Transfers!

Dear Family,

It is all agreed in our apartment that this past week was verrrrrry
looooooong. It was a blast, but we were all running our own areas for
8 days. I feel like each day was 36 hours. We did an okay job at
having members coming out with us each night so we could have splits,
and we were together during the day visiting people from all three
areas. We taught a lot this week. There were a lot of people to visit
in the areas so that was fun :) Elders Yoxtheimer and Johnson are a
blast. We had a companionship theme song in the car, and Elder's
Yoxtheimer car was temporary so it had unlimited miles and we used it
a lot! We saved a lot of miles for the frontier 😂 Anyway, there were
just a lot of fun things that happened this week that I had never
experienced before in the mission. Elder Dart left 6 shirts so now I
have 13 white shirts!!!!   Haha. It is my first tripanionship and it was pretty fun. Way to exhausting to be longer than 8 days, but fun while it lasted. The coolest part; the
Lord blessed all three areas with miracles this week. Elder Yox had a
baptism in his ward on Saturday for Anna Tarango. I had the privilege
of baptizing her. She is PREPARED. One of the coolest girls I have met
out here in the mission. It has been unforgettable to see people like
her embrace the Gospel and make the Baptismal covenant with the end
goals of the temple and the eternities in mind. We found 6 new
investigators last week in La Joya Norte as a part of our miracles. 3
of them are Gerardo's wife, Ana, and their 3 kids. This family is SO
COOL! We gave a blessing to Hermana Lupita's friend (Ana) and she felt
the Spirit. That night, Gerardo told her that he is Mormon (less
active for a long time). She was like WHAT!? We need to go to church!
So the parents and the three kids; Mariana, Sebastian, and Alexa will
come to church :) Pure miracles brought us to them. The areas are fun
though. La Joya is the toughest ward I have served in, but it is all
good, the next missionary coming should be good. I think it is Elder
McCuch, but I am not sure. Whoever it is, if he is with me for 3
transfers, then he will be my last 😳. We shall see tomorrow. Elders
Yoxtheimer and Johnson are training in their areas. They will do
great. We will figure it all out tomorrow. I wouldn't go as far as to
say that President Griffin is off his rocker, but he is definitely
different than President T. THE WHOLE MISSION is going to the meeting
tomorrow for extra training. We will probably all get lunch too and
not be gone until like 5 ay caray. His style is so interesting. He is
very inspired though. I didn't get the chance to talk to him this
week, but we will be seeing him more in the coming weeks.

I learned a lot of interesting things this week. We taught someone who
is less-active, Mari, yesterday and she wants to come back to church
more than anything but she says that SHE CAN'T. Something always comes
up. She said that it is so hard for her to go to church, but she wants
to and she is trying. For the majority of my mission, I would be
pretty frustrated and just tell her a bunch of reasons why she needs
to go. I am trying to be more empathetic though, and it is SO HARD to
put myself in others' shoes. It is so hard! I have realized that it
really can be hard to make it back to church. I don't know the other
side of things and I may have a norrow-minded perspective. I am just
not sure. I know that Christ knows them and what they go through so I
need to help them trust in Him, and I know that being inspired by God
through the Spirit to return or to come to church is the best thing
that could happen so I rely on that too. But I feel like I am coming
to understand just how hard things may be in real-life. We have
"strong" and "active" members missing church 2 out of 3 weeks for
work, not having a car, not being ready on time, etc. etc. These
people are counselors in quorums and Young mens' presidents. We visit
them and tell them why they need to go to church and it may not come
off as loving to them, but we do our best. It is hard for these
people! Only God can decide who is giving their best efforts to go
despite all the opposition, but we need to go and show the LOVE so
that they can feel God's love. I don't know how hard it is for these
people, I don't even know how hard life is in general because mine was
so easy before the mission! I realized that too; life was pretty swell
for me growing up. The future looks swell too, but ya never know. I
have this false pretext that everything will come out smelling like a
rose if I just keep living like I did before the mission but who
knows! It has been good for me to take a step back this week and be
real with myself about how the rest of my life will be. The challenges
and mountains to climb that we have are what help us to grow and to
become, so I guess they will be good! So I know they will come, I just
don't want to spend 2 years judging others for their poor (or what I
judge as poor) efforts and then get home, live life, and realize that
they were really having a hard time. There is nothing trunky about
this either; but I have also been trying to learn how to apply all
this stuff I am learning. A simple question makes me look at anything
on the mission differently; "how would this look to me after the
mission?" Because it is true, we all know how and when to study the
scriptures, to bear testimony, to go to church, and to do the right
thing in general, but if we don't know how it will fit in when we get
home, we are going to get home and have trouble applying! And we would
waste some time and make some mistakes as we try to "get used" to
normal life. I think I will just take President and Sister Taylor's
advice and choose now to be weird and to stay that way :) I hope that
all made sense... I learned a lot about life!

I had a Baptismal Interview this weekend. It was TOUGH. The boy wasn't
showing a lot of excitement. He is kind of rebellious too. I couldn't
decide the whole interview whether he should pass or not. I was
praying and trying to discern the whole time, but nothing. I took a
little extra time in the closing prayer as I sought for an answer from
the Spirit. Nothing. I think nothing, but I went with the answer that
I thought was best and I followed through confidently with it. He
wasn't ready to be baptized. I learned a little there about how the
Lord answers our prayers. It was tough because I never got a "real"
answer. But I think the Lord trusted me enough to let me make the
decision I felt to be right. Whole new meaning to the scripture that
the Lord says that He will "consecrate our performance."

Well, I think there was a lot more I wanted to say. But I forgo

Love, Elder Parry

Oh yeah, mentioning to you about the weather this week isn't worth
more than 2 minutes of typing for me. I was in the rain for about 20
minutes and there were puddles in the gutters for a couple days.
Nothing special at all. Overall, this summer has been very wimpy in
heat.