Letter from Resistencia Barrio 4 - 5 December 2011

Dear Friends and Family,

Transfers! This Tuesday night we got the news that Hermana Da Silva would be training again and that I would be transferred to Resistencia Barrio 4... as M1 (senior companion). Early the next morning we were on a bus to Resistencia--Hna. Da Silva to pick up her new companion, and me to meet my new companion and get to work here in the city.

It is quite a change and I am still adjusting. I am sure this came through in my emails, but I really did grow to love Goya (the place, the people, everything) with all my heart. I have realized even more forcefully how much I loved it now that I´ve had to leave. But! there are exciting things about working here in Barrio 4. First, Barrio 4 was Hna. Da Silva´s first area and she had a lot of tips and suggestions about this area and a list of people for me to visit. Second, I am still in a bit of shock that I am senior companion in my third transfer and I don´t feel at all prepared but Hna. Da Silva always said that it´s when you move up to M1 that you really start to grow and progress as a missionary, so i am looking forward to this as a growing opportunity!

Cons:

-No Hna. Da Silva. I am going to miss her. She was a lot of fun and an excellent trainer.
-Very confusing addresses. There are lots of apartment buildings and it is hard to find people.
-The record keeping was not very good in this area before I got here so we are basically starting from nothing.

Pros:

-I am now serving in a ward and not a branch. This means there is a good support system of members and well functioning programs (young mens, young womens, relief society, etc).
-Lunch with a different member every day!!
-Peanut Butter! (there is a Walmart here--which would not be a huge plus except for the fact that they sell peanut butter, so I am putting it on my list of pros).
-I am now VERY close to the mission office...which means I get my mail much faster.
-Hna. Griffeth! She is great. She´s from Lehi, Utah and she´s been here one transfer more than me. She was also trained by an "Uruguaya" and was in Formosa before she came here.

Okay. I better go. I will right more next week about my new experiences here in the city and I will send pictures!

I love you all.

Hna. Parker

Letter from Goya - 29 November 2011

Every Day is a Holiday!


Dear family and friends,

Yesterday was another holiday here in Argentina which means our P-day was pushed to Tuesday (today). I asked many many people what holiday we were celebrating but no one seemed to know. Juan, one of our recent converts (and a man so kind and constant and gentle and pure in his actions and intenions that I do not hesitate to say he is one of the best human beings I have ever met. he is a widower and lives with some nephews and a bunch of cats and he always makes us tortas fritas and smiles really big when he sees us or anyone from church and he is always one of the first to arrive at church every sunday and he also seems to come to every baptism and pays his tithing faithfully every single month although he doesn´t know how to read so he always asks for our help to fill out his name and the other information on the tithing slip) told me it was something to do with "Malvinas", but someone else told me very emphatically that it absolutely was not. Someone out there in the real world should do a little googling for me to let me know what holdiay we were celebrating so I can celebrate retroactively. I love celebrating. 

Anyways, all is well in Goya. Tonight we will find out what happens with transfers. I have not the slightest inkling about what might happen. President Heyman is known for making sort of crazy changes (including sending an elder to a very remote province in his very last transfer to be a zone leader). I´d love to stay with Hna. Da Silva for her last transfer in the mission (and for Christmas!) because we are working with a lot of great people and it would be sad to have to leave them. Also, we are just about to install air conditioning in our apartment, and to be honest, that is a major plus for staying in Goya as well. Anyways we hope everything stays the same but Hna. Da Silva and I are afraid that one of us will leave, so we have been making little preparations--visiting all the people we love and explaining to them about transfers, just in case. They give us NO time to go say goodbyes in my mission (they call us Tuesday night and we are usually on a bus for another city early Wednesday morning) so we have to say lots of just-in.case goodbyes. Lujan, who doesn´t have a phone, left us with the phone number of a neighbor who lives a few houses down so that we can call there and they can pass on the message to her if one of us leaves. Yesterday we also visited one of our favorite families with their 6 little children that live out in the countryside and brought each of the kids popsicles and took picture. I will let you all know what happens in my next email. It could be that everything will continue as normal. Or, if there are changes, I am sure it will only prove to be a new adventure. 

I would like to thank very much the anonymous sender of a small ziplock bag of peanut butter playdough. I recieved the envelope earlier this week and I loved the surprise! I can´t believe it made it all the way here in the regular Argentine mail without being intercepted or disgarded. But, anyways, I thought I would thank the not-so-anonymous sender (I know who you are!) and let them know it made it here safe and sound. And just in time! I was just down to the last spoonfuls of the peanut butter I got in my birthday package. 

This week some beautiful things happened. Many of my favorite moments as a missionary are sometimes hard to summarize or quantify. Sometimes it is a single image or sentence or a meaninful look. Yesterday, for example, as we approach Sandra´s little wooden house there was a moment, right before she looked up and noticed us approaching that we watched her sitting there unawares, on a bench in the sun, reading the book of mormon, her little naked baby Bruno at her side happily splashing in a makeshift pool she made for him from a stray bucket. When she saw us coming she smiled. "you´re reading!" we exclaimed. She nodded and said that Lucas (her two year old) was sleeping and Bruno was being so good and quiet that she thought she might as well take a moment to read. Anyways that moment: Sandra, sunshine, Book of Mormon in lap, Bruno smiling and spalshing. That moment is still shining brightly in my mind.

Well, that´s all I have time for today. There are "bigger" things that have happened this week but sometimes I like to write about the details. I think it´s these details that make life endlessly fascinating and rich and unpredictable and beautiful. 

Well, we are off to try a few more flavors in our favorite ice cream shop...you know, just in case. 

Love from Goya,

Hna. Parker 

Letter from Goya - 21 October 2011

Dear Family and Friends,


Happy Thanksgiving!

Today I celebrated Thanksgiving with my companion. After celebrating Halloween with our branch activity last month I decided I might as well celebrate every single American holiday I assumed I would miss as a missionary. Hna. Da Silva was excited about the idea so I went ahead and made Thanksgiving plans.

We only own three plates and three chairs, so we decided we could only really accomodate one dinner guest in our apartment. After some deliberation, I decided it would be nice to invite Aylen, a girl in the branch here who is about our same age and teaches seminary. She made for very nice company. It was a small celebration but a good one and I think we successfully captured the spirit of the holiday--eating a nice big meal and chatting about what we are grateful for. Hna. Da Silva will hit 17 months in the mission this week and she shared some very sweet thoughts about how grateful she has been for her mission and for all of her experiences as a missionary. As her time is growing short, and our second transfer together is almost over, we have been extra reflective this week and it has been nice to talk about all of her experiences and the things she has learned and a few of her goals for her last few weeks as a missionary. 


I have only been here for 3 months but I am also very grateful for this experience. I am learning things I am certain I could not have learned anywhere else. I am thankful for my companion. I am not sure if I have mentioned enough in my letters how great she is. I will try to make up for that now: Hna. Da Silva is GREAT, I really could not have asked for a better trainer. She is patient and fun and brave. She is an excellent teacher. She is great.
I am also thankful for family and friends whose love and support has been invaluable. I´d love to hear from more of you! Send me a letter sometime. I promise I will respond.

 Anyways all the Thanksgiving preparation and clean-up has left me with little time to write so I will have to leave it at that this week.

 An Extra Happy Breakfast Thanksgiving to all the believers! I will try to have a more elaborate breakfast than usual this coming Saturday but make sure you celebrate in my honor. Remember the poor starved peasants who had to eat the leftovers of the bourgeoisie for breakfast. This is their day.

Never Forget Your Imagination,

Hermana Parker

Letter from Goya - 14 November 2011

A Busy Week

Dear Family and Friends,

I know this sounds cliché but I can  hardly believe another week has passed. Besides a sluggish Wednesday (the weather was atrociously hot and sticky and I almost melted in a puddle of sweat and humidity) the days flew by. It seems to get really hot right before it rains and then the rain relieves us for a few days.

This week was full of tiny miracles. There were moments of frustration or exhaustion, but we would offer a prayer (sometimes aloud, sometimes silently) and push through and reach end the day feeling mostly happy and fulfilled. I am finding there is always some small moment of triumph even on the stickiest sweatiest most seemingly unproductive day.

Sundays are often our most hectic day because we have to get up extra early so we can get ready for church and make it out the door in time to go and find a whole bunch of investigators. It is a real struggle to get anyone to come to church for the first time and we find that they usually only make it when we go to their houses in person and walk with them to the chapel (or sometimes we have to catch a taxi). Obviously we can´t do this every week, but it is usually necessary the first week. So, lately, to help get more of our investigators to actually make it to church Hna. Da Silva and I have been dividing and conquering on Sunday mornings. Saturday night we call two women in the ward and ask them to come with us on splits and we each go with a different temporary companion to pick up a different set of investigators. This week it all paid off when we made it to church and found almost everyone we had invited had made it (this is not very common. there have been weeks where we went on splits and each went to get 3 different people and NO ONE ended up coming). I literally almost cried when I saw them all. It was a beautiful sight. Probably the best part was seeing Sandra (a recent convert, Lujan´s daughter) and her husband and her two boys walk into the chapel. Her husband has been struggling with some drug and alcohol problems and only recently decided that he wanted to turn his life around and quit the drugs and come to church and be a better husband and father.  We had an earthshaking sort of lesson with him a few days ago where he came to us, a little ashamed and  humbled, and with tears told us he needed a change, that he couldn´t keep doing what he has been doing. I know this sort of change is hard, and it might take some time, but I have faith in him. I really do. Especially after seeing him walk in to church with his wife and children. I don´t think I´ll ever forget that image.

Speaking of children, often there is a gaggle of children of investigators sprawled throughout the rows of seats around Hna Da Silva and I during Sacrament Meeting. I always bring little pieces of paper and colored pencils and Hna. Da Silva brings lollipops and we try our best to keep them quiet and occupied but it isn´t always easy. Usually I sing a line of a hymn, then congratulate a child on his drawing while trying to keep singing, then give another kid a colored pencil, then hand out a lollipop, then sing the last line of the hymn, then draw a dot-to-dot picture of Jesus, then try to tell some kids to fold their arms for a prayer, then congratulate another kid on his drawing, then look for another colored pencil for another kid, try to listen to a word or two from a talk, etc.

This Sunday I actually gave my first talk ever in Argentina and it went very well. I talked about our responsibilities as members of the church and as followers of Jesus Christ to care for and befriend other ward members. Retention is a BIG problem in this branch. We have no functioning home or visiting teaching program to speak of. But everyone is working very hard  to try to change this and to reach out and bring back people who have fallen away or been forgotten. I based my whole talk on the story of Peter--focusing especially on the scene in John 21 where the resurrected Christ appears on the shore as the disciples are fishing and tells them to cast the net on the other side of the ship and then he eats with them and tells Peter to "feed my sheep." I love this story. It has a special place in my heart.

Well, I know I said I´d give more details about the conference but I am out of time! Everyone should look up the story about the woman and the oil in 2 Kings 4:1-7. I had never heard it before and Sister Christofferson based her WHOLE talk on it. It is a beautiful metaphor about how the atonement of Jesus Christ and his gospel can help us to pay our debts and then some.

Have a blessed week!

Love,

Hna. Parker

Letter from Goya - 7 November 2011

Mission Conference

Dear Family and Friends,

It has been a pretty crazy week and I am going to keep this short. My entire zone traveled to Corrientes Friday night to spend the night in the apartments of the missionaries that live there so that we could wake up bright and early Saturday morning and travel the last 40 minutes to Resistencia for our special mission conference with Elder Christofferson.

We made it to Corrientes pretty late at night and slept on hard tile floor (there were only 2 beds and 6 sisters) in smothering heat. But my gift for sleeping really came in handy and I managed to sleep a good 4 or 5 hours despite the conditions. In the end, it was all more than worth it to get to meet and listen to an Apostle speak. We also got to listen to Sister Christofferson, and Elder and Sister Jensen (of the 70) and Elder and Sister Foster (of the area 70).

behind elbow on right

Next week I will share some things from the notes I took. For now I will leave you with my testimony. I am so thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know the atonement is real. For me, belief in Jesus Christ is unflinching, immovable faith in the good and in the power of goodness and light to overthrow darkness and sadness and destruction. I have seen this first hand in my short time in Argentina as I have seen the changes people experience when they choose to come to Jesus Christ. This belief pentrates to my very core and it makes me an optomistic person--I have hope in a better world through living the gospel. I am thankful to know that Gods speaks and leads His church today. I am thankful for a living prophet and apostles.

Until next week,

Hermana Parker

Letter from Goya - 31 October 2011

Freckles, Halloween, Baptism

Dear Friends and Family,

The first thing I would like to inform you of this week is that I now have freckles. Lots of them! On my face! I don´t think Hna. Da Silva finds this as remarkable as I do--but I really don´t think I have ever had so many face freckles before. It is all this sunshine! I tried to take a photo to show you but I am not sure how well you can see them.

find the freckles

Second, Happy Halloween! We celebrated with an activity in the church this past Friday. It was a lot of fun and I even got to dress up. This Halloween I was Little Red Riding Hood and I wore my red dress and bought a piece of red fabric to make my little cape/hood. I also managed to find a small wicker basket that I filled with rolls and apples and carried around as an accesory. Hna. Da Silva was going to be the Grandmother but in the end she didn´t find everything she needed in time so she changed her costume and the last minute and went as an Indian instead.  

Last and most importantly, our investigator Marcelo was baptized and confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ this weekend! We met him a few days before General Conference when we were walking past his house and randomly (or not so randomly) felt impressed to knock on his door. We told him about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and about how there is a Prophet and 12 Apostles today just as there were in the times of old and how he could listen to them speak, if he wanted, if he came with us to watch a session of conference that weekend. (Side note: this is the type of bold thing that I still can´t believe that I do as a missionary--especially when I think about how just a few months ago I was afraid to knock on my neighbors door to ask to borrow a bottle of ketchup. But when I step back and think about it, it is actually, truly, profoundly...cool, for lack of a better word.) I am consistently surprised and gratified that as I invite people to do things--to come to conference, to read the Book of Mormon, to pray, to exercise a little bit of faith, to try something new--that they actually, sometimes, DO IT. They let us in: to their homes, their lives, their hearts. Not everyone. But some people. And it amazes me how one moment I am knocking on someone´s door and the next thing I know I am sitting in widow´s bedroom singing her hymns or at the bedside of a sick child offering prayers of comfort and healing. It is unreal. And that is exactly how I would describe the experience of finding myself, only a few days after first meeting him, sitting beside Marcelo in the Sunday afternoon session of general conference listening to apostles speak and the tabernacle choir sing. And then, only weeks after that watching him enter into the waters of baptism to make covenants with our Heavenly Father and start on the pathway of discipleship.

I am happy. This weekend we travel to Resistencia to meet with Elder Christofferson. I am pretty excited.

That´s all for now.

Love,

Brooke

Letter fro Goya - 24 October 2011

"Familiarity Breeds Love"

Dear Family and Friends,

Transfers have come and gone and Hna. Silva and I are going strong for at least another 6 weeks in Goya just as I hoped. I am happy—we are working with some really great people and it would be a shame to have to leave them. I am starting to realize how 6 weeks is really not very long at all.

I am grateful for this opportunity that I have as a missionary to live in a specific city and really settle into my life here for longer than a passing moment. As a tourist or a traveler, who would ever think to come to Goya? This is not a tourist city—there is nothing particularly noteworthy in that respect. It is a small riverside city in northern Argentina. There is that saying “familiarity breeds contempt,” but that saying makes me mad. I don’t think it is true, or at least it shouldn’t be true if we are doing things right in our relationships with both people and places. I think familiarity should breed love and that for the most part the better we get to know people and places  the more we should love them. That is how I feel about Goya. I love the details. I love the little things I would never know or see if I were just passing through. I even love walking the same streets and seeing the same people and doing a lot of the same things every day, because it’s only then that I start to notice that even in what seems to be routine there is endless and fascinating and lovely variation. Maybe it is only when we have the routine that we can start to appreciate these small things.

We have visited Liliana dozens of times. The walk to her house is familiar. I have started to memorize the graffiti on her front door we have knocked and waited so many times (white-out names and phrases--surely the doing of one or more of her three rascally sons). We always greet each other in the same way, ask the same questions (“how are you? How is your week going?”). We sing, share a scripture, a thought, a prayer. Her son Tommy usually yells and slams doors and has to be wrangled or distracted or calmed. Her second son Agustin, greets us with a handshake and a gap-toothed smile. He usually is eating an apple and watching television, cutting off a single piece at a time with a small kitchen knife and Liliana usually yells at him to be careful and to please put the knife away. 

But then, there are differences. Last night, for example, it was cold and cloudy when we visited and Liliana´s voice was hoarse with a cough and she was rolling out frybread dough on the table with a glass cup and my boots were covered in mud but she told me not to worry about it and to come inside anyway. And then, before we left she disappeared into the kitchen and reemerged with two steaming pieces of fry bread and she smiled and told us “this should be good for a day like today.” And we thanked her and said goodbye, kissing each other’s cheeks. And the fry bread was almost too hot to hold in my bare hands and when we walked outside the streets were all abandoned because it was a Sunday evening and in Goya everyone is afraid of the rain. And I am not sure why something so simple and unremarkable was so wonderful to me, but how i savored that moment: walking through the empty streets, muddy boots, dark gray sky, steaming frybread in hand.

Here are some other precious, funny, quirky little details for you:

-Walking down Madariaga by the hospital we often pass an old man with only 3 or 4 teeth and when we see him he always, without fail, comes to greet us enthusiastically and tries to kiss Hna. Da Silva and she always, without fail, smiles and extends her arm firm and insistent and says “hello! As missionaries we greet with a handshake!” and his attempt to kiss her is foiled once more.

-Ducking under a barbed wire fence next to a horseracing track every time we go to visit Gustavo.

-There is a set of twin boys named Justo and Enrique. They are probably 11 or 12 years old and we run into them EVERYWHERE. Hna. Da Silva always enthusiastically yells out “Hola, Justo!!!” and 9 times out of 10 the boy shakes his head and yells “ENRIQUE!” and we continue on our way. We are starting to be able to tell them apart. Enrique is skinner and more serious. Justo is chubbier and a little warmer when he greets us. Sometimes we say the wrong name anyways just because it’s funny.

-Grido – the Baskin Robbins of Argentina has recently opened a new store half a block from our apartment. Hna. Da Silva and I are very please. Now we can keep relaxing all the time. 

-Hna. Da Silva love Christmas music. We probably sing at least one Christmas song a day. She also hates walking in straight lines because she says she feels like she’s not getting anywhere.  So we are always zigzagging through the streets. She loves to tell jokes. I love to translate her jokes into English because they don’t make as much sense but they sound funnier. Here is one for you:

Q: What do you call a yellow dot on top of a building?

A: A french fry committing suicide.

Well. I will leave you with that. I planned to tell you all about our investigator Marcelo and how he is incredible and he is going to get baptized next week and to share some thoughts from my scripture study but I am running out of time. I will tell you all about it next week.

I love you all! You should all send me a letter. I love getting paper mail.

Love,

Hna. Brooke  M. Parker

Letter from Goya - 17 October 2011

"Dogs and Mothers Day"

Dear family and friends,

Today I celebrate two months in my mission and the last P-day of my first transfer. Hna. Da Silva and I are pretty sure we are going to stay together but just in case we have been taking more pictures and today we decided to celebrate our first transfer together by buying lunch and eating it at this nice, peaceful park by the Parana River (“La Costanera”) and then going to eat ice cream.  It has been a long time since I last ate ice cream and it was delicious!

I was a little disappointed that the bathrooms in this ice cream shop would discriminate against women with 2 legs, but I just pretended I only had one leg like the woman in the sign and no one even noticed my fib.

I will let you know next week whether or not I am still here and whether or not I have a new companion. I´m hoping we will keep going strong here in Goya for at least one more transfer but I am prepared for anything.

Dogs

There are millions of dogs here in Goya. Many stray dogs and just as many not-stray dogs. Earlier this week it seemed that every single dog in the entire city wanted to attack us. At first we thought maybe it was my bright red dress that was inspiring such canine hatred (we were also wary of taking our usual shortcut through a cow pasture on this day, for fear that the bull would also attack me)—but the next day we realized it must be something else because I wore a much more subdued palette and they still pursued us. I am not sure what it was, but it seems to have passed and now we are only barked at and chased after a few times a day rather than constantly. 

With so many dogs we often come across some very interesting mixes. I am thinking about sending you a picture of my “dog of the week.” This week I came across a dog that actually made me laugh out loud because of its haircut. I hope you enjoy it the way i did. (picture pending)

Mother´s Day

This Sunday was mother´s day in Argentina and to celebrate we had a special activity to honor all the mothers this past Friday. It was a lot of work. The Relief Society President of the branch here planned the food but Hna. Da Silva and I planned everything else. We planned a spiritual thought using the scriptures in proverbs about virtuous women and talked about what it means to be a virtuous mother using examples from these scriptures. We also planned games –charades (loosely mother-themed. You knows words like “mother earth” and “Eve” and “Mary mother of Jesus” and “cradle), a game to quiz everyone´s knowledge of their own mother (her most prized possession, her favorite singer, her anniversary, etc) and finally we made a giant scavenger hunt (“the hunt for the lost diaper!” it was Hna. Da Silva´s idea and it ended up being pretty cute). At the beginning we announced that there was a lost diaper somewhere in the chapel and the first team to follow the clues, find it and bring it back to us would win a prize. We also baked a cake. And decorated the chapel. And helped another sister to make cards and little fake flowers to give to every mother.

Then we went to try to pick up investigators and walk with them to the chapel. When we went to look for Lujan, both of her adult daughters and all of the grandchildren were ready to come to the activity. It was quite a sight to see us parading through the streets (it is probably over two miles to the chapel) with an entourage of 9 small children. In the end, although we were exhausted, it was well worth the effort. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves immensely.

Losing Myself

Well, that´s all from me this week. I better go. At the end of my first transfer I am feeling much more comfortable with missionary work and with being a missionary. I have had times of homesickness or times where I have felt overwhelmed, but as I have prayed and studied the scriptures and asked for my Heavenly Father´s help I have been strengthened and I have found a lot of joy and meaning in my work here—even in small moments. I have especially tried to focus on forgetting myself and to focus all my thoughts and energies on the people I am serving here. In my spare time I have been writing people notes or planning creative ways to serve or help the people here (rather than writing letters or thinking about home) It really works!

Mark 8:35 “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”

Love from Argentina,

 Hna. Brooke Parker

Letter from Goya - 11 October 2011

"Mi Cumpleaños y la Día de la Raza"

Dear family and friends,

Yesterday was a holiday in Argentina (Día De La Raza--I am not quite sure what they are celebrating and neither did anyone I asked) so they switched our P-Day to Tuesday this week. Anytime there is a holiday on a Monday they switch our P-Day to Tuesday, so if you don´t hear from me one week on a Monday this could be why.

Anyways, I don´t have too much time to write this week but thank you to everyone who wrote me and thank you for the birthday greetings! I have lots of photos for you this week.

Vera family

My birthday was great. I really can´t complain. First, we celebrated with a pudding cake that Hermana Da Silva made for me in our district meeting on Tuesday. Then, Wednesday morning I woke up to a little birthday scavenger hunt that my companion made for me. There were 22 pieces of paper hidden around our apartment and after I found them all I put them together to discover a birthday message. I have attached the photo. It is a scripture from the gospel of Luke. All throughout the day Hna Da Silva told people it was my birthday and I got a lot of greetings and even a few cards. That night we went to have dinner with the Vera family and they made me a special meal and we ate cake (AGAIN) together. I definitely felt loved and taken care of. I have attached a photo of dinner at the Vera´s.

Well, I can´t get the pictures from my camera to load for some reason so I will just leave you with the one´s from Hna Da Silva´s camera. Although we work in some very urban areas we also have a lot of more rural areas with dirt roads and a lot of fields and cows and long stretches of country. I love walking out to visit families in the country. On this particular day I decided to join Brisa and Cynthia and take off my shoes as we walked to town. They were on their way to buy some soda for their family--we were on our way to go teach another lesson.

Another family we visit lives out in the country in a little one-room wooden shack. They have 7 small children and, as you can see, two parrots. The nice one is named Pepe and I always like to put him on my shoulder when we go to visit. The kids were SO excited to take pictures with us this day when we brought our cameras.

I have also attached a picture of my Zone outside our chapel after the Sunday sessions of conference. 

Goya Zone

And, to close, the biggest and best news I have this week is that Elder Christofferson is coming to visit my mission on November 5th!!!  ALL the missionaries in the entire mission are traveling to Resistencia to hear him speak! I am very excited.

I love you all. I will have more pictures and stories to tell next week.

Love,

Hna Brooke Parker

Letter from Goya - 3 October 2011

"General Conference and Other Frequently Asked Questions"
Dear Family and Friends,

bfsh

All is well here in Goya! This week we had our first day of real deadly, sticky, sweaty heat. It was very hard. But, thankfully the weather has turned more gentle and spring like once more. Today I bought a big floppy sun hat (bfsh) though so I will be prepared next time. Hna. Da Silva already has one.

My email today will be short but I will respond to a few questions.

1. How was conference?

Conference was hectic but good. On Saturday morning we went to the chapel with one of our less-active members who had never been to conference before and NO ONE was there, except one brother and the zone leaders. It turns out the satellite was broken. Slowly more people trickled in and we ended up cramming everyone into a back room to watch the session streaming from the internet on a small computer monitor. I didn´t get to watch most of this session because there was no room for the missionaries and we were all running around trying to fix the satellite so we could watch the next session on the big screen in the chapel. One elder was on the phone with salt lake for what felt like hours, reading off numbers and pressing buttons and doing all kinds of strange and nonsensical and elusive things to try to fix it. Later a bunch of elders climbed up the satellite tower to remove a bird’s nest and to clean it out in case that was the problem. It didn´t work. Then they piled a bunch of tables one on top of another as a substitute for a ladder and tried fiddling with the projector. Finally, the zone leaders went out and bought the longest ethernet cable I have ever seen in my life and ran the cable all down the hallway of the building and connected the projector in the chapel to the internet in the branch president’s office and by midway through the second session on Saturday we were in business.

Conference is not the same when it is dubbed over in Spanish. It is also not the same when you are worried about your investigators and whether they are bored and whether or not they understand. Although, thankfully, most of them are beautiful, honest souls who seemed to enjoy themselves and feel the spirit despite their boredom and general confusion.

Sadly, I missed President Uchtdorf’s talk. I hear it was excellent. I probably will not be able to watch it for another year and a half, which is sad. But at least I can read it in a few months when we get the Liahona. 

I cannot believe they are turning the Provo Tabernacle into a temple! I was shocked. That is so cool. Did anyone catch wind of that before they announced it? When will it be finished? I am excited to return to Provo and go to that temple. New favorite temple.

2. What do you eat?

milanesa

Good question! We do not have many meals with members here. I am not sure why. We are trying On Sundays we eat with the Vera family and on Wednesdays we eat with the Aranda family. I would say, in general, the food is not very delicious to me--but keep in mind I have not shared meals with very many people. So far I have eaten lots of fried battered meats (they have this thing called milanesa that people eat all the time which is a breaded meat) and fried potato things and empanadas and bland pastas. The milk and yogurt here is not very delicious either. It has a weird chemically taste. I have stopped drinking it. I also don´t really like the desserts here. The cakes are very sugary and moist and covered in caramel and the "alfajores"  (sandwich cookies with caramel in the middle) are crumbly and starchy and bland. Thankfully Sister Heyman makes some of the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever tasted and she gives them to us every time with meet with her.

alfajores

All the days that we do not have meal appointments we cook for ourselves. I actually don´t mind this because I like cooking and it means that I don´t have to eat very much meat and I can eat healthily. The fruits and vegetables here are very good and fresh. Lots of people grow them in their gardens and sell them at little corner markets all over the city. I make for myself pasta and vegetable soup and omelets and fruit smoothies (I found an immersion blender in a pile of old dirty broken stuff in my apartment! I fixed it up and now I use it all the time). I have also made crepes and french toast and hash browns. 

I am hopelessly, endlessly, tragically, desperately missing peanut butter. I would sell my left arm to get some good peanut butter.

Well, that´s all for this week. I will send more pictures and stories next week.

Love,

Hna. Brooke Parker

Letter from Goya - 26 September 2011

"The Friendly Drunkards always please me with saucy tales"

Dear Friends and Family,

Brooke's cobbler kitchen? 

All is well this week. Argentina celebrated the first day of spring this week, as well as "the day of the student" and about 6 other holidays (it seems) so classes were canceled at least half the days this week and everyone was out celebrating and playing the soccer. The weather is a mixed bag of cold windy cloudiness and hot blazing sunshine (with a generous helping of mosquitoes and other biting bugs--although so far my insect repellant has been working to ward them off). Spring is always a little fickle, but I love it. Flowers are blooming and things are growing and all around Goya there are Mulberry trees weighed down with dark plump mulberries, and I stop whenever I can to grab a few. The Vera family have a tree outside their house and they are always very amused by how much I love to eat them. One of these days I am going to make a mulberry cobbler.

This week I have noticed that missionary work can be sad. Or, rather, as a missionary I often hear and witness some very sad things. I feel acutely my baptismal covenant I made to "mourn with those that mourn." I think especially as sister missionaries people (especially women) learn to trust in us and  often want to unload some of the heaviness and sorrow in their hearts when we visit with them. They open up to us, pour out there souls to us and we listen and try as best we can to offer comfort and peace by talking about the Savior. This week we visited the daughter of a recent convert. She has 6 small children in a very small home out in the country. Her husband has a drinking problem and this week it has been getting worse. Another man we have been teaching finally opened up to tell us about how lonely he is. His wife left him 10 years ago. He has no children and he doesn´t feel any hope that he will ever find someone to love or share his life with. He feels depressed and finds it hard to motivate himself to make changes in his life when he has no one but himself to live for. Another sister spoke to us about her struggle and her anger with God, her anger with her father´s horrific death and her own inability to conceive and have children.

Brooke's bedroom

Although these things are painful to hear--sharing these moments with these people has also been very meaningful for me. I love them. I hurt for them. Every night I fill my prayers thinking about them and pleading for them to my Heavenly Father. Sometimes I feel acutely my own inability to help them or to offer words of wisdom or comfort and so I pray that God will help me to be able to say and do the things that they need.  I am SO young, and I have NO idea what it would be like to have to deal with these things myself-- still, I have  found power and truth as I have found small opportunities to bear a simple testimony about the atonement and invite them to put their faith and trust in He who really does understand.

Missionary work can be sad but it can also be extremely rewarding. Lujan´s grandchildren always come running to greet us when they see us walking down the road to their house, shouting "hermanas" and hugging us with so much force they almost knock us over. This week, one of the youngest grandchildren, Alejandro learned how to say "hermanas" and now he enthusiastically shouts with the rest when we visit (it is more like "manas! manas!"). It is so precious.

Now I will explain the title of my email. I brought my Shakespearean magnetic poetry with me on my mission and have been making sentences on our fridge here. The first sentence I made is the perfect introduction to the following story.

One of our investigators is a spirited 69 year-old man nick-named Peluza. Coincidentally, this was also the name of the dog we had when I lived in Chile. Usually this name is reserved for pets. We have no idea what his real name is. Everyone calls him Peluza.

Peluza stopped us in the street one day. He told us that he felt our hearts were speaking to one another. Or something similarly grand and poetic. He said he would like to listen to our message. Peluza is a recovering alcoholic and in our first meeting he shared with us about how God saved his life and helped him to stopped drinking. A few days later he invited Hermana Da Silva and I to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting as special guests. We agreed with the idea that it would be an interesting experience and a good way to find more people to teach.

Now I will set the scene: It is a Friday night in a tiny room tucked into the back corner of a Catholic church. There are AA Posters and slogans plastered all over the peeling yellow walls alongside  aging pictures of Saints and the virgin Mary, rosary beads and crucifixes. Three earnest, graying Argentine men--the entire branch of AA Goya--are gathered there and with an air of formality (although not a cold or a rigid formality, but a formality notably softened by the humble surroundings and warm spirits) they welcome us to the meeting and ask us to introduce ourselves and talk a little bit about what we do. We do so and they all listen with rapt attention and an occasional enthusiastic nod. When we are done, one by one they begin to wax poetic about how wonderful we are and what a beautiful work we are doing here in Goya. It almost felt like the leader of the group, Mario, was presenting us with a prepared speech as the other 2 men interjected at key moments proclaiming things like:

"You are here on a mission, a beautiful mission!"

"You come here to share the precious things of the soul!"

"What you are doing is SO important!"

"You are not here as a sacrifice, you are here for LOVE!"

"People don´t always listen to you! Sometimes people turn you away!"

"People here are stubborn, they are lazy. They have no idea what they are missing!"

magnetic poetry

Keep in mind that 2 of the 3 men had never met us before in their lives and that NONE of them are members of our church.  After several minutes going on like this, Mario whips out a piece of paper and says "now I have a few questions for you!" Then, reading from his paper he asks us to explain and define the atonement, Aaronic priesthood, the Melchizedek  priesthood and the apostasy. Surprised, we go through each of these terms and define them for him. When we finish he exclaims happily, and as if we had just passed a test, he presents us each with package of cookies. It was very bizarre. I guess he received a pamphlet about the restoration several months ago and wanted to see if we could explain some of the words in the pamphlet.

We ended out visit by singing to them Abide With Me Tis Eventide, and only when we finished did Peluza begin to laugh and talk about how funny it was to have two Mormon missionaries singing hymns in a Catholic church. In the end we ended up getting the phone numbers and addresses of every one of them and will be stopping by to teach them sometimes this week. 

To close, I have included pictures of my apartment (inserted above), so you have a better idea of what it looks like. This week I will be taking pictures of our area around Goya and will send them in my letter next week.

So far I haven´t received any letters from the office but getting mail is a slow business hear so i look forward to any communications that are still in transit! Please keep writing to me! I take time every Pday to write letters.

I love you all!

Hna Parker

Letter from Goya - 19 September 2011

Week Two!

Dear Family and Friends,

On Saturday I celebrated one month in my mission. I don´t know why but it feels like it has been much longer. Maybe because in that one month my life has changed so entirely.

My second week in Goya went well. It is actually still pretty cold here. For example today I am wearing my winter coat. But I know the heat is coming. This week I got to wear my rain boots and raincoat for the first time. It was quite an experience tromping around in mud and puddles all day long. People here don´t go outside if it is raining, and they don´t send their children to school. So we look pretty crazy out there braving the elements.

So much happens every week and we talk with so many people it is impossible to recount it all. Every morning we plan and pray and my planner and prayers are filled to the bursting with names. Names of people, wonderful people we have met or that we are teaching next to the time we are going to go visit them. It is incredible how these names, these people, in such a short time have filled my life and how much I already love them. I will share about just a few:

Adela: Adela is an eccentric and talkative woman that we (the missionaries, not me personally) have been teaching for several months. She is hesitant to get baptized until she has a very strong testimony, and I can respect that, but in the meantime she is coming to church and we are teaching her. She is extremely open and will share with you every single little detail about her life. She is also not fond of the United States and likes to launch into lengthy discourses on how we steal all of Argentina´s natural resources. Yesterday in church she informed me that she didn´t want to offend me but that the United States does not produce its own honey, and we steal all of the honey from Argentina. I told her that I know for a fact that we DO produce honey because there are people from my community that are beekeepers and sell honey. She did not believe me. So, I dropped it. It will be interesting to see what happens with her. She seems open to the church, and agrees wholeheartedly with most of the doctrine, but she is still looking for a stronger testimony and is also quite stubborn in some ways.

Matias: Matias is the young man we tracted into last week who is very bright and said he would love to learn more about the church. When we came back he was not there but had left us the brochure we had given him about The Restoration with the answers to all of the questions in the back written out perfectly. We left him a Book of Mormon and returned a few days later. He came out to talk to us and said he was very interested and had been investigating. He called his dad, the theologian and had a lengthy conversation with him about Mormons. He was very kind and said he didn´t want to be false with us and wanted for us to understand perfectly his current posture. He then launched into several questions and doubts concerning how Joseph Smith could have withstood the presence of God when he had learned his whole life that the presence of God was too bright and glorious for any mere mortal to withstand. He asked questions about the origin of the Book of Mormon and brought up the scripture in Revelations about not "adding or subtracting" from the word. He did with an openness and a kindness that was visible and it was not like he was arguing but simply asking questions. When we said we would love to have a more formal lesson with him he agreed. Hermana Da Silva said he is the first person in her 15 months in the mission that she has found that is like this. His intelligence and grace is astounding. I only hope I will have the words to respond to his sincere questions. I told him I might write out some responses (in Spanish) so I have more time to think and respond thoroughly. We are meeting with him again tomorrow.

Juan: Juan is the most adorable man I have ever met. In stark contrast with Matias he cannot read, although I think this is because no one ever taught him and not because he is not able to learn. Sometimes he opens the hymn book to the wrong page and pretends to be following along when we sing. I am not sure if he realizes that anyone notices. His wife died many years ago and he lives alone. He was baptized maybe 3 weeks before I got here. He is the purest most earnest person I think I have ever met. He is a recent convert and probably already one of the most faithful in attendance. On Sunday he brought Hermana Da Silva and I this special kind of bread that he wanted me to try.

The Vera Family: Another family of recent converts. They are stellar. They are so strong. They do everything for the missionaries. Feed us lunch, wash our clothes and the oldest daughter Maria Jose, who is 13, goes out to teach with Hermana Da Silva and I on a regular basis. They were baptized last Christmas and are going to the temple to be sealed as a family in a few months.

We had a wonderful Zone Conference in Resistencia this past Thursday. Elder Foster an area authority came to speak with us and he offered us some great counsel. He said that he appreciated the focus and the success we have with baptisms in our mission but that we needed to take the next step. He quoted in Alma 4 where it says "And they began to establish the church more fully; yea, and many were baptized in the waters of Sidon and were joined to the church of God." He said that our job now is to "establish the church more fully." That we should not leave an area counting how many baptisms we have had and count that as success, but instead leave thinking "is the church (branch, ward) stronger for my work" and if the answer is "no" than something is wrong. I loved this because focusing purely on statistics or quantitative data is often misleading. The branch here is struggling in many ways and I really agree that we need to take a more holistic approach than just trying to find new converts. This week we have been focusing on how we can help establish the church more fully here in Goya and although it is more challenging I feel better when I keep that as my focus.

Hna Da Silva at Zone Conference

I feel very good with the language but I still am constantly humbled by my weakness in speaking. I am so grateful for my 6 months in Chile--I have started to think of that time as my first 6 months in my mission because my experiences there helped prepare me in more ways than I can count. Still, I am such a verbal person. I love the english language. I love having total facility and command in the language I speak. I love using the subtleties of speech to say exactly what I mean exactly how I mean to say it. I sometimes feel discouraged at my inability to do this in Spanish. Sometimes it is hard to feel sincere or like I am following the spirit when I am focusing so much on saying what I can say (i.e. what I know how to say) rather than what I really want to or should say. Sometimes Hermana Da Silva does that smile and nod in my direction that signals it is my turn to speak and all I can say is something like "yes, I too know this is true and it will bless you" before I smile and become silent once more. I have a personal goal of trying to think less about speaking perfectly and focus instead on being sincere. It is just difficult to juggle it all.

Before I finish I want to recount two of the funnier experiences I had this week.
One, in a first lesson we asked one of our investigators "why do you think there are so many churches." He paused and then responded in all sincerity: "maybe so we don´t have to walk so far to make it to a church?"

The second funny experience was when we were trying to find the house of a taxi driver that we met a few days before. This taxi driver´s name happened to be Jesús. We knocked on the door and a woman answered and my companion said "hola, se encuentra Jesus?" or, basically, "Hi, is Jesus there?" The woman started to look very confused and a little startled. she said: "um, yes. But I don’t have a lot of time now." We persisted, "oh, that´s okay. we just want to know if Jesus lives here." She hesitated and then said "oh, yes, well, but I don´t know, I don´t have a lot of time." We then realized she thought we were talking about Jesus Christ and Jesus the Taxi Driver. We backtracked and explained we had met a taxi driver named Jesus and he said he wanted to listen to us and he had given us this address. She looked suddenly relieved and said "OH! My SON Jesus! Oh, yes he lives here but he is not home right now." As we walked away Hermana Da Silva and I could not stop laughing. I have always found it very strange that people name their children Jesus in Spanish speaking countries and now I am more convinced that doing so can cause a lot of confusion. Although, now we have a new door approach if we ever want to use it.
Well that´s all for this week. As always, I´d love to hear from all of you!

Love,

Hermana Parker

Letter from Goya - 12 September 2011

Week One in Argentina

Dear Family and Friends,

I made it Argentina and all is well. We got into Buenos Aires on the morning of the 6th (a Tuesday) and I didn´t make it to my area until very late on the evening of the 7th. All of the incoming sisters spent our first night in the home of Sister and President Heyman in Resistencia. They are very nice and their home is very welcoming. We had some training there in the mission offices in Resistencia and then they paired us up with our trainers and shipped us off to our areas.

I am being trained by Hermana Da Silva from Uruguay and we are serving in Goya. Hna. Da Silva is great. She is very patient and kind and is always complimenting me on my Spanish. Goya is a smaller city about a 4-hour bus ride away from Resistencia. There are, I think, 6 missionaries here. My companion and I and 2 companionships of elders. There is one branch which can either be very small or quite large depending on the weather (I´m serious, it shrinks considerably if it is too hot or too cold out) and, apparently, whether or not there are elections going on (there are elections this coming weekend--Hna Da Silva said last time no one came to church except for the missionaries).

So far I love being a missionary. It is very hard work, I come home every night exhausted and with aching feet. We walk all day long and small things like having 10 extra minutes to get ready on Sundays feel like a luxury. But the work is also incredibly satisfying and there is always plenty if not too much to do. I end every day feeling fulfilled. I love meeting with the people here, sitting with them in their houses, sharing important matters of the soul together, talking with them about God and love and hope. It is really very beautiful. There have been several moments--during a lesson with one of our investigators, or as groups of local children call out "hermanas! hermanas!" and run to us when they see us coming from afar off, that I have been struck with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and privilege that I have this chance to be here and to do what I am doing.

Our area here in Goya has a piece of the city but also a lot of the outskirts and countryside. Most of the streets are made of dirt and many of the houses are crude constructions made of wood or cement--this is especially true as you walk further out into the countryside. We meet with people from a variety of economic backgrounds but many of our investigators and members here live in very humble circumstances. We have several investigators who cannot read. It is rare to find a house with more than 3 rooms and with anything nicer than a cement floor. I have noticed that the majority of people have very poor dental health and many people are missing several teeth.
I am very happy that I arrived in the springtime. The weather right now is perfect. A little cold in the morning and at night but very nice during the day.

Lujan's Baptism

I have already witnessed my first baptism! My first Saturday here our investigator Lujan was baptized. She is incredible. She is an older woman with 8 grown (or nearly-grown) children and many grandchildren (maybe thousands?).

She has made some incredible changes in her life as she has embraced the gospel. She quit smoking, she went through a headache of a process to get the paperwork and officially marry her partner of many years. This Sunday she received the gift of the Holy Ghost and she put on her nicest collared shirt and slacks. She brought with her a tithing envelope to hand to the branch president. Tithing was the last lesson we taught her before her baptism and it was extremely gratifying to see her embrace that principle of the gospel immediately.

I have had many other wonderful experiences. The people here are, in general, very open. It is not hard to find people who are willing to listen to our message. Most times we strike up a conversation by simply asking people if they believe in God. I have not yet met one person who has said "no." In fact, most people respond with an emphatic "yes, of course!" Although people are quite willing to hear our message it is definitely more of a struggle to get people to make changes in their life or to do small things like come to church on Sunday. Last Sunday we had about 8 investigators that told us they would come to church. Only one showed up. But the one who did was a miracle. Leonardo is a single man in his mid 40´s. His wife left him many years ago and he has no children. He seems to be pretty lonely and depressed for the most part. He enjoys our visits, and welcomes us, but refuses to make promises because he says it is in his nature to be distracted and unreliable. He doesn´t want to tell us he will come if instead he ends up sleeping in or can´t seem to motivate himself to leave the house. We tried to talk to him about Jesus Christ and the power of the atonement to help us change and find happiness. We tried to teach him about free agency and how the greatest thing we can do in this life is use our gift of agency to "choose the better part," serve God and our neighbors and do good things. He persisted in saying he would make no promises. And then, he showed up! I couldn´t believe it. I was so happy.

On another note, I ended up having to teach the Gospel Principles class to our investigators and new converts this week while my companion went to pick up another investigator. She ended up not coming because she was off selling tomatoes, or something like that, so Hermana Da Silva came back to help--but it was quite an adventure to be left to my own devices with a class full of people to teach a lesson about eternal families in Spanish in my first week in Argentina. I think I did an okay job considering. I am sure stuff like this will happen many times while I am here.

We are meeting with many other people. My favorite person we have tracted into so far is a guy named Matias. We knocked on his door last night and he was very excited to talk to us. He seemed very sharp and intelligent and extremely kind. He is in his 20´s, I forget what he said he was studying but he told us that his father studies theology and that he loves to read and learn about other religions. He responded to our request to visit him again with an enthusiastic "yes."

Well, my time is running short. I forgot to bring my camera with me to the internet cafe this week but I will send pictures (including the one for sister bishop and of Lujan´s baptism) next week.

A BIG thank you to everyone for you emails and letters. Before I sign off here is the deal with letters and packages:

Dearelder.com still works and is probably the easiest way to send me a message. I was told that they print them in Salt Lake on Monday and that they arrive in my mission office around Thursday and I get them in my District Meetings on Tuesday.

I can also receive and write emails but if I get too many it is hard for me to read and respond to them all in my allotted email time. So, I think I prefer dearelders.

You can also send me regular mail to the address at my mission office. Regular mail in Argentina should be pretty reliable and get to the office in about 2 weeks. I would LOVE some cool handwritten letters. I will definitely write you back when I have time on P-days. I wrote about 4 letters that I am sending off today.

Packages are expensive to send and to receive so they have a rule in my mission that I can only receive 4 throughout my entire mission. You are not supposed to send homemade food and they said it is best never to declare a high value for the items you send. The higher you declare the more I pay (and they take the money out of my monthly allowance). They say that packages take a long time to process but that they all arrive safely. I don´t think a large padded envelope counts as a package but I am not positive. In the first package you send me I would love a giant jar of peanut butter. I only brought one small one and I am nearly out.

I love you all. Please write! I´d love to hear from you. Also send any questions you have my way and I will try to answer them.

Love,

Hermana Parker

Letter from MTC - 1 September 2011

"Week Two at the MTC"

Dear Family and Friends,

I have survived another week at the MTC. The most important news this week is that I am leaving! On Monday, September 5th for Buenos Aires. I can't believe it! I won't have even been here 3 weeks.

What this means is that I probably won't recieve any DearElder.com letters (or, actually, any other letters sent to me after this Saturday). So send me a letter while it's still easy! It would mean the world to me. And I will write you back! I am not sure that they will forward any mail I recieve after I leave. I know for sure they just throw away DearElders since there is no postage. I think that when I am in Argentina the most reliable way to get mail to me will be through the pouch system. But I MIGHT be able to get emails, and longer letters and packages can be sent to my mission president's office. That address should be on the sidebar there.

I had some photos printed this week and will probably send some of those out so you guys can see everyone in my district and also pictures of ME as a sister missionary, nametag and all. I am sure I will have more time in Argentina to actually upload a few as well to be posted here on the blog.

MTC district

We are all leaving different times this week. The first hermana to leave in our district is Hermana Hernadez. She packs up and drives to Colorado tomorrow morning. Several missionaries going to Argentina are still awaiting visas and have recieved temporary assignments. Some missonaries in another of the advanced Spanish classes are going to South Texas for a while. My companion, Hermana Dunn and Hermana McWhorter are both going to Saint George for a while until they get their visas.

Really quick, the elders in my distirct are Elder Cannon, Ovalle, Baldwin and Martinez. Two native speakers, two somewhat native speakers. They are all great. I wish I had more time to write about them. They are going to Denver South, Sacramento and Asuncion Paraguay on their missions.

I am experiencing that MTC time warp that everyone told me about. I've been here for 2 weeks and I already feel like I am some sort of aged MTC war veteran or wise old mTC sage entitled to impart all the wide-eyed newcomers with wisdom and knowledge. I am sure this would annoy those who are here for 9 weeks or longer...but oh well! I am out of here in 4 days! I am pretty excited about that. The MTC has been great but I also am fine with moving on to new things.

I have decided I DO feel very much like a nun at times here, calling all the women "sister" as I do. "Good morning sister, would you please pass the salt?" and "Sister, what kind of shampoo is that you're using?!!" I am sure this is the closest I will ever get to being a nun so i guess I will relish it while I can. It is pretty fun.

Something I neglected to mention last week in my email: all the sisters in my district and I are in the choir. It seems like everyone in the MTC wants to be in the choir right now because you always have to fight to get a seat at the practices. Anyways, it has been a wonderful part of my time here. The man who directs us on Sundays is an impressive fountain of scriptual knowledge. He is always spouting off scripture from the top of his head and relating the stories to whatever song we are singing. This last week we sang a beautiful arrangement of Faith of Our Fathers and he told us stories about Paul and about Abraham that I am not sure I've ever heard before.

Probably the biggest plus of singing in the choir is that you always get good seats at the Tuesday night devotionals. This was especially nice this week because Elder Holland came to speak to us.

I can't even begin to describe how powerful it was to be in the same room with him and to listen to him speak for over an hour--no prepared remarks, no notes--just speaking to us from his heart and answering our questions.

In the past I have been a little overwhlemed by the intensity of his speaking style and have felt his delivery to be too harsh and gating to resonate well with me. On Tuesday, however, he was as intense and as direct as ever, but I think it was something about his physical presence in the room, and the incredible depth of feeling with which he spoke, and the ewually, if not more intense love and reverence and humility he radiated--that made all the difference. I do not have time to summarize all of his words or even most of them. I filled up 8 pages of my journal. Here are a couple quotes from the Q&A segment of the meeting:

About prayer: "Pray. Break down that barrier. Try a little harder to be unrestrained in your prayers. Just burst into the kingdom with the vigor of your earnest supplication."

The last question he read during the Q&A was simple but touching. Someone asked: "why does God love us?"

He paused, looking for words, and then said with such feeling that his voice quavered throughout: "I am very, very, very imperfect. I feel very acutely my inadequacies and I am certain those who are close to me have noted them too. But, there is one thing that I'd like to suggest I am almost, nearly perfect in--and that is the love I have for my children. Sinful, inadequate, imperfect as I am--there is NOTHING, in righteousness, I wouldn't do for my children. (...) and I am just an regular, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, Latter-Day Saint Kind of guy. If that is true of me, what on EARTH does it mean for God?! Why does He love us? Because we are literally, truly and eternally his children."

I can't explain why that was such a powerful and satisfying and wholly satisfactory answer to that question, but it was. I could feel it. And I know it is true.

I still need to write about Sharon Eubanks talk. I need to do her justice. i might share some of her words with a few of you in private letters. Her talk was probably equally powerful to me as Elder Hollands. But I am running out of time once again.

I love you all! Please take 5 minutes here or there to write me a quick messgae these next couple days. It would mean the world to me even to get a quote or a lymerick or a haiku.

I will write you next from Argentina!

Love,

Hermana Parker