A Temple Date

We're headed to the city today to play with Sister Barker in Central Park so I'm in a bit of a rush but there are a few cool things to tell you...

My birthday was pretty much normal. Hermana Brog made me breakfast and one of my roommates made me a cake so that was fun. And then I got some surprise phone calls from some other missionary friends because one of them happens to be the AP so he can call whenever he wants to. haha So it was a good birthday.

On Monday, I was on an exchange with Sister Lotulelei so that was fun to serve with her again even though it was only for a day. While we were on our split, we met with Leydi, the less active that we've been working with. She is literally my favorite person ever and I basically want to be best friends with her for the rest of my life. But anyways, the whole time we've been meeting with her, she has expressed her desire to go to the temple. But she drinks coffee and knew that she would have to stop to be able to go to the temple. So she's been working on that and has slowly been drinking less and less and has had some really cool spiritual experiences with it. She had an interview with the Bishop last Sunday (a week and a half ago) and I think that really solidified everything that she was for real going to stop drinking coffee. So when we met with her she told us that she had thrown out all the coffee she had in her house which I was already super excited about. Then we start talking about the temple and I explain that as soon as she stops drinking coffee and has an interview with the bishop, she can go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. So she starts looking at her phone and she says "Well today is the 24th. I think I can stop drinking coffee in a month and be ready to go to the temple." And now I'm wanted to jump off my seat in excitement except that I don't because she doesn't need to think that I'm any weirder. So I'm like ok "well do you want to make a goal to go to the temple in exactly a month which would be July 24?" and she says yes and then I tell her that July 24 is a pday and so Hermana Brog and I could come to the temple with her and help her. And she's all smiley and excited this whole time and says that would be really good. And so now we're going to the temple with Leydi on July 24 and we're so stinking excited and the best part is that even if one of us gets transferred, the temple is open to all missionaries so we can still be there with Leydi. YAAAYY!!! I think I might be more excited about this than any of my baptisms because she has changed SO much since we first met her and she is so excited and it's going to be the best!!!!

I hope you all were able to watch the Worldwide Training Broadcast on Sunday. You should watch it if you haven't. It doesn't matter if you are in an auxiliary position. It was super good. However, with the technology changes for missionaries, missionary work is going to be a lot different. We'll see how fast our mission gets all of those things. I wouldn't be surprised if it was soon just based on other things our mission has done before other missions. 

I hope you all have a great week!

Love you lots!

Hermana Parkin

More Investigators and Less Active

Hello!!

For starters, funny story! Yesterday we were in a lesson with our investigator Telma and the member we had brought with us had to bring her cute little 5-year-old son too. So we're sitting there and all is going well and her son falls asleep on her lap and after like 20 minutes she starts going "No! No! Wake up!" and trying to wake up her son. So we're like huh whats going on. And then when he wakes up and stands up, we see that he has wet his pants all over his moms lap. So we're like...oh. What do we do? Needless to say, the lesson ended there and we took her home. It wasn't a huge deal because obviously it was an accident and mostly it was kind of funny because Sister Brog and I are pretty sure that will the the first and last time we'll ever have anyone pee their pants in the middle of a lesson.

Sunday was the coolest. Maribel came to church (which at this point she's basically a regular and comes every week. We just still can't get her moved into another apartment without her boyfriend thus, no baptism) but we also had 5 of the less active members we've been working with come to sacrament meeting. It was so cool!!! And they all said that they really enjoyed church so we're really excited to keep helping them come back. Leydi  is doing especially awesome and loves coming to church. Even her little 6-year-old daughter, who was with her dad this past Sunday, was sad that her mom went to church without her. They're the cutest! We're struggling to get our investigators to come to church though. They all tell us that they will be there and they all have cars or can walk to the church building but then no one ever actually comes so we're trying to help them have the desire to attend sacrament meeting.

It's crazy how much the Lord has blessed us in this area. We are working with more investigators and more less actives than I've ever worked with my whole mission and we just opened this area. There is so much work to do and we are working with the coolest people! As much as I miss working in the city, I just love the people here and I hope that I can stay for one more transfer so that I can keep seeing everyone progress.

Fernando's girlfriend/mom of his kids is official back from Peru. It's making things a little weird because she seems to think (for who even know what reasons) that we've been coming over because we're interested in Fernando; however that is completely false seeing as how Fernando could probably be my dad. So unfortunately we haven't been able to talk to Fernando as much as normal and it's making us a little nervous that he's smoking again. Hopefully we can get everything sorted out and teach the whole family.

I hope you are all enjoying your summer!

Love,

Hermana Parkin

Pasta Salad Made Me Feel Better

Hello!!

 

This weeks excitement level was a little low but here are a few stories for you.

On Sunday we were looking up some less active people and we were walking down this street that we've walked down before when all of the sudden this car drives past and this kid yells out the widow "HI ELDERS!" This is the first time in all of my mission someone has yelled at me from a car because unlike Utah missionaries, no one knows who we are. So basically we're really excited, especially since they called us elders because we thought maybe they were investigators of the English missionaries. Then 3 minutes later another car drives by and honk and waves. So now we're feeling like we're the coolest ever. And then after another couple minutes another car drives past and honks and says something about sisters being cool. And we were feeling really cool. I mean it's probably not a coincidence that three cars of members drove past us. They were probably all headed to the same place. But it was still the best thing ever.

On Monday we ate dinner with a member and she made chicken noodle soup and I love chicken noodle soup and haven't had that my entire mission because that's not really a spanishy thing to make so I was super excited! We start eating and one of the elders is like "Uh...this is chicken heart." Yep. The chicken in my delicious soup was chicken heart. You know the gross muscle thing that beats inside of a chicken? I was supposed to eat that! Well I tried and at first it's not to bad until it starts to dissolve into mush in your mouth and then I almost threw up. Luckily I have really nice elders serving with me that were willing to eat the rest of my chicken heart when our member had gone to the other room. So now I can add chicken heart to my list of weird things I've eaten and I can also know for certain that I never want to eat it again.

I hope all of you dad's have a great fathers day!! And I hope everyone else tells their dad's how great they are. I know my dad is the greatest!!!

Love,

Hermana Parkin

After Hermana Parkin wrote this email, she emailed me this. There was excitement after all

So I got in a car accident on Saturday. No one died or is even hurt and it wasn't super bad but I feel super bad about it. I've been trying to be super careful and so I feel kind of dumb and really bad that it's affecting so many people. But basically what happened was that I was trying to change lanes because I was stuck behind a line of cars turning left and I didn't want to turn left. I checked all of my mirrors and blind spots and waited until there were no cars and even Hermana Brog looked and didn't see anyone. So I start to change lane and I'm not even very far into the right lane when all of the sudden there's another car and it runs right into the right front corner of our car and then doesn't stop so the whole side of his car skids down ours. He was super nice though and New York doesn't give tickets for things like this I guess so that was definitely in my favor. But now I'm suspended from driving for a month (which also doesn't make sense because I think if you get in an accident you're supposed to be suspended for the rest of your mission. But apparently they think I'm a good enough driving to only be suspended for a month.) and so Hna Brog has to drive and she's terrified, plus I cost the church a ton of money and all of the poor peoples tithing money has to fix our stupid car and the office has to do a bunch of paperwork and I just feel bad that everyone has to suffer for my mistake and I can't do anything to fix it. But then that night I went home and made pasta salad so that made me feel a little better. haha Anyways, that's the exciting news of the week.

Free Souvenirs

President Morgan decided that no one really had enough time to email yesterday since we were all rushing to get to the baseball game so he's giving us a little bit of time today. So now I have some time to tell you a few more things going on here in New York.

First of all, the game was great. We won and none of the innings were excruciatingly long so that was awesome. We sat clear up in the top of no where land but it was in the shade so that was fine with me. The weather decided to be nice to us and there actually wasn't too much humidity so I didn't want to die. We also got to sit with Sister Barker so that was super awesome because I basically never see her anymore now that I've been banned upstate and I got to see all of my other missionary friends and spend some time in my old ward boundaries. Plus Sister Brog and I got some free souvenirs by stealing all the plastic soda and beer yankee cups that people left behind. All the other missionaries thought we were crazy but I think we were pretty smart and we washed all the alcohol out so whatever.

We have a new investigator named Telma and her daughter Andrea. Telma has been going to the English class that the elders teach and she has some member friends and stuff so she knows a lot about the basic organization of the church. She decided that she wanted to learn more so we started teaching her and her daughter on Monday and when she came to English class yesterday she said that she had read part of the Book of Mormon and that she loved it and that she would be coming to church on Sunday. We're super excited! 

Our other investigators are doing well. There are still some commandment issues we're trying to help them work out but slowly they are making baby steps towards baptism, which is awesome.

Have a fabulous rest of your week! Love you all!

Hermana Parkin

Addictions

Real fast letter because I'm about to leave for the Yankees game. But I have to share a story that is just too classic to wait for next week. So Fernando has a smoking problem. He has already stopped smoking a lot because he used to smoke multiple packs each day and now he just smokes one or two cigarettes each day. He told us he wants to get baptized last Friday (YES!!!!) but that he needs to change a lot of things first (clearly.) So we talked about how he could stop smoking and our members Hermana Mercado (who's the cutest and one of my favorite ladies) told how her husband stopped smoking and we talked about how he needed a goal. He kept agreeing and saying that he does want to quit but he wouldn't commit to quitting. About a week earlier I had read in Peach My Gospel a personal study thing to try to stop doing a habit that you have so you understand a little bit more about addiction recovery. That kept coming to my mind during the lesson and basically I thought I was crazy but I also didn't want to ignore a potential spiritual prompting. So finally I'm like "Ok, lets make a deal." And he says "Ok..." And I say, "I have an addiction to cookies (Which lets be honest, is basically true. I LOVE COOKIES). I eat cookies every single day. So I'm going to stop eating cookies for a week if you'll stop smoking for a week." And he was like "Alright let's do it. We'll start on Monday." So this week is the week of no cookies and no smoking. I'm pretty sure I'm crazy and that's not the most normal missionary thing to do but I also think it was the extra push Fernando needed to commit to stop smoking...we'll see how things go throughout the week.

Hope your all doing well!

Love,

Hermana Parkin

Hermana Brog, Hermana Parkin, Elder Heywood & Elder Noguiera

Hermana Brog and Hermana Parkin In they're red mission car