Two weeks ago, we got a referral from the mormon.org website. I’ve gotten like 50 of these throughout my mission, and have never gotten a single solid investigator out of so far, so we didn’t think too much about it... but of course we go to contact it anyway and turns out they lived just down the street from us. Their names are J--- and L--- with their two sons, ages 7 and 10.  We knock, the husband comes out, looks at us, and says, "My wife must have made an appointment with you guys.  Let me go get her."  They invite us in and we sit on the couch and start talking. They are Catholic, but have gone to several different churches looking for the truth.  She told us she has a friend who is an inactive member of the church, so they are already pretty familiar with the church, and that she managed to somehow borrow a copy of the Book of Mormon and start reading.  She said, "It just keeps pulling me back!  I can’t explain it, but I love it!"  She went on to explain how she has been praying and trying to contact the missionaries for several months now.  She always tries to flag them down on their bikes, but they always just waved and rode on by, eventually she found the website and put in all her info!  

We did some "how to begin teaching," just like Preach My Gospel says.  It was the best experience on how to begin teaching and establishing expectations I have had on my mission so far.  We explained how we like to begin and end each lesson with a prayer, suggesting that we would offer the opening, and we would like one of them to offer the closing. I prayed, "Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for letting us be here in the home of the ---- family. Please let us feel of your love as we talk about your gospel. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.  (One of the things we learned from the brethren from the missionary department who came to our Missionary Leadership Conference two weeks ago is how we should pray with investigators- so simply that they are 100% positive they will be able to offer it at the end.)  It was amazing how powerful the shortest prayer I’ve ever said was. We continued the lesson to answer their questions, explain the Book of Mormon, testify, and invite them to be baptized- which they anxiously accepted and invited us back last Friday for a BBQ.

The BBQ was awesome, and they are the funniest people in the world!  We were laughing our heads off.  We answered a lot more of their questions about what they had read from the first 10 or so chapters in the Book of Mormon and L--- told us she’s been praying all week and already knows this is what she needs to fill the missing gap in her life.  We taught about the restoration and they just soaked everything in. They committed to come to church (which was Stake Conference in Camarillo.) We went to set them with a baptismal date, and they said, "as soon as possible, just not this Sunday, because there's going to be so many people at Stake Conference!"   We set them for the 20th of December.  Because they speak English, we let them know how the English elders would be coming to teach them next time, and how we would introduce them tomorrow at church. Then L--- started crying, saying how she wants us to teach them because she prayed for months and months to be able to talk to us and we finally showed up at the perfect time and everything feels so RIGHT even though they have only talked to us once.  It was obviously bittersweet because this is seriously what I have been fasting and praying for my ENTIRE mission-to find teach and baptize a family that will undoubtedly be sealed in the temple.  We expressed our love for them as well and how much we enjoyed teaching them, but tried to explain that the other elders are awesome and how it was best if they continued to be taught by English elders.  Even though they were crying, she just agreed and said whatever it takes, we know this is where God wants us to be.

 Two days later they came to conference, and we introduced them to Elder Gregory and Elder Gerrard, and they set up an appointment for later in the week.  They loved Stake Conference, and are literally the most prepared and elect family in the world!!  It is so awesome and we are so excited for Elder Gregory and Elder Gerrard to teach and baptize them!   Now we just have to find someone like them that speaks Spanish!!

Love,

Elder Parrish

Area: We worked really hard this week, and spent a lot of time working in both of the Oxnard 6th Ward elders' areas. Its often quite confusing to me how Elder Griffin and i can go on a blitz with with elders in their area for just a couple hours, and between the 4 of us get like 4-5 other lessons, 10-15 declares, and some really promising potential investigators... and then the rest of the week the numbers suffer terribly and the majority of their weekly totals on Sunday came from that 2 hour blitz we did. Then in the time that Elder Griffin and I do dedicate to our own area (only like a day and a half this week) we see a lot of success and still manage to have some of the highest numbers in the zone.  It occupies my mind a lot of the time how that’s even possible.  I know that numbers are not what's important in the work of salvation, and we do have a couple brand new missionaries and first time trainers, as well as some who are struggling personally right now, so I am trying to wrap my head around it to understand what we can do better as leaders to help them.  However I do believe our zone goals will help and am excited to see as the we get better week by week, line upon line.  But I wish I was just Elder Holland, so I could bring down some hell-fire and make them all work harder.

Companion:  Elder Griffin and I are doing great.  Our personalities are really similar and we have a lot of fun in the work.   We try not to talk about wrestling too much.  One thing we have been working on to establish Zion in our companionship, (found in the Teach With Unity section in Preach My Gospel) is to testify of what the other has said, and praying for one another while the other is speaking.  Elder griffin is really good at doing this and it reminds me to do it as well.

Testimony:  So we were pretty down yesterday after none of our investigators came to church. Especially on in particular promised us every day this week she would be there... a feeling we're all too familiar with as missionaries.  We have like 9 people who are all soooo close, but for some reason there are these itty bitty things holding them back.  During sacrament, I looked into my bag, and pulled out a paper we had our ward mission leader print out for us that we were actually going to give to M--- when she came to church.  It was a poem called "The Race."  It’s about a little boy running a race.  He’s in the lead and all excited to make his dad proud, and then he trips.  But gets up because of the urgent look on his father's face, and even though he wants to quit, he gets up because he just doesn’t want to disappoint his dad.  Then he ends up falling a couple more times and he loses.   It’s a really good poem. Look it up.  (See Below)  I have read it a few times, but I decided to read it again for some reason during the sacrament.  I found comfort in it and I promised God to get up and keep running.  After Sacrament Meeting, I looked to the back of the room and there were our investigators V--- and M-- with 2 of their children who had snuck in without us noticing.  It felt so good.  And they had a great experience at church.  It was their 3rd time coming.  Even though I don’t always know why, I do know everything happens for a reason, and there is always next week.  Just like the Lord is always there with open arms every time I repent and renew my covenants during the sacrament, the Lord is always there for our investigators and will be welcoming them with open arms just the same when they walk into church next Sunday.

Service:  The FoodShare volunteer coordinator said in front of everyone, “There's something about these guys... after all my years of working with the LDS groups, I still can’t figure out what it is." One of these times, we are going to get the opportunity where we can answer that :)

Love,

Elder Parrish

Mission Leader Conference Nov. 2014

All the Zone Leaders

I've been eating my veggies every day, but for some reason I think I'm shrinking. 

  

Well, it’s been a year since Thatcher and I got to see each other last at a transfer meeting, because one of us would always go when the other stayed in their area. But finally now that I’m zone leader I get to go to all the transfers :) so we got to see each other on Tuesday and sat together and got to chat for quite a bit about everything!! Oh man, it was so much fun.  I got this strange feeling that we’re going to be companions someday doing zebra work. That would be so sweet. 

My new (old) companion is Elder Griffin again!  We were together last Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, so we are hoping we can pull a repeat! So far, it’s been so much fun!  We have been crazy busy with administrative stuff, and staying up late every night talking missionaries out of going home and all their other problems, but it’s awesome!  We had to come up with zone goals, which was quite the process trying to come up with good ones, but finally got it all settled and we are super excited.  We do 3 goals that all the missionaries will do this transfer, and 3 more that Elder Griffin and I will do personally, and others for how we will establish Zion in our companionship, etc.  

For one of them, all the missionaries will be accepting the invitation from Elder Neil L Andersen last conference to record the testimony of the prophet Joseph Smith in their own voices, and listen to it a few times a week to obtain a more divine witness of the prophet Joseph.  Maddie and Marshall, you should do the same!  There you go, I planned next Monday’s FHE for you.

SEE: www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/10/joseph-smith?lang=eng

We went by to see our investigator, A---- on Tuesday, and followed up on his reading in the Book of Mormon.  He said yes he had read, so we asked if he prayed.  He said yes he prayed, so we asked if he got an answer.  He said yes he got an answer, and that he knows the Book of Mormon is true. Then just like that, our elated spirits came crashing down when he said he got an answer that its true, but then he had a second thought come to him... and he said nope I’m Catholic and can’t change... Man, if I had a dime for every time I’ve heard that one... so we had a little bit of a heart to heart and bore our testimonies and came out of there with a return appointment for 2 days later. We went in, expounded on the apostasy and restoration, and what it truly means if the Book of Mormon is true, and recommitted him to read and pray. True conversion isn’t something I can teach these people. In fact, I can’t teach anything -the Spirit is the only true teacher.  I’m glad to hear that you have been studying Preach My Gospel.  I really know that it is the way we are supposed to teach.  By following the principles in Preach My Gospel, we can create an environment where spirit can communicate with spirit, and we are simply along for the ride.  Please pray for A---- We promised him that his first answer was indeed true and recommitted him to keep reading and praying and have a follow up appointment tomorrow!

Church was awesome, like always. It was the primary program. A couple from the Santa Barbara branch showed up.  You should have seen their faces when they saw Elder Griffin and I together again.  They were so confused. haha. He was our ward mission leader up there, so I gave him a hard time and squeezed out some referrals of people he knows here in the “nard.” (That’s what they call Oxnard).    Our investigator, M--- came to church! She’s golden.  Hopefully, she will be baptized soon.  Also, a less active family we’ve been working with came too.  Another less active guy we reactivated last transfer is doing really well and is now teaching the high priests and doing a lot of missionary work for us! He’s awesome.

OH AND GUESS WHAT!!  Y--, the little lady I baptized in Carpinteria recently got a calling in the Relief Society presidency!!  She has only been a member for 6 months! It’s tough a lot of times for me to be in California, and realize that stuff like this happens all the time in other missions besides Cali, but just her alone makes the whole thing worth it! :)

Love you all,

Elder Parrish.

Transfers are this week. Elder Bryson is awesome, but he is off to go be assistant to the mission president! I’m staying in Oxnard with Elder GRIFFIN!! He was my follow up trainer back in Santa Barbara. I’m pumped :)) Now we actually know Spanish and are going to do everything right we should have known back in SB. I loved Elder Bryson. We never had one disagreement the whole transfer. It was so much fun and hard work.

I’m so excited to stay in Oxnard. We are on the verge of so many good things. We are making a lot of progress with our investigator, A----. This week we were able to leave him commitments from the Book of Mormon, where as when we started it was only from the Bible, and then from the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and now only the Book of Mormon. He is progressing great. We have 2 appointments set up with him this week, so we really need to get members there to help him really catch the fire and get him to attend the baptismal service in our district this weekend. We know it will open so many doors for A--- to realize this is where he needs to be.

The zone activity was a huge success! We planned it out like crazy. We conquered a bunch of cities and at the end we talked our President Felix and bishop into dressing up as Lamanites and then I owned everyone at dodgeball. It was the best :) This week we went to the Camino Del Sol park here in Oxnard with some sidewalk chalk and drew a giant Plan of Salvation diagram. We were able to have a couple good lessons as we walked people through, and even found a less active lady who wanted to start coming back to church! It was a great finding tool and we were super excited to go walk people through for a little bit each day and use it for the whole week, but then it rained the next day for the first time in six months and ruined our drawing. We need the rain, though, so it’s ok :) I’m really excited for this next transfer with Elder Griffin and the Zone and we are going to baptize in November!

Elder Bryson is the best. I’ve absolutely loved every minute of serving with and learning from him these short six weeks. His testimony is so strong and he can be so effective in everything he does. He has great mental strength and self discipline. He has a lot of life experiences at his young age, and because of it is very mature and spiritually mature as well. I know he’s going to be great in the Ventura Camarillo YSA with Elder Wallace and Elder Lee. He is very capable of doing anything the Lord asks of him.

I know that the Jesus Christ is my Savior and that He lives. I know the Book of Mormon contains the fullness of Jesus Christ's Gospel, and I know that Preach My Gospel is the way the Lord wants me to share it. This past week and especially this next transfer, I have goals to have more effective studies. I really want to give my best efforts to my investigators and really focus on receiving revelation for them in my morning studies. and simply enough, I know that really these 3 things: the Savior, the Book of Mormon, and Preach My Gospel are where I need to dedicate my studies and how I will learn God's will for my investigators.

For service this week, we did 2 hours for FoodShare! They love us and are starting to realize how dependable and effective we are! They have more and more things they are starting to trust us with.

Love, Elder Parrish******

Our investigators are all coming along slowly but surely. We just need to get them all coming to church more regularly so they can really progress more. A--- is a new investigator we have been working with.  He’s super laid back guy who has a very strong Catholic background and Virgin Mary statues and murals all over his home.  At first he was pretty firm with only wanting to study the Bible and was very willing to let us come over and read the Bible with him, but said he wasn’t open to the Book of Mormon at all.  Just 3 short weeks later, as we were having a Bible class, we were studying the baptism of Jesus Christ and also the atonement in Matthew.  We had the opportunity to bring up the Book of Mormon and testify of its divine witness of Jesus Christ. The Spirit was there, so we invited him to read it and committed him to baptism once he receives an answer that it’s true. It was awesome. He changed after that, and then asked us if we could start coming over 2 times a week instead of only once. It was really neat.

I was fortunate enough to go on exchanges with Elder Lee on Thursday, who is an Assistant to President. It was such an amazing day. We attended a powerful District meeting with Elder Sorensen and the 6th Ward district, and then had a really successful day after that. This was the first time I have really ever gotten to work or talk to Elder Lee, and it was a lot of fun.  I think Elder Lee is the most Christlike missionary ever. You can just tell everything he says and does reflects his conversion and commitment to follow our Savior, Jesus Christ. He's so effective in every aspect of the work and is a really great example to me and to the whole mission.

I also had the opportunity to go on exchanges with Elder Sorensen on Saturday. He is a really good district leader and takes his assignment serious. He really loves and cares about his district. Elder Sorensen was my first companion when I was a district leader and Elder Bryson’s companion when he was a district leader before that, so he is very familiar with his responsibilities and just does a great job all around. For our goals on the exchange, we wanted to work on helping getting people to church. Lately, I been trying to be creative and get missionaries out of our complacent routines and come up with different ways of finding.  So we were trying to think "outside the box" way to get people to church, and we had the idea to make a flyer, just an invitation to come and worship with us this Sunday with the address of the church and a picture of Jesus Christ on it.  We passed them out to EVERYONE hoping that maybe one person would come to church from it. We got literally one million declarations out of it and a lot of people who said they would come. Even though nobody did, it was a lot of fun and it was good to get out of our normal routine way of declaring, and just walk up to people with an excited invitation to come to church with us tomorrow! We did get some return appointments and we felt really good about it at the end of the day.  I think with some more practice and experience we could really have some powerful lessons about church and the importance of keeping the Sabbath day holy even in declare settings. Elder Sorensen is really good at testifying to everyone of Jesus Christ and of the restoration. His Spanish is so good.  He was good 6 months ago when I was his companion in Carpinteria, but I can’t believe how much he has improved since then. He has worked really hard on speaking Spanish all the time and I think he has far surpassed me with his language skills. I know my competitive spirit will start studying harder now because of it.

My companion, Elder Bryson is amazing.  I love picking his brain on all sorts of gospel subjects.  He always has a unique perspective on things I don’t think of.  We have worked really hard to prepare the zone activity today to reenact the stripling warriors with our mission president dressed as a Lamanite and we are really excited for it. (see more pix below)  I can’t believe it’s already week 6, it all goes so fast.

My testimony of the Atonement and of Grace have increased this week.  I love the definition of grace in the Bible Dictionary.  (https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bd/grace?lang=eng&letter=g)  I love the enabling power of the atonement, and that it’s not just for the bad to become better, but also for those who are doing to do more. 

We did 9 hours of service this week.  The more we do, the more opportunities come up to do more!

Favorite scripture: Ephesians 6:12 "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, 

against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Love, Elder Parrish ******

The final battle of the scriptural journey.  The goal was to knock down the cardboard structure while not getting hit by the ball.  This was dodge ball at its finest.  

       

I went to the temple on Tuesday.  It was sweet.  We went with our bishop.  He drives like he's Travis Pastrana or something.  It was the best.  He was getting ticked because of all the traffic, so he decided to take a short cut through all the ritzy neighborhoods and we ended up going through Bel Air (I thought I saw the Fresh Prince) and Beverly Hills and all the other rich places and then down to Rodeo drive and all the other famous streets and stores that look just exactly the same as they do on the Playstation in the TonyHawk game.  I think he did it on purpose just so he could teach us how to be rich people.  

He was gonna take us to eat at the Belvedere Hotel or something like that, which I guess is the most ridiculous famous rich people place ever, but we didn’t have time (thank goodness).  He took us to the 4 Seasons Hotel in Westlake instead... parking lot full of Ferraris and Lamborghinis and we get valet parking and everything.  

Then we go sit down and I eat the best tasting small portioned meal I ever had with a bunch of disgustingly rich people who think they’re famous.  It was interesting, but really fun. I can’t decide if I want to be rich someday, or enjoy the simple things in life. Bishop’s awesome.

But anyways... the temple! I think the greatest thing the Temple symbolizes for me is Love.

Because God loves us, he’s given us our families. Because he loves us, he sent his son to die for us.  Because he loves us, he has given us prophets to teach us the gospel and show us how to be happy in our families. Because he loves us, he has given us a holy house of prayer where we can go to learn and be instructed. He’s given it to us as his children and he’s given it to us for our families, so that we can be united eternally and live with those we love forever.  I’m so grateful for my parents and family.  I know we will be together forever.   And I know if we truly love God, then we need to carry that love over into every aspect and relationship of our lives, especially as missionaries- our interactions with people may be the closest they will ever be to Jesus Christ, so nothing but the highest level of charity and love should be expected.  It’s so true that no one can assist in this work except he be full of love. 

We had a really successful Family Home Evening on Monday night with a few families that came and it went really well.  Elder Bryson and I taught the lesson on the importance of prophets and everybody really enjoyed it.  We managed to have it at the home of a less active member and 2 other active families came and 2 other less actives came as well, so it was a really good turn-out.  One of them was M----, who has been less active for the better part of the last year and we visited him about 3 weeks ago.  All we did was invite him to come back and that was all it took. He has come every week since, attended FHE, and told us to call him anytime to go to lessons!  There truly are our brothers and sister out there waiting to come back, and all they need is just a simple invitation and a warm smile at church.

We did 4 hours of service this week.  A lot of it was for FoodShare.  We planted trees and helped in the garden for a couple hours, and then we helped relabel at least a thousand boxes of frozen macaroni and cheese. It was great!

Love, Elder Parrish******

Mission Leaders Conference

And Breakfast

It sounds like you all are busy as always with church, sports, school and work. How grateful I am that I get to dedicate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to the Lord, and not have to worry about anything else!  It’s such a blessing!

 We had a crazy busy week with MLC and Zone meeting and exchanges, we really only had one full day to proselyte, but we still managed to have the same numbers for the week somehow. It’s crazy how much the Lord blesses us for all the time we spend helping out our zone, but it was super good and we saw a lot of miracles like always!

Our new investigator, R--- is really solid and we had an awesome first lesson with her reading Alma 32.  She related to the seed of faith perfectly because she works at a nonprofit farming organization and really appreciated the analogy of faith and the seed. She is totally a Mormon already, just doesn’t know it yet. :)  She seriously is so prepared. We had an amazing lesson with M---, as well, one of the best of my mission. One of our goals is to have the Holy Ghost as our senior companion, and I know that the whole lesson was definitely guided entirely by the Spirit.  We got right down to what her real need was and were able to teach and testify to her about the atonement.  We even shared with her the poem, "The Race" that Pres. Felix read in transfer meeting a few weeks ago about a boy who keeps falling down but gets up every time and finishes the race. It was really powerful and she finally just got it. Something clicked at the end, and she just had that ah-hah moment where she realized how much God loves her and how her relationship with her earthly father does not represent her relationship with her Heavenly Father and that she doesn’t need to be perfect before she can go to him and say sorry and ask for forgiveness. She learned that repentance is an everyday-all the time means to an end, not merely the end alone. It was really powerful. She will be baptized soon.

I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that his atonement was truly infinite, that He is the master potter and we need to turn our lives over to him to be refined, refined and refined again. I know that he isn’t concerned with why the lost sheep left the ninety and nine, but only concerned with bringing him back. I know that the key to our progression in this life is getting up one more time than we fall. Through him we can be changed permanently.

 I think I’ve said this before, but Elder Bryson really is a never ending fountain of knowledge.  We have a lot of really cool gospel discussions and I learn so much from him. He gets the Gospel. He understands that it is simple and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel.  We just need to follow the Spirit.  I really love and respect that. We have been talking a lot about the needs of our missionaries in the zone, and trying to come up with a zone activity to help us all use the atonement to get out of our complacency.

We offered 2 hours of service at FoodShare again this week and it was a lot of fun.  They were having an event of some sort, so we found out we were going to get to help set up tables and chairs.... we just looked at each other and smiled, because we knew that these people were about to learn how incredibly fast and efficient Mormons happen to be at setting up tables and chairs. :) 

I got to go on exchanges with Elder Juan Bautista, who I was comps with for a couple weeks back in Fillmore, and randomly we ran into one of our old investigators from Fillmore here in Oxnard! It was way cool and way funny how we were both together for it. 

Love, Elder Parrish******