We had such an awesome week.  Elder Griffin and I had 10 lessons with members present, and in the zone we had a total of 30 this week.  Around 42% of our total number of lessons were taught with a member present this week, compared to 29% last week, 18% two weeks ago, and 9% at the beginning of the transfer.  We are really proud of the efforts the zone is making to involve the members more and keep raising that number.

One miracle we had with going out with members:  We took out a priest named David.  We tried going by a former investigator’s house, who we had a lesson with.  He actually gave us a referral of one of his neighbors who just moved in, named L----.  We contacted him using a He is the Gift pass-along card and set a return appointment for yesterday.  We took David with us again the for the appointment, and taught Lorenzo about the restoration.  We weren’t sure how into it he was, but after explaining the First Vision, Elder Griffin asked if he believed that God and Jesus Christ could appear to someone today and call him as a prophet.  Lorenzo said yes, and that he believed in miracles.  We talked a little after that about miracles, and he shared with us a dream he had a while ago. , In his dream an angel appeared to him and told him that the Lord was going to send someone to him that would give him “mas entendimiento” about the Bible and learn about his word.  Then he told us that he kind of shrugged off the dream as just a dream, but now he knows that it was true and that we were sent to him to give him the "mas entendimiento" that the angel talked about. We invited him to the Christmas devotional last night and he rode with David and his dad to watch it with us in Camarillo. It was all pretty awesome, especially for David, since it was his first time ever going out with the missionaries,  to have a sweet miracle like that. Now David wants to come out with us all the time :)

Elder Griffin is amazing.  He takes talking with everyone to heart.  We're seeing a lot of miracles and having so much success with the “He is the Gift” initiative. It is so effective!  Everyone wants to talk about Christmas!

I think about this past General Conference, and I can see the principle of accountability as an underlying topic in basically everything.  I have been pondering about the subject of accountability, and I loved the emphasis in MLC on us as leaders being accountable for our areas. I know that to 'Return and Report" is an eternal principle.  Every time we account for something, it influences our final return and report with Father in Heaven.  I like that. It makes me want to do my best in everything, even the small and insignificant things.  It makes me anxious to be more accountable.  It makes me want to be a better missionary, son, brother, future husband and father, neighbor, etc. it influences everything.

We had a really cool service project with Foodshare's can-drive at the collection on Friday.  Our whole zone and some of the English zone helped by making Christmas trees out of canned food.  We ended up helping with I believe 240 trees, all with over 600 cans each.  It was awesome.  Foodshare loves the LDS missionaries!   We had several opportunities to answer questions and share “He is the Gift.”  There were tons of newspapers and radio and photographer people.  Google it, maybe there will be a picture of me :)

I can’t believe Mitch is 22! I want to wrestle him, and play basketball and every other sport with him again.  I might be able to compete nowadays.

Love,

Elder Parrish