ELDER PARKS IS ALIVE! - May 7, 2012

Oh my gosh I can't tell you how happy I was to get his emails. Wow. I wanted to read his entire emails to my companions, but I realized that was probably annoying, especially when we're trying to get our emails done as fast as we can haha. Trenton this email is super long, so I put all your stuff at the beginning if you don't want to read the whole thing.
This week was semi-fascinating. The mission is so weird. It literally is a mini-life. But I love it!
That was so interesting that Trenton will probably be training on his 3rd transfer.

Trenton - have your companion take pictures of you too! We want to see you! I take pictures of myself all the time hahahahahaha. Okay not really. Do you go on exchanges with English elders? Crazy. Is your mission doing the prayer/blessing door approach?

Oh and I don't want to call when Trenton calls (I want to give you an hour of missionaries rather than just half an hour!) so I'll be calling at like 5:30 your time. I'm pretty certain Arizona is on Pacific time right now, so I'm planning to call right after church at 3:30 my time. It that doesn't work, I'll call at 8:00 my time. Haha I hope I can figure out the conference call thing, but it doesn't sound too difficult haha. I can't believe Mother's Day is this week. I get to hear your cute little voices!

So we just found out this week that "the brethren" have requested that they start transitioning the sisters off bikes into cars. So I'll probably never be in an exclusive biking area my whole mission! In some ways I'm happy (I get to keep my iffy skirts!) but in other ways super sad because now I really have to watch what I eat and will never have a biking experience! Oh well. Did Trenton not buy those cool tire things that you bought for me by proxy? I can't believe he's already had two flat tires.
I meant to talk to you about that too - Dad you didn't say anything about my bike and supplies! What do you think? Also, it's kind of weird because we live in the garage apartment of this old widow and her old son lives in a trailer right next to us. And anyway he works on bikes for a living in the garage connecting to our apartment in a pair of cut off sweat pants that are a little short. He's not active in church hahaha. Anyway so he said we'll have a "bike day" and he'll help me put in my new tires and all of us put on our kickstands. So that's nice. It'll probably be next week though. Fun!
Also with training, I was telling Mom that it's pretty common (at least in my mission) for sisters to be training like right after they finish their own 12-week training because there are so few sisters, but Sister Taylor told us a couple weeks ago that we're not getting any English sisters until Sister Falke leaves in like September! So there's no chance that I'll be training until like my 6th transfer or something, and for all I know we could be in a trio until then too! Crazy yeah? I know.
Oh my gosh so you remember Kyle Pronger, the 12-year-old who was the first person whose baptism I participated in? He passed the sacrament this Sunday!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my gosh it was so cool. I totally teared up. I've been super emotional at church lately and can't figure out why.
We've been working really hard on our door approaches because we've not been having much success at all and our district leader is concerned hahaha. So like Friday after our Trainer/Trainee meeting follow-up in Phoenix, we were committed to sharing doctrine rather than being like, "Oh you have a religion already and don't want us to pray with you - how nice! Bye!". So even though we didn't bless any more houses than we have lately, we had such better conversations with people! Now we're committed to sharing doctrine and bolding asking for return appointments. They might as well tell us straight up that they never want to see us again. Actually people tell us that and sometimes we still go by. Like there was this one Polish guy we tracted into at his house who said he wasn't interested (in a super awesome and strong Polish accent). So that was like Thursday. Then Friday we went down to Phoenix for the meeting and at the office the senior missionaries were like, "Oh Prescott sisters you're so far away! Do you need anything?" We said no but then they said they had a Book of Mormon in Polish! Sister Falke's eyes lit up, and we grabbed it and ran out before we could change our minds. Okay not really. But basically. And then we went by again yesterday, and the guy (Roman) just laughed about how we don't give up. But he took the Book of Mormon, and we told him what it was and why it was important. He said to give him a month to read it and we could come back! Awesome. He asked if there were other Latter-day Saints in the area, and we had just tracted the street the other day and were able to tell him that there was a family that had literally just moved in and were members. He told us we'd make good spies. Nice!
We have like 5 recent converts that we're still working with but haven't been seeing much success with in one of our wards. So at our coordination meeting, we took the names to them with specific help that we needed. And Sunday we saw the ward just going to work, and those things that the recent converts were lacking were starting to be taken care of! The Prongers were at church (and Kyle passed the sacrament!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), Ashleigh's husband was there and was not acting like a 19-year-old (he was acting old btw). Anyway. It was just awesome. Rock on ward members! It's amazing how apparent it is that every member is a missionary and that this work is entirely impossible without the help of ward members.
Hello? Nobody has suggestions on how to get the Prongers to go back to the temple? We want their family to be sealed!
Our investigator Troy is having serious issues with keeping the Word of Wisdom. He's been smoking since he was 8. He was off alcohol and drugs for a while but has gone back to drinking a bit. And he can't go without coffee (WHOLLY CHEESE I will NEVER ever listen to anyone who tries to tell me that coffee in all its forms is not addictive. Good night it's ridiculous). So we're trying to work with him. He just needs good activities and good friends to replace these things with. It's hard.
Bleh I love our elders in our zone so much. I've been thinking about that a lot lately because elders are not supposed to be your friends. Well like you're just supposed to maintain like that respect that all missionaries should have for each other. Because we're all servants of Christ. But then it's super annoying because the elders can be all buddy-buddy with each other and as sisters we're kind of this off-limit issue. I mean we all are "friends" as much as possible, but it's not really supposed to work like that. Haha I think I just miss my little brother and I especially miss my guy friends since I see my elders as that. I didn't think I'd have such a problem with that on the mission! But it's cool. And I understand why it's necessary to the work. It was funny because I brought up issues like that in my interview with President Taylor a couple weeks ago, and he responses were usually (okay always) along the lines of "You'll find the balance, Sister Parks. You know when it's inappropriate." DO I PRESIDENT TAYLOR?! REALLY?! Okay fine it was actually strangely beneficial and slightly comforting. But there are just some things that have to be in a mission! Haha it was funny. And just interesting overall.
This past Saturday was Cinco de Mayo so the whole mission was required to be in their apartments at 6:00 pm. In Prescott we were laughing so hard because NOBODY celebrated it, but in the valley I'm sure it was kind of an issue with some crazy parties going on. Anyway. It was nice to have that bit of extra time though to clean the apartment and have a slightly longer meal than usual.
We'll be having training this week (well tomorrow actually) on prospective elders and then we get to train our ward leadership on it! The rest of our district already knows about it because they're leaders and were inviting to the stake training meeting, so they'll be teaching us tomorrow. I think prospective elders is this idea where we have a list of all those adult male members who have the Aaronic Priesthood but don't have the Melchizedek for one reason or another. And then we go in and see how they can increase their capacity for good by receiving the higher priesthood! Oh my gosh the priesthood is so amazing. I LOVE IT. I seriously tear up every time a baby is blessed. And then I teared up while the sacrament was passed this Sunday too. Goodnight I'm a mess. Anyway this is super ridiculously long. Thanks for all the emails! I love all of you bunches and oats.
Oh hahahaha one more thing (I hope). Sara Jolley has been amazing in writing me, but I totally haven't written her back yet! In fact, I even sent a letter to Devin Sabin who never wrote me but sent it to her address since I didn't know his! Haha I'm awful. Anyway but it was funny because in the letter I got from her this week, she sent stamps in it as well which is something we always joked about doing to our missionaries that weren't writing us! I'm totally writing her when we get home from emails! Poor kid. She just put in her paperwork though! Pretty sweet! So check Facebook in a couple weeks and see where she's going!
Okay sorry I can't believe how long this was. I LOVE ALL OF YOU SO MUCH IT'S TOTALLY RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME. And because of the restored sealing power of the priesthood, I have the knowledge that all of you are stuck with me for eternity! Oh my gosh isn't that the coolest news ever?! I know.
I promise I'm growing in maturity. My emails are not evidence of this though hahahaha.
TALK TO YOU SUNDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LOVE TIMES A BILLION AND FIVE
Sister Parks