Sup Familia, Los quiero mucho!

Area: we had some good member present lessons this week with some part-member families. L---- also doing great and super excited for his upcoming baptism on the 14th. We have been trying to get out of our normal routines of visiting the same members all the time in our area, and began to visit some of the others who tend to fly under the radar and have already established some good relationships with them. One of which is Hermana C---. old lady from the jungle of Mexico. We helped her prepare and eat some of the doves that she raises in her backyard. It was a lot of fun and now she loves us! The YM/YW in our ward had an activity, where they invited friends and played some sports, and then had ice cream sundaes, learning about how each part of the ice cream sundae represented a different aspect of praying to our Heavenly Father. Hermana Costilla and Hermana Shepherd were the brains behind it all, and it was a great activity. A lot of the youth brought their friends! 2 of them we were able to give church tours to after the activity and are now new investigators. One will be passed off to the English elders, but the other is a really cool kid named M---.  He is 16, Catholic, and has a lot of great questions about a lot of stuff he sees in his church that has been changed throughout the years or that he doesn’t agree with.  He has a lot of potential. He is the friend of D---, who helped us find and teach L----!  It’s awesome to see him catch the missionary drive to share the gospel!

Companion: I’m so excited to get to stay here in the Oxnard 5th ward with Elder Griffin again!! We both are pretty stoked about it.  I am so thankful for the chance to work in this ward with my awesome companion Elder Griffin. It's really changed my whole outlook of my mission and I’ve learned so much here.  And of course Bishop Quezada is just the best! 

Testimonio: Bishop Quezada shared a lot of really cool stuff with us about the atonement yesterday during the 3rd hour of church. So in my studies, I decided to go into a little deeper with the scripture Alma 7:11-12. Of course the atonement is for overcoming sins, but verses 11-12 talk about a whole lot of stuff that Jesus Christ did for us even before he took upon himself the sins of the world in vs13. Pains, afflictions, temptations, sicknesses, death, and infirmities are all part of what he "went forth to suffer."  I went to my dictionary and looked up the word 'INFIRMITIES.'  It means: 
-of poor or deteriorated vitality
-feeble
-weakness of mind
-weakness of will
-weakness of character
-irresolute (to sway, to waiver, to hesitate)
-not solid or stable
-insecurities
-frailty
-disease or malady
-personal falings.
These are all the things he took upon him, so he could be filled with mercy and know how to "succor" us. I looked up succor in the dictionary too.  It comes from the Latin: SUCURRERE, with the roots from SUB- up and CURRERE- to run. and SUCURRESE- to help. so the root meaning behind the word 'succor' is literally "To Run Up To Help" 

Jesus went through all of our pain, affliction, temptation, sickness, infirmities, with everything that that entails, so he could know EXACTLY how we feel and RUN UP TO HELP us. Not even walk, but to Run to our relief!  I love that. The power that we have available to us from the Creator of the universe is infinite.  We should all feel on top of the world because of Him and His atonement. He is right there beside us as long as we choose to repent, not just repent of our sins, but accepting the enabling power available to us to overcome all of those^^^^^ things and achieve our greatest desires.

We’ve been working with the youth a lot lately, and sometimes they just don’t get it!! Then again, I didn’t really get it when I was that age either, so I guess it all works out eventually. (haha)  I think the atonement is the single most important thing the youth don’t understand.  Sure, they know how to answer the questions in Sunday School, but they don’t really use it!

Service:  We helped Hermana C--- prepare yummy doves to eat (heart, intestine, and all) as well as 2 hours for Foodshare.

Love, Elder Parrish

    

We have a lot of things happening for us right now.  We just finished the assignment from our bishop to get 100% accountability on the membership records, and have picked up a lot of new part member families and less active members to teach.  Sacrament Meeting attendance was high enough that we had to open the overflow into the gym again for the 2nd week in a row. Bishop Quezada was pretty pleased with that. Our investigator, L--- came to church again and we had a nice lesson with him yesterday in the home of a member and watched the Prophet of the Restoration movie. The member shared a killer testimony and L---- loved the movie. We had another man come to church named R---, who is in a part member family and the mother has been praying for the longest time for them to start coming back to church, and they came yesterday out of the blue!  We are excited to start working with him.  He was originally found and contacted through our ward soccer night every Tuesday.  I’m getting my soccer skills back, too, by the way :) 

 Elder Griffin is astounding in all aspects.  He is almost as competitive as me :) and a huge Red Sox fan. Someday, I want to be as good of a missionary as him. We have been running around a lot, and have had a lot of crazy things with all of the stuff in the zone, but we couldn’t be happier here in the service of the God of Israel!

L--- feels the spirit and talks about how maravilloso everything is that we teach him, but we’ve been getting a little worried because even though he loves everything it’s hard to know how much is really clicking, because he only has a 4th grade education and can’t read or write very well at all.  I found a scripture this morning in my personal studies that I really liked, though.  It is right before Christ appears in the Americas, and the voice of the Lord speaks out of the darkness and tells them in 3 Nephi 9:20-22 that whoso cometh with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion and were baptized with fire and with the holy ghost, and they Knew It Not....therefore whosoever repenteth and cometh unto me as a little child him will I receive, for of such is the kingdom of God..  That scripture basically gave me a confirmation that even though L---- has no education, can’t read or write, and doesn’t yet understand everything we teach him, it’s ok because those aren’t the qualifications.  He is definitely acting on his faith in Jesus Christ by coming to church, ward activities and keeping all his commitments, and is willing to follow Him as a little child and do everything he asks of him, including repentance and baptism.  He just has a light about him every time we teach him now. 

We started helping a new food pantry through Foodshare that needed new volunteers at the Salvation Army.  It was really fun, and we even had a good gospel conversation with a small Filipino woman who speaks Tagalog.  It just so happens that in one of my last areas I randomly stumbled across a Plan of Salvation pamphlet in Tagalog, and felt prompted to keep it!  I told her about it, and she is really excited to meet us next week so she can read it! 

Oh, and I went to a random church on Friday --Universal Church.   We were invited by one of our investigators.  We happened to be there for a special demon-casting-out service, and we witnessed some pretty sketchy blasphemous stuff!!..   Don’t worry, we left quickly.   I definitely learned what the Spirit does NOT feel like!!!   It really strengthened my testimony that investigators WILL feel the Spirit when they enter our buildings!  The Book is blue and the Church is true!

Love, Elder Parrish

Mission Leader Conference Jan. 2015

Elder Griffin and I had dinner with the Macias family in our ward this week, whose son served in Nicaragua in the same mission as Mitch, and they knew each other pretty well!  It was really awesome to talk to him and hear about my brother as a missionary and some funny stories of their mission.

We have been seeing miracles like crazy as a result of only working with members.  Members are coming out with us who have never come out before. Members are giving us referrals who have never given a referral before.  We have had random people just walking into church, etc.  We received a referral from a member last Monday during FHE for a family of 6, who we passed on to the other elders, and they came to church yesterday and after church said they want to get married and baptized!  It’s definitely not the easy way of doing things, but it’s way better!  Se vale la pena for sure!  A lot of it can be contributed to the assignment we have received from Bishop Quezada to contact every single member on the ward records. Our goal in the ward is to have absolute 100% accountability of all the members in the ward boundaries- in ward council we like to call #CienAlSenor :)  It’s something that not a lot of wards have around here, and I think it was a super inspired step to take from Bishop Quezada. We have just been going straight down the list, contacting them, and inviting them to church explaining all the great things happening in the 5th ward and how there is no better time to be in the church than right now as the Lord is hastening His work!  We have been able to clear out a lot of the old names who have died or moved out years and years ago, and also we have found so many part-member families and less-active members who are open and willing to come back to church! Yesterday we had to open the back partition into the gym because our Sacrament Meeting attendance was so full! 

Lorenzo is our most solid investigator still and he never ceases to amaze me with his faith and childlike humility.   He has felt the spirit and knows he needs to do whatever God wants him to do.

Elder Griffin and i have been working on... SMILING!  Who knew, it actually works.  We have tried to kind of just take a step back, and be humble, and really try to love our missionaries in the zone, and let them know that they are important to us.  We have already seen just an all around better sense of unity and energy in the zone :)

Yesterday, a man named Jesus randomly walked into church. So we proceeded in welcoming him and starting to give him a church tour.  It was obvious he was bothered and upset, and frankly just wasn’t interested in a church tour at the moment.  So we sat down and started talking with him, and he told us his wife just died the night before, literally on Saturday night, and he was devastated.  He was just desperate, looking for something…anything to help.  We tried consoling him and said a prayer with him before the meeting started.  While sitting in Sacrament Meeting, I guess you could say I felt like Ammon-with the king’s servants at the waters of Sebus when the flocks are scattered and the people are all weeping because they know the outcome is going to be fatal.  But Ammon, his heart was swollen with joy, because he saw it as an opportunity to show the power of God and help these people.  So even though this man’s world had just come to an end, my heart was swollen with joy, because we had the opportunity to teach him about the plan of salvation, and share our knowledge that he would see her again.  As I read Alma 40, I felt the spirit testify super strong to me that it was true.   I am so grateful for the great plan of HAPPINESS our Heavenly Father has laid before us :)

Love,

Elder Parrish