Thanksgiving

My tablet just deleted my whole draft and now I basically hate my life, so this email is going to be brief. Sorry. :P

I woke up on Tuesday and my back hurt a lot, so I was considering staying in the apartment, but I felt like I should still go out. I don't feel like typing it all up again, but we got to see some sweet blessings as a result. And my back feels mostly better now, so it's all good. 

Wednesday we ate lunch at Subway and this guy with a huge white beard wearing a shirt that said he was a polygamist bought us cookies. I feel like that might be bad for our image, but hey, free cookies. 

On Thanksgiving we did a big service project cleaning up after an event at the Honda Center where they fed a bunch of homeless people Thanksgiving dinner. It was a lot of fun. Then had Thanksgiving dinner at a member from the Spanish stake, so it was super authentic Mexican food and it was delicious. There were these super good crunchy taco things and this soup called pozole. I have no clue what was in it, but it was delicious. 

Friday we started using the Light the World Christmas initiative for finding. Y'all should definitely participate with the initiative, because Christmas is the best.

Saturday I went to the A10 area again. It went well in the morning, but around 7 P.M. I started feeling a little sick, and then we knocked on a door and I got super lightheaded and almost passed out while we were talking to someone. So after we finished talking to her I told Elder Barnett and Elder Orr that I needed to lie down and we went back to their apartment and I curled up in a ball and slept until my companions came to pick me up, then I grabbed my blanket and pillow and went back to our apartment where I threw up in the bathroom then went to bed and slept until 2:30 or three the next afternoon. I'm feeling better now though, so today is pretty much back to normal. 

That's all for now. Till next time!!

-Elder Clark

Face to Face

I watched the face to face with M. Russell Ballard and Dallin H. Oaks yesterday. They said that on your mission you're told what you need to do and for the most part, when to do it. They tell you who your companion will be, where to live, where to go to talk to people, than when you finish your mission you suddenly have a lot more agency. Something important to remember with all the decisions you have to make is that while the Lord knows what's best for us and wants to help us, He wants us to exercise that agency for ourselves. So, in making decisions we have to ask for His guidance, but ultimately we still need to take charge and make the first few steps for ourselves. (Asking for the Lord's guidance is a super important step, I told that investigator with the Word of Wisdom problems if he wanted his life to change he had to take initiative and make a change in himself right before he stabbed his girlfriend, and in retrospect I wish I had emphasised seeking the Lord's guidance along the way more than I did.) That's all I've got for Britney though. Just remember that God has greater things planned for us than we usually have planned for ourselves.

That took longer to write than I meant it to. I don't have a ton of time because I try to write a response to anyone who sends me an personal email and I got five emails this week, so sorry if the rest of this is pretty brief. 

We did a lot of service this week, first we helped a member move some of her mom's furniture to a retirement home. She was such a sweet old lady, it was honestly realky fun. And her computer was running the version of Windows from like, 2006. Good stuff. 😉 Then I went to the A10 area on exchanges and helped at Mary's kitchen again. This time I went from table to table refilling drinks, it was a lot more hands on than the first time I went there. Then on Friday we helped our ward secretary lay sod, which was actually super fun. It was like doing a puzzle, except all of the pieces are the same shape and size and fit anywhere. So actually not like doing a puzzle at all. 

Other than that we had another of our investigators drop us, and we had all the other investigators we're still teaching cancel their teaching appointments for various reasons, so we did a lot of talking to people at the college and at apartment complexes. We met a lot of cool people including but not limited to: A hardcore Seventh day Adventist who agreed with all Mormon doctrine except for worshiping on Sunday instead of Saturday; a guy who likes singing and has some Mormon friends and wants to come to church the Sunday after Thanksgiving; a girl who is super nice and talks a lot. We talked to her about gospel things for about an hour and she seemed really open to our message. She wants to meet with us again on Saturday; and a man who puts way to much gel in his hair but is super nice and fairly interested in the gospel and even drove about an hour to come to church, which is awesome. 

We spent just under 10 hours at church on Sunday between all of our meetings and the face to face with Elders Oaks and Ballard. It was super good, we just got the spirit dumped on us all day long, I wrote so much in my study journal. 

The only other exciting thing was that Elder Baker and Elder Mills started a weight loss competition on Saturday. It was super funny, they were both eating everything all day and chugged like a gallon and a half of water before they weighed in. They both gained like four or five pounds in water.

That's about all, love you!

-Elder Clark

Zone Conference

Not a lot happened for the first half of this week, we knocked on a lot of doors but did not teach very many people. Then on Thursday we had another lesson with the girl at the institute. She's so solid when we're actually able to teach her, but she's super hard to contact. On Friday we had zone conference which was super duper good. We talked about how to have more effective conversations with people when we're finding and then did a whole bunch of practice so everyone could get it down better. I still wouldn't say that I'm good at talking to people, but I do feel like I've been significantly less awkward as I've tried to apply the stuff we talked about. 

On Sunday morning we taught a lesson to the girlfriend of a returned missionary. She's super awesome, she came up and asked us for a Book of Mormon last Sunday, and she apparently read all of the lesson pamphlets before we even started teaching her. She had a bunch of really good questions. She said she grew up Catholic, but stopped going because she didn't like a lot of the stuff the Catholic church does, then she said she liked our church a lot more because the things we do make a lot more sense. She's super cool, we should have another lesson or two with her next week. 

Today we're having a combined P-day activity with the Spanish missionaries that cover our zone, so we're super excited. Apparently there have been some ill feeling between Spanish and English missionaries in the past, so President Golden is having us do more combined things so we can interact with them more and eliminate any such contention. We're super pumped, it should be really fun.

The only other thing is Saturday, which was so crazy I was going to just skip over it, but I think I am going to tell you about it and just not go into a ton of detail. Basically one of our most progressing investigators, the one who was overcoming Word of Wisdom problems, went to jail because he got drunk and stabbed his girlfriend. The girlfriend is doing okay, she was actually the one who texted us and told us about it. But yeah, we dropped him and probably aren't going to be meeting him again any time in the near future. California is a crazy place.

Anyways, other than that we're doing good! I still, don't have any pictures because I still think my hair looks dumb, but I love you all!

-Elder Clark

November

Hello!!

I keep forgetting it's November already. It was over 100° last week and it's been in the seventies all this week, so it's crazy to think that it's snowing back home. 

I can read emails during the week, but I don't usually think about them very much until P-day since I can't respond. So feel free to keep sending them earlier if you want, I'm fine either way. 

We went to a barber shop last Monday, and he did fine on Elder Mills and Elder Baker, but he just chopped mine super short, I could have done the same thing myself and not had to pay any money. So, since I don't like my haircut at all, I didn't take any pictures for you this week. Maybe it'll look better by next Saturday. ;)

On Halloween I was studying the section in Preach my Gospel about helping people overcome addictions because we have an investigator who's trying to overcome some word of wisdom problems. At The end of the section there was a suggestion for a personal study activity that said, "Think of some habit you have—something you do frequently, without thinking, such as cracking your knuckles, adjusting your glasses, eating too much, or sleeping too late. Now try to go one day without doing it once. When you succeed, try to go a whole week without doing it... Then try to imagine how much harder it is for an investigator to conquer an addiction such as tobacco or alcohol abuse." I decided to give it a try, so this week I've been trying not to do my little pen spinning thing. It was super cool because on Thursday we met with that investigator at about 7 P.M. and we found out that he had gone the whole day without drinking any alcohol, and I hadn't even made it to lunch time without spinning my pen. It really testified of the things we can accomplish when we have the Lord on our side. He's having more success fighting alcohol than I am stopping my little pen thing, and that's not even an addictive substance. It's been so awesome to see how much progress he's made since we met him, he's basically the best. 

Nothing else very noteworthy happened until Saturday when we got to go to the Newport Beach grounds tour! It's a super small temple, but it's beautiful, I'm super excited for when I get to go inside. After the temple tour Elder McMurrey gave us the old Placentia zone leaders phone. They had us keep our other phone since some of our investigators already have that number, so we have two phones now. The first day was adventure because the Placentia phone was dead when Elder McMurrey gave it to us, so we we're trading the one good battery between the two phones so we didn't miss any texts from anyone on either phone. 

Then on Sunday we went to church, which was super good. So yeah, it was kind of a slow week, but it was good. That's all for now, talk to you later!

Love Elder Clark