Elder Parker Banks

March 26, 2012

Alright so this week I have to start by saying that it’s a good thing I’m on my mission cause I officially hate the sports world. We went to our ward mission leader’s house on Sunday with another guy in our ward and we talked about sports for a while and I was so mad when I found out Peyton Manning is on the Bronco's. But at least Tim Tebow is gone now. And then i found out in a letter from Weston this morning that Mcgee is on the Nuggets now. Chris that was an awsome picture of you trying to get his autograph. I’m way jealous! And i knew Kentucky was playing Baylor on Sunday so I was glad to find out that they won. That was one good thing from the sports world.

Just another random thing real quick, make sure that when you send letters to the mission home to me to write Elder Parker Banks. If you don’t put Parker sometimes they send them from the mission home to the other Elder Banks. So i just got a bunch of letters from the first week i was here that just arrived 2 days ago.

But anyways missionary work this week was interesting. I spent most of the week with missionaries besides my companion which makes it way hard to get stuff done. We had a pretty bad week teaching cause a bunch of appointments fell through and overall it was just way long. Monday was just a normal P-day and then Tuesday we went to the temple and that pretty much took all day. That night was way fun cause all six of the missionaries in our district slept over in our apartment. But then Elders Jensen, Barney, and Adie all went to St. Louis so me and Elders Ward and Gubler were a tripanionship for a few days. That was pretty awful. They are cool missionaries but it was just way hard to do everything with an extra companion. We taught one good lesson to Yana and James and a not so great lesson to Kodie. But then Wednesday night when all the other elders got back it was way awesome. I was so happy that Elder Jensen was back and we could start doing our normal work again. Friday was a pretty normal day then Saturday I got to go on exchanges with the district leader Elder Barney. He and I get along way well so that was fun. Elder Barney and his Companion Elder Ward slept over that night as well so we could all just go to church the next morning together. We woke up and played a game with a giant exercise ball and we called it destruction ball. I’ll send my SD card home today and it has a few pictures of our apartment after we played it. That should explain the name.

Something that I just thought of that is way important is that conference is this weekend and we are all so excited! I have never really looked forward to conference that much but I couldn’t be more excited now. It’s going to make Saturday and Sunday so awesome. All my friends better watch on Saturday and Sunday. I never watched on Saturday but now that I am out here I wish that I had. I can’t believe that I was passing up the chance to listen to the prophet and apostles to go watch basketball or some other stupid thing. They all know what they are talking about so I encourage all of you to listen and learn from those amazing men.

So a crazy story that I heard this week was about Elder Bednar. So apparently he came down to St. Louis for a meeting and met with a few missionaries that are in St Louis. During the meeting he gave them all an apostolic blessing and apparently it was really cool. Then after the meeting everyone was just chilling in the chapel and they got to go up and shake hands with Elder Bednar and it got pretty loud and a lot of the missionaries were talking a ton. So Elder Bednar stepped out of line of shaking people’s hands and went back to the mic. He chewed them all out for a second and then took away the blessing that he had given them. I head it was pretty crazy and they all felt pretty stupid after that.

So this week wasn’t too eventful but one cool thing that happened was on Sunday we were set up to go to a Baptist church. We were going to leave the apartment in like 15 minutes and I seriously felt terrible. That night was so horrible and i had no idea why i felt so terrible. I told Elder Jensen that maybe we shouldn’t go to that church with the guy who invited us. Then he told me that he didn’t feel too good about going either. So we called the guy and told him we wouldn’t be able to make it. It was the craziest thing cause I instantly felt so much better. We both got the Spirit back and we felt so good. Even though we just walked around and talked to people all night we gave away a couple copies of the Book of Mormon so hopefully one of those can turn into something more.

I guess the last thing I will talk about is that we went to a baptism for a lady named Crystal Davis. She is a pretty big lady and the guy baptizing her was pretty little. He also had some problems saying the prayer 100% right. So it took him dunking and praying about a dozen times before the baptism was done correctly. Even though it was way hard to watch and super awkward the last time when they finally got it done the Spirit just overtook the entire room. No one felt uncomfortable after that and everyone was so happy for her finally getting baptized.

Oh and I almost forgot. Shelly, Betty, and Katelyn all made it to church this week which is awesome. Hopefully we will be able to get them all baptised in the next couple weeks! Thank you for your prayers and keep them coming cause they are working! I hope all of you have an awesome week and I will talk to you all again soon.

-Elder Parker Banks

P.S. Thank you so much for the letters and packages I have been receiving!! It means a ton.