October 28, 2014
This was probably the best week I have had since getting here to the States.

We were so busy all week.  We were running around so much.  It was a lot of fun.  We had 13 lessons on the week.  Jani is progressing so nicely, she had her interview on Saturday and is being baptized on saturday!! I’m so excited for her!  This Friday, Halloween, we are going to the temple, so it’s going to be an awesome two days.
A lot happened this week so hopefully i will be able to remember all of it.  OH!!!  I met a guy from Ghana!!  I’m teaching him, I’m so excited.  He is so cool.   He's been here in Utah for about two years and got here because of winning DV (lottery that the US does to bring people here to states and get green cards).  He's super open to listening to us, but he's just super busy.

We made a better effort at setting return appointments. Elder hale and I had a great week.  We were always coming back to the appointment, so exhausted, so fun.   We would fall asleep so fast it was wonderful.

So we got a call last night.  Elder Hale is leaving me.  He is going to the Taylorsville South Stake.  I am staying in the YSA and I am getting Elder Dahlke who is from Tennessee.  So I don’t know how its gonna play out. I don’t know him too well, so I'll update you next week.

This week was awesome, but it was just full of teaching, so it’s hard to write about.  Sorry it’s so short.

I love you all.

Elder Park
the White African... in Utah

I asked for a picture of him with the quilt, this is what I got. 

This was breakfast on their P Day

October 21, 2014

This week was a struggle...

It was the week of continuously being cancelled on... it was really frustrating, so this letter is probably going to be short.   We did have a couple great lesson with Jani who is going to be baptized on Nov 1.  She is so cool, we met her in September and as of Saturday she was reading in Alma 5.  How awesome is that???  She's been to church about 4 times now.  I'm super excited for her.

We are teaching Brendon still and last night we had a lesson that was AWESOME!  We watched the Restoration video with him, and then talked about how it has helped us in our life.  We had Trevor there who is an RM who served in Mexico, having him there made all the difference.  We came to find out what Brendon’s concern was, what was bothering him and making him hesitant in making covenants with our Father in Heaven.  Now we know where to go, it was just a great lesson.  He is starting to pray about the Book of Mormon which is awesome!! and he committed to pray to know if Joseph Smith is a true Prophet.  I’m excited to continue working with him.

Last week I went on exchange with Elder Soelberg.  He's from Oregon and was going to school at BYU-H. How cool is that? He's still in his first transfer but doesn’t really seem like it, he's very mature and very smart.  He's going to be an amazing Elder.

On Wednesday we had Elder Clarke from the Seventy come.  He's like 3rd in command when it comes to missionary work.  Pres. Monson, Elder Nelson, then him, hahah.  He's super funny.  It was fun to watch him give President Moffat a hard time.  He talked about a lot of things.  Towards the end he said something that stood out to me that is very scary to think about,  he said in the next 5 years, a 1/4 of you missionaries will become Less Active.  That is just so sad for me to think about.  How can someone who is teaching people this gospel and seeing the change it brings to people’s lives fall away?  It doesn’t make sense to me.  I can’t begin to explain how much I have grown on my mission.   The things that I have learned, gained, the people I've met, I’m not willing to throw that all away.  I know that this church is true, I love it.  the Book of Mormon is the word of God, it is true!!

Elder Park
The White African... in Utah

He took a picture of his bed with the quilt I made him

October 13, 2014

This week was pretty good.   We are slowly teaching more and more.

We have a couple people we are working with.  Jani is awesome!!!  She is preparing for the 25th of Oct to be baptized.  There is still a couple things that we have to work with her on, but I’m sure she'll be  good to go.  She is already in reading in Mosiah and we have only been teaching her about 3 weeks now. so that’s AWESOME!!
!
Antonio, we met through the Sisters, he is sweet too.  There are just a couple things that are holding him back, but he's awesome.  He's been to church a couple times already, so now it’s just time to work and teach him a little bit and he's good to go!

The whole week was pretty good, we had at least one lesson everyday so that made me happy, but the high light lesson was on Saturday.  We got to take Jani with us to Temple Square!!!  I've been there so many times before, but this time was just different.   It was really cool to walk around and have the sisters there do the teaching, and the tour was awesome.   It was so cool being there. The Spirit was super strong there also.

On Sunday Elder Hale and I gave talks in the Parkway Ward.  We also showed up a couple minutes late too.   We had a meeting at the Cottonwood building which is about 10 miles away, and it started at 8:15 and church in the Parkway Ward started at 9, so we were racing to get back.   It was a fun.  I think I was all over the place with the talk and saying 'um' a lot, but everyone said we did good, and I didn’t see too many people sleeping so that’s good right?

I hope you all had a great week

Elder Park
The White African... in Utah

Salt Lake Temple

Elder Park and Elder Hale

Granny's house

Elder Park, Elder LaMont and Elder???

Collin and LaMont previoulsy served in Liberia, Elder ??? was previously serving in Sierra Leone, so these are all West African Missionaries.  (I wish Elder Elliott had been in this picture, he was the fourth West African mission reassigned to Salt Lake, he was serving in Liberia too)

October 7, 2014

What a weekend did we have??  That was awesome!

This was the first General Conference I watched on my mission, but the funny part of it is, that it was also the last one I will watch as a missionary.   It was really nice actually hearing the leaders of the church speak.  Ever since returning to the states and realizing that I was able to see it, I’ve been so excited and it was totally worth it.

For those who might be reading this and don’t know what General Conference is, here is a link:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/sessions/?cid=HP14GC&lang=eng

We have General Conference twice a year, there are 4 regular sessions, 1 session specifically for the women of the church, and 1 session specifically for the men.   Our church leaders give talks on a wide variety of topics that provide inspiration and direction for members of the church, music is provided by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and other choirs.  The Conference takes place in Salt Lake City but it is broadcast to many of our church buildings, is available on cable tv and over the internet.  We look forward to it every time.  These Conference sessions replace our regular church meetings that weekend.   The link above links you to all of the talks so that you can watch, listen or print them.

The best part of it is on Wednesday when we were having interviews with President Moffat, I told him that I have haven’t seen a General Conference since 2012, he paused, then handed me two Priesthood session tickets!!!!!  I literally couldn’t think of anything else.  I was so happy!!!  It was a great day.

All the talks were FANTASTIC!!  I really liked the Saturday morning session there were a lot of great talks. but all of them really awesome!!

This week was pretty good too, we are starting to have some good lessons.  We had one with Jani and we had it at the Bishop’s house.  After that he took us to lunch haha.  It was a great lesson about the Book of Mormon.  She even commited to being baptized which made our day!  Now it’s time to start working!!   after the lesson, the Bishop, who a return mission president, said that the way we explained the Book of Mormon was one of the best, if not the best he's seen from a missionary.   I was actually really surprised he said that because I thought we were all over the place, but that made me feel good.

We had a little scary moment Saturday morning with Granny (The missionaries live in the apartment in the basement of Granny’s house).   She had fallen and couldn’t get up, so she got her cane and started banging on the floor hoping that we were still there.   We heard it so we ran up the stairs and granny was so happy.   We decided after that that we would watch the afternoon conference session with her.   I love granny but just pray that she doesn’t hurt herself.

We are making some progress with some of our investigators.  The Spirit is really starting to work hard over here.   Yesterday we, as a zone, would stop at every hour and pray specifically to help someone that the missionaries were working with throughout the zone.  It was great because now, as a zone, we have 8 more people that are now preparing for baptism.  The Lord works in mysterious ways!

I hope that everyone enjoyed conference, I know I did!!

Elder Park
The White African... in Utah