Newspaper Hat & Roberto Oviedo - September 24, 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been a good, interesting week. Wednesday we had transfers, so Tuesday night we went around and said a whole bunch of just-in-case goodbyes. It was really heart wrenching.

We have actually started to work with Ezequiel's entire family so we went to have a little Family Home Evening with them and take pictures and say our goodbyes. We even got Ezequiel to smile for us (he is much cuter when he smiles)! In our lesson we were also able to set baptismal dates with his mom (Raquel), his sister (Belen) and his little brother (Eduardo)! So we are working hard with them so that they can prepare for their baptisms.

Then we went to visit Lucas and his family. And then we went to our investigator Sandra´s house and ALL of her kids and all of the neighbor’s kids (her nieces/nephews/relatives) came over and we took pictures and made a video of all of them saying goodbye and they all started crying and then we all started crying and it was just a whole HUGE bittersweet mess of feelings!

We were pretty positive that Hermana Medina was going to be transferred to Colombia because, according to her contacts in Buenos Aires, everything is ready for her to go. But then we found out that she is NOT going to Colombia. At least, not yet. And we are together again for another transfer. So the rest of this week as we have passed by to visit people, we have heard lots of great sighs of relief and lots of exclamations of "you´re still together!"

I am excited to be here at least a few more weeks with Hermana Medina (it is possible she will be called to Colombia mid-transfer. NOOOO!). She is hilarious and we have a lot of fun joking together, learning English, inventing raps, making newspaper hats (do not worry family! I have top quality sun protection!), and dreaming of one day being on a popular radio/television show here: "The Roberto Oviedo Show" (well, actually it’s called, "El SHOW de ROBERTO OVIEDO!") The other day we passed by the radio station and decided to try to talk to someone to see if we could visit one P-Day and see how the radio works--and who should come out to talk to us but Roberto Oviedo himself!!! He showed us inside and showed us all his posters and trophies and all the old VHS copies of his show (30 years running) and we invited him to our baptism. It was an amazing moment. Now we joke all the time about one day making it onto his show (as far as we can tell it mainly features brassy, latin-y bands and exotic-ish dancers. but we are thinking we can change it up a little!)

This week we taught seminary one night and, oh boy, it was a DISASTER. We love them, but these youth from our branch are really hard to handle. We were teaching about the book of Proverbs and we only made it through 1/10 of the lesson.

Hna Medina takes a lot of short little videos and I thought I´d try sending one this week. The video I am attaching is from when we were waiting at the bus stop on our way to teach seminary. we had NO IDEA what was in store for us. It is half in Spanish and half in English--so for those of you who speak both you will understand it ALL. For those of you who speak only English, sorry! You´ll understand the first part. There is also ONE word in Guaraní--a word used commonly here in Formosa--"mitaii!" it means "kids."

Sorry, this week my email is all over the place. I am going to send a whole bunch of random pictures too from these last couple weeks to match the random tone of my email. Sometimes we make giant fires and sometimes I like to hold guitars. I love you all!

Keep keeping on.

Hermana Parker

Hope & Despair – September 17, 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

I want to write a little bit about hope and despair and how I have experienced both of these feelings on my mission, and specifically, this week.

I will start with despair. In Preach My Gospel it talks about a cycle that starts with losing hope and becoming discouraged. Discouragement leads to weakened faith. Weakened faith leads to lower expectations, decreased effort, weakened desires and more difficulty in feeling and following the spirit. This cycle, as described in Preach My Gospel, has really impacted me on my mission. Sometimes it seems easiest to just give in to discouragement, but I always try to remember that doing so will weaken my faith. And, if I make an effort, and pray to avoid discouragement, that I can hopefully begin to put into action an opposite cycle--one that starts with hope, leads to a strengthened faith, optimism, greater desires and so on. There is a quote from a talk by Chieko Okazaki that I just love: "Sisters, I testify that the forces of life are always stronger than the forces of death. If we choose, if we even desire to choose, if we even hope for the desire to choose, we set in motion powerful forces for life that are led by Jesus Christ himself. He responds to those tender tendrils of crippled life with the force and energy that will bring them to flowering. Listen to these promises of love and yearning desire for us. Feel the hope they bring that with Him we can overcome the world."

I have to admit, that sometimes on my mission I encounter such tragic situations that I start to despair. A lot of it has to do with extreme poverty, but the greatest tragedies of all that I have seen have to do with sin--hatred, anger, violence, abuse, rape, addiction, neglect. I have seen these things all throughout my mission, and of course I saw them before my mission too, but for some reason they really have been weighing on me here in my new area in Formosa. Often we go to visit people and we hear such awful, heartwrenching stories, that it is hard to leave these lessons with a brightness of hope and an optimistic spirit. Often I feel a little helpless or powerless when the powers of darkness seem to be so strong and so deeply rooted in homes, families and even communities around me. How can I possibly make a difference when these things have become so widespread and accepted that they begin to seem inevitable? This week my companion and I have walked out of houses and felt to weep for the things we saw and heard. We have poured out our hearts in prayer for some of the people here in our branch. But sometimes, sometimes, they feel a little bit like the prayers of the prophet Mormon at the end of the Book of Mormon for his people that are "without faith" (see Mormon 3).

Still, now I want to write a little about hope. Even in the face of such tragedy, not always, but often, I do feel hope. I pray for hope and there are moments when feelings of hope come even when it should be impossible. My thoughts and impressions from the rededication of the Buenos Aires Temple were erased last week, but I wanted to share that there in the rededication I felt an incredible brightness of hope. I felt the certainty that light could overpower darkness and as sister Okazaki says that "the forces of life are always stronger than the forces of death." I know that purity and goodness are possible even in a world of darkness and corruption. This is my testimony of Jesus Christ and His restored gospel. I felt an incredible peace in the temple last weekend.

I also felt hope as I watched Lucas and Ezequiel enter the waters of baptism this weekend. It was a beautiful occasion even though the preparations (as usual) were a little stressful. I feel hope that, although each of them face very challenging circumstances in their respective families and homes, that maybe, just maybe, they will be the ones to make a difference in their families and communities. I have a perfect faith that if they persevere in applying the gospel principles we have taught, they will be able to have happy, successful lives, regardless of material circumstances. This I know, because I have seen it in the lives of wonderful, humble, faithful members here.

I am attaching a few photos. It was pretty much a miracle that Lucas´s dad showed up! And please excuse the grim expression of Ezequiel´s face. He really is a nice, happy, person--he just needs to learn how to smile in photos.

Well, that is all I have time to write for now. Transfers are tomorrow. It is getting harder to get Argentine visas and so they are not sending as many North Americans to our mission lately. Rumor is that this transfer there will be LOTS of changes, so I would like to say I will stay in the branch here in Parque, but I am not sure.

I love you all.

Hermana Parker

Lost - September 11, 2012

Dear Family and Friends,

What a week! I can´t even remember what we did most days, so I´m not sure what to tell you about them...one day just sort of blurred into the next. We are pretty busy working with two investigators who have a baptismal date for the 15th (i.e. this coming Saturday, i.e. Jared´s birthday! Happy birthday Jared!)

One is Ezequiel, he is 16, we found him because he has lots of friends in the church and has been attending seminary (a little background: they don´t have early morning seminary here in this stake. Instead they have it 3 nights a week from 7:30-8:30 PM. Lots of kids go that aren´t members, but, from my perspective it´s more as a social thing than anything else, because afterwards they play ping pong and soccer and hang out. We have tried visiting a lot of the non-member youth that go to seminary, but have only really seen progress with Ezequiel). He is pretty shy, and at first it was difficult for me to gauge how much he was learning or if he was really feeling anything when we had lessons with him, but these last few weeks we have had some great experiences. He has been reading everything we leave him, and will even sometimes read more on his own, he has the desire to be baptized and it has been tender and rewarding to strain to listen to his soft, whispered, but very sincere prayers.

Our other investigator is a 9 year old boy named Lucas. He is a riot! He is pure chaos! Every lesson with him is like a whirlwind. But he sure is a lot of fun, too. He was supposed to be baptized with his mom about a month ago but his dad (who is separated from the family) wasn´t fully on board and the previous sisters also felt that he lacked a little preparation and understanding. Still, he comes to church each week and he loves it and we continued visiting his family often because his mom and older brother are recent converts.

I wrote about 5 more paragraphs but then the window randomly shut down and I lost it all and now I have an angry, annoyed, devastated feeling in my stomach and I think I might cry. grrrr.

Basically, Lucas is funny. Our apartment almost caught on fire and we had the re-dedication of the Buenos Aires temple this weekend. It was great.

Sorry. I will write more next week.

Blah.

Hermana Parker