Elder Parker Banks

The weather has been freezing but I went out and bought a scarf and gloves and stuff so I’m nice and warm. Yesterday we were driving and it was raining/25 degrees outside. So when we got to where we were going our car had a solid layer of ice over our entire car. It was pretty cool.

 

I’m staying in the office for my last transfer with Elder Wunderli. With all the changes that are happening right now president wants me to stay. I’m so excited because we have 2 dates right now and a possible 3 or 4 more baptisms before I go home so I’m really thankful to stay. Things are good.

            I love the St Louis Hills ward so much. We had so much good stuff happen this week. Monday was a pretty normal pday but Tuesday is when things started looking so great. I was on exchanges with Elder Jenkins in Dardeene Creek and it was pretty normal, but we got a call later that night from Elder Wunderli and Elder Terrazas who were in our area and they had the coolest experience happen. They went over to the Biberovic family’s house to visit them and see if their daughter was interested in taking the lessons. They got there and of course, because their Bosnian, they sat them down and started feeding them dinner. One of their friends came out and she started talking to the missionaries and started to talk about how she was at church on Sunday and just loved it. She bought a Book of Mormon like 3 years ago at a yard sale and never really knew what it was but she loved it and kept it the whole time. To make a long story short she has a baptismal date for the 21st of December and we’re teaching her and her 3 kids. They love having us over and have been feeding us a couple times a week and it has just been awesome. They’re a Bosnian family and we have a few more meetings with them this week so hopefully things keep going well.

              We picked up a few more investigators over the next few days and they were all member referrals. One of them is the Masons son whose 11 years old. He is a really good kid and ready to be baptized and then his family is working towards being sealed in a year. It seems like every single day we are getting calls from members and the sisters in our ward and everyone with referrals for us. We went to church on Sunday and there were nonmembers everywhere. We were running around like crazy trying to meet them all and get appointments with some of them. One of my favorite things about our ward is the diversity. Our 2nd hour class that had all the nonmembers in it was a couple white people and then the rest of the room was full of all kinds of different everything. We had Bosnian families everywhere just like normal but we had tons of black people and it was so funny. We had guys with dreads down to their butts talking about praying to God and we probably had 5 people straight from South Africa in class. It was so cool to just sit there and be surrounded by all of that.

            This week we have transfer planning all week from 10 to 4. The thing that we’re excited for is all the evenings that we have this week. After transfer planning we have tons of appointments with different people and we have a baptism with Troy Outlaw this weekend on Saturday. We have a couple more things to teach him but he should be good to go. In our area over the next 6 weeks we are hoping to get a couple more baptisms. I am so thankful that I get to spend the rest of my mission in this great area with a great companion. Our mission is seeing miracles all over the place. We need 51 baptisms between now and the end of the year which is unreal. But we are setting tons of dates all the time and we’re still going to need some serious miracles but it’s looking more and more like we’re going to pull it off somehow. We’re looking forward to another good week!

 

-Elder Banks