chocolate cake and sunshine.

This week has been super stellar! Here are some highlights((:

BASE FHE: we started doing this thing where we meet with our marine buddies every monday night and read about war stories in the Book of Mormon and pig out on food (tacos, hot chocolate, cookies, etc), because if you know anything about boys it’s that the best way to get them to come to things is bringing food. LOTS of food. It’s so fun to see how much their testimonies are growing!!

PEOPLE: so this week was amazing with our teaching people. We met with this super awesome man named Johnathan 1 time and then later that day he messaged us and told us he wants to be baptized!!! So we explained how it works and then he came to sacrament meeting and he reads the Book of Mormon every day!! Such a freaking miracle.

We’ve also been teaching a super sweet lady named Cecelia who is always super mega overwhelmed and stressed because she is a single mom with a bunch of kids in a tiny trashed trailer house and she’s working full time as a caretaker. Normally we can only get her to focus for like 10 minutes and she never kept commitments, but we really focused on promising blessings to her when she acts on faith and she has completely changed. She focuses when we go over and she always says how she loves to feel the Spirit, and she has gotten so much better at following through on what we invite her to do!! I am so happy about that.

We are teaching a few other people too, but these are the highlights of this week! (I realize I always forget to tell y’all about who we are teaching lol)

PIANO LESSONS: this week I started teaching Marie virtual piano lessons! It is so so fun and I love her so much. She isn’t a member, but I am teaching her I am a child of God in the simplified hymnbook and subtly tying in the missionary lessons so she can feel the Spirit too. She is so sweet and we connect really well!!(:

SERVICE: we did a lot of service this week at the thrift shop and helping Cecilia build a fence which was awesome! We met some super hilarious marines at a service activity and we are gonna try to start meeting with them soon! I absolutely love getting to meet so many new people and hearing their stories.

CHOCOLATE CAKE: soooooo the other day we got home from a busy day and there was magically a massive triple chocolate cake sitting on our doorstep. Sister Fry doesn’t like chocolate cake, so Sis Taylor and I looked at each other and grabbed two forks and just went to town. We definitely ate the entire thing and I definitely dont regret it haha.

CHALLENGE: yesterday we were watching the weekly worldwide missionary devotional and something I LOVED that was said by Sister Reyna I. Aburto was something along the lines of “Make sure the things you are worrying about the most are the things that matter the most.” I think it’s easy to get distracted and caught up in stuff that won’t be of any worth in the future rather than spending our time worrying about things with eternal significance.

So this week, I invite you all to make a list of things you “worry about” or think about often and evaluate whether or not it is worth your worrying. I promise that when you choose to focus on things that matter, you will begin to see that the other things work out on their own without your worries. God loves you and trusts you, trust Him back!

I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!

Liebe, Sister Parker