From Parker:
Greetings as a senior companion and all the stresses that go with that! Yeah Elder O, since he was leaving, gave me a ton of random but usuful stuff like rain coats, supplies, notes, ties, etc. It was pretty cool. So I good on supplies.
Well Arizona isnt maybe as hard as Denver, but the area I am in, President Toone told me is the hardest place on the mission. We stuggle even with two extremely awesome companions, to get 10 teaching opportunities to investigators a week. We teach a lot of less actives as well though. But as you will hear in my week, some miracles happen even in my very wealthy area. I guess it is like Ethan being in Arura Colorado. My guess is they are similar. and you definitely receive a witness after the trial of your faith
So here is my week.
Monday: We got transfer calls and that was pretty exciting that I got called to be a trainer! I suspect Elder Oblad had a lot to do with it telling president I was ready. Elder O went home, I really miss him. I have been blessed with two awesome companions. Our personalities matched. Both were extremely obedient to. After emailing we played basketball and chilled at the church for a little bit. Then did laundry, and cleaned. We then were in a tri-companionship. We visited a few people in my area but we spent most of our time in there area. We had a few lessons. Kindof tough to cover both areas with no car and just on bikes.
Tuesday: Same thing I was with Elder WIlliam's. We went to another district leaders district meeting and it was kindof boring. Like I said my companions were both stud teachers to. We received a referral from this less active guy who later to be found out is freaking crazy. Once he got our number he keeps asking if he can come over and play chess. He texts us the Lord's Prayer everynight. He is very odd. And his referral didnt turn out either haha. But we spent most of the day again in there area
Wednesday: Was on last day as a tri-comp. Good riddance, 3 people is a crowd and people already get freaked out when 2 people knock on their door. Three people is like "nope i'm not answering the door go away" haha. So the members in my ward think I have been out for a little under a year becasue Bishop W didnt want them to find out I was a greenie. Well he accidently blew my cover when talking in sacrament meeting so now everyone knows, and now they found out I am training somehow and so the members who I LOVE, mess with me saying don't blow it haha.
Thursday: We had transfers. They changed the way they did it and how we found out our companion. His name is Elder C. So here is where the mircale happened. We got home, started biking and there was this lady walking on the street. I stopped and said hello. I asked if there was anything we could do for her and she said no thanks. we biked off but I had this really strong impression to go give her a card and ask to stop by. We went back I gave her a card, asked if we could come share a message and she was like yeah in 20 minutes. So we rushed to find a member to come with us. Found one. Went over to her house and there was another gentleman there. We started teaching both of them and it turns out his uncle is a bishop, his mom is now a member and he wasnt interested but recently had a few things in his life happen one being a friend passing away and he wants to change his life and go back to his roots. So he wants to be baptized! So him and his girlfriend are on date for November 1st!!! Isnt that crazy we would have never met them If I hadnt had the impression to go back!
Friday: We had weekly planning. Elder C is a good missionary he just doesnt seem to do anything unless you ask him to. And then I feel like he kindof gets annoyed a little bit, but he is just to quite to say anything. In training hour he thinks he already knows everything, and kindof ignores what I am saying. He was first half trained by zone leaders as well. But we are getting along better and better. Just gotta be friendly and obey the rules with exactness. Speaking of which, One of our new roommates is our new district leader and he is a complete dud. He practically promotes disobedience. He doesnt break the large rules obviously but he just doesnt follow them very well. Like being up at 6:30 or things like that. If Elder O saw that he would have a cow! So I sustain him as my district leader I just think he is kindof a bad influence on some of the other missionaries. He is super cool guy but it is going to be a long transfer
Saturday:we met with that guy who is now going to be baptized. He is so solid and cant wait. The only problem is he is living with his girlfriend who also wants to be baptized so we will have to get that all squared away. We had an okay day finding people but not much luck. We got stuck most of the day inside because a giant storm hit and it poured rain like the entire day. So that really destroyed our plans.
Sunday: It was crazy! The normal meetings happened Elder C introduced himself to the ward and stuff. The guy who is going to be baptized came and loved it. It was the primary program which you know is my favorite sunday ever. Then after church the stake preisdent called a special meeting. They are disolving one of the wards in the stake and the K ward is gaining half of those members but is also looking a lot of people to. it stinks becasue guess who live over in the new ward's boundaries.... The guy we just put on date to be baptized, so guess who doesnt get to teach him anymore....us.... So we literally had this mircale and we now lose him. But as long as he continues to progress and be baptized, Its alright. becasue of this we arent exactly sure what ward we are going to be in... we are waiting for President Toone to tell us what he plans to do.
That was my week training is fun becasue we get to go over the basics again and again which is really what every missionary should focus on. Elder C is loosening up and it should be alright. But with all this going on it had made my life a while lot more stressful ahaha
Btw what is Emily's email! I would love to hear from her more. How is she doing with school and everything? That is awesome about you all getting rid of the rental finally ahaha it will be cool to come back and see the new house pretty much finished I would assume. Tell Mutti and grandpa I love their emails and Sorry I dont have more time to write them back. Well I gotta go
#I will go and I will do
Love you all!!
Elder Parker Hemsley
From Ethan:
Hey Mum!
All I can say is that I'm glad I have a little bit of time to rest today. It has been a super up and down week and frankly I'm a little exhausted. I'm starting to feel like I may not finish my mission here in this ward. I've been getting the vibe that I may get transferred for my last six weeks. The worst part is that I kinda hope that happens. I love this ward and just the people in general here, but its starting to become a real drag. The work has slowed down heavily, and its just been super difficult for me to keep being the one man companionship here. Elder A. would be a great guy to be friends with back home, but as a companion goes, hes pretty apathetic to whether we are obedient or not. I have to force things sometimes, which I hate, but they don't happen otherwise. All I want is someone to share the load haha :P
On the plus side though, all of these experiences that I've had with good and bad companions have really showed me what I need to look for in a wife haha. That sounds so weird to say, but its been popping into my head a lot recently.
Anyways, this week finally did what I've been feeling was going to happen. We officially have dropped all of our investigators, and are starting from the ground up. Some of these people have been taught for so long, that it finally came down to either progression or drop. It was kind of a bummer, but I know the Lord can easily provide new people to teach if we work for em.
Monday was an okay P-day. Borrowed the F's guitar and chilled at the church watching cheesy movies we found in the library. Thankfully there are a few missionaries here who would rather do that thank play basketball. Then we all went and got slurpees.
We exchanged that evening, and Elder B came with me to my area. We have both an Elder and a Sister B here in our district haha. Elder B is way cool. Totally gonna be a great missionary. He's only been out for like 4 weeks. But we had an eventful exchange for sure. Ate dinner with the D's and their adorable Pugs, and then we went to visit a LA named Brother W. He's from Sudan. Nice guy, but he recently went through a divorce in which he lost his kids, which had affected his activity. Poor guy.
Tuesday was a CRAZY day. In a good way for the most part. We got up and started biking to the Stake center cause we were pretty short on miles. It took us way longer than I thought it would, and man it almost killed me. I guess its been a while since I have biked that vigorously. But a lame thing happened on the way. I got a flat! Luckily there was a tire shop nearby that filled me up and gave me enough of a boost to get to the church. But by the time we were done with DLC's it was flat again. So the ZL's gave us a ride back. I fell bad every time they have to do something like that :P Plus is was super awkward to be so sweaty in the meeting haha.
Ate lunch and then we debated on whether we wanted to spend the miles to go down to service like we planned. We ended up deciding to skip it and start working. We had a potential named Jenelle that we wanted to try, so we went over and they let us in! They had a lot of people over at their house, but the first one they introduced us to was a dude named Stephen from Ghana. He was their PASTOR haha. The dude was a trip. He motioned for us to sit down and he started teaching a lesson from the scriptures. He was a pretty nice guy, as was everyone else in the home. But as he continued, it became apparent that his whole sermon was starting to underhandedly poke at a lot of the things that we believed. Lots of dumb sectarian dogmas were starting to seep in. Me and Elder B could totally sense it, but no one else in the home could. Probably the gift of discernment on our part. But we just sat there and listened for easily and hour. Some of the way through, Jenelle noticed that we had been silent the whole time, and asked if we had anything to say. Stephen shushed her and told her that we could speak when he was done. That was a little odd. Then She interrupted again and asked if we had the time to be there that long or if we had other appointments. Stephen shushed her again and told her "they have time for this." It was really rude haha. So we just let him finish and then finally he allowed us to speak for a bit. I could tell that Elder B was about ready to go into bash mode, which only makes situations like this worse, so I asked if I could bear my testimony. What then followed was a testimony that I REALLY hope was recorded in heaven. It was the best, most powerful testimony I have ever borne. Everyone there could feel it. I basically got up onto a soap box haha. I went through the whole first lesson in a 3-5 minute testimony. Finally the preacher started trying to interrupt, which no one else liked. But he intervened with the typical sectarian rejections to modern revelation. I swear they all use the same ones. You get tired of hearing em after a while. But then he told me that Joseph Smith was in hell and I would be too if i didn't renounce my testimony of the Book of Mormon. "I will NEVER renounce my testimony of the Book of Mormon" came the response, and then we walked away. The coolest thing though was that when we were walking to our car, Jenelle came outside and just thanked us profusely for coming, gave us some water, and asked if she could still get a hold of us with the number we gave her. She still wanted to talk and still had questions. That was amazing to me haha.
Ate dinner and then we taught a short lesson to Jose, one of our newest investigators. It was a good short lesson, but he talks a ton. Some people don't know how to not talk.
Finally we taught the first lesson to the S's. It went really well, although Sister S didn't really give a response to the baptismal invite. Hopefully she will as the lessons go on.
Then we had correlation meeting to finish off the night.
Wednesday morning we went to the church at like 6 so some of the Elders could play basketball for exercise. I wasn't really too thrilled about it, but everyone else had fun, which was good. We actually caught a bit of Seminary while we were there haha. It blows my mind how much more involved their class is. Ours was just show up, and stay awake.
Had district meeting, which went well. I had all of the Greenie's give the bulk of the program haha. We called it the Greenie Fire District meeting. I thought it went well.
Ate lunch, and spent a lot of time trying some potentials. A few successes but nothing major. Then we went to our appointment with Ernestine. I knew this one was the make or break lesson with her. But when we got there she was on her way out. Basically she was just about to flake on us. We talked for a little bit. Apparently she was ready to take a break for a while. She talked me up a ton and talked about how much faith I have and how much spirit I posses, and how that really influenced her to strive for a better relationship with God. But the reason she was done was because something I said in the last lesson offended her apparently. She was never able to pinpoint what exactly it was, but she told me that she felt like I got angry at her for having questions and that it made her feel "unworthy" or something. Both Sister F and Elder A thought that was bogus btw. But the fact of the matter was that we had attempted to teach her for the last three lessons, but they had all been dominated by her inability to stop talking, and her venting all of her personal problems at us. When we had tried to teach, she usually interrupted and spouted off so many questions that we weren't able to get the lesson back on track. So in the last lesson, I was bold with her and told her that we were there to help her understand the gospel line upon line. Questions like "well, doesn't the bible say something about how we shouldn't celebrate holidays like christmas?" would be answered further down the road. But apparently that offended her and led her to want to take a break. But she kept referring to it as something that I DID, which was still heartbreaking for me. I cried after that visit. I know she has felt the spirit. I just hope she can recognize it somewhere further down the road.
Taught a quick stop by lesson with the Juett family, and then we ate dinner with the Bishop and his family. Great family with great kids. We got a text afterwards that said we were really good missionaries, and that we should keep up the good work. So that was a comfort.
Thursday was nuts as well. The night before, we realized that we were plum out of miles for the month. That was a huge source of stress. So that morning we went to Wal Mart and bought a new tube for our bikes and a new pump for me. Sorry I've been spending so much on the card recently. Its been a tough month.
Went down to the church, and waited until it was our turn for interviews with President. Interview days are always crazy. I enjoyed my interview with President M, and he talked about how we could potentially get more miles for our huge are. But in the end I kinda felt like he had just breezed right through mine. I didn't get to talk about a lot of what i needed some guidance with. Its just nice to have someone to talk to period.
visited Darwin and Carmen that day just to check up on them. They're doing good. Carmen still wants to go back to church but she's not gonna go without Darwin's approval. Its sad. But it was good to see em again.
Ate dinner with the S family. They made us some really good Tongan food. Then their son Feleti came with us to go see Jose again, but he bailed. The rest of the night didn't produce very much success either.
Friday was a crazy day too. We got rangled into helping a move that was going on in the Zone leaders area. . But we were there way longer than we wanted to be. She didnt have a ton packed.
We correlated with the Sisters for a little bit that day, and then we planned. It wasn't super productive. No one answers their phone, and if they do its really difficult to get someone to commit to an appointment. Such is the life :P
Saturday we went on exchanges with B ward, so I got to go over there and experience their area. We also went on a biltz in the Strasbourg ward. It is super country all the way out there. Tons of tiny towns. But it was cool. we found some people for them to teach.
Had a few appointments that really let me see how great of a missionary Elder R is. He goes home in three weeks and he's been a zone leader, but man it was cool to just learn from each other seeing as how we both had a ton of experience. Lots of great conversations.
Sunday was a tad lame. Tevin bailed on our appointment, Ward council announced that it was no longer required for us to come to the meetings, and they also announced that our Correlations meeting would now just be us, Lucky and our non-existant ward missionaries. So say good bye to our good relationship with the Ward!
Church was good even though no one showed. Sat in on a super cool Q and A between the Bishop and the youth. Wish our Bishops had done that.
Visited the R with Brother H after church and then ate dinner with the L family after that.
Finally we ended with a visit to the N family. Taught them Part of lesson four and had a good time answering their questions.
Up and down haha. What else can I say.
I'm gonna try and upload some pictures real quick so I'm gonna cut this one off.
Love you!
Elder Efan
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