dear Family,

  First off, MY ROOM!!! It's so clean!  That's funny how the two years that I'm not there is when it's going to be the cleanest. Oh well, thanks for not throwing anything away.
  So Dad, at least it's a car! The Tongan assignment had the car first so the breaks are actually shot to heck but it works fine and gets us around on P-Day.
  With the bike, I do have a lock and the bike is holding up fine. The only exciting moment on the bike was the story a few weeks back was chasing that one kid around on a bike because we thought he was a north missionary.
  In regards to the hiking pictures, we don't have very many missionaries from other countries here. A few come from Spain, Colombia, Mexico, and Mongolia but the vast majority are from the States.
  Thanks for the letters about Nathan. That was really sad news.
  The problem with our landlord is that she thinks it's her obligation to feed us. Our landlords aren't suppose to feed us daily like she does. Somehow, news actually got to the Stake Presidency that she was feeding us all the time (we haven't told anyone) so the stake presidency is actually gonna call her some time this week and talk to her about it. Her food is off and on but it's just the fact that she doesn't like that we have to be obedient to the schedule. She likes feeding us according to her time which interferes on our study and planning time. Oh well, it'll be resolved soon. And don't worry mom, I'm doing just fine!
  Sorry this email isn't very interesting, it was a boring week. We've got a lot of potentials this week though so next email will be interesting.
Love y'all!

Elder Parks