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.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013


May 20, 2013
To start off, Happy belated birthday Dad!!!!  How's being 50?  My companion says happy birthday too.  I wished you happy birthday on Saturday, and I spent the day being frustrated because we kept getting bounced and then we had a PEC meeting that was boring. They are always boring.

This week was interesting.  We got bounced a lot... we always have at least 2 bounces every day.  One day a couple weeks ago we got bounced 5 times in one day.  It was great... but we still managed to teach some lessons.  We don’t have as many as we want or plan to, but most of the lessons we have are good ones which make it all worth it.   We had a lesson with a man by the name of Samson, at the end we started talking about baptism.  We extended a date for him but he says he's been looking for a church that he knows is true.  We talked about how we knew the church was true.  The only way one can know if the church is true is to pray.  I still remember the day that I prayed and asked my Father in Heaven if the church was true, and the feeling I got afterwards. I explained how I grew up in the church and still had to pray to know.  My companion who is a convert himself, talked about his confirmation feeling.  It was a powerful lesson. During the lesson it started to rain, so we stayed after for about 30 minutes till the rain stopped.

When it rains here, it pours and pours and pours!!!  Sometimes only for 20 minutes, sometimes for an hour, sometimes for the whole day. It’s a guessing game, but when it rains we have to wear our boots.  I'll take a picture next time a wear them.  I can’t begin to describe how much I hate boots, but it is fun to puddle jump sometimes.  Hopefully I won’t get too muddy when I do that.  I may be a missionary, but I’m still a kid at heart!

When we don’t teach a lot of lessons we don’t do our area book. My suggestion is not to procrastinate.  We spent about an hour updating and creating our teaching records for the people we teach.  It’s very helpful to have an updated area book.  Don’t procrastinate!!!!
We were on the road trying to get a car (taxi).  The way we get a car is to pretty much hitch hike.  It’s a lot of fun sometimes, but most of the time frustrating.  We waited for about 20 minutes to get a car when the couples drove past and stopped and drove us to our destination.  We rode in the BRAND NEW mission bus.  It had 27 kilometers on it when we got picked up.  The couples were on the way to the airport to get President Roggia.  It was really nice to have A/C for about 5 minutes.

This week will be filled with conferences.  Zone conference on Wednesday, and since we aren’t a stake yet, district conference this weekend.  It’s going to be good to hear President Roggia speak.  Second to last time with him, he will be released at the end of June.

The third Sunday was weird not teaching or speaking, but kind of nice to have a break. We'll see if it stays that way.  (In Collin’s first area the missionaries gave all the talks and taught the classes on the third Sunday of the month)
Until next time my friends, love and miss you!

Elder Park

The White African
T.I.A.

Through the internet and a west africa missionary mom's email group I belong to,  I got connected to Elder Skousen's mom.  Elder Skousen was Collin's first companion.  I was surprised to see an email from her this morning.  She sent a couple of pictures of Collin which goes perfectly with his description of the rain in this email:




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