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