Fire

We're now covering the Anaheim Hills area for the Craig Park YSA ward, which is where the fire was, but my athsma has actually been totally fine. I think it's because there's so much oxygen at the lower altitude. There actually haven't really been service opportunities with the fire. The houses were either untouched or burned to the ground, and there isn't a lot you can do to help when there isn't any more house. The area we're covering now is a super rich area, there are very few houses that are worth less than a million dollars. It's definitely a very different experience from the ghetto, dumpy apartments we were at before, there's a lot less people out and about, and most of the people we do talk to are far less polite. Not all of them though, we have talked to some really great rich people, and the ward is awesome. I think more than half of them are returned missionaries. I appreciated the package, tell Dannika thanks for all of the letters. The glasses you sent me are definitely not my prescription though, and they're too small for my face. Plus I brought both of my pairs, so I'm thinking you sent me Ammon or Josh's glasses. 

A lot of this week was just knocking doors and having people tell us they weren't interested in hearing from us, so I'll just hit some highlights.

Tuesday we had dinner with the elders quorum president. He actually grew up in Hyde Park and I went to high school with his little brother. His brother's name is Josh, but I can't spell his last name so I'm not going to try.

Wednesday we got to go to institute! We went in the morning and introduced ourselves to the institute directors at the colleges in our area and one of them told us he had non-members taking his classes and wants missionaries to start coming to some of the classes and introducing ourselves to them. It was just like institute/seminary back home, and it was kind of nice to have a familiar experience in the middle of all the crazy new stuff that's been happening. 

Thursday we set up a table at Cal State and walked around just talking to college kids. It was really awesome, we got to talk to so many people, and it was a lot of fun. And want to know what's super awesome? I had two different non-members ask me for a Book of Mormon without me even offering one! The first guy literally walked up to me and said, "Are you a mormon?" So I was like, "Yeah." Then he asked where he could go to buy a Book of Mormon! So I told him we were selling them and if he gave me 10$ I could get him one. Just kidding, I gave him the one I was holding and talked to him a bit about how he heard about the Book of Mormon and what he knew about it, then I told him a little about the restoration and asked if we could come by later and teach him more. He didn't want to give us his number yet, but he had us write our number in the book and told us he'd call if he had any questions, so hopefully we hear from him again later. Then later that day we we're going around looking for previous investigators and introducing ourselves to members, and one of the people we talked asked if we could give his dad a blessing, and I got to give the blessing! It was super cool, the words really do just come to your mind, all I had to do was say them. 

Friday we met with President Golden and tried to find people. No one wanted to talk to us, but we tried real hard.

Saturday we were visiting people up by the burnt out houses, so we went and checked those out while we were there, then we went to the hospital because that member from our last ward who got in the motorcycle accident had to go back because he got an infection. He had to have emergency surgery, but he should be all set now to make a complete recovery, so that's good. 

Sunday we went to the YSA ward! We got to introduce ourselves to the bishop and meet a lot more members, and they're all awesome. They also fed us steak at the linger longer afterward, so that was pretty great. Then we went out to Anaheim Hills to try to find people again, and we were finally able to set up some solid return appointments, so we should actually be able to teach some lessons this week! It was a really great day.

So yeah, it's been a slow process, but I think we're starting to figure out how to be effective in our new area. We have some new ideas to try out this week, so we'll see how they work out. That's pretty much it for this week, I love you all!

Love,

Elder Clark