Hermana Parry in Houston: President Mortensen is FANTASTIC!!

Monday, July 7, 2014

I met President Mortensen and his family this week! Oh my gosh, they are FANTASTIC!!! They are just going to pick up right where the Pingrees left off and take the mission to even greater heights. I can already tell that the mission is going to change dramatically. President Mortensen is very different from President Pingree but its awesome to realize that they both really do have the same end goal- eternal life for everyone. I just feel so pumped to work with President Mortensen. I am a little sad that I will only have a few short weeks with him.

Missionary work is incredible. I love it so much. Please I never want to leave. I was talking to President the other day and I just broke down telling him to never send me home. This is my little piece of heaven. Why? Because this work is divine. I couldn't be involved in something that is so close to Godliness except for this. I have the grand privilege of helping find people and then teach them how to qualify to life with God forever. It is so beautiful! There was an hermano who was visiting our ward from El Salvador that bore his testimony yesterday. I was a mess the whole time because he talked about how grateful he was for all missionaries over the world, because without them, he would be dead and most likely dead in his sins. Boom! That hit me hard. There is nothing more rewarding than to hear that. It really made me grateful for the mission. That I have been able to be a mouth piece for my God and warn people of the effects of sin and then take them by the hand and guide them to the light.

This week I learned a lot about repentance and allowing yourself to have a change of perspective. There is that famous phrase that says how you never know what you have until it is gone. Well I feel like that is so true with the atonement and repentance. We never really understand it and appreciate it until we have to use it. I am grateful for the mistakes that I have made because they have turned me to God and made me better. They have helped me come to appreciate and know my Savior in a way that is a lot deeper than it could ever be otherwise. It was precisely yesterday when we were sitting with Kimberly's mom when she told us that she is so mad at herself for letting her family get so far away from God. She felt so guilty because she was born in a home with the gospel and they were a blessed family. She recognizes now that without a Christ centered home, you lose blessings that are rightfully yours. She is in the process of making changes so that her children can be blessed. It was so powerful to be able to testify to her that this moment in her life is a spiritual awakening for her. She understands more the truthfulness of the gospel because she has been without it. God has humbled her in her circumstances so that she can now push forward and be even stronger. I am so excited for la Hermana because she is determined to make things right. Her future looks so bright:)

God has really given me a bigger capacity to love while being out here. But not just to love but to express it. I am so blessed. I cannot tell you how absolutely fantastic it is. I got up to bear my testimony yesterday and I just was without words. God's love for us is indescribable and when we can get even a little sense of the love He truly has for us, wow, we are changed.

The fourth of July was spent contacting! Everything fell through. But it’s ok because while we were driving we saw a HUGE fair going on and we decided to crash it. I literally felt like I had walked into the great and spacious building of Lehi's dream with Hermana Saenz. We were so out of place but hey; we are just trying to save the world. We want to save as many people as we can in the short time he has given us so obviously we go to places where it is most densely populated. We didn't have any immediate success but I hope someday someone who we gave a card to will be able to benefit from the blessings of the gospel-- because the blessings are oh so sweet!

3 Nephi 5:13. That is me and I love it. I couldn't be more honored to be able to serve my God and my friends. It’s the best.

Read the Book of Mormon. That is the best tool we have against Satan-- well that and our own righteousness.

I played basketball this week and it was one of the happiest moments of my life. Ashley better get ready because I am so ready to play in 3 weeks!

LOVE YOU ALL!

Keep Smiling,

Hermana Parry