Our investigators are all coming along slowly but surely. We just need to get them all coming to church more regularly so they can really progress more. A--- is a new investigator we have been working with.  He’s super laid back guy who has a very strong Catholic background and Virgin Mary statues and murals all over his home.  At first he was pretty firm with only wanting to study the Bible and was very willing to let us come over and read the Bible with him, but said he wasn’t open to the Book of Mormon at all.  Just 3 short weeks later, as we were having a Bible class, we were studying the baptism of Jesus Christ and also the atonement in Matthew.  We had the opportunity to bring up the Book of Mormon and testify of its divine witness of Jesus Christ. The Spirit was there, so we invited him to read it and committed him to baptism once he receives an answer that it’s true. It was awesome. He changed after that, and then asked us if we could start coming over 2 times a week instead of only once. It was really neat.

I was fortunate enough to go on exchanges with Elder Lee on Thursday, who is an Assistant to President. It was such an amazing day. We attended a powerful District meeting with Elder Sorensen and the 6th Ward district, and then had a really successful day after that. This was the first time I have really ever gotten to work or talk to Elder Lee, and it was a lot of fun.  I think Elder Lee is the most Christlike missionary ever. You can just tell everything he says and does reflects his conversion and commitment to follow our Savior, Jesus Christ. He's so effective in every aspect of the work and is a really great example to me and to the whole mission.

I also had the opportunity to go on exchanges with Elder Sorensen on Saturday. He is a really good district leader and takes his assignment serious. He really loves and cares about his district. Elder Sorensen was my first companion when I was a district leader and Elder Bryson’s companion when he was a district leader before that, so he is very familiar with his responsibilities and just does a great job all around. For our goals on the exchange, we wanted to work on helping getting people to church. Lately, I been trying to be creative and get missionaries out of our complacent routines and come up with different ways of finding.  So we were trying to think "outside the box" way to get people to church, and we had the idea to make a flyer, just an invitation to come and worship with us this Sunday with the address of the church and a picture of Jesus Christ on it.  We passed them out to EVERYONE hoping that maybe one person would come to church from it. We got literally one million declarations out of it and a lot of people who said they would come. Even though nobody did, it was a lot of fun and it was good to get out of our normal routine way of declaring, and just walk up to people with an excited invitation to come to church with us tomorrow! We did get some return appointments and we felt really good about it at the end of the day.  I think with some more practice and experience we could really have some powerful lessons about church and the importance of keeping the Sabbath day holy even in declare settings. Elder Sorensen is really good at testifying to everyone of Jesus Christ and of the restoration. His Spanish is so good.  He was good 6 months ago when I was his companion in Carpinteria, but I can’t believe how much he has improved since then. He has worked really hard on speaking Spanish all the time and I think he has far surpassed me with his language skills. I know my competitive spirit will start studying harder now because of it.

My companion, Elder Bryson is amazing.  I love picking his brain on all sorts of gospel subjects.  He always has a unique perspective on things I don’t think of.  We have worked really hard to prepare the zone activity today to reenact the stripling warriors with our mission president dressed as a Lamanite and we are really excited for it. (see more pix below)  I can’t believe it’s already week 6, it all goes so fast.

My testimony of the Atonement and of Grace have increased this week.  I love the definition of grace in the Bible Dictionary.  (https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bd/grace?lang=eng&letter=g)  I love the enabling power of the atonement, and that it’s not just for the bad to become better, but also for those who are doing to do more. 

We did 9 hours of service this week.  The more we do, the more opportunities come up to do more!

Favorite scripture: Ephesians 6:12 "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, 

against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Love, Elder Parrish ******

The final battle of the scriptural journey.  The goal was to knock down the cardboard structure while not getting hit by the ball.  This was dodge ball at its finest.  

       

I went to the temple on Tuesday.  It was sweet.  We went with our bishop.  He drives like he's Travis Pastrana or something.  It was the best.  He was getting ticked because of all the traffic, so he decided to take a short cut through all the ritzy neighborhoods and we ended up going through Bel Air (I thought I saw the Fresh Prince) and Beverly Hills and all the other rich places and then down to Rodeo drive and all the other famous streets and stores that look just exactly the same as they do on the Playstation in the TonyHawk game.  I think he did it on purpose just so he could teach us how to be rich people.  

He was gonna take us to eat at the Belvedere Hotel or something like that, which I guess is the most ridiculous famous rich people place ever, but we didn’t have time (thank goodness).  He took us to the 4 Seasons Hotel in Westlake instead... parking lot full of Ferraris and Lamborghinis and we get valet parking and everything.  

Then we go sit down and I eat the best tasting small portioned meal I ever had with a bunch of disgustingly rich people who think they’re famous.  It was interesting, but really fun. I can’t decide if I want to be rich someday, or enjoy the simple things in life. Bishop’s awesome.

But anyways... the temple! I think the greatest thing the Temple symbolizes for me is Love.

Because God loves us, he’s given us our families. Because he loves us, he sent his son to die for us.  Because he loves us, he has given us prophets to teach us the gospel and show us how to be happy in our families. Because he loves us, he has given us a holy house of prayer where we can go to learn and be instructed. He’s given it to us as his children and he’s given it to us for our families, so that we can be united eternally and live with those we love forever.  I’m so grateful for my parents and family.  I know we will be together forever.   And I know if we truly love God, then we need to carry that love over into every aspect and relationship of our lives, especially as missionaries- our interactions with people may be the closest they will ever be to Jesus Christ, so nothing but the highest level of charity and love should be expected.  It’s so true that no one can assist in this work except he be full of love. 

We had a really successful Family Home Evening on Monday night with a few families that came and it went really well.  Elder Bryson and I taught the lesson on the importance of prophets and everybody really enjoyed it.  We managed to have it at the home of a less active member and 2 other active families came and 2 other less actives came as well, so it was a really good turn-out.  One of them was M----, who has been less active for the better part of the last year and we visited him about 3 weeks ago.  All we did was invite him to come back and that was all it took. He has come every week since, attended FHE, and told us to call him anytime to go to lessons!  There truly are our brothers and sister out there waiting to come back, and all they need is just a simple invitation and a warm smile at church.

We did 4 hours of service this week.  A lot of it was for FoodShare.  We planted trees and helped in the garden for a couple hours, and then we helped relabel at least a thousand boxes of frozen macaroni and cheese. It was great!

Love, Elder Parrish******

Mission Leaders Conference

And Breakfast

It sounds like you all are busy as always with church, sports, school and work. How grateful I am that I get to dedicate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to the Lord, and not have to worry about anything else!  It’s such a blessing!

 We had a crazy busy week with MLC and Zone meeting and exchanges, we really only had one full day to proselyte, but we still managed to have the same numbers for the week somehow. It’s crazy how much the Lord blesses us for all the time we spend helping out our zone, but it was super good and we saw a lot of miracles like always!

Our new investigator, R--- is really solid and we had an awesome first lesson with her reading Alma 32.  She related to the seed of faith perfectly because she works at a nonprofit farming organization and really appreciated the analogy of faith and the seed. She is totally a Mormon already, just doesn’t know it yet. :)  She seriously is so prepared. We had an amazing lesson with M---, as well, one of the best of my mission. One of our goals is to have the Holy Ghost as our senior companion, and I know that the whole lesson was definitely guided entirely by the Spirit.  We got right down to what her real need was and were able to teach and testify to her about the atonement.  We even shared with her the poem, "The Race" that Pres. Felix read in transfer meeting a few weeks ago about a boy who keeps falling down but gets up every time and finishes the race. It was really powerful and she finally just got it. Something clicked at the end, and she just had that ah-hah moment where she realized how much God loves her and how her relationship with her earthly father does not represent her relationship with her Heavenly Father and that she doesn’t need to be perfect before she can go to him and say sorry and ask for forgiveness. She learned that repentance is an everyday-all the time means to an end, not merely the end alone. It was really powerful. She will be baptized soon.

I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that his atonement was truly infinite, that He is the master potter and we need to turn our lives over to him to be refined, refined and refined again. I know that he isn’t concerned with why the lost sheep left the ninety and nine, but only concerned with bringing him back. I know that the key to our progression in this life is getting up one more time than we fall. Through him we can be changed permanently.

 I think I’ve said this before, but Elder Bryson really is a never ending fountain of knowledge.  We have a lot of really cool gospel discussions and I learn so much from him. He gets the Gospel. He understands that it is simple and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel.  We just need to follow the Spirit.  I really love and respect that. We have been talking a lot about the needs of our missionaries in the zone, and trying to come up with a zone activity to help us all use the atonement to get out of our complacency.

We offered 2 hours of service at FoodShare again this week and it was a lot of fun.  They were having an event of some sort, so we found out we were going to get to help set up tables and chairs.... we just looked at each other and smiled, because we knew that these people were about to learn how incredibly fast and efficient Mormons happen to be at setting up tables and chairs. :) 

I got to go on exchanges with Elder Juan Bautista, who I was comps with for a couple weeks back in Fillmore, and randomly we ran into one of our old investigators from Fillmore here in Oxnard! It was way cool and way funny how we were both together for it. 

Love, Elder Parrish******

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. Mom, I got your package on Sunday after the other elders hid all my mail from me all week and I shed 2 little tears cuz everyone forgot about me on my birthday... It turns out Elder Bautista and Elder Santos just stole it all.  But it was pretty cool that all the apostles and prophets prepared all that and went through all the trouble of holding that special meeting just for me on my birthday. General Conference was great! And it’s even better when all those prepared and inspired messages get delivered to you on your birthday! It was really special. 

Ok, so I used Ether chapter 3 to prepare.  The brother of Jared climbs an exceedingly high mountain and moltens out of a rock 16 small stones, and he makes sure they were small and clear. Then he hikes with his stones to the top of the mountain and presents them before the Lord.  Because of his faith and all the work he put forth ahead of time, the Lord lights them up with his finger one by one and the veil is removed from his eyes and his faith is turned into knowledge, nothing doubting.

So I challenged myself to molten "16 questions" instead of stones, and I went through the work to make them simple and clear.  I pondered a lot and figuratively "climbed the mountain" to present them before the Lord at conference.  And wouldn’t ya know it, I must have done something right because all I can say is WOW!  I knew it would happen and it did. (I guess they call that faith)  I was amazed that after every session I was able to keep checking off questions and see as they were not only answered, but thoroughly talked about and explained. In some cases, there were even entire talks just expounding and exploring my questions down to every jot and tittle.  The Lord literally did light up my stones one - by – one, all 16.  A veil was removed from my eyes so I could see more clearly, and my testimony is growing line upon line into a more and more sure knowledge. I thank my Father in Heaven for the scriptures and for the ability we have to liken them unto ourselves. I can’t wait for the November Ensign, so I can study them deeper!

We have been working hard and seen a lot of miracles. Even with full days of interviews and General Conference weekend, we still managed to teach 15 other lessons and have good numbers. We set A--- with a baptismal date for the first of November and she is definitely so ready to make that covenant with Heavenly Father. Her only roadblock is that she has to work weekends and can’t make it regularly to church on Sunday.  The elders have fasted with her in the past so she could either get Sundays off or find a new job, but without any luck yet, so we are working really hard with our ward mission leader and bishop to try to find something for her. P-- and D----  have committed to marriage and baptism this month, and both came to Saturday afternoon session of conference and loved it! P-- says he hopes he can remember everything he learned, so we will definitely be reviewing the talks and counseling with him about what he needs to do for his family and future. They are brand new parents and struggling to make ends meet, but P-- desperately wants to come closer to God and find stability in his life. M---, who has a baptismal date for October 25, was so close to coming to conference. We went over between Sunday sessions and she was getting ready to come, so we set up a ride for a member to go pick her up and watch it at their house on TV, but turns out after they picked her up they decided the members decided they wanted to have a BBQ after conference, so they went to the store (Yes, on Sunday) to buy BBQ stuff.   As luck would have it, they spent 2 hours at the store and missed all of conference... so M--- didn’t actually get to see conference, but we did have a good lesson with her in the evening about keeping the Sabbath day holy :)

 Elder Bryson is so great. We are working hard and trying to do everything in our power to be obedient and do what the Lord wants done.  In between every session of conference, we were out teaching appointments and inviting people to come listen.  We skipped a few lunches and dinners this week just so we could teach more.  It’s great and we're lovin’ it.  We are striving to have the Holy Ghost as our senior companion and we definitely saw that in action this week.  On Thursday, after trying to visit someone who wasn’t home, we decided to walk to where we were going next, even though it was pretty far away. After a few blocks, we realized how far it actually was and wondered why in the world we were walking.  There was nobody on the street to talk to, but for some reason we just kept walking.  Right before we got to our destination, we passed 2 women. We offered a card to the first, but she said no and kept walking, but the second stopped and listened. It seemed as though she was just listening to be polite at first, but after a couple minutes, she invited us into her yard to tell her more. We taught her about the restoration. She told us how the day before, she was in an Episcopal church during a meditation period and was just praying and asking God to help her find the truth, somewhere she could settle down and where it felt like home.  She said she wasn’t sure why she listened to us, but thinks it could be her answer!  We testified that it was, left her with some reading homework and set an appointment for this week!  Her name is R--- and we are super excited for her!

 Elder Bryson and I did 8 hours of service this week, nothing too special, but hopefully it will plant seeds for future harvest! 

OH and I got to see the movie, “MEET THE MORMONS” on Friday after President’s interviews.  It was sweet.  I was skeptical at first, but it’s a pretty sweet movie.  I hope it’s not just because I’m a missionary and it’s a good missionary tool.  So ya’all are gonna have to let me know what normal people think about it.  Just make sure you take non-members with you to go see it!  It comes to theatres here on October 10th.... 

Love you, Elder Parrish