'Sup fam!

The past four transfers here in the Oxnard 5th Ward have seriously been the best of my entire mission. As is normal with I think most areas, we saw a lot of miracles right towards the end of the trransfer as one of us is about to leave it. That's ok, though, because it is in excellent hands with Elder Griffin and Elder Cavazos!  One of my favorite families just had 3 of their non-member relatives from Mexico come and move in with them. They came to the futbol night on Tuesday and will start meeting with the missionaries this week! We had one lesson with one of them. As we were talking, we found out her dad had recently passed away and she has some doubts whether or not she will see him again. It was so awesome to be able to testify of the Plan of Salvation, and promise her that she will. It's the best when you meet people with real questions and their souls are searching for solace. It makes the gospel fun as we have the chance to watch it fill the gaps in people's lives that can't be filled any other way.  Missionary work is fun! :)

Our recent convert, J--- got to use his priesthood for the first time when he baptized his 8 year old son on Saturday! That was super neat. They are moving to Utah here shortly, which is too bad because the 1st ward needs them!

This week, we took L--- to search his family history so he could take his own family names to do baptisms at the temple. They werent able to find anyone because L--- only knew the names and not the dates, but he was still able to go to Los Angeles on Saturday and do Baptisms for the Dead for the first time! He LOVED it. He was just giddy when he told us about it the next day at church! At church, they also sustained him to receive the Aaronic Priesthood and he was ordained after church! Our converts from a year ago when I was with Elder Griffin in Santa Barbara are now inactive and never made much progress in the church, so it feels great have gotten to go for round two here in Oxnard and to see all our converts here sticking it out, getting the priesthood and going to the temple! That's what it's all about:)

I sure will miss my brother Elder Griffin. I'm super grateful for the 5 transfers we have been companions here on the mission and everything he has taught me.  It was nice of him to be born in March, so we could finish out with a bang by going to the temple! It was awesome to go and just ask Bishop Quezada tons of questions about the Gospel the whole way! And the empanadas were great too :)   I'm super excited to go to Santa Maria and work in the branch up there with Elder Moreno and Elder Clarkson in a Tri-pan! I've always wanted to serve with both of them.

Halfway between LA and San Fran.

I know that members and missionaries need to work together!!  I am so blessed to have been able to be a part of the Ox 5 no tracting!  It has changed my mission.  I know that the Lord is hastening His work and all the miracles we have seen in the 5th ward is evidence of that! This last month of February, our ward (and entire zone) taught the most member-present lessons in the history of the zone and also the most less active/recent convert lessons as well.  We have shrunk the percentage gap of working with members and exactly what was supposed to happen is happening.  We had 6 baptisms in the zone this transfer, 3 from each ward and plenty more coming in the near future! We feel our zone goals were really effective too, as 4 recent converts now have the priesthood and 2 have already been to do baptisms for the dead!  It's a leap of faith to not tract, and only work through the members, but its worth it.  When the members catch the vision, it's all worth it.

I'm not sure if I ever really explained the details to you guys of no tracting, but here are the basic principles that got us started. There are a lot more that I don't have time to explain :)

-Regardless of how hard missionaries work, the Lord won't bless the ward with new converts if they're not ready to receive them and not taking care of the ones they already have (less actives and stuff).

-100% accountability of everyone in the ward.  No more focus-15.... focus on everyone.  Missionaries are teaching the lessons to every single member in the ward list, active or inactive.

-By focusing ALL of our time on working with members, teaching them Preach My Gospel, studying the lessons for Sunday School with them, helping them prepare classes, mutual, home teaching, service, etc. to make sure the ward is in order, by theory we prove ourselves to the Lord and he will then trust us enough to bring new souls to us who would have been found otherwise by tracting.

Missionary work in utah is definitely different because everyone in the ward lives within 2 blocks of the chapel, but that doesn't mean you can't focus harder on the less actives/partmember families! 

Out of time. Bye. Love, Elder Parrish