January 20, 2015

He didn’t write a letter today, he confirmed some of the details for tomorrow, he wants to go to the temple and to Café Rio!  We can do that!

He did write:

i woke up this morning and it was just weird...

I get picked up at 2 to go to the office, and then I don't know what happens.

I'm getting off!!   See you tomorrow!

He did include a couple of pictures of Kameron on her baptism day from a couple weeks ago.

January 13, 2015

Well this week wasn’t so good.   Not a whole to write about.

We are working with a Less Active Family, the Lavae's.   They are so fun, we always have really good conversations with them.  The son, the only son in the family, is awesome, he was in my last area and always joins in.   Since Elder Farnsworth got to this area, he's been here for 3 transfers now, they haven’t been to church, but on Sunday, they came to church!  The amount of excitement Elder Farnwsorth and I had was through the roof.   We were so happy!

In SLC the smog is terrible.   There are some nights I think I’m going to die.  Most days I couldn’t even see the mountains it’s that bad.   So to avoid having lung cancer, we are walking!   I missed walking ever since I got here.  I’m so happy to be doing it again.

Yesterday sucked....  it was a good ol' Washington type day.  It was just raining, and yes we were still walking.   We talked to a couple people but they weren’t too fond of talking to the missionaries..  it was interesting.

Well not much to say about this week.

Elder Park
The White African.... in Utah  

January 6. 2014

New years as a missionary is not very exciting.  I forgot how it was from last year.  Last year I actually woke up and heard people celebrating it, but that’s only because I was awake, because I was sweating to death in my bunk bed with a net over me in Gardnersville.  Here in SLC, nothing.  I was dead to the world and never woke up that night.  I went to bed at 10:30, and didn’t really move till 6:30 the next morning.

This week we had a baptism for Kameron Hamm!!!  It was great.  A lot of her extended family came from southern Utah and Nevada, a lot of them were not members of the church, and it was awesome, it put a little bit of pressure on me since I was in charge of time filling while my companion was changing.   This is sometimes very interesting, you never know who is going to be there.  So this time I just talked about the reason behind us missionaries always inviting people to be baptized, even with people being baptized prior in a different church.  So I focused on how Christ walked to the Jordan River to John the Baptist.  I talked about how John the Baptist had the Priesthood and if we are not baptized by the Priesthood, Heaven Father won’t and can’t recognize it.  When we are baptized by the Priesthood, it is recorded in heaven.  As any other missionary would do, I tied that back to how the Priesthood was lost and then Restored a long time later by the Prophet Joseph Smith.  I felt like I did a decent job and I was hoping I answered some questions for some of the non members that were there.

Elder Farnsworth baptized Kameron, but she asked me to confirm her on Sunday.  I definitely love being able to do that.  I was thinking about it after the confirmation, I helped her gain one of the best gifts on earth which allowed her to be on the strait and narrow path toward heaven.  I played a huge part in her life.  It sunk in that I have done that for a lot of people and it was shocking, being as missionary is the best and it’s coming close to the end...

I hope that everyone is having a great 2015 and is sticking to their goals!!

Elder Park
The White African.... in Utah

December 30, 2014

Well Christmas was good.  We ate a lot of food!   AND I was able to talk to my family!

Being this close to the end of my mission I really don’t know what else to talk about but I'll find something.

So it finally started to snow.  We did have a white Christmas and it is still very snowy, and it’s also very icy... I've only fallen a couple times...

Kameron is still looking good for her baptism on Saturday.  So we're all excited for that.  We are still struggling at the whole finding new investigators thing, it’s a little frustrating...

Christmas was good, but I ate too much...  we also got to sleep in!!  So happy, I needed that so much, it was great. I hope that everyone was able to take a second and think about the true meaning of Christmas sometime during the day.  I know I  did and I am thankful for being able to celebrate the birth of my Savior.

On Saturday I went on exchange with Elder Lyon who is the District Leader.  He is so funny.  He has a mini ping pong table so we played that for the whole night it was a lot of fun.

My week was a little boring, but the work goes on!!    

Elder Park
The White African.... in Utah

They built a fire in a fire pit with the sticks, he said it was fun

December 24, 2014

So it will be a short letter today, sorry! 

We went to Temple Square on Thursday with Kameron and Blake.  It was really good, we focused on how families can be together forever and did the little section there that was amazing.  It was really good, both of them want to be with their families forever and want to go in the Temple. AWESOME!!!  we also stayed long enough to see the lights!  It was really fun to see them.  It was my first time being there with the lights on and I loved it!!   They also both came to church on Sunday.

Elder Farnsworth and I taught their Sunday School class. It was great it was all about out missionary work and their normal teacher asked to so we said of course.  It was really good. By far one of the best Sunday School lessons I've taught.  

Tuesday we had a mission Conference. It was fun.  We had a not so talented talent show.  There was some good laughs there. 

This morning we had Elder L Whitney Clayton of the Seventy came to speak to us. It was really good.  He is an awesome guy and a great teacher.  I learned a lot about the Star that appeared at the birth of the Savior.  I wish I was as smart as him.  It was great.

Have a wonderful Christmas!!!!

Elder Park

The White African.... in Utah

He was spotted at Walmart!

Collin is below the "M" and "I" in "Mission" on the back row.

December 16. 2014

Well not much happened this week besides the fact that I moved to an new apartment to finish my mission in.  Elder Farnsworth has been here for about 2 transfers so this is his 3rd transfer here and 3rd in the mission field.  He's from St Louis.  He's pretty great.

Last night we re-did our room!  We had just normal beds but we wanted bunk beds to have more room, so we found one!  It was great we had so much fun putting it up, and now we have more room to do stuff in the room.  Our apartment was a one room plus a bathroom, so we needed some extra room.  We haven’t really told any of the mission leaders, so I we don’t know how that’s gonna go down, but we do have the old bed frames just in case!  It’s fun!

Last Tuesday I went and saw the Hezeltines!!  I was so happy that they were home!  It was fun to talk to them and catch up a little bit.   Yes we did do the LIB handshake!!  I love it and miss it too.  I teach it to almost all my new companions.

My new area is very small!!  I really don’t see the need for a bike.  It’s so small.  I cover the Whitewood Ward, Stonewood Ward and the Bennion Heights Ward in the Bennion West Stake. There are no apartments here either... so life is a little tough.

I hope all of you have seen the new Video that the church has put out! "He's the Gift"!!!

Have a great week!!!

Elder Park
The White African.... In Utah

I see the photographer in the bathroom mirror   :)

A little like home?!

December 9, 2014

The week was good!

We had a small miracle happen on Friday!  It was fantastic!  So, Chris Goeckeritz is a very busy man and very hard to get in touch with, he also lives really far away.  So, we knew that he got off work roughly around 4pm, so we planned to get there at 4:30.  Our plans before that fell through, so we went there early at 4.  He wasn’t there, as we thought, so we sat on a bench because we didn’t want to miss him coming home.  I had a reeses in my pocket, (thank you office couple!)  I didn’t even have time to eat it and he came around the corner!  Holy smokes!  We caught him at home for the only 5 minutes he was going to be there.  It was amazing because he was going to be baptized the next day.

Saturday was a good day for us. Chris Lord and Chris Goeckeritz were baptized on Saturday.  They are both in the Cottonwood ward so we had a double baptismal service for them.  It was fantastic, the Spirit was amazing. Chris Goeckeirtz gave us a scary thought.  We called him at 6:15, the service was starting at 6:30, he said he was on his way.  So, at 6:25 he still wasn’t there.  So we started to worry.  We kept calling him, but no answer.  At about 6:45 our Ward Mission Leader said 'let us pray.'  About 10 minutes passed after that and we were on the verge of going to his house to see what was going on, but at 7 he finally got there. He had worked late and had a hard time getting there.   I was so happy he finally made it.  He was so sorry that he was late, but he is glad that he made it.  The confirmations for both of them were done very smoothly. Chris Goeckeritz affirmed to us he was on his way to the church at 8:30 on Sunday morning.

So, we got our transfer news last night, unfortunately I’m moving... I’m not very happy about it.  I’m moving to the Bennion West Stake.  I really don’t know anything about the area but I’m going to be with Elder Farnsworth.  I don’t much about him so I can’t say anymore!

We got some fish ties for a Recent Convert in our area. It was pretty funny!

I hope everyone has seen the 'He is the Gift' video!

https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-00-1460-he-is-the-gift?lang=eng

Elder Park
The White African... in Utah

Baptism day with Chris G

Baptism day with Chris L

Elder Elliott's last day on mission.  

He was one of the three that came to serve in SLC from Liberia.

With Elder Franca from Brazil

With Elder Brogan

With Elder Paau

With Sister Blaisure

With Sister Taupau

Basketball on Pday, December 9, 2014