February 9, 2009

Dear Family,

Hello hello! Another interesting week in the life of Elder Parker. This week was happy and sad! I shall explain.

We finally got the chance to finally teach someone, and his name his Morris Cline. Very big fellow but very honest with us and has expressed the desire to really want to learn more about the Book of Mormon. We taught him the first lesson about the Restoration and he seemed to enjoy it. So that is the only one we are working with currently.

The rest of the week has been filled with service. We cut down a lot of trees and yards. It was a lot of fun but a lot of hard work.

This weekend though, was a sad one. When I was with the zone leaders a couple of months ago, I got to know a family that Elder Gift had taught and baptized the mother of that family. The mother had a 3 year old son named Jonn-Luke. He was so crazy and funny. Unfortunately, he passed away last Sunday. The mother and son were in a trailer and the furnace caught on fire and the mother jumped out of the trailer and then tried to pull Jonn-Luke out of the trailer but she couldn't reach him so he passed out and died. Luckily, he didn't burn to death. So on Friday, they had an open viewing of the boy. It was sad to see him like that because it sure didn't look like him. He was a good boy and he will missed! Saturday was the actual funeral service. There were about 100 bikers there from the family. It was crazy. Then we followed everyone to the grave site and they buried him. Elder Gift actually dedicated the grave. That was a neat experience. Elder Gift took his death well. I am so grateful for the knowledge of the Plan of Salvation and I know that that boy is guaranteed salvation. I know that God is a loving God and that he has a plan for all of us. I love this gospel and I know it to be true.

Then on Sunday, they had work crews from Little Rock come up and help clean up Pocahontas. We had a quick Sacrament meeting. It was weird to see all the congregation in work clothes but we were doing service for the Lord. Then we worked the rest of the afternoon. Later that night, we went over to the Adams, a Less-active family and talked to them. They have a lot of daughters. All of them are Cade's age and they are cute, *Wink, Wink, Cade*. I told them about my little brother, Cade, and I also mentioned that he was single. :)

An update on the apartment, we got power on Thursday so we are warm again. Most of Pocahontas had power and everything is going back to normal, hurray. It will be nice to actually do normal missionary work. :)

I hope all is well with y'all. I pray for y'all constantly. Glad to hear y'all are doing just fine.

Love,

Elder Parker