Newsletter Week 68

Hello friends and family!
I hope you all had a great week, not a ton to talk about here. This
week was a crazy one. I had MLC, went on exchanges and had zone
meeting. So talk about crazy busy. Thursday was the first day I
actually had a full day working in my own area. Haha I have been
noticing a pattern I'm not a huge fan of.. So every week of MLC and
zone meeting I always get sick, haha I think it is due to the lack of
sleep.... -_-
But anyhow on to things of a but more importance, our investigator is
doing great for her baptismal date! We shared why we have commandments
and the Word of Wisdom with her, and she committed to try to live it,
but wasn't real convinced. So we are hoping to help her with that:)
We are still on the search for new investigators, but at least we now
have a few that are actually progressing:)
Can I just rant for a minute on how stinkin great Texas is! I
seriously love Houston so much.. If my heart wasn't so set in living
in Mantua, Utah... I might just consider living here. The people are
so incredible:) I love them so much:)
As many of you know, the great Texas Houston Mission lost one of her
Alumni's this week. Please keep the family of Sister Jeppson in your
prayers. <3
Well I'm not sure where the rest of the week went.... But that is all
that is coming to mind.
I love you all! Have. Great week. :)

One of the recent converts made us friendship bracelets.... My heart=full

Hermana Parslow

Newsletter Week 67

This week was so full of the spirit!
I have some big news.... Ready for it???
I SHOOK THE PRESIDENT OF THE QUOROM OF THE 12 APOSTLES HAND!!!!
He even told me "Buenos Dias" :D
I was literally so happy... I swear I could feel his testimony through
his hand. ;)
So we had a special missionary conference with him this Saturday, the
three Texas Houston Missions gathered together (all 700 of us) to hear
him. He talked to us for an hour and a half. It was the coolest thing,
when President Nelson spoke he spoke with such a surety of the things
of the gospel, that it felt impossible to be around him and not
believe too.
He was taking to us about the importance of family history work, and
he shared and experience he recently had. If you all remember his last
conference talk, he mentioned him performing heart surgery on the
little girl, the surgery was not a success and the little girl passed
away. Well a few years later the same parents brought their other
little girl with a similar heart problem for President Nelson to try
and perform a lifesaving operation. The little girl did not make it
either. He talked to us about the hardship that was for him and the
two little girls parents life. President Nelson than went on to tell
us that those two girls have recently visited him from the Spirit
World. They told him that they were not sealed to anyone. President
Nelson went on his way to help those two girls be sealed to their
parents. They got sealed this past November. Over 50 years since they
left this life.
He went on to tell us that there are so so so many people in the
spirit world wanting to be helped, and to have their ordinances done
for them, but they do not know how to get help.
We have the key, we can help them! He said something really funny too,
he said that they are very much alive and don't like to be called
dead.. Haha. Never thought of that:)
We also had stake conference on Sunday, and President Nelson spoke to
us all in Spanish! It was the cutest thing in the world! I love him so
much. He spoke to us about the how to have stronger more united
families. He said several things that I really liked, I'd like to
share a few:)
He taught that the Gospel does not replace parents. Taught that
parents should inspire their children, rather than control them. There
was something else I really liked, he said your standing at the bottom
of a ladder, you look up and see all these blessing at the top... Then
he said, blessings don't have feet.... But you do! :)
Well that was pretty much the highlight of my week:) life is super
good:) I love this Gospel, I love my mission.
Have a great week!

One of the missionaries drew this:)

Purple tongues after eating an entire package of blackberries... Yummy! :)

Love them sooo much! :)

Hermana Parslow

Newsletter Week 66

Hey y'all!
I hope that this week was a good one for ya:)
What a week we had here! To start of we had this awesome world wide
missionary conference. We met as an entire mission to watch it. We
received a lot of revelation on what we could do better. The theme was
"we teach repentance and baptize converts" which reminds me of
something I found in my studies today that says:

"When we bring people into the Church, we are not baptizing them into
the Church of a man, whether that man be Joseph Smith or Brigham Young
or Thomas S. Monson--revere those prophets as we do. And we are not
baptizing them into the Church of happy families or of the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir.
When we bring people into the Church, we baptize them in the name of
the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. In doing so, we are
leading them back to the presence of the Father through the ministry,
Atonement, and grace of His Son, with the influence of the Holy Ghost
guiding them to this goal. We must always keep uppermost in our minds
this preeminence of the Godhead as both means and end as we undertake
the work of salvation." Elder Holland

I really loved that! I sometimes feel that I am trying to sell the
church to people, showing them all the cool programs and organizations
the church offers, but really what we are offering is the way and the
path to eternal life through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This week we also went to the temple with a recent convert. Our
mission is starting this thing where every 4th Friday of the month the
temple is reserved for recent converts who are going to the temple for
the first time with their own family names. It was such a beautiful
night to be able to see so many recent converts there doing the work
of the lord. Their testimonies are so strong!

Also we had transfer calls last night... And guess what! I'm staying
in Jersey Village with Hermana Gayler! So that is fun:) haha this
place really feels pretty much like home, I have been serving with
most of these same members for like 8-9 months now:) haha so my
address is still:
10919 west rd. #414
Houston, TX 77064

Love y'all! Hope you have a great week:)

This morning eating breakfast with one of the wars members:)



Hermana Parslow

Newsletter Week 65

This week I learned "it's all about the attitude"
So the beginning of this weeks I'm gonna be honest things were not
going as planned.
There is an investigator we have been working so much with, praying a
fasting for, calling and helping with reading, literally doing
everything we can to help him with his testimony.
Well the whole time he has been struggling with something concerning
the law of chastity.
On Thursday night we went to our lesson with him, and he told us that
he wasn't going to be able to get baptized because he isn't willing to
change his lifestyle to live in harmony with the commandments. My
companion and I were literally heart broken. You could see in his eyes
that he had received his answer from God and that he knew the church
was true, but he wasn't willing to change to live in harmony with it.
We bore strong testimony to him that we know these thighs are true..
He said that he was still going to come to church, but he ignored our
texts and didn't come on Sunday. He is a good person, I really hope
one day he will accept the gospel.
So with the baptism of Fernanda, Victor and Theodora and then him
dropping us we are running super low on investigators, like really
low.
So after feeling super sad all day Thursday, we decided that on Friday
we weren't going to say anything that wasn't positive. And in our
prayers we couldn't ask for a blessing until we had thanked him for 4
things. And our day was great! We knocked so many doors! It was
great:) we honestly felt so happy.
Sunday we decided to do a gratitude fast. The lord blessed us so much.
My testimony grew so much on the power of gratitude. :) I love the
mission so much! I hope y'all have a great week.



Only in Texas do we see... On a nearly regular basis.. People riding
horses down the rode.
Our cute little district! + Suamy
Hermana Parslow

Newsletter Week 64

Hey! This week was such a crazy one!! Super stressful, but super good.
This Tuesday I had MLC, and we learned about how are mission is doing, and may I just say that I am in the best mission in the world!! He showed a graph of convert baptisms, and the mission is doing significantly better than it has done in the past 15 years! We have such an inspired Mission President. He really pushes us to be our best, but it is definitely worth it:)


Some exciting news is that President Russell M. Nelson is coming to our very own little Spanish Stake at the end of this month!!!!!! I am so excited:) We are the last pure Spanish speaking stake in the United States... so we are expecting something pretty big to be happening.


This week I was feeling pretty stressed, we had a baptism to plan, I had zone meeting to plan, I had to speak in Sacrament Meeting, annnd we had to teach Gospel Principles, on top of that were struggling getting many of our key indicator goals for the week, and honestly I was just feeling super duper stressed with all of it. I honestly just wanted to give up, but I decided to say a prayer for help instead. I felt prompted to open the scriptures and I opened up to Mosiah 24:14


"14 And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions.".


It gave me the comfort I needed, and the Lord did help me through it. I was able to teach and example role play in Zone Meeting, He helped me give the talk, we taught the class and we achieved many of the Key Indicator goals we were trying to reach. And Fernanda had a beautiful Baptism:)


I honestly love my mission so much. I have learned and grown more than I ever could have imagined. It has been the hardest, best thing of my life. I love the Hispanic people. I love Texas:) I love my Heavenly Father.


I hope you all have a great week!! :)
--

Love, Hermana Parslow

Newsletter Week 63

Hey yall:) This week flew by so fast! It was truly a week of miracles.
We have been working a lot with the unknown members (trying to find them and get to know them) of the ward and have seen so many miracles through it this week:) We have found that many of them really want to come back, they just need someone to reach out and invite them. This week, we had 3 new Less active families come to church, and 2 of them brought their neighbors!! It was such a miracle.
I hope yall had a very happy new years, and put some good new goals. I am excited for 2016 and all the things it brings:) And to grow even closer to Heavenly Father.
I went on exchanges this week, with one of the Hermanas in my zone that is still in training. I love being around the new missionaries and feeling of their excitement for the work:)
Well love yall, hope ya have a great week!

Pic: We made these flowers out of Jolly Ranchers with the Young Women in the ward and delivered them to our 15 year old investigator with them:)
--

Love, Hermana Parslow

Newsletter Week 62

Hey ya'll! :) I hope you had a very Merry Christmas.


This week we had the Baptism of Victor!! yay! It was definitely the highlight of the week:) He is so awesome and is going to be such a great member.



So I got to try my hand at making some homemade corn tortillas this weeks. The Hispanics use nothing but their hands.. at first they weren't very pretty... but I eventually got the hang of it.. and can now say that I am pretty good at making homemade tortillas, even the Hispanics approved :) haha


The other day one of our investigators had us over for Lunch and he pulled out these TINY peppers. Like the size of a seed. He told us to try one. The only thing is... we didn't know you weren't supposed to eat it plain! So right away our faces turned red and our eyes watered. It was SUPER spicy, I will most definitely not be eating those again any time soon.


We had the Christmas conference this past week! It was fun to have all of the missionaries in the whole mission gathered together. We never gather together with so many of us at the same time. We sang Christmas Carols, ate dinner, and watched the Nativity. There was a part called Christmas around the world where President Mortensen had the foreign missionaries talk about what Christmas is like in their countries, it was really interesting to hear missionaries from all over the world share their experiences.


I learned something really cool there that I wanted to share:)
So we all know the gifts that the three wise men brought:
Frankincense: used by those who were able to enter into the temple, it was used at the alter of sacrifice. When they burnt it it would emanate a sweet smell that would drift into the entire city. Which would draw and invite others to go to the temple.
Myrrh: Used in burials.
Gold: The finest metal that could be given.
Our Mission President went on to deepen our understanding about the symbolism behind each of these gifts, and how these are still the gifts that the Lords wise servants still give.
Frankincense: Represents sharing the sweetness of the gospel with others, and helping people find their way to the temple.
Myrrh: Is doing the work for the dead.(Family History/Temple Work)
Gold: Our very best efforts, doing all we can to keep the commandments and be faithful members of his church:)
I know as we love the savior we will strive to give him our best gifts!



Christmas Day was pretty good, we opened our presents, and my mom sent like this scripture chase thing, where on each gift there was a scripture written, and you had to look up the scripture and guess what the gift was. We had a blast. And we made Gingerbread Houses with our District:) It was really fun too, And then I got to talk to the family. It was so good to see them all:) I have truly been blessed with a great family:)


Then Christmas Day we went out to do some Missionary work, we ended up finding 2 new investigators! I am really excited to work with them, we went back to their house on Sunday:)
Christmas day we also got to have a lesson with some new investigators that we had found earlier in the week, they said the didn't have family here.. so they decided the invite us over:)


Well life is great!!! I love you all!! Hope you have a great week :)
Sorry this week's is so long... haha just had a ton to share:)

Newsletter week 61

Hey guys! I hope you have a very merry Christmas!
Things are going really good here, I got a new companion. She is the
cutest thing in the world! We get along great and work really hard
together... The only problem is that she also a gymnast.. So instead
of sleeping we stay up practicing gymnastics and seeing what we can
still do:) haha it is great fun:) but man we are tired....
This week has been a week of miracles! The investigator we have been
working with finally got an answer to her prayers! Heavenly Father
gave her a dream as an answer, and on Sunday she came up and told us
she received her answer and is ready to get baptized! My heart is
full:)
Victor is getting baptized this Saturday, his conversion has been a
long time coming, but he has trusted in his faith and gotten over his
doubts. God is good:)
We have a big week coming up, tomorrow I have a special training
meeting, Wednesday is our missionary Christmas conference, then
Christmas Eve... And then I GET TO TALK TO MY FAMILY!!! :) I am super
excited. Well I love you all, and hope you feel the Holy Spirit this
Christmas season:)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!:):)

Love this family!

Newsletter Week 60

Hey y'all! So I don't have very much time today, but thinks have been
so good here!
I feel so blessed to be able to see Belzazar baptize his son! He has
come so far in the past 5 months. Watching him baptize his son really
put a new definition of my joy being full. His life is so different
now.
Also Theodora entered into the waters of baptism! What a blessing! I
seriously feel like she is my 2nd grandma. She is super awesome:)
Transfers came this week, and I getting my new companion.
Love ya all! Have a great week.