slow: church in session

Our Colonial Heights leadership conference group.
Elders Logan, Jones, me and Haley. Serious stuff.

Transfer calls came last night. We got a call at like 9:30 from President Perry and we're just like "oh crap" but he let us know that we're both staying in the area. However, because they just opened up New Kent down south and because they would've been in our district and it would've made our district huge, they split us up. So now it's just us and the Gloucester sisters and they made me district leader. Yeah, it's gonna be weird with just the four of us but we'll make do. It's nice cause I only have one other companionship to worry about and I don't have to worry about going on exchanges or anything. And we can have district meetings a little closer to here. So it's a pretty cushy situation. It'll add a nice twist to the next 6 weeks instead of just "same old same old". The only downside is that we're now cut off from the rest of the zone even more since we can't even talk to Williamsburg anymore. But we'll do just fine.

 Elder Jones has a lot of time to study (health stuff)
so he did this giant thing on the
Mosaic law on a sliding glass door. Crazy.

So that's the big news I guess. Conference was great, we really enjoyed it. Lots of talks on marriage and women and temples and stuff we shouldn't be worrying about right now but I guess it'll be good for later. I really just turned my brain off a little during those talks to be honest. I really enjoyed Uchtdorf's talks again, especially on the priesthood. He's the best. Monson's talk in priesthood was good too. I think he just sounds fed up with certain stuff in the world and just wanted to vent a little on some random topics. And then Elder Holland gave me a Kramer moment with a general conference talk about general conference. I don't know if this conference was better than the last one but it might've been.

Other than that this week was kind of disappointing. We had like 8 missed appointments with investigators we really needed to teach, including 3 missed from our miracle couple. They're going through a lot of crap right now that seems to just be coming from everywhere. We hope they get through it and still want to meet with us. I think they will. We did get to do more service which is always fun. We helped a guy move out of his house and he gave us some free stuff he didn't want. Elder Gaunt got seasons 2-6 of Stargate which I thought of getting dad but he loves it more than I think even dad does. So he was exctied. I got the extended edition of Fellowship of the Ring which I thought was a nice snag. It's in good condition too. So look for that in the mail.

Virginia

But other than the free stuff it was a good week. We've had a lot of problems contacting and teaching people regularly just because of the distance restrictions but we're making do. We should be able to have more miles this month because of the district meeting situation so that'll be nice. We hope to find someone to baptize soon and there's some promise in some places but we're trying. We hear a lot from the members how hard the area is and how missionaries just go crazy when they're here for too long. They've only had 2 baptisms in the last 5 years so it is an uphill battle. But we've got a good attitude.

I think that's all. My e-mails are just getting more and more boring! Reading over that again I'm just like "where's the enthusiasm and the creativity?" I don't know how to change it except for complaining about it at the end of my e-mails. That's why the tapes are so nice cause I can just yap a bit without time restraints. UGH enough repeating myself. Have a good week!

-Elder Parker