Sunday we heard from a guy named Chad Lewis, he played football at BYU and then in the NFL. It was really cool, he talked about his mission and the importance of working hard.
Monday we picked up a new investigator named Anna. She's from Russia and she's learning English at BYU, so she has a really cool accent. She said she learned English with some missionaries back in Russia and she wanted to learn more. After we finished talking to Anna we had about ten minutes to eat lunch before we had to go teach a lesson to Linda, which went well.
Tuesday we taught Anna. She asked a lot of questions that really made us have to think. We ended up writing quite a few of her questions down so we could look into them and answer them later. Then in the evening we had a devotional where we heard from President Kearon of the seventy. He talked about dealing with rough days on the mission. We all go through hard times whether we like it or not, so we might as well make the decision to be positive and happy anyways.
I didn't sleep well Tuesday night, so I was really tired all day Wednesday and I don't remember very much of what happened. Sooo yeah.
Thursday we went to an infield orientation about how to work with members. It basically was a two hour presentation telling us to follow the rules and work hard so members trust us enough to help out and refer their friends. It probably would've been more useful, but the person they paired me up with to do roll plays with really didn't want to be there, so he was pretty impossible to work with. It's alright though, I felt like I learned a little from it. After the infield orientation the sisters showed us a song they wrote about our district. It was to the tune of Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer, and it was pretty funny. For our afternoon class Brother Oniki helped us work on tailoring the lessons to be more applicable to our investigators needs. Then at night we were back in our room when we heard a knock at the door. We opened it up and one of the other districts in our building started piling in our room and singing Jingle Bells. They went all out, some had bells and others had Santa hats, it was really funny. I think that's the most I've experienced the spirit of Christmas in the middle of September before.
In our class with Brother Oniki on Friday he taught us how to extend a baptism invitation in the first lesson with someone without it being weird or awkward, it was good. Then we had our last lesson with Anna. We usually teach lessons outside, but it was raining super hard, so after we found her we had to wander around the nearby building a bit until we found an empty classroom we could teach her in. We taught her about the plan of salvation and bore our testimonies, then we said our farewells and encouraged her to keep reading and praying and trying to learn for herself that the Book of Mormon is true. As we were walking away she told us that we'd helped her more than any other missionaries she'd met so far. That was a huge testimony builder for me because I had thought that our lessons with Anna hadn't been going very well at all even though I'd been trying to do my best to teach by the spirit, but once she said that I realized that the things we say under the influence of the spirit make a bigger impact on people than we may think that they do at the time. It's important to remember that I'm not the real teacher out here, the spirit is.
Today we did laundry and Elder Hart got mad at the MTC barber. We missed our appointment because our morning trip to the temple took longer than we thought it would, and Elder Hart was super offended that the barber had a totally booked schedule and wouldn't let him in. The barber was being perfectly reasonable and even found him an appointment for Monday, I'm not sure why it made Elder Hart so mad. Now we're sitting outside and writing emails to people so Elder Hart and Elder Schell can try to listen to the announcer for the BYU football game.
I'm going to miss my district, but I'm definitely excited to leave and start my mission for real. I love you all, I'll be keeping you in my prayers!!
-Elder Clark
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