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

Letter from MTC - 25 August 2011

Week One at the MTC

Dear Family and Friends,

It is finally P-day and I am finally writing my first email from the MTC. I apologize for any confusion about when I was going to write. I sent out a few paper letters implying that you would recieve an email from me last Saturday, but I was mistaken. This was our first mini P-day but we were not alloted any email time like I thought we would be.

First I want to say THANK YOU for all the many amazing letters, DearElder.com messages and incredible baked goods I have recieved. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to get mail and how much I appreciate and need all of your support. Everyone should use DearElder.com while i am here in the MTC. It is really great because, as many of you know, they print them out here the same day you send them and I get to read them. It is so nice after a long day to hear from some familiar voices. Also, be sure to include your address in the letter so I can write you back. On the same note: Eveyone please send me your addresses, You can reply here on the blog and I will have a family member forward them to me, or you can write me on DearElder.com and I will get it that way. I will try very hard to respond to any letter I recieve. i don't have tons of time but I have been finding many small moments here and there to send letters out. So, let's send letters. Everyone wins!

Well, here is the update: I am alive. and well. And very happy. I am honestly enjoying the MTC much more than I expected to. There is so much energy here. I love having a period for such intensive and devoted study. There is a a great energy here and it is fun to walk the halls and peek into classes learning every language imaginable--Finnish, Hungarian, Tagalog. Spanish definitely seems to dominate around here though and people are always greeting each other by saying "Hola Hermanas!" or "Hola Elderes" when we are walking the hallways.

I am in a GREAT district here. There are more sisters than elders in my class (6 sisters, 4 elders). This is very rare and people are always surprised when they walk into our class and see them women outnumbering the men. It is a lot of fun. When i first arrived I was briefly in the intermediate spanish class, but soon they switched me and my companion into the advanced class. This means we are only here in the MTC for 3 weeks (I leave around September 7th although I haven not yet received my flight plans) and that we are studying with mostly native spanish speakers. Here are some breif descriptions of some members of my district. All of the sisters listed below are also my roommates:

6 sisters

1. Hermana Dunn: My companion!She is from the central coast of California and is also studying at BYU. She studies Business, Music and Spanish. As soon as we met we were really excited because we realized that we have several mutual friends and crossed paths or nearly crossed paths several times before coming here. She is good friends with Justin and Jacob from my freshman ward at Wyview Park. I love being her companion and I think we work really well together. We will be flying down to Argentina together but will part ways when she goes to the Buenos Aires North mission and I head up to Resistencia. Sad!

2. Hermana Orellana: Hermana Orellana is an amazing woman! She is from Guadalajara Mexico and has a vachelor's from BYU Idaho in Business. She speaks French as well as Spanish (of course) and English and has studied abroad in France. She also lived and worked for a year in New York City. She is the oldest in our district at 23 and she is going to the Los Angeles mission.

3. Hermana McWhorter: I love this girl. She is originally from Arkansas and she grew up on a little farm doing all sorts of cool, traditional old-timey things I love like milking cows, grinding wheat, raising chickens and picking fresh blackberries in the woods. She is studying art history at BYU and we also have lots of mutual friends. A big "HELLO!" from both of us to the Art History Hot Chocolate House girls. We both love you. and love that we both know you! She is going to the Buenos Aires Bahia Blanca Mission.

4. Hermana Abreu: A fun, fesity girl from the Dominican Republic, she converted to the church when she was 16 years old. She is very upbeat and talkative and always gets us laughing and brings with her a strong spirit. She is going to California, Fresno mission.

5. Hermana Hernandez: A very calm, kind loving demeanor. She was born in Mexico but moved to Utah when she was 3 so she speaks perfect accentless English and Spanish. She also studied at BYU--psychology and nutrition. She is going to Denever North mission.

All of these women are bright, beautiful powerhouses that are going to do great things on their missions. I know it.

There are also 4 great elders in my district, I will tell you about them next week as I am running out of time today!

I am really enjoying the MTC training program for the most part. It has a lot of documentary film elements to it, which I love but which can also be distracting to me (I am always sitting there wondering to myself how the camera affected the content and how they filmed it, etc). We have used a neat audio/photo documentary project on the new york times website several times called "8 Million Others." Look it up. It is really good and exactly the type of work I am interested in doing after my mission. I also have enjoyed the reality tv-show-esquer program called "The District" that we have been watching. Basically some film crew followed a bunch of missionaries in the last couple years and we get to watch them in action. I like how people-focused it all is ("teach people not lessons") and how we are counsled to really get to know people and discover their "question of the soul."

My favorite part so far was a talk given in Relief Society by a woman named Sharon Eubanks who works with the humanitarian department of the church. I am going to write you all about it next week,. It was one of the most spiritually powerful experiences of my life. I love that woman. Look her up, if you can and see what else she has dlone. She inspires me!

I am loving my time here in the MTC but I am even more excited about getting over to Argentina. I feel like the language learning is going well and it has been especially good for me to speak all day with native speakers. I love you all and look forward to hearing from you throughout my mission. Please write to me!

love,

Brooke AKA Hermana Parker