Dear World,

Im curious how many people actually read my emails… my estimate, about 1000. AH! Anyways I am doing amazing. We had transfers this past week which means my trainer Elder Cardoso took off and left me all alone (with Elder Hiar the finiancial secretary)!! Anyone who is familiar with military terms knows what I mean when I say this week is my “hell week.” But its almost over! Yesterday we had a meeting with President and scheduled all the zone conferences, temple trips, etc. So much work ahead of me…

One “novidade” of this transfer is I was called as a district leader!! My district includes the secretaries, assistants, and another companionship next to our area. I was blown away. I figured President would let me wait a few transfers to get the hang of being the executive secretary but nooooo. So now besides doing all my office work, I have to take care of a district! I am excited I know that the Lord will help me with ALL this work I have to do. I had my first baptismal interview last night! The district leader does the interviews for the people in his district. So the assistants had a 13-year-old boy, he was way cool, and more importantly, he passed! Hooray for baptisms.

So this past Tuesday night I got to hang out with one of the new missionaries, his name is Elder Denis. He went to the interior so they stay the night at our house and get shipped out the next day. So he has the collest conversion story ever. He was living in Boston, and one day he was getting his hair braided (he is black.. ). Then all of the sudden a book of mormon commercial came on! His mom wanted one so they called and a week later it came, in the mail.. (normally missionaries deliver it) So he started reading it and was really liking it, THEN the missionaries showed up, and baptized the whole family! Even cooler was he has a sister that wasn’t living at home at that time and was having lots of problems, then later on he got to baptize her! So awesome… He is a straight up gangster with a boston accent, and just a way chill dude.

So last week I mentioned a book I am reading (“Drawing on the Powers of Heaven” by Grant Von Harrison). It is officially my favorite book. There are so many things that I have learned, so many thing I need to work on! One thing that really drew my attention this past week was the subject of the gifts of the spirit. Listen to the following quote from George Q. Cannon: “How many of you… are seeking for these gifts that God has promised to bestow? How many of you, when you bow before your Heavenly Father in your family circle or in your secret places, contend for these gifts to be bestowed upon you? How many of you ask the Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, to manifest himself to you through these powers and these gifts? Or do you go along day by day like a door truing on its hinges, without having any feeling upon the subject, without exercising any faith whatever; content to be baptized and be members of the Church, and to rest there, thinking that your salvation is secure because you have done this?

God is the same today as He was yesterday;… (He) is willing to bestow these gifts upon his children. I know that God is willing to heal the sick, that He is willing to bestow the gift of discerning spirits, the gift of wisdom, of knowledge and of prophecy, and other gifts that may be needed.”

How awesome is that! There are SO many gifts of the spirit we can have, all we have to do is four things:

1 Study the gift, learn all you can about it
2 DESIRE the gift (read last weeks email)
3 Ask the Lord to give you it
4 Be obedient!

“I can promise you that the spirit is a whole lot more anxious to help you than you are to be helped” – S. Dilworth Young. We need to learn to ASK, and SEEK these gifts. We all have weaknesses, none of us are perfect, but the Lord can help us with out righteous desires by blessing us with the gifts of the Holy Ghost. I hope we can all understand more the significance of these spiritual gifts, and strive to obtain them. Have a grrrreat week, I love you all!

Your fellow brother in the gospel,
Elder Parker Boyack

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am humbled by this opportunity to speak with you all today. I pray that these words will help each one of you in your busy lives.

This week was good and bad. Good as in we got lots of work done in the mission office, but bad because we didn´t get much done in our area. We have transfers next week so we are getting ready for the verdinhos (greenies) to get here and we are getting all the flights ready for the missionaries who are leaving. Usually President does the transfers the Sunday before transfers day, but he has been working almost this whole transfer with it and pretty much finished. We have been really growing as a mission, our last group was about 15 new missionaries, we are getting 15 this Tuesday, then 15 more the next transfer! Then leaving there are only 3 this transfer and 5 the next. So we are in a big need of trainers and let me tell you it takes a GOOD missionary to train so President has spent lots of time back in his office.

So one of my duties is the baptismal forms. Every time someone is baptized and confirmed, the missionaries send me the form with all their information then we send it all to church headquarters. I have to enter every paper into the computer, you get pretty good at it So as you could imagine, the best mission in the world has a lot of baptisms! So lots of baptisms means lots of forms and information. So I was having a little trouble organizing everything. I asked a few other missions how they were doing it and their methods weren´t really good either. So I came up with this amazing excel spreadsheet to help track everything. The church doesn’t have any official program or method, so I sent my spreadsheet to São Paulo (Brazil LDS Headquarters) and they loved it! So things are going well, I am just not looking forward to this Wednesday when Elder Cardoso (my trainer) leaves! Then if something happens I can’t blame it on him! HAHA but I am confident I will do a good job.

So the other day I was getting a haircut and you are going to laugh, but honestly it was the first time I have looked into a mirror and seen a man. I really have grown up so much here on the mish. I can see it and feel it mentally. I am thinking different. I love reading! I never liked it as a teenager haha. Jeffrey R. Holland claims to be the person most affected by his mission, but I would say I am pretty close. I just couldn´t imagine not going. This is such an amazing opportunity and experience, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

This past week I found a book by Grant Von Harrison called Drawing on the powers of Heaven. (computer crashed here, thank goodness for Word auto-save!!). So this book is so small but packed with amazing things. I have learned a lot about desire. In your words what does desire mean? To wish? So for example, I have the desire to learn how to play the piano well. Do I just wish to play it well or do something about it? Mr. Von Harrison describes a desire as a “motivating conviction.” So if I TRULY have a desire to learn how to play the piano well, I will practice DAILY and work hard at it, AND have the faith I can accomplish my goal. So then I asked myself, what is my desire on the mission? One word, BAPTISMS! I must admit, my desire of baptisms was the wrong definition at first, just a wish. But now I realize that if I truly desire to help people discover the truth, I need to work HARD. I cant just sit on my butt all day here in the office and expect to see people flocking to the baptismal font. So I challenge you to ask yourself, “what is my ultimate desire?” If it’s a righteous desire, God will help you to accomplish what you want. But what are you doing about it? We need to CONSTANTLY stay focused on what we want. If we relax and let our minds wander, things enter in that hinder our progress. We must focus on what we desire and work towards it. I tesify that the Lord will help us if we ask. He loves us and wants us to be happy. We our children of our Heavenly Father and he has made a perfect plan for us to return to live with him for eternity. That is why it is so important that we show our love and faith to him by keeping the commandments, praying, and listening to his servant the prophets.

Thank you all for your prayers and support, I hope you can ponder on these things and change your lives for the better! Have a wonderful week!

Dear Family and Friends,

Good afternoon! How are things over there in the United States?! Things are doing good here. Guess what? In about 1 hour we have a baptism!! We have been teaching this family and the father (Nadir (pronounced Nah-gir)) is getting baptized! The mother doesn’t have much interest and she won’t let her daughter get baptized, YET! It will be awesome, and don’t worry, I will send pictures

Yesterday I went on a division with one of our Zone Leaders Elder Knowles. He is a pretty cool guy. It rained the entire day, and luckily I forgot my umbrella, but it was ok. We taught some really cool families.

So today we cleaned our entire house, I love cleaning! Then Elder Hiar, one of my companions who happens to love cooking, decided he was going to make lasagna! It was soooooo good. One cool thing I started the other day is this system to help me get down my routine i.e. brush teeth, study scriptures, pray, etc. So for every thing I need to do throughout the day there is a two sided circle, one side red the other green. So at the beginning of the day everything is red then when I do that thing I get to flip it to green. Pretty lame sounding I know, but it REALLY helps me! I still haven’t figured out the prize I get when I have an all green day. Usually the one circle I always miss is exercising haha! But I am learning…

I have officially become the household barber! Haha I have some natural hair cutting gift, but I hate cutting hair.. pretty funny. So I charge 1 real (about 45 cents) per haircut. I am making some gooood money.

This week was a rush, we are getting into zone conferences so I have to get everything ready. I am working really hard and loving it. I thought I was going to give the training I did a few weeks ago but President wanted me to stay here so he had the AP’s do my training. I was actually bummed out because I really enjoyed doing it.

We have really been blessed recently with some good referrals. Elder Zucaratto the assistant said something cool the other day, ”if we don’t find the elects, they will find us!” so true.. in fact quite often people walk in here wanting to know more, SO AWESOME!

I really love this work. I really need to get better at it! There is always so much to learn and do. And most important, we can NEVER stop. Just like the prophets say, EVERY member a missionary!

Dear World,

Olá! Como vai? Se quiser eu posso escrever em portugues mas eu vou falar inglês para que vocês possam entender. Tá bom? Haha throw that in Google Translater and it should come out right.. For whoever has seen other side of heaven, remember the part when he reads the bible in tongan then when he finishes he practically forgot English? That’s how I am feeling! EVERYTHNG is Portuguese here so you start thinking and dreaming differently. Its funny though because when I wake up I am not completely mentally “with it” so I talk in English expecting a response from someone but no one understands! Pretty funny sometimes.

Things are going great here. It has been colllld all week. And its not even officially winter yet! But its all good, I don’t mind the cold. I dry cleaned my suit and some ties and they are just like new! Makes me so happy

Well as most of you know I was called as the executive secretary. I will let you all in on what exactly I do from 9 to 6 Monday though Friday. One of the main things I do I get people in and out of the mission. I schedule flights, vans, etc. for all the missionaries and President when he goes to the interior. I also deal with all the Baptism Forms, when someone baptizes a person they fill out a form and they all get sent to me. I enter them all into the church system, pretty time consuming but someone has to do it! I also deal with the governmental stuff, visas, and passports. So a couple times each transfer I take the greenies and missionaries passing 1 year and we have to do some paperwork fo their documents. I am pretty much the secretary for the president so any times he needs something he has me do it. There are lots of other things, im just not thinking of them right now! I am a pretty creative person so I have been giving a lot of new ideas to president, for example we are making a mission website! Its so sweet. Also we got cool temple recommend holders and I am making a design for a cool mission pin. Then once and a while there is the good ol training to all the missionaries.

THEN after 6 every day we get to work in the field until 9. The work is going pretty well here, its not the easiest area. We have 4 people marked for baptism, and almost all our investigators and FAMILIES!! There are lots of others that we are working with that are so close! What a blessing… so be ready for baptism announcements! Its funny because in the 3 areas I have passed through so far, EVERY time I came in the bishopbric changed. So I think my next area I will call the bishop and give him an early warning…

I have been dealing with a lot of contention lately. Contention in the office, in the companionship, with other missionaries, and I hate it! I have always hated contention. I don’t have much patience either so it’s a pretty funny mix. So the other day I began to study peace. It was really cool. I learned a lot about how we live in a world full of contention, strife, anger and hatred. But WE who took upon ourselves the name of Christ need to be peace makers. Instead of arguing, try to find solutions. SO many problems in this world could be solved if people forgot their differences and just tried to have peace. Some people are hardhearted and just like to be mean all the time. Its funny to see when one person is in a bad mood, EVERYONE around them gets in a bad mood!! So we need to be an example to everyone around us. People will see the light and peace and will WANT IT. They will ask why we are always happy, its happened to me already. So this week, I want YOU, yes you reading this letter, to make peace. At work, at home, with friends, whatever. Keep this in your mind and remember it so when the moments come you can be a peacemaker!! That’s just one small step to following the example of Christ. I love you all, peace out!!