Well J---'s interview was last night and he is all ready to go to be baptized this Saturday, and it's all coming up so fast! I feel so blessed to be a part of it. He is so prepared and ready to make this change in his life. The lesson we had on the Word of Wisdom was amazing.  He explained to us that he drinks 6 cups of coffee a day, but that he will quit and do whatever it takes to live according to the commandments of God. He accepted the law of Chastity and the law of tithing, as well with an immense understanding for why we have them and why they are important.  Then, we had a great lesson in priesthood meeting yesterday about trials, and how it is a one hundred percent chance that we are going to have to make sacrifices, but that it is something we must do, and it is totally worth it.  I feel like it was something the teacher prepared exactly for J--- and what he needed to hear. He says he cant wait to be baptized, because once he receives the gift of the Holy Ghost he knows it is going to help him in everything.

In Sacrament Meeting, we had a talk from one of the stake representatives.  He served in Argentina on his mission, I believe.  He compared the gift of the Holy Ghost to an Iphone for "old people."  He told the story of how he carried his iphone with him all the time, and had an iphone for several years before he had any idea that it had ''Siri" or was capable of doing all it can, and that before he learned how to use his iphone to its full potential with ALL of its abilities it was no different or no better than any other cell phone. Similarly, The Holy Ghost is something that we at least have the choice to have with us all the time, obviously a help to us in certain situations, but that there is so much more that the Holy Ghost can help us with every aspect of life.  All we have to do is "learn how to use it to its full potential."  It was a great talk, and somehow I understood every single word of Spanish, where during the talk right before that, there were several bits and pieces that I couldn't quite put together to make sense.

We have been trying really hard to find new investigators and knocked a lot of doors this week, without any luck yet, but Elder Griffin and I know that we will find the people that the Lord wants, when the Lord wants.  For now, it is our job to do everything we can, and talk to as many people as we can to make sure we don't miss our opportunity. 

We have a lady named G---, that has investigated the church for several years, but has been living with her boyfriend so she couldn't be baptized.  Well, we haven't seen her for a while, but we randomly ran into her this week.  She was so excited to tell us that she proposed to her husband and they're getting married in December, and the first thing she wants to do after is get baptized!  A completely unexpected miracle.  We see them everyday. I'm so grateful to be here and grateful to serve with Elder Griffin.
 

It has been kind of a crazy week, but all is well. I get to go to the temple tomorrow with Elder Sorensen, so I am pumped for that to prepare for conference and receive revelation for my district and also for Elder Russell M. Nelson coming.

We met a random guy on the street that just so happened to be carrying a 1858 edition of the Book of Mormon, the second printing ever.  He just happened to have a huge file of all the papaerwork and proof of signature by some famous New York Mormon guy... so that was super random and super weird.  He isn't a member or anything.  He just picked it up at a swap meet for like 3 bucks.  He had it appraised for 10,000 bucks.... He wasn't interested in learning about the Church or anything.  He said he has already done a ton of research on it and his book, but he was super intrigued when I told him about a living day Moses, and how our prophet will speak this weekend, so hopefully something will come of that. 

I saw a bunch more rich people, and knocked the biggest house of my mission so far. It was a huuuge mansion with 2 guest houses on the side of the long walk up the drive way. The guest houses were twice as big as our house... Lamborghinis, Porsches, all of it.  Nobody answered, but it was cool anyway.

 

Love,

Elder Parrish

We had some really good lessons this week with our investigator Y-- on chastity and the commandments and reviewing the Word of Wisdom. She has gone 2 weeks and 2 days so far without drinking tea and coffee, so she was pretty excited about that. She came to church yesterday again which was Ward Conference, and we had a great lesson from Stake President Houston on "The Family: Proclamation to the World" that I think was really good for her. She even brought her little 5 year old son to church and he went to Primary and everything and he loved it. We found out she is a little nervous for her baptism because she is afraid of water, but that she still really wants to be baptized on 22nd of April.

Russell M Nelson is coming to our mission for a mission conference on April 19!  I'm stoked. President Castro is really stressing the importance of "getting what we prepare for."  Luckily, Elder Sorensen's birthday is in April, so we are going to the temple the first week in April to prepare for General Conference and Elder Nelson's visit.  :)  I'm pumped. 

We went on exchanges with Elder Henriod and Elder Mackay on Thursday. I stayed in our area with Elder MacKay.  He's awesome. It was a super fun exchange. He's really good at teaching from the scriptures.  We taught quite a few lessons and had a really good day.
 

I went on exchanges with Elder Barlow too.  He's from north of us and is super cool.  He knows all the mountains from riding dirt bikes and snowmobiles.  Our exchange was up in Santa Barbara in my old area.  It was so great!  I saw all my old investigators and members of the branch. I saw Joel, the guy I baptized, and he was so happy to see me.  He says he's going to come to Carpinteria Ward soon just to sit with me. :)  

Thanks for everything! Love ya!

Elder Parrish

Well we have a baptism on Wednesday!! It is an 8 yr old who is part of a recent convert family. He is awesome. He has autism.  This will be the third time they have attempted baptism, because he doesn't like the water, but I think they're doing it in a hot tub this time, so it should be fine. :) 

 

We had exchanges with the zone leaders, and I had the great privilege of serving with Elder Watts here in Carpinteria.  I learned so much.  He has an INCREDIBLE ability to show love for the investigators.  It blew my mind how he just connected so well with everyone we talked to (in English... I was kind of on my own for Spanish.  Haha).  I definitely learned that I need to focus more on really listening more than speaking.  We had a lesson with an 18 year old, and the nicest way I can put it is he is kind of an emotional wreck.  He just has no self confidence and lets what other people think of him determine his happiness.  Everyone at school says that, "only girls talk about their feelings," and call him gay if he talks about it.  Elder Watts handled it about the way I would imagine Christ would handle it.  He handled it waaay better than I could have.  Haha.  It tears me apart, because I realize that I was the person in high school telling people that stuff was girly, making fun of things because they're "gay" and all that.  I would say that's one of the biggest lessons I have learned on my mission so far, to see people the way our Heavenly Father sees them. I realize that I am nothing, less than the dust of the earth.  No one can determine someone else's unhappiness. Going back to who I was before the mission is not even an option, I can't.  It would be like spitting in God's face.

We had our first District Meeting of the transfer! I'm not gonna lie, I was a little nervous, but I thought it went really well. We had a talk on obedience by Elder Mackay that was really good and then elder Sorensen and I did an edpep on the importance of kneeling prayers and getting the investigator to pray kneeling for us at the end of the lesson. It came to my attention that it was an issue as I have done Call-ins for baptismal updates on Wednesday nights.  For the questions in the 2 boxes- "Reading in the Book of Mormon" and "Saying kneeling prayers"... The first is almost always a YES, but the kneeling prayers is almost always a NO....  It seems like it's a pretty vital piece of whether or not they make it to the waters of baptism or not, otherwise it wouldn't be on the paper.  So my goal for the edpep in district meeting was to make sure that both of those boxes say YES.  I feel like it is the little things that are going to make a difference. It is just like when Namaan went to the prophet Elijah to be healed of his leprosy, but was almost offended that such a menial task was required.  Something as simple as washing in a muddy river 7x to be healed from leprosy is comparable to investigators saying kneeling prayers.  It may make all the difference whether or not they receive an answer and keep their baptismal date. 

Yeah, we had an earthquake this morning.  It was pretty cool!  I just finished reading the New Testament this week, and Revelations is quite the trip.... we're in for it - hahaha- signs of the times!! 

I am so jealous of Marshall playing indoor football... that's sick.

Love,
Elder Parrish

My new area is awesome. We have lots of good things happening.  We committed our investigator to live the word of wisdom, and she came to church yesterday and loved it. One of the members of the ward is a professional race truck driver. He lives clear up on the mountain, and has an AMAZING view from his house of the ocean and all of Carpenteria. At any rate, he races the Baja 1000, which is the race that the movie 'Dust to Glory' is about, I think! He and his daughter race it every year, and they’ve won it 6x.  Anyway, we did some service for him, because his retaining wall collapsed with the rain we got last week.  Oh it was so great!  I got to just work a shovel and carry huge stone blocks, rebuilding it for a few hours.  I got a huge blister in the middle of my palm from shoveling without gloves.  It hurts so good.  I’ve never been happier, just sweating in the hot sun digging and doing real work.  Haha.   Then, that night we had a lesson with an investigator up at an avocado ranch, where he taught us how to pick avocados with the 20 foot pole and shears. It’s harder than it looks, but we got a whole trunk full that we have been passing out to investigators.  Yesterday, we traded a bag of 6 avocados for 2 huge boxes of oranges, lemons, and mandarins-- not a bad trade, fruit for days. The mountains up here are pretty cool with their view of the ocean and all the agriculture.  (Anything and everything will grow all year long here.) The only bad thing is no deer.  I mean, you couldn’t pay me to live in California, but if you could...It’d definitely be here.  

 

Everything's great except I have no time to email :)  My district consists of: Elder Griffin (my comp for 2 transfers in Santa Barbara), Elder Barlow (We were super tight in the MTC), Elder Henriod (my last companion), Elder Mackay (defensive end for state champs last year), Sister Wright (who I've served around for 3 transfers now), and Sister Higgs (idk anything about her).  So it's gonna be an awesome transfer!  We have so much more work here on this side of Carpinteria!! We have 3 people to be baptized in March, and hopefully we will set one more this week. We have so many awesome investigators! I'm so excited for this transfer.  My comp is super focused and has an incredible desire for the work.

We invited T--- to be baptized.  He gave two reasons for not being baptized:
1) He said he loves the teachings of the Church and everything about us, but that he can't be baptized because he will not pay tithing to any church, no matter what church it is.
2) He said that he gets things his way, and he wants to be baptized only if he can do it naked...

So I said, "No problem!  You don't have to pay tithing to the Church, just to God, and we can head over to the church and I'll baptize you naked right now, I don't mind one bit!

He got a kick out of that and just laughed.  It is pretty sad to see that something so simple is the only thing holding him back from spiritual progression.  But I really think someday it will click.  He is so close. 

At any rate, this week was super good!  We had a few good lessons with our investigator, J---.  His family made a Japanese dinner for us on Friday, and then he showed up to church on Sunday!  He stayed for all 3 hours, and afterward they had a lingerlonger with some refreshments.  The ward was super awesome at fellowshipping him and a sister in the ward invited him to come over and eat with us last night.  So we went over for dinner and had a pretty good lesson.  Ha Ha.  I think he was kind of overwhelmed and confused wondering why the Mormons are so weird and how come all of these people are being so nice to me, but it all went really swell.  He has gone from smoking 10 cigarettes a day to only smoking 4 in the past 2 days, so that's pretty cool.

Today is transfers and last night, I got the call from the assistants to the President that I will be the new district leader here.  Wow!  I was not expecting that!  Ha ha!  It's pretty safe to say I felt a little overwhelmed and unsure.  I can hardly even handle myself, let alone an entire district.  One of the assistants, Elder Reese told me that I needed to seek out a confirmation from the Lord to know whether or not this was really a calling from Him.  So before I went to bed, I knelt down and just simply thanked my Father in Heaven for the opportunity and asked Him for "an undeniable confirmation" that indeed it is Him that has assigned me to this calling and if I am worthy and capable of measuring up to what the future holds.  Sure enough, almost immediately it felt like a super cool, weird wave of sensual calm energy filled my chest and mind circulating for several seconds.  I tried to hold onto that feeling as long as I could.  It was pretty awesome.  I can't say I have ever received an affirmative answer to a silent prayer that fast and that assuredly before.  So here goes nothing!

I'm staying in Carpenteria, just moving over to the other area (the non-beach side...) and my new companion is Elder Sorensen, who has been out a little less than me.  I have gone on a few exchanges with him.  I'm excited, because he is an awesome missionary.

Love,
Elder P