Life in the MTC

Pointing to Puebla Mexico :)

Carlie downtown SLC getting her Visa

With her companion Hermana Ibarra

Carlie's district

Carlie LOVED her companion!!

Email April 19, 2014

Qué pasa? What's up mi familia? 

Okay, answers, just so that I don't forget to answer them.=)

I just sent you a picture. Sorry I haven't sent any yet. You can only send 1 at a time here cause the file size is too big and the hour we have goes by too fast! 

One other companionship is going to Puebla North with my companion and I. The other two, H' bullock and H' Powell are going to the Monterrey East Mission. We actually just met another sister on Wednesday who's going to the Puebla mission with us. 

Rochelle sent me a package and I was surprised that she had sent me a CTR ring, I love it!!!  I’m going to try and write her a thank-you note before I leave the MTC.

Guess what? I got my travel plans!!!! Yay!!!!!

We're all super excited! We leave next Monday. Our first flight is at 12:45, we'll fly to Houston, Texas, then we'll fly from Houston to Puebla at 6:32. I won't even be in Puebla until 8:30ish. I'm super excited though! :D 

We aren't doing to the Easter hunt thing until tomorrow because we get to do a Zone activity each Sunday. Since we all got plastic eggs from our families and Hermana Ramirez got candy from her mom, we decided to do an Easter egg hunt with the Elders that day. We're all pretty stoked! 

Ooo speaking of Easter, guess what? We get someone awesome tomorrow who's going to come speak to us!  I don't know who yet but I can just feel it.  Rumor has it that it's gonna be one of the First Presidency but no one knows yet. It'll definitely be one of them or a member of the 12. I'm so excited! Not to mention we're in the choir as well so we get to sing for whoever is coming!

On Sunday, the BYU Men's choir came and performed for us. They're the largest all men choir in the USA. They were amazing! They sang a couple of hymns but mostly none traditional songs. It was music to my ears...literally. They sang "Lean on me" and they did it in a very Southern style that was sooo much fun! Then they sang an African song that was amazing and a New Zealand song that was beautiful. They did a war dance that was kinda like the Hakka. It was awesome! Especially for missionaries that haven't heard anything but the sound of their own voices for the last month....or 3 months. Some missionaries are here forever!

On Tuesday, Neil A Anderson came and talked to us! I know! Neil A Anderson! He talked about the Atonement and about the importance of knowing where in the scriptures the Atonement is mentioned in the Book of Mormon. 

We taught Leticia for the last time yesterday. It was really sad. Of course we didn't treat it like a last lesson but it was still sad. We were able to teach her all of the lessons and she was soooo close to being ready for baptism! Ugh, aw well, I'm glad we got the chance to teach her. She was amazing and very open to the gospel.

This next week we'll be teaching each other as we take on the role of a investigator. I thought of the person who would be the most difficult and give me the best view of what an investigator sees. So I became Justina.  It's fun, and super cool to feel the power the other missionaries have. Especially the ones who feel like they struggle the most. The Spirit is so strong here it's amazing!

I love you all! I'll let you know how Easter went! 

Finally a picture :)

Email April 12, 2014

Conference was amazing. There's something incredible about being in a big room of missionaries listening and learning from the prophets.

I'm so glad Jeff Terry is doing better. Thank you for letting me know that he is in the hospital. Please tell them I will be praying for him and their family too.

I actually will probably see Cailey Jeppson on the Sunday after she arrives and the Sunday before she leaves. Let me know how the farewell goes.  Also, please thank Sister Jeppson for me when you see her next. In her loving kindness she sent me an Easter package that I'm very excited to start. She also gave me things for my Easter basket and my companion's. Hermana Ibarra was so grateful that she wants to write a letter with me to thank them. 

Oh Dad, thank you so much for your letter. I'll be writing you back but I just wanted to let you know that it brought so much comfort and answers to the questions I had sent in a letter to you the day before. I am so grateful that you listened to the spirit and knew exactly what to write to help me!

On Sunday, we watched General Conference and then found out that we still had a devotional that night. Oh man, were we all bummed. We couldn't take sitting anymore. At least, that was until we realized who was coming. VOCAL POINT!!! They're an amazing accapella group from BYU, all members, all return missionaries, It was amazing. They would share a thought with us about missionary work and an experience from their mission and then they would sing a hymn for us. Oh my goodness. I don't know how they're going to top that one.

We got a new investigator this week. She's our TRC investigator which means she could be a real investigator or not. Regardless, she's amazing. She's very kind, very attentive, and very receptive. We love teaching her. Our lessons with her are amazing! We were talking about the Gospel of Jesus Christ with her and ending up talking a lot about baptism. She had a sister who died as a baby and wasn't baptized. Her mother was so upset and still sad about it because she had been told that her daughter was lost in limbo. I don't know how we did it but through the power of the Spirit we were able to pull out scriptures from the Book of Mormon that explained all about infant baptism and were able to teach her in great detail and were able to address what she needed. It's amazing. We taught her yesterday about the Plan of Salvation and she was just so happy about it. Hermana Ibarra and I both felt reminded about why the plan is so important and just how much we want to be with our families forever. 

On Thursday, we got to have a really good lesson with Brother Dolbin. I know I talk about his lessons a lot but really, they're some of the best. We were outside and he was answering any of the questions we had through the scriptures. It was only Hermana Ibarra, me and Hermana Powell and Hermana Bullock. The other two were at the doctor all day. Anyway, the lesson was amazing. He answered some of my questions without me even having to ask them, like questions I had forgotten I had. He explained about personal study and how important it is that we use at least part of our personal study for ourselves, to not just study for our investigators. 'We can only convert someone up to the point of our own conversion.' Using this amazing knowledge I decided to try it out on Friday, I studied about the glory of God and what exactly that means. I'm learning about it but D&C 93 is amazing for this topic. The verse I want to share isn't about the glory of God however it's about us. Verse 45-46 say, "Verily I say unto you my servant Joseph Smith Jun. or in other words, I will call you friends, for you are my friends, and ye shall have an inheritance with me -- I called you servants for the world's sake, and ye are their servants for my sake" When we try to serve others, whether or not we have a calling in the church, we become his servants. Let us all not only do our best to be his servants but may we all strive to be worthy of being called His friends. 

I love you all! May the Lord bless you!

Hermana Parslow

"Continue on your journey, for I am with you even to the end." --the Lord.

Email this week came early due to Conference this weekend

Hola, mi asombroso familia!

Thank you so much for sending this email on Monday. Some of the Hermanas here were worried that since we were doing our P day this Thursday, they wouldn´t have letters from their family. However, I wasn´t concerned. I knew my family loved me. =) 

 I´m sorry Dad´s not been feeling well. There must be a spring bug going around. Some of the missionaries here have caught something, myself included. Tell him to drink plenty of orange juice and to get plenty of rest. He must stay in bed and watch the entire Star Wars....or Lord of the Rings trilogy (Whichever is preferred) and cannot get out of bed, except for potty breaks and snack trips, until the entire series is over. Hermana Parslow´s orders. =D  

 I´m glad the funeral for Sister Graham went so well and that Dad was feeling well enough to sing for it. She was so strong. I admire her very much, I was very sad to hear about her passing. 

 We actually didn´t get to see the Women´s broadcast, however, we´re apparently going to watch it in the evening while the Elders watch the Preisthood session. We´re all really excited. We get to spend the WHOLE DAY at Main Campus. It´s going to be AWESOME! We all can´t wait.

 So, life here at the CCM (West Campus version of the MTC) is pretty good. It was a rough week at the beginning however I got a good lesson out of it. I learned this week that Satan really does not want me on a mission. I thought before, "If I can just get to the MTC...everything will be fine." I don´t think I could´ve been more wrong! If anything he´s tried harder while I´ve been here. He tells each of us in all of our lives that we´re inadequate. We´re not good enough. We´re not qualified. We think that we´re just not enough. WRONG! The truth is that honestly, when we feel that way, it is a sign of just how adequate and good and qualified and strong we are. Satan would not try so hard and the Lord would not let us be driven so low if we weren´t strong enough to pull ourselves back up. The Lord knows us better than ourselves and will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear. I got taught that this week that we should never feel less that someone else just because their strengths are different from ours. 

  I have such wonderful leaders here. Right when I was struggling, I got to have an interview with my District leader and my Sister Training Leader (that´s the equivalent calling of a Zone Leader for a sister). They´re actually Hermana Ramirez and Hermana Wells. The other district in our zone left for their missions at the beginning of this week so we´re all alone. A lone little Sistrict. Yeah. I know. Sad. Anyways, I got to meet with them and they were so kind and somehow knew exactly what to say to bring me back up. 

 I also got to meet with my Branch President yesterday, President Stewart. He´s such a wonderful man. He´s like a mix of Gordon B. Hinckley and Grandpa Buttars. I´ll have to make sure I get a picture with him before I leave here. He came all the way to the CCM just because I asked to meet with him. He was so kind. He told me that he was surprised I was struggling because all of the reports he had gotten about me from my teachers and my companion were all great. Aren´t they all just so sweet? He told me that he could tell I was going to be a great missionary and that although he would rather have me for 18 months, he´ll gladly take the 6 weeks. I´m sure he says that to everyone but it still makes one feel pretty awesome. =) 

 Oh! I almost forgot! Guess what? So on Sunday, there was a "Going away" devotional for all of the missionaries leaving the following week. At that devotional, the President of the MTC told everyone that the Sunday devotional that week would be one you would seriously regret forever if you missed it. Of course word got around and naturally so did the rumors. Everyone thought it would be an apostle speaking to us or even President Monson. Well....we were all kinda disappointed when we got there and the board read Richard Elliot. Atleast, we were all disappointed until he started the devotional. He´s the organist for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and is absolutely amazing. He played songs and talked a little about the reason he was playing that individual song right before he played it. He played a song mostly with his feet! What?! I know! It was amazing. Then as icing on the cake, guess who showed up having gotten home from his mission not the Wednesday before? Go ahead guess....David Archuleta!! Oh my goodness, he was just as amazing as Richard Elliot! They performed "Be Still My Soul"..oh my goodness, it was so beautifully done. It was a devotional to remember!

  We get to watch a "movie/film" after a devotional on Sundays and this last sunday we watched "Legacy". It´s an older pioneer film that was actually really well done. However, you can definitely tell that all of us missionaries are media deprived because everyone would cheer and clap and "Ooo" and "Ahh" and just the right parts. Yeah...I know... it´s kinda sad really. 

  Let´s see, what else....Oh! We were talking in class the other day about Christ and why He is an example to us. Elder Christoffersen said, "God gave you your agency and Jesus showed you how to use it." Powerful right?

  I don´t know if you were told but I got a letter from Candace and Becca yesterday. Becca had been in primary on Sunday and the lesson had been Missionary work. She walked out of class with two pictures and said, "Mommy look! It´s Me and Carlie as missionaries!" Oh my goodness, that just melted my heart. Candace sent both of the pictures to me and they are now hanging up on the wall of my bedroom. I´m tempted to put them on the fridge however, I wouldn´t want the other Hermanas to be jealous of my niece. =) If you get to see her before I write back to her please tell her that I am sending a letter to her as soon as I can. 

  Our Tuesday devotional was done by Elder Scott Whiting of the Seventy. He talked alot about missionary work, being obedient, and power vs authority. He was a really good talk. My favorite thing he said though was "Focus on the Wonders of the Work". I think that when any of us are having a bad day we should just focus on the wonders of the work. Whether it´s God´s work and his creations or the work He has call us to do. 

  The last thing that just crossed my mind as I was about to finish writing was, remember, when the Lord asks you to do something hard, it´s not just because he wants that hard thing done but it´s because he wants a better you. He asks you to do hard things because they will make you better and stronger and exactly what the Lord needs. 

  I love you all! Good luck Camille! You´re going to be amazing at your games this weekend! Please give my dog my love! You´re all amazing!

"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Hebrews 11:1 with JST Translation. 

 

Hermana Parslow

 

P.S  Please tell Camille that the cookies were absolutely delicious and everyone loved them.

Oh, btw, guess what?! We get 4 new elders added to our zone this coming Wednesday! Yaaaay! We´re all super excited! We´ve decided to give them the "Bubble Salute" when they arrive! =D Thank you Madre Parslow and the Parslow family for providing the bubbles! 

Email March 29, 2014

Hola mi familia!!

Another week and in the words of the Croods...STILL ALIVE!!! 

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! For the care package. I think I got it on either Tuesday or Wednesday. All of the other Hermanas were jealous of my super AWESOME family! I loved all the little treats and laughed so hard at all the little quotes. It was amazing! Oh! I gave out the bubbles to the Hermanas, when they realized what they were they screamed a little bit and then there was much rejoicing....yaaay.....I also made sure to tell them that the bunnies were from Madre Parslow and they all say Gracias! 

Congrats to Camille on her game! That´s awesome! Way to be lil´ sis! 

Thank you to everyone for taking care of my darling dog, sorry for the thief tendencies... I have no idea where he gets it from. 

Thank you for all of your notes throughout the week, they really helped and I love hearing from you all. 

 

Okay, so yes my apartment has a full kitchen. There´s a companionship to each room, thank goodness, you can barely fit two beds into one room. The smoke detector finally got new batteries....after a week and lots and lots of beeping. Cortney, you asked about the girls in my district so I´ll tell you a little about them. 

   First, there´s my companion, she´s still super awesome and great. She´s a very on time person and very dedicated to the Lord´s work. We still get along great!

   Then there´s Hermana Powell, she´s this super sweet girl from a farm in Indiana. She´s really innocent and says the funniest little things at the most random moments without meaning to. She's apparently the Mom of our district cause she´s 21. Her companion is Hermana Bullock. She´s canadian, although you´d never guess it. She´s the oldest in our district and has been given the honorary title of Abuela by Hermana Ramirez because she´s the oldest out of us all. Abuela is Grandmother in spanish. She´s usually our entertainment in the morning while we´re all getting ready cause she sings in the shower. It´s fantastic actually cause her voice is amazing! 

   Hermana Wells is my age and from Cedar Hills, Utah. She´s super sweet and is the kind of girl that would probably have been voted most likely to succeed. She was a soccer player and spent a couple of semesters at BYU Hawaii after graduating. Her companion is Hermana Ramirez. This woman is outgoing, blunt, forward, and as sassy as they come. She wrote the book on attitude. She´s really sweet and is actually our entertainment throughout the day. She´s hilarious. She´s from Salt Lake City. 

The Empty Sea is Great!! Once we got into a set schedule and was done with all of the introduction stuff, things got much easier and fun! 

Our lesson with Gabriela were great! My companion and I actually were the most successful with her. She was having trouble praying and had really just asked to meet with us because she was curious about our church and why we were all so crazy. We were able to get her to pray and believe that she could change. We had our last lesson with her on Wednesday which was super sad because she was making so much progress! Funny thing though, we got another teacher on Thursday named Hermana Bair, guess who walked in...Gabriela! Yeah, okay, we all knew she was a teacher but it´s so much fun to get to know her as herself instead of just as an investigator. She´s amazing. She helps us with the language so much! Not to mention she´s hilarious...even if most of us don´t know what she´s saying 90% of the time. I took a picture of something called my Perspective Rock and will hopefully be able to send it to you. Thursday she had us all run outside in the rain to find a small rock. When we got back she had us try to see things with the rock held up to our eye. Naturally you can see very little. She then had us throw the rock on the ground and look at it. The rock represents obstacles and it was about perspectives. When you´re mainly looking at your obstacle it seems huge but when you look at it from a distance with the big picture in mind it becomes very small. It was a good lesson and reminder.

 

On Sunday we got our Hellfire! and Damnation! talk. It was pretty good actually. The speaker called people (in general) out on flirting and not being in the MTC worthily. He also said that in the MTC right now there are 1,840 missionaries! Whoa! He also said that the best missionaries in the field are sisters...pfft, no doubt. He mentioned that the prophet lowered the age for missionaries because all of us will need to be stronger for what lies ahead in our futures. 

My favorite part of Sunday though was watching a devotional done by Elder Bednar a couple of years ago. It´s something you ONLY missionaries get to see and it´s called The Character of Christ. It. Was. AMAZING! He said, You are in the right place at the right time in your life. You are exactly where the Lord wants you to be. He also said that each missionary is assigned to a mission by an apostle, who we sustained as a prophet, seer, and revelator. We are never sent somewhere we weren´t meant to be. That being said, he also reminded all of us that, You´re mission is not about you. He said, The character of Christ is to turn out with love and service when others would turn in. Christ always turned out to others when something awful happened to him. Ugh! How I wish you all could hear it! It was amazing! Two of my favorite things he said were, That Natural Man is like the Cookie Monster (then he gave the best Cookie Monster impression ever) and that we all need to make sure we are converted to Christ, not to the church, not to the programs, not to the people, no even to our leaders but to Christ. The other thing I loved was when he was talking about turning out when we want to turn in and he said, When you find yourself, you won´t be looking for it, because you will have turned out to others. Wow, talk about powerful!

I love you all! I miss you! Thank you so much for being amazing! Please forward this to Grandma and let her know I loved hearing from her, that I loved the card, and that I love her and Grandpa!

Oh! Please send me a pic of the family or pictures in general, everyone has been asking me for them!

Thank you! I love you! Hasta luego!

Hermana Parslow

A few pictures from the night carlie was set apart

First email from Hermana Parslow March 22, 2014

Hola mi familia! How is everything going? I hope everyone is doing well. Mucho gracias for the card! It couldn't have come at a better time! 

   It's interesting here at the MTC, the first day after you dropped me off I got my badge, my books, and found out where I would be sleeping. The elders we met by the temple weren't kidding. I really am on West Campus and it is totally the best. They're pretty laid back and trusting here. Up at the Main Campus where the dorms are is almost like the military compared to here. Not to mention my apartment is super nice. The only downside is the two fire alarms in the house that beep all. day. long. The one in the hall beeps every 23 seconds and the one in my bedroom beeps exactly 8 seconds after that. Oh my goodness, I'm about ready to break them. However the second night I was here we figured out how to make them be silent for at least 8 hours, which was a total bonus! It wasn't until after one of our teachers, Hermano Dolbin, said something about batteries that we realized new batteries would fix the beeping problem...go figure! 

   I live with 5 other girls who are in my district. Hermana Bulllock, who's a super sweet woman from Canada, Hermana Powell, who's from  Indiana, Hermana Ramirez and Hermana Wells, who are both from Utah, and then Hermana Ibarra from Portland, Oregon. She's my companion. I am so blessed to have her as mi companera. She’s sweet, kind, likes to laugh, and super excited about serving the Lord, which is great because I had a really hard time being excited once I got here but I'll tell you about that in a minute. We get along splendidly! I don't think our district could have been paired up better. We've gotten into the habit of thanking each other for being our companion right before we say goodnight.

   So, first there's a district, which is the class that you first start out in (we have all hermanas), and then there's a zone which is made up of districts. We only have two districts in our zone, our zone leader is Elder Clements...the one we met at the temple, he's fantastic. Those hermanas and elders in the other district are so wonderful. They have been here a while and have spent the last few days showing us the ins and outs of the MTC. They actually just got their travel plans and are leaving next week which makes me very sad. Hermana Spence, from Montana, was the first one I met when I got dropped off on West Campus. She ran up to me and yelled, "You're in my zone!" Everyone in our zone was super excited to see all of us hermanas because they had apparently been the only district in their zone for a few weeks. 

   It's amazing that I've only been here 3 days, I feel like I've been here for weeks. Every day is soooo full. They don't waste any time here, which is awesome! Keeping busy seems to be the best way to keep the homesickness from too bad. Speaking of that, I might as well tell you. I have been a little homesick, don't worry, although I feel it sometimes, I'm doing much better now. :D 

    I was actually talking to Hermana Bullock in the kitchen last night because we were both brushing our teeth (6 girls + 1 bathroom = Improvise with kitchen sink!) and I found out that she was going through the exact same thing as I was. She was just as surprised that she was homesick too. We talked about it and how upbeat our companions were and agreed that although they were fantastic, it was nice to know we weren't alone in our trials.

   Our first investigator discussion was pretty good. Her name was Gabriela, she's super friendly and bubbly although I have no idea what she is saying and she speaks sooo fast. It's a good thing Hermana Ibarra speaks some spanish otherwise we both would've been deers in headlights. Luckily, Gabriela spoke un poco English and so with some charades and Spanglish her and I were able to understand each other. We're teaching her again this evening when P-day is over. 

   Ugh! I have so much to tell you and sooooo little time! Um, a quick overview I suppose. Today we went to the temple which was pretty cool, the Provo temple is super white and cream. Oh! Yes, the food is decent. It's pretty good actually. We visited the main campus cafeteria today for lunch and it's no wonder the missionaries gain so much weight while they're here, there's food....EVERYWHERE! Oh. my. goodness. I was in heaven. Especially since they had some classic Utah foods that I didn't realize any one else ate. Like frog-eye salad or orange salad. Yeah,  I had to explain to just about everyone in my zone what was in it and why I was so beyond excitement that I was getting to eat it.

    Um, a spiritual thought. One of our teachers Hermano Dolbin is amazing. He taught us last night and the one thing that really stuck out to me was this...(by the way, you know that he really wants you to remember something when he gets super serious and saying something in Spanish and then English) he said, "Never forget. The ONLY person who can heal someone is Christ. He is the ONLY person who can offer it. His Atonement is real and it is the only thing that can heal someone." Also, "The Lord is gathering His sheep and He is going to do it no matter what. He's just letting us be a part of it. Our job is to figure out how to get out of the way so that He can do it." 

   The Spirit is amazing here! I love you all! The Lord loves you! Let me know how everything is going at home! Let me know if you have any questions! Hasta luego! 

 

P.S Apparently they gave us the wrong address here is my updated one.

Carlie Cynthia Parslow

APR28 MEX-PUBN

2023 N 900 E Unit 826

Provo UT 84602