Hey everybody!
This week just flew by! I can't believe it's Pday again.
Elder Chappell and I made a goal this week to teach 2 lessons a day which has improved our teaching and kept us busy. Our teaching is slowly improving as we're realizing more and more that it is the Spirit that needs to do the teaching, not us! I had a cool experience Monday night before bed. We've been teaching the sisters in our district who have been pretending to be investigators for us and we were going to teach them the next morning. So as I knelt down to pray before I climbed into bed I just started praying for our investigators and that Elder Chappell and I would be able to receive the guidance/direction we needed from the spirit in order to help our investigators. I said amen and was just kneeling there thinking for a bit about everything and about our lesson we had planned with the sisters for the next morning. We had planned a lesson for the next day to teach them about the plan of salvation and eternal families because all 3 had mentioned their love for their families. But as I knelt there thinking about it I had this strong impression that we needed to teach them about the Restoration. I was really confused because earlier that day the Plan of Salvation seemed exactly like what we needed to teach them. And being my stupid self, I tried to push the thought away thinking, no no the plan of salvation is what we need to teach them. And then immediately the feeling came back to teach about the restoration.
So the next morning we started teaching the sisters and after our opening prayer we asked them if they had read the chapter in the Book of Mormon that we assigned them. They said they had and then one of the sisters pretending to be her friend who is a non-active member just randomly said, "I was reading the chapter and it said something about the priesthood...I remember learning something about how the priesthood was taken from the earth as a little girl? Is that true?..because I'm really confused about it." Elder Chappell looked at me and he said, "restoration?" and I said, "yup." We then started teaching about the restoration and I think it was one of the best lessons we've ever had. The spirit was strong and guided me and Elder Chappell the whole time. It might seem silly to some that we pray for guidance and direction to teach fake investigators...but my testimony has grown so much that the training and role playing we do in the MTC is essential to becoming successful in the field. As we've prayed for revelation for those we've been teaching, we really have been able to receive revelation as if they were real investigators! ...Repentance is something we should all rejoice in! When we see others take the time to turn away from sin, and come unto Christ we should support, love, and pray for them. It's the most incredible gift we have to be able to repent and become pure and clean again through the atonement of Jesus Christ. We all make mistakes every day that we need to repent for. None of us want others to judge us so we shouldn't judge others who make mistakes. I know that I could never be here today if it wasn't for the healing power of the atonement and mercy of our Savior...
Love you all, and I'm grateful for you! I'm doing faaaaaaaaaaaaantastic and I hope you all are too.
Love, Elder Parrish
