So I don’t think I've told you much about Santa Maria. First off, it’s just an extension of Mexico with tons of Hispanics, most from Oaxaca.  It smells just like Mexico, too- like there’s a dead badger on every corner, so that’s cool.  We go to this one big apartment complex almost daily, and there’s the usual big group of kids from ages 5-10 that just shout, “Hip hip hooray!” every time we walk in the complex.  (We want to teach them to shout, “Hurrah for Israel” every time, but they don’t understand.)  They just treat us like celebrities and follow us around and hand out cards to everyone we see.  We play soccer and they all count how long I can do handstands.

There’s a huge 27 hole disc golf course here that we play every P-day with the YSA guys.  It’s tons of fun. The other day there was a squirrel chillin’ on a log and I instinctively (swear I didn’t mean to) chucked my Frisbee at it and knocked it into next week. Oh and I skinned a snake, because an investigator asked me how...   

Anyway... :) the work is going great!!  We had a ton of member present lessons this week, which is like manna from heaven in this area, and saw a lot of miracles from it.  We pushed J---'s baptismal date back to May 9th just because Satan doesn’t want him to come to church, so his boss keeps calling him on Sunday mornings to come into work, so we think it’d be best if we wait a bit to make sure he's going to  be committed to keep the Sabbath day holy. 

Oh my goodness, and then we had the sweetest lesson ever yesterday with a new investigator family we found.  J--- and R--- with their 3 kids.  One of them is having surgery on Wednesday, so we went to go give her a blessing yesterday after church.  We brought it up in ward council that morning that we would like a member to accompany us for the blessing, and they assigned a whole family to come do the visit with us. (More manna from heaven.)  So we go with the whole family, who are the same age and have kids all the same ages too.  We gave her the blessing and their families just hit it off great and made instant friends.  We had only taught them the first principle of the first lesson before that since they are new investigators, but just from that little visit and the spirit we felt, they were like, "You guys don’t pray to the Virgin Mary right?... Were gonna take down our Virgin Mary right away!"  We didn’t even say anything about it at all, but it was funny, and hopefully the surgery will go well and there will be plenty more about this family. :)

Another miracle from getting the members cooperation was with G---!  We were able to have him come to a dinner at a member’s home.  They hit it off great as well, and he accepted a baptismal date for May 16th after teaching him about the Restoration! 

So when I think about my mission, I have come to a little conclusion about the atonement.  I think if I was simply required to come on a mission for 2 years only relying on my own strength, a few things would happen.  I have always been rather self-reliant and always enjoy a challenge, so I think I would be able to come, stay for 2 years, and go home, on solely my own physical abilities. I hope that doesn't sound prideful.. I think I would be able to put up with the daily grind of the work and just put my head down and go, day in and day out, waking up and working hard until my time was up. I really think I could.  *BUT* that’s all it would be, going through the motions, depressed or something, and pointlessly just doing it with merely an end… like a never-ending wrestling season with a bad attitude or something.

Where the atonement has comes in, specifically the enabling power of the atonement, is what makes growth possible, progression.  It wouldn’t be possible to be successful without it.  Everything I have learned and achieved on my mission, can only be contributed to the atonement.  It allows the daily grind of waking up, getting out, working all day, talking to everyone,  to be more fun than anything else I have ever done!  Who would have thought!  It provides the convincing power to touch the SOULS of men, rather than just selling a product.  Without it, I would’ve had no growth, no purpose, no impact in others' lives, no success, etc... The Savior’s Atonement is everything, and I am so grateful for it.  It’s hard to explain, but there's nothing else to attribute it to.  Every day, I am becoming better because of it and I hope to continue that change perpetually.

Love,

Elder Parrish

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

General Conference.  Santa Vaca!  Conference was shweet!  I cant believe it was my 4th and final conference in the  mission!! It's been cool how all 4 conferences have either been on my birthday or half-birthday in the mission.

I followed the trusty ole pattern from el hermano de Jared of preparing stones and presenting them to the Lord to light up with his finger. I didn't prepare 16 questions this time around, but I still followed the principle.  The Lord never ceases to remove more and more of the veil as we diligently seek and ask. The talk that impacted me most was Elder Holland's talk about the kid getting saved by his brother as he was falling. I don't know why that one was my favorite.  I didn't even have any specific questions that it answered and I can't honestly recall much of it, because I was too into it to take notes... but I definitely remember how I felt and I can't wait to study it shortly!  Conference was the best! I loved how it was all focused on the simple, most important things. 

We made some really good progress this week with our ward mission leader and branch president! We had a good meeting and we all got on the same page. (Preach My Gospel page). These past couple days have been the best so far working with the leadership in the branch. I'm sure there are many good things to come!

My companions are amazing, so Christlike and humble.  I'm striving to be more like them every day. 

Sorry, no time for a solid email.  I  gotta go disc golfing :)

Love, Elder P

Everything that we can control as missionaries is going very well.  We are seeing a lot of miracles and success in our sphere.  However, there are definitely many things in the branch that are out of our control for the time being that are impeding the work here in Santa Maria. Our investigator from a part-member family, J---- is doing great and progressing towards his baptismal date for April 18^th.  We had a little bit of a conflict with some in the branch yesterday.  It turned into a lot of finger pointing, but we just tried to be respectful and still express our concern to work more unified with them.  I have never run into anything quite like this on my mission so far, but we did end on good terms.  We came to the conclusion that the spirit wasn’t there, so we needed to regroup and try again later in the week having fasted and prayed.  

My companions are amazing. Elder Clarkson is so passionate and does everything he can to magnify his calling. Elder Moreno is a Self-Mastered champ. 

I know that the Lord is mindful of us in all moments.  We listened to a talk on our way to the Z---- baptism (which was amazing) by President Eyring about praying for trials and mountains to climb. I was feeling pretty spiritual and gung-ho, so I said a small prayer in my mind telling the Lord that I would like to be able to learn from whatever mountain he wanted me to climb and that I was ready for a trial! And whaddya know, the very next day I got one.  So I definitely know the Lord answers prayers, and praying for trials is one sure way to get an answer!  I think I’m going to keep in mind the idea of asking our investigators to pray for trials so they can know for sure that God answers them! (ha ha!) 

Service has been good.  We translated some documents for Catholic Charities here in Santa Maria, which was really fun!

Love, 

Elder Parrish

Hey Fam!

Santa Maria has a lot of potential! We had an awesome week.  We set the husband of a part member family with a really solid baptismal date for the 18th of April.  We taught him obedience, laws of the land, baptism, and tithing.  He has been taught everything, and now we just need to review the baptismal interview questions with him and see what else we need to review. He made a huge sacrifice yesterday to come to church by going in to work super early on Saturday, working all day and all night to be able to come home Sunday morning and then come to church Sunday afternoon on basically no sleep, but he loved it.  We were all super pumped about that and he is doing great.  We are making good progress on visiting all the members, teaching them the doctrine of Hastening the work, and helping everyone fulfill their HomeTeaching assignments. We are working hard, staying optimistic and seeing a lot of great things!

Elder Moreno and Elder Clarkson are great for me. I feel like we are doing extremely well, obedient, talking with everyone, seeing miracles, having fun, and we have stellar study sessions. Of course there's always room for improvement but we are being the best missionaries we can be!  Elder Clarkson is from Spokane, Washington.  Elder Moreno is from Nevada, but his family will be moving to Utah as soon as he gets home.  He is a convert of three years now.  He is going to be my roommate at Snow!

I am just happy to be called of God and of a living prophet. I love being a missionary, and cherish my time to give all of my heart, might, mind, and strength to Him. As I have been preparing for General Conference coming up (in 2 weeks!! I can’t wait), I have been going over my notes from the previous 3 conferences of my mission. Elder MacKay's mom sent me a nice organized little notebook where all of the apostles have their own section, so I have been studying my notes by apostle and it has been really cool to notice the style of each apostle and patterns and similar warnings they repeat in so many of their talks.  There is no doubt in my mind they are men called of God and that the Lord is no stranger to his servants.

Love,

Elder Parrish

So, I’m here in the Santa Maria Branch as District Leader on an assignment  from President Felix. Basically, this is their last chance.  If they don’t step it up this transfer, we are pulling out all the missionaries and leaving the branch on their own.  It’s pretty crazy.  There is just an extremely poor understanding of the gospel in general.  It’s not even missionary work that is the problem.  So President has stacked it this transfer with Elder Moreno and me ( We’ve both been Zone Leaders for a long time) Elder Clarkson, Hermana Costilla, and Hermana Killpack (the traveling sister trainers) as kind of a last resort effort to save it.  We all have only a couple months left, so we got our own little dream team up here and we're goin’ hard.   So far, so good! We've met with a lot of the leadership of the branch this week, and told ‘em straight up that we are not tracting or door knocking, and only focusing on the members to strengthen them and help them.  For the most part, they seem pretty behind us and willing to give it a try.   The Branch President Predazzi is great, and we have set goals with him to contact everyone on the member directory to have 100% accountability in the branch.  One of the things we have decided to focus on, which wasn’t as big of an emphasis in Oxnard, is Home Teaching. It’s like nobody has even heard of it up here.  We think it will be the best tool to get everything going and earn trust with the members.  We were able to take out one member to a lesson, and taught an awesome lesson on the Restoration to a guy named D----. The spirit was definitely in the room and he is keeping his commitments, so poco a poco he will come around. 

Santa Maria District

The district is great!  President Felix inspired me at transfers with a quote about, “There being a hush down every hall and corridor in heaven when we say we were in the dispensation of President Monson." That was kind of our theme for district meeting last week.  We talked about reconnecting to the pre-earth life and our potential to godhood, studying our patriarchal blessings and using that as motivation to be everything the Lord wants for us this transfer, and also using that to recognize the god-like potential of the members as well, and having the faith that they have every eternal capability to participate in gathering Israel.  It was a good meeting.

My companions are amazing!!!! Elder Moreno is a stud. He's a bold and powerful teacher, cool, calm and collected always! Elder Clarkson is such a motivated missionary, and always desiring to improve. He just has a natural way of talking to people and getting them to talk and open up.  So far our unity has been good, and it has been a ton of fun!  Companion study is sweet, and we always learn a bunch from each other.

I have enjoyed studying about covenants this week in an effort to better understand mine, and help others begin to make their own. In reading Deuteronomy (I think it was chapters 27-33), it was really cool to see how the Lord set up his covenant and charged Israel to keep it through Moses.  There are a lot of cool fulfilled latter-day prophecies in there and also LOTS of curses and penalties for breaking covenants.  I know that keeping our covenants give us blessings and power, and that breaking our covenants brings not only lack of blessings but also very specific and bad things. It is important that investigators understand that as well as they prep for the baptismal covenant.  It also made me think about one of our primary responsibilities as missionaries- "to warn people of the consequences of sin."  I know I can do a better job of crying repentance and condemning sin, and want to work on that as well this transfer.

Love, Elder Parrish

From these internet photos, Santa Maria looks like a nice city with vineyards, hills, and beautiful coastline!

'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

This week, our recent convert L--- got his temple recommend interview to do baptisms for the dead!  He passed, so he is going with the ward this Saturday to do baptisms! We have been working with another member who is really into geneology, and this week he is going to help him search his family history and he is going to be able to take his own family names to the temple!  We are super excited.  That was part of our zone goals for this transfer as well.

One cool miracle for the week, on Thursday night as we were planning for Friday, we didn’t have any set appointments, and I couldn’t decide what I should study for in my personal study the next day. As we finished up our planning, I just randomly wrote a letter G in my planner, and then for no reason at all I wrote the name Gabriel in the little box for my personal study topic. In the morning, I decided to study Jesus Christ in the Topical Guide.  Anyway, we went through our day on Friday, and everything went normally and then we went out for dinner with a member named O---. He took us to a little taco truck to eat some tacos (delicious). After we ordered and were eating, the member struck up a conversation with the owner of the taco truck and introduced us as missionaries that have changed his life.  The guy in the taco truck said that that he had just commented to his wife (who was making the tacos) that he could feel something about us "muchachos" when we ordered our food.  We didn’t even have the chance to speak because O--- just jumped right in and bore testimony of how that was the Holy Spirit testifying that the work we are doing is true.  He invited him to church and to start meeting with us and everything.  It was pretty exciting, and the man accepted the invitation. I then took the opportunity to bear my testimony of Jesus Christ.  As we were leaving, I asked his name. It was Gabriel, the same name I randomly wrote in the study box of my planner the night before.  Now I know that I studied about Jesus Christ in the topical guide that day, so I could share my testimony with Gabriel.

I finished the Book of Mormon again this last week - in Spanish- so that was awesome.  Afterward, I prayed in Spanish and got an answer that it was true yet again. I love how the Holy Ghost will ALWAYS testify of truth. I know that Moroni's promise is true.  We can get an answer if we ask in faith, with real intent, and it doesn’t matter how many times we have previously asked before, we can always get a confirmation of the truth! :)

We have been teaching the members of our ward the principle of FOLLOWING UP from Preach My Gospel in our dinner messages and challenging them to think about all the invitations or gospel conversations they have had throughout the last several years, and follow up with all those people and re-invite them! We have had a really good response from the members and they all accept to do it!

Love,

Elder Parrish