Y--- was baptized and confirmed last Tuesday :)   She is Mong, born in Laos. She grew up during a time of war between Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.  She and her family tried to escape Laos and get to Thailand, but they got caught and put in a training camp. She lived there for 4 1/2 years as a teenager, eating moldy rice and rotten fish every day. They had to sleep in little cubbies lined up like sardines, just like the holocaust victims.  The little kids had to do all the chores and fetch water, because if the young girls went out, the guards would either rape them, or abduct them and take them to wife, so the girls would pretend to be sick and hide under the covers whenever the guards came around. Then one day the family at the front of the camp escaped during broad daylight, so her uncle came in, put on his back pack and said the secret code words "I'm going hunting"  which meant they had to leave immediately, because when the guards found out the other family left, they would start killing people and increase security, so there would never be any more hope of escape.  So they ran. They got into the mountain jungle and walked for 7 days straight night and day, no stopping, no rests. She said they would fall asleep walking and fall to the ground, and they would just smack them to wake them up and tell them to keep going. They would follow the tracks of a water buffalo that one of their friends took with him when he escaped like 6 months before, so that's how they didn't get lost. All they ate was a little bit of rice and bananas they found while walking. There were the bodies of old and young ones that couldn't make it, rotting along the path. Finally they got to the top of this mountain and there was a clearing all the way down the back side down to a river, the Mekong river or something like that, which separates Laos from Thailand.   They literally sprinted all the way down the mountain and swam across the river.  Once on the other side, they knew they were in Thailand and that they were safe from the Laos soldiers, but not safe from thieves on the Thai side, so they walked and walked and walked a few days more and finally reached the refugee camp.  They stayed in the refugee camp for another few years. Every month, Americans and French people would come and choose people to sponsor and pay for them to leave and come to the U.S.  So every month they would apply but never get chosen. Finally, after many months, half of them were sponsored to the U.S. and half were sponsored to France, so her family is still split up between the 2.  She has so many cool stories and has been here for like 30 years now, but long story short, she did  ALL OF THAT^^^   so she could come to California, meet the missionaries last October, and be baptized into the true church of Jesus Christ!  She said when we confirmed her, she felt a super heavy warm heat energy come down upon her and fill her up :)  The church is so true and her family is so supportive!  

 

Don’t be lame members! Invite people to come to church and hear the missionaries!!! 

 Love you all, Elder Parrish.

This week was filled with feeling the Spirit!  Sometimes I can’t believe how often I feel the Holy Ghost.  I have to check myself and make sure that I’m not just getting the goose bumps and chills randomly, and make sure that it truly is a witness of the Spirit.  The conference with Elder Russell M. Nelson was amazing.  Elder Bowen and Garns from the 70 and their wives spoke to us, and then Russell M.  Nelson spoke to us for like 2 hours.  He’s hilarious!  Man, I tell ya, these prophets and apostles just do whatever they want.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a serious meeting or not.  But he is definitely a servant and apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ.  He opened it up for questions, and I loved how quickly he knows the answer to every question no matter what, and especially the way he answered the questions.  It stuck out to me that often he would answer the question with another question.  That’s one thing I would like to improve on.  I feel like answering questions with a question is a great way to help others to realize they may already know the answer, and it will have more meaning to them than just redundant facts. 

One cool thing he taught us: What it means to be truly converted -- one word.

Repentance:

In greek is Metanoeao.

Meta- means Change.   

Noeao is related to:

nou's- mind

gnos- knowledge

penume-spirit and air

pneo- breathe.

So you know you’ve truly repented and are truly converted if you have a change in mind, knowledge, spirit, and even the very way you breathe. 

 Stake Conference for Easter Sunday was a treat as well. Brother Bowen is a powerful speaker.  I loved the messages his wife shared in both the mission conference and stake conference, as well.  It was so good to celebrate Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We had dinner , (Ham :) )last night with Brother David Magnusson, former stake president and scholar in literally every gospel topic ever.  He is one of the most passionate people about the gospel I have ever met.   He is super motivating, and  also buddies with Pres. Uchtdorf.  You meet so many cool people in Cali.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the video, “Because of Him” for Easter.  If not,  you probably don’t have very many friends on Facebook.  Russell M. Nelson told us it will have 10 million views by Easter, and so far it has been seen in 189 different countries and the number one state/province with the most views-you guessed it- California.  We have been asked to show it to everyone.

We have been super busy preparing everything for Y---'s baptism tomorrow. Everything is good to go and we are really excited. We have made daily contact with her, and she seems a little nervous about the water, but really excited too.  She has invited a lot of her friends and family from Fresno to attend the baptism as well.  She attended Stake Conference yesterday and really enjoyed it. We talked with her husband finally yesterday and he is not interested in coming to church or taking the lessons or anything like that, but said he will gladly support her and he is coming to her baptism tomorrow night to support her as well.  We are praying he will feel the spirit at the baptismal service and have the desire to become an eternal family.  I am super grateful to be the one she chose to baptize her. 

Love, Elder P.

 

Well, Y--- has her baptismal interview tomorrow.  Some stuff came up, so she has to be interviewed by one of the mission presidency, so I am a little nervous for that.  Hopefully all will be well, and her baptism is set for the 22nd!

Happy Easter! Maddie and Marshall are lucky I'm not there to whoop them in the easter egg hunt like always.  I hope you all remember why we really celebrate this day.

 

So transfers were last week, and I think I forgot to say...

I'm staying here in Carpinteria for another six weeks, and my new companion is Elder Lopez!  He's from West Jordan and went to Copper Hills High School.  He is a native Spanish speaker, so I'm stoked to speak more Spanish.  He's great, super cool.  He makes fun of me a lot though, because he thinks I'm a straight up hick.  I guaranteed him I grew up in the city, but for some reason he just thinks Brigham is this little town where we all ride our horses to school and our tractors to church. (haha) Here's a picture of him picking some avocados....

 

 

HOLA Familia!

 

This week was crazy cool!  The temple was awesome of course.

One of the General Conference talks that stood out to me was that of Gary A Stevenson. He talked about the Olympic athletes that train years and years and years, their entire lives, for a performance that is over in a couple seconds. Yet, they will remember those couple seconds for the rest of their lives.... ha so that one cut me pretty deep. Wrestling. Years and years of miserable practices, days on end cutting weight, and preparation. all ruined my Senior year.  I can't help but think about it, and wish I could go back every day...I won't ever forget how much that hurt, how one tiny thing had such a huge impact on forever.  I guess it happened for a reason, because now I can look back on it, and see that that was just a small speck compared to Eternal life.  We prepared for who knows how long, since the beginning, to come here to earth and perform for "just a couple of seconds," but our performance will influence the rest of eternity and we will remember it forever.  The same can be applied to the mission.  My whole life has been a preparation for this, and now it's here and it's flying by.  In reality, it is just a "couple of seconds of performance," but I will remember it forever, so I need to be sure I am doing absolutely 100% everything in my power to make my performance pleasing in the eyes of God, so I can be confident in the presence of God, and be able to say without a shadow of a doubt that I gave it my all.  Because the way I feel about wrestling is not how I want to feel about my mission, nor how I want to feel about my earthly experience.

 

At any rate, I hope you enjoyed conference!  it was amazing.  M. Russell Ballard told you all to study Preach My Gospel, and tell me what you learn, so go ahead!

 

Love,

Elder P

 

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