Blog Description

This is a blog for the family and friends of Collin Park. He will be serving a two year mission in the Sierra Leone Freetown Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he left on January 24, 2013. While Collin is on his mission his Mom will be posting pictures and letters as she gets them, the content will be straight from Collin (unless otherwise noted) - spelling and punctuation will be corrected of course! Commentary and clarification may be added by his Mom as needed.
UPDATE: Collin's mission was split in half! The Sierra Leone Mission included the country of Liberia when Collin first left. As of July 1, 2013, the mission was split along the border and the new mission created: the Liberia, Monrovia Mission. Collin will never see the country of Sierra Leone. He has been in Monrovia Liberia since he left the MTC in Ghana.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Because of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, Liberia and Sierra Leone Missions were evacuated on August 4, 2014 and missionaries were reassigned to different missions. Collin was reassigned to the Salt Lake City Central Mission.

Monday, February 10, 2014

February 10, 2014

By far one the best week I've of 2014!!!!
This week was fantastic!  Working alongside Elder Witehira is great.  He loves to work hard and so do I, so it’s perfect.   Even though we didn’t hit our weekly goals, we saw a lot of people. 

Our first lesson on Tuesday was with a very stubborn woman who 'has her church.'   We focused on the Book of Mormon and the Restoration.   Honestly I think she has her answer but just isn’t willing to admit it yet.  I think I ended up asking her one of my favorite questions to ask people who 'have their church,' "if Jesus Christ comes down right now and says my Son/Daughter ____, my church is the one over here, but you are going to the one over there.   What would you do?"   As missionaries, we are representatives of our Savior Jesus Christ.   We are telling people that Christ has his church. but since we aren’t Christ, we invite everyone to pray and ask for themselves.   It breaks my heart when people get their answer after praying and still refuse to accept it.  I pray that Sister Hawa doesn’t do that.
We had some younger girls call of over and wanted us to start teaching (or as they call it- preach to them).   we had a small lesson just kind of introducing ourselves and purpose to them.   It was really hard because they just wouldn’t listen.   During the lesson we saw that their pa walked by and after the lesson we went up to him as he was walking towards us.   Before we said a word, he starts talking to the girls about how we are men of God, and how they need not to waste our time.  It was really interesting to see the change in their faces, and nice to see that someone does recognize that we are here for a purpose and that we are representatives of Jesus Christ.    We said hello to the pa after he got done being vex with them.  Hopefully we will find a time that we can talk to the whole family and have a family investigator.

On Saturday we went to baptisms even though we didn’t have a candidate there.   At home I remember people saying that 'mormons' have a certain glow about us.  S aturday  I truly noticed it.   There was a sister who gave a talk and when she stood up to start talking, you could just tell that she had something about her.  It was even really cool to see the people who got baptized, to see the difference in their eyes from before they were baptized and after.   My whole life I never really noticed it.   This whole week, I've been noticing a lot more of just the small little things.   My conclusion, MY MISSION IS THE BEST!!!!!
The Upper Caldwell Branch needs help.  There are a lot of less active members.  I was shocked that when the sacrament was being passed, there were only about 15 people in the chapel.   The four Elders in my district/branch have a lot of work ahead of us. 

Our apartment is, well, not as bad as I thought it was going to be.   We have city water pumped to us so it’s nice.  But, we haven’t had a generator for the past 2 nights, we've lived in darkness.   We have no money to buy more gas so we go without power for a couple days.  (I asked him about this in an extra email, and he said:  I will go to the bank on Wednesday and get it.  District/apartment money is what pays for the gas, we get 100 USD for gas for a month.  It’s 350 LD so it’s almost 5 USD a gallon.   We have torches or flash lights,  i got myself a lantern looking thing.)    This mission is humbling.
I hope that you have a great week and I love you all and pray for you all.

Elder Park
The White African
T.I.A.

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