April 20, 2009

Dear Family,

Wow, what a week! It's the end of transfer # 6. The start of transfer # 7. Lucky number 7 baby! 3 people out of our district are getting transferred: Elder Irwin, Elder Fowler and Elder Haver. You can see it in the picture included in this e-mail.

We got a baptism coming up for this Sunday for Kevin Cowles. It will be my first one out in the mission field! And I was there when the spirit told him what to do! That is always awesome! I am so excited for him. We will see him tonight!

So this week was pretty good and pretty sad so let me explain! On Tuesday night, we got a call from Mary Lowtharp (A less-active we were working with). She told us that her husband Steven (A non-member) wasn't ready for us yet. So I was sad by that but not too bad because we only met with him twice for a whole 2 transfers (12 weeks).

We got a call from President Drewes (the mission president) and gave us a referral of a 11 year old boy that needs to be baptized. He lives in Ash Flat, AR. It is about an hour away from Pocahontas so we are using a lot of miles but it's ok, we are just doing what President asked us. We set a date with the kid. His name is Nathan Hillard. The date is May 3, (Chad's B-day!, of course, I couldn't for that!) but we might need to move it back because we only have taught him once and we only go once a week, but we will see!

We are teaching Raymond (Husband of Flora Mansker. She is a less-active member. And Raymond is black, she is white.) at a more regular basis. He is really nice to us and understands what he is being taught. He just needs to continue to pray about it so he can get an answer.

We stopped at Will and Christies (Part-member family) and we decided to wait for Christie to be done with School because she knows that she needs to pray about it but she just doesn't have time because of school. She could easily pray but she is just using school as an excuse. We will give her time.

Sunday was the potluck. It was Mexican food. It was really good. But my companion got called the Devil! We saw a member last week and we stopped by his house. He wanted to read out of book of revelation and so he told Elder Hansen to get his bible for him. On top of his bible was a wooden box, so he picked up the box and set it somewhere else, and gave him his bible. Bro McLaughin, (the member) told us that that box was his wifes. Now, his wife passed away about 10 months ago. Now, Elder Hansen, thinking that it would be ok, to look into the box, proceeded to do so. There was nothing wrong with what he did because Bro McLaughlin told us about it so we thought we did nothing wrong. Anyway, yesterday, on Sunday, he told us that Elder Hansen was the devil and that he went through all of his wifes stuff and was just disrespectful. I know that Elder Hansen didn't do anything like that. Then he told us that we had no spirit with us. That bugged me. Now, keep in mind, he is really old and senile. Then he started to tell us bad things about the members in the branch. When it got to that point, I told him we needed to leave. He did not have a good spirit about him.

Anyway, it was an overall good week. Hurray for my first baptism. I am excited! I hope and pray it goes through! I love y'all. I pray for you constantly. Thank you for your love, support and prayers. They are much needed and appreciated!

Love,

Elder Parker

Pictures Included: Picture of our district, Picture of an A-track. I have never seen one of these. It was awesome, And some goats. Enjoy!