July 20, 2009

Dear Family,

Wow, what an interesting week! It has its up and downs but it’s good. But I have a story for you!

So I have always wanted to go to another church other than ours. So we were visiting a Less-active by the name of Sister Triggs. She doesn’t come to church because she has a handicapped daughter that has to go to the bathroom a lot and she can’t stay in one place for too long, so we come and visit her instead. We began to talk and she brought up the comment, “You know, I feel like the Mormons are going to have more people going to heaven than any other faith.” I then proceeded to ask her why this is. And she didn’t know, so we showed her something we call the “Cup demo”. It shows that our church is Jesus Christ’s church 2000 years ago. Then it clicked with her and it made sense and she was really happy. Then she told us that her daughter has a church that comes over and does services in a room in their house. About 7 to 10 people come to it. She wanted us to show her church the cup demo or basically the 1st lesson that we teach as missionaries. So that is when the fun began.

So, we went over the next day and they began with lunch. There were a lot of black ladies and one white lady. She said the blessing on the food. And there began the prayer talk. So we knew that it was going to be an interesting day. Then came to preaching my “sermon” as I would like to call it. :) I got in the room and there was a camcorder. So they were going to record me. What they are going to do with that tape, I don’t know. But it started off pretty well. I began talking about prophets and Jesus Christ. The people started to shout praises every once and a while. “Amen” “Thank you, Jesus” “Hallelujah” “Praise Him!” It was kind of hard not to laugh to be completely honest. Then I got to the part where I talked about Joseph Smith. Then the praises stopped. The spirit was really strong when I talked about Joseph Smith but they were so closed minded that they didn’t feel it. The main preacher of that congregation started to laugh at me. Not very nice. Then when I closed with my testimony, and said amen, they started to clap. Not a normal thing to do at a church service at least at ours.

Then the fun began. They started there church services. They began with a bunch of people singing solos. Then they had like a mini testimony meeting. I bore my testimony and got a couple “Amens”. Haha. Then they started singing again but this time they passed around an offering plate. We didn’t donate at first but then we felt bad because everyone else was donating so we decided to donate. Who knows where that money went, probably into the preacher’s pocket, but we will never know. Then the preacher got up and began her sermon. She read out of 1 Samuel talking about David and Goliath. It was pretty good but you could feel the spirit because she was yelling and everyone was constantly shouting praises, “Come on, come on, come on, tell us!” There was a lot of truth in her sermon. And I learned quite a bit. But the people there confuse the spirit with an adrenaline rush. Then she concluded her sermon. Then another preacher got up and she asked the congregation if anyone wanted to bring a problem to Jesus and to accept him into there lives to come forth. One black lady stood up and she got up. Then the preacher behind her got up and started to chant something along the lines of “Amen, Lord God, Jesus, Thank you, Amen” Etc. She just went on and on. Then the preacher in front of the lady that got up started to anoint her with Olive oil. She put it on her forehead and two palms on her hands. Then she hit her in the head and hit her in the feet and then told her to say something and then she was saved. Yes, it was that easy. Me and my companion had a hard time not laughing but we did respect them. We didn’t make fun of them. So at the end of it, one of the ladies accidently broke the camcorder holder and the preacher got really mad at her. She was like “I don’t believe that you broke this….” “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to.” “I don’t care, you still broke it….” So after this lady preacher had supposedly felt the spirit all of a sudden was really angry at this person.

You know, I didn’t write this to make fun of other religions. I hope you laughed because it was funny. But it really strengthened my testimony of our church and the doctrines that it teaches. They taught truth but they don’t have it all. I hope that the spirit may touch them one day.

Elder Cortez is a good missionary. He has been out for about 5 months. Things should go well with him!

This week, I have been out 1 year! It is amazing because it sure doesn’t feel like I have been out a year. Time is going too fast for me. I have enjoyed my time as a missionary thus far and serving the Lord. I will continue to do this for another year. I love my Lord and Savior and I am nothing with Him.

Sorry this was super long, but I had to tell it. Hope you enjoyed. We have a good week coming up and I am excited! Hope all is well back home. Thanks for the support and love you have given me.

Love,

Elder Parker

Pictures include: Elder Lyman’s wall of Mountain Dew. He really likes it. Elder Lyman and I. He is now in Monticello, AR.