Christmas2018

Hello! I hope you had a happy Christmas! Ours was pretty good. We delivered some cookies we had made on Christmas eve, and we had dinner with our ward mission leader. 

After Christmas the week was pretty much back to normal. We were able to teach Julian on Wednesday and on Thursday, and he told us that his plans had changed and instead of moving at the end of January he was going to move that Saturday, and he was moving outside of our mission. So we told Julian that if he could do a lesson the next day we could bring the missionaries who are in the ward he is moving to. After we left we got right to work setting up a pass off lesson. It was short notice, but after much prayer and a good amount of phone calls we were able to get everything all good to go. The missionaries we passed him to are great, and the lesson went really well. They even brought their bishop so Julian could meet him right from the get go, so that was pretty neat! I'm going to miss teaching Julian, he's definitely the most enthusiastic person I've taught in the mission. But, I know he's in good hands, and he's definitely going to make it to baptism.

We finished off the week with a lesson with Grace and her kids. It went really well, they are such a great family! Then, after the lesson Grace was talking about how she was pretty behind on making these moccasins that she sells online, and how her least favorite part was tracing the patterns onto the leather to cut out. So, we decided that once we came in for the night we were going to ask her if we could take some of the patterns up to our apartment, trace them onto the leather, and bring them back down in the morning. So, we spent our evening before we went to bed doing that, and she was super thankful. It's a real blessing to be able to serve. :)

And, that is how our week went! Happy New Years! 

Elder Clark

Pictures: 

•Tag for a shirt Elder Wagley got for Christmas'

•Another new fruit. It tastes kind of like an apple, but I didn't like it very much. We also ate cactus. I didn't like that too much either.

•One of the traced moccasin patterns

•A plan of salvation visual I drew up this week.

Happy Birthday

Hello! Thanks so much for the birthday package, it was perfect. The cake in a cup things are awesome, because that way my companion and I don't eat a whole cake in a week. The CD is great, it was just a good birthday gift. :) Thanks so much for all you do to support, I love you guys so much!

It sounds like you guys had a very good week! I'm glad to hear that David is doing well. If being bored is the biggest thing he's complaining about that's pretty good. 

This week was quite nice, I was still recovering from being sick at the beginning of it, so I spent a good amount of time reading the Book of Mormon and sleeping. But, by Wednesday we were right back to it, so it's all good!

Wednesday we went to an apartment complex on the edge of our area. The first person we talked to was a woman walking to her car, and she turned out to be the apartment manager. We were thinking she was going to kick us out because it was a gated complex and we had sort of snuck our way into there. But then she told us that we were welcome to go around and do our thing, she herself just wasn't very interested in talking to us. From there we talked to a few people who didn't speak any English, then came across a young boy wearing a Black Panther jacket. We asked him if his parents were home, and he told us his grandma was, but she didn't speak English. We asked him if he knew any of his neighbors who did speak English, and he pointed out all of the apartments on the building he lived in who could speak English. We thanked him and started knocking on all those doors and were able to have some pretty good conversations, then we moved on to the next building. As we knocked on the door, I heard something behind us, so I turned around and saw the same kid hiding behind a bush. As we went to the next apartment he went along behind us darting from cover to cover so we wouldn't see him. He continued to do this throughout the time we were at the apartment complex, sometimes making high pitched noises from his hiding places. It was pretty funny, but not very helpful as far as teaching people, so we decided to go and try a different apartment complex. On the way out he told us to wait because he was going to grab something. He ran off into a nearby apartment and came out with eucalyptus flavored gum for the two of us, and we went on our way. I think we made a friend, so that's pretty cool. :)

The rest of the week was pretty nice. We have someone we're teaching who's really interested and wants to get baptized, but has troubles commiting to things come, and he came to church for the first time this week! We had a lesson with him on Friday and talked about what baptism is and what he needs to do in order to prepare himself for it, and he seems a lot more committed now that he understands it a little bit better. 

The other cool thing from this week was that we got to teach someone we met about two weeks ago. He isn't really sure about God, and he doesn't really feel like there's anything after this life we're living. But, he does have a little daughter and he feels like his purpose in life is to raise her and help her to grow up right, and since he's heard that members of our church tend to raise their kids with pretty good values he wants to learn about our church so he can be a better parent. It's not exactly a testimony, but it's a good start. :)

And, that was pretty much it! Today we went the mission office and helped sort mail. Since our mission is so small all of the mail goes to the mission office so the zone leaders can pick it up and distribute it from there. So, since missionaries tend to get a lot more packages and letters around Christmas time there is a lot of mail there to pick up. After that we went shopping at another Korean marketplace and got more asian foods. This time we bought spicy ramyen (super yummy), cola flavored chips (not so yummy), and milk candies (pretty weird, but also pretty tasty), as well as some bamboo chopsticks, so that was fun, and now we're just relaxing a little bit at the apartment because we finished everything we need to get done today. So that's pretty much our week! Thanks again for the birthday wishes, hope you all have a great day!

Elder Clark

Pictures:

1. Our Asian foods

2. The seal of authenticity

3. A section of wall that got totally obliterated. I guess any street's a through street if you're going fast enough.

the biggest nutcracker collection one I've ever seen

Hi there! I'm glad David is doing better, still sending lots of prayers his way. 

This week was pretty good overall. It rained some more, so that was great. Then I got pretty sick Friday and it's been kind of rough since then. We did have a pretty awesome miracle Sunday though. In the morning I decided to tough it out and go to church. It was alright, but by the time it was done I was feeling pretty crummy. We had an appointment set up with someone we met on Thursday though, so we hopped on our bikes and peddaled on over. I admit I had a bad attitude at first and I was hoping the lesson wouldn't happen at first so I could go back to our apartment and nap. But then on the ride over there I realized that if that was when the Lord needed me to reach out to that person that I should be grateful and ready for Him to use me when and how He wants to. I still felt sick, but I I was a lot happier to be going to the lesson, and it went really well! We taught her the Plan of Salvation, and she loved it! She wants to be with her family forever, and she was exited to read the Book of Mormon and meet with us again next weekend. She's so cool, it was definitely the highlight of the week.

That's mostly our week! We also had dinner with someone in the ward, and they have the biggest nutcracker collection one I've ever seen. I took a bunch of pictures, it was pretty neat.

Love you so much! Also, if you're able I was listening to an album called Finding Christmas by Gentri on exchanges the other day, and its basically the best. So if you could find the mp3 for that it would be cool, but don't let it stress you out or anything. I can certainly do quite all right without it! :) Have a good week! Best of luck with the 3rd graders next week!

Elder Clark

Thanksgiving 11/28/18

We had a great week here, we started out with Zone conference on Wednesday, so that was nice. They had two people from the mission department at Salt Lake come and talk to us about setting goals and making plans, and it was a really good training, I feel like I learned a lot. Then we went out and got to work. We met a couple cool people that night and the next day. It was a hard couple of days at the start of the week, but then I had a really good study after Thanksgiving dinner, and it's been really great since then! Always remember to read your scriptures, you'll feel happier, I promise! 

Unfortunately I left my journal at our apartment, so I can't remember too much of what we did. We were able to teach some really cool people for the first time this week though! The first one is Alex, we knocked on his door at about 8:50 one night and his dad answered and told us that he's really been wanting to have someone talk to his son about God, so he invited us in, and we were able to sit down with Alex and teach him the whole restoration! He's a super cool kid, he's kind of quiet, but really smart and understood the message we shared really well!

Then last night we were able to teach these two people Elder Vaivai and I met a while back. We taught them most of the restoration, and they said it was so cool to know that God had called 12 apostles and a prophet today just like in ancient times! So we said, "Yeah, it is super cool!" Then we taught them about the Book of Mormon and set up an appointment for next Sunday, it's super great.

We had a pretty traditional Thanksgiving dinner at our ward mission leader's house, so that was great. And that's pretty much it! Happy Thanksgiving, I love you all!

Elder Clark

Rainy Days 12/3/18

I was trying to get the pictures from the rainy day attached, but they aren't working. I wrote an email though:

We had a good week here! We've been meeting a lot of people who seem interested when we talk to them and set up a time for us to come back, then don't answer the door when we come back. But, in the midst of all those we had a few lessons that happened and they were all super good lessons! My favorite one was with a guy we met Friday night. We were knocking on doors in one area, and hardly anyone spoke any English. Most of them were Vietnamese, so I couldn't even fake it with the little bit of Spanish that I know. Out of the whole night, we had one person who very briefly told us he was busy that day, but that we could come by the next day at five to share our message with him. So the next day we went back and knocked on his door. It started out the same way as all the other lessons from that week. We knocked, his wife answered and told us that he wasn't home. But then as we were walking away he pulled up in his car and told us he just had to run in and drop some stuff off and he'd come out and talk to us. He came out a couple minutes later holding his Bible and something to write with, which concerned me a little bit because I had almost exactly the same situation happen with a different guy a while back and the person sat down and tried to argue with us for the entire lesson. But blessings happened, and that was not the case this time! He was so cool! He listened to the whole thing, he asked great questions, he marked the scriptures we shared with him in his Bible, and he told us that everything we shared with him made a lot of sense! We gave him a Book of Mormon and he said he'd like to talk to us again next week! It was superb, definitely the highlight of my week.

In other news, it rained a bunch on Thursday, so that was super fun! We haven't seen a real rainstorm like that since last year. Then today, Elder Wagley, Elder Vaivai, Elder Strongo and I went to the dollar tree and bought some super cheap Christmas decorations. So now we have a tiny tree we decorated on our table and a couple other little things we still need to set up. 'Twas a fine time! Loving the work and loving life, it's a fine time to be a missionary.

Bye til next time!

-Elder Clark

Pictures:

They had Spikeball for $4.99 at the grocery store, so I bought myself an early Christmas present. It's under the tree here, but I probably won't wait til Christmas to open it.

Bicycle Brigade

Anywho, this week has been an adventure! Tuesday we picked up our trainees, then we had a lot of meetings. Wednesday morning we had a meeting about training, Thursday we had our regular district council in the morning, and immediately after that we went to another meeting to get our bikes and have a little safety training. Which I guess is only three, but it still felt like a lot. It was a good week though, so I'll jump right into it!

My new companion's name is Elder Wagley. He's from Minnesota and is super excited to work hard, super excited to learn how to do missionary work, super excited that different food grows here, and basically just super excited about literally everything, it's pretty cool. Our personalities are pretty different, but so far we've been getting along swimmingly anyways, so that's awesome. We've met quite a few cool people already this week, it's been a good time.

The bikes are pretty cool, the mission bought a whole fleet of brand new bicycles for all the area's they put on bike. They're pretty nice, and they have no pump tires, which I probably wouldn't buy for my own bike back home, but are pretty nice for missionary work. We spent a good amount of time patching tires last time I was on bike, so it'll be good to not have to worry about that. It's also helping me to get back in shape! My legs feel exhausted every night when we get back, which means I'm actually doing something that strengthens them a bit! ;) We all lined up and took a picture after the bike safety meeting, and so now we're all part of the California Anaheim Mission Bicycle Brigade.

Then, to finish off the week, Carissa Scott got baptized, so that was super cool. She's preobably one of the smartest 9 year olds I've ever met, and she is going to do really great. She even said she wants to be a missionary someday, how cool is that? 

That's all I've got for now! Love you guys!

Elder Clark

Oh, and last P-day after I wrote my email we went to a Korean supermarket and bought some weird food! I wanted to get a jackfruit (also known as durian) but they were super expensive. So we bought a bunch of other stuff instead. It was all actually pretty good! The last pictures are some dumplings we got. We bought them because they looked like the ones off of Kung Fu Panda, then we realized we were supposed to steam them and didn't have a steamer. So we fashioned this contraption with a frying pan, the tray from our broiler, and a big metal pot. It wasn't pretty, but it worked nice and they were pretty yummy!

Pictures:

Baptism, Bicycle Brigade, Elder Wagley, and the foods

Serendipity Supper

We had a pretty action packed week this week! I'll just hit a few highlights. 

On Monday we had dinner with one of the members of the ward. We normally try to not have dinners on Monday so we have time to clean up after the activities we did for P-Day, but the person who runs the missionary dinners forgot about that and signed someone up. She asked if she should reschedule it, but we told her it we would just make it work. So, we left our sports early to make it over there, and we were so glad we did! The members who fed us recently had their granddaughter Emily move in with them for a little while, and she grew up outside of the church. So, near the end of the dinner Brother Hall leaned over and told us that we needed to set up a time to teach Emily because they'd talked about it and she said she would be willing to hear the missionary lessons! We asked if we could share the message right then and there after dinner, and she said yes, so that was super awesome, we were able to set up another time to teach her later in the week. It was a great way to start off the week!

Tuesday we met someone really cool on exchanges and sent his information over to the JAS (Spanish YSA) ward. It was really neat, because their target demographic is super small here and they're really grateful when they have people help them out with finding people. 

Wednesday we taught four lessons and had three people from those lessons set up a baptismal date! It was crazy, everybody wants to get baptized! We really are so blessed to have met all of the people we're working with right now, things are just so good. :)

Thursday I went on an exchange, then in the evening Elder Vaivai and I got a call from the assistants. I'm released as a district leader, and we're both training new missionaries this transfer! I'm super pumped, we're actually both staying in the same ward, but instead of one companionship covering all of the Anahiem 3rd ward and all of the Samoan ward, Elder Vaivai and his new missionary will be covering the east side and the whole Samoan ward, and my new companion and I will cover the west side of the 3rd ward. And... my companionship will be on bike! So that's pretty exciting, and the really good thing is that somebody donated a bunch of bikes to the mission, so we don't have to buy one, and the bikes we'll be riding will be new and functional, not like the missionary bikes we usually inherit that we have to repair once or twice a week. So, Elder Vaivai and I are still together until tomorrow night, then we'll get to meet our new missionaries.

Then, to close out a great week, Grace got baptized on Saturday and confirmed on Sunday! It was so good, and she brought her whole family to the baptism and church! It was the first time they came to church because she was really nervous about bringing them, but they liked it a lot, so we should be able to start teaching them pretty soon here! It's so good, Grace has so much faith, and it's just been so awesome to see the Gospel changing her. :)

So, that's our week! I'm excited to keep working here, and super excited for my new companion who gets to start his mission in the best ward in the world! Make your week the best, I love you all!

-Elder Clark

Pictures:

1. Grace's baptism

2-3. More fruit, I don't know what this one's called either. Persimmon maybe? Which reminds me, this week some members took us to a Korean BBQ. It was pretty interesting, they had a little grill thing in the middle of the table and you grabbed your meat and cooked it yourself. I ate a little bit of beef tripe, which if you don't know is cow intestine. It was absolutely terrible, never eat that. All the other food there was much less weird and very yummy though, I'd go again. :)

4. The poster for someone who's running for city council. I'd vote for him.

Haloween

Wow, that sounds like an eventful week! It should be nice to have a car with a warranty, and it should pay off if you don't have to repair it as often. :) This week has been pretty good for us. We were able to teach Grace some more, and she's still doing great. She's super excited for her baptism this Saturday, and we're really excited too. All she needs to do this week is be interviewed and she's ready for her baptism.

Halloween was a really good day for us, we talked to tons of people knocking doors and on the streets. We found two especially cool people at the park and they let us sit down and teach them a lesson then and there at a park bench, so that was super neat. One of them was really pretty interested, even though his friend seemed like he was mostly just listening because the other one was there. After dinner we were supposed to go back to our apartment and do our studies, so we did that. We had some candy in case there were trick or treaters, but none come by. So we have candy now, so that's not too big a loss. ;) Elder Vaivai and I both scared each other pretty good with a fake tarantula. He burried it in the bowl of candy, so when I dug through it it made me jump pretty good. Then I grapped it and slipped it under his blanket and when he found it he almost fell off of his bed. It looked surprisingly real considering that we bought it from the dollar store.

We also ate lots of weird fruit recently. We had fruit form a cactus and some bell-shaped fruit that grows in bunches. We keep trying to start up conversations by asking about fruit we don't recognize, and they keep just giving it to us and not having conversations. But hey, if we can't share the gospel with them, at least we get to try new fruits. :)

That's mostly it for the week! Love you guys!

-Elder Clark

Baptism

I don't have a bunch of time today, but this week was so good! Gina and Zoila got baptized on Saturday!! They're so cool, and the baptism was just the best. Their dad, who has been getting back into the church was sitting there crying after they got baptized, and it was just so cool to see him feeling the spirit and happy. :) 

Then, we had a lesson with Grace, who's the next one who's getting baptized. She's so cool, every week she tells us something new she did to follow Christ, and it always blows us away. This time around we asked her where she's been reading, and she told us she is all the way in Alma 8. She's just so ready to follow Christ, and it's awesome to see how much faith she already has. :)

Elder Vaivai and I went to drop a bunch of stuff at Goodwill, and while we were there we discovered that Goodwill had a bunch of really nice, good looking ties that ranged in price from $1.50-3. So we bought quite a few of them. I got eight for a little less than 20$. I'm pretty satisfied, done splurging for a while.

That's all I've got for now! Love you!

-Elder Clark

Picture from the baptism!

The Lord has blessed us

Hello! We are having a stellar time here in the Anaheim 3rd and 8th ward. We can barely even keep up with all of the work the Lord has blessed us with. On Wednesday we literally had four lessons in three hours, it was crazy! But more on that later. 

So, to start out the week I went on an exchange with Elder Israelsen who just came to the mission. He's from Chicago, and he, believe it or not was captain of his high school's ultimate frisbee team! Needless to say, we hit it off right away, and had a great day of missionary work too! He's currently working in the Anaheim 2nd ward, which is where I spent the first 3 weeks of my mission. It was pretty fun to go back there now that I sort of know what I'm doing a little bit better.  We met taught a pretty cool woman in the morning and spent some time contacting at the college. We met quite a few people who were really cool, and it was nice to spend a whole day just talking to and meeting new people, we don't have a lot of time to do that with all of the people we've been teaching, which is an okay problem to be having, I'm not complaining or anything. ;) 

More adventures started when I got back to our area. Elder Vaivai told me they had gotten a call from the Huntington Beach missionaries that they were apparently teaching someone named Rod who was working towards getting baptized in his friend's ward, but actually lives in our area. So, they wanted us to drive down way outside our mission almost to the beach and have a pass off lesson so they could introduce him to us. We figured that President Golden would tell us we couldn't do it because it was so far out there, but we called him up and asked, and he told us we should definitely go and do it. Which was great! Except, like I mentioned at the top of my email, we had three lessons already scheduled that night and there was no possible way we could cover them all on our own, so we ended up having to call up our zone leaders and split with them so that we could make it to everything. It was crazy, but we were able to make it all work out. So, out of nowhere we were given another person who's working towards baptism! So many blessings! And all these people are totally just being given to us by the Lord, we're just instruments in His hands to help and guide them along.

Then, behold and lo, Friday morning we recieved a referral for Julian who had been on one of the churche's chat rooms with other missionaries and learning about the church. We sent him a text and talked to him a little over the phone, then we asked him if we could meet the very next day because he seemed so excited to talk to us. Then, get this, he asked us if we could meet that night instead! As in less than 12 hours after we first texted him!! We went over and taught him the Plan of Salvation in his front yard, and he told us he wants to get baptized! He's pretty much the coolest, every time he asked a question about the lesson instead of saying, "So what do you guys believe about...?" Julian would say "So we believe that...?" Then our answers just made him even more excited! 

Then, to cap the whole week off, Jeff, the returning member who came to church last week with his daughter Carissa came to church again, and we were able to meet with them later that night and they set a firm baptismal date too! It's unbelievable, I never thought a missionary would ever be this busy in the middle of Southern California, but Heavenly Father has blessed us with so many people who are so ready to make changes in their lives to follow Him! I'm so thankful for the opportunity I have to play a part in these people's lives, and I'm super grateful that he's given me such an awesome companion to work with while we're in the midst of all this craziness! Elder Vaivai's the best, I don't think I talk about how awesome he is often enough.

Anyways, I think I've blabbed on enough. I hope you all have an awesome week, I know I sure will!

-Elder Clark

Pictures:

I have more, but this is all that will load, so it's what you get.

1. Elder Vaivai and I

2. A visual I drew up for a lesson

3. I think you're supposed to put a bomb here. 

Carpet 10/16/2019

I got the package today actually, so it showed up pretty fast. Thank you much! I was super excited when I saw something in a mason jar, homemade jam/juice/other fruit stuff is always the best. 😄 I did have a request this week. Our mission president reminded us we should only be listening to music that is legally obtained, so I deleted mostly everything from my USB because I had just taken it from other missionaries. I got quite a bit off of lds.org, but that's all we have access to on our devices so I was wondering if you could look at the website for the Tabernacle Choir and see if they have any music that's free to download on there you can send me. I feel like they'd have at least some, their website just isn't on our approved list. If you can't figure it out, don't worry about it. We can always just listen to the conference talks while we're in the car. :)

I'm finally mostly caught up in my journal, so I actually remember what to write about this week.

First, we got a notice that our carpets were going to be professionally cleaned. Which meant we had to move all of the furniture and everything off of the carpet. We don't have a lot of hard surface flooring, but after dissembling our beds and putting our bikes out our window onto the decorative patio thing, we were able to make it work... and we also got a notice from the leasing office the next day that we were not supposed to put anything onto the decorative patio thing. But, we saw it after the carpets were cleaned, so it's all good. We talked about how it was going to be a great opportunity to rearrange our furniture, then when it was time to put everything where it went we discussed for a while, then put everything exactly where it was except for one lamp. Change is hard sometimes. 😉

On Friday it rained! And there was thunder and lightning and everything! It was the first time I've seen lightning since I came to California, and the first time it's really rained since like, January. That night we also had a really cool contact with a woman named Ana. We knocked on her door, and she said she was super busy and couldn't talk to us. So we asked if there was anything we could do to help her out, and she asked us if we could go and pick up a cake because it was her boyfriend's birthday and she was running late on getting ready. So we ran over to the grocery store and bought a cake! It was really fun, and afterwards we set up a time to come visit this Sunday! She's really cool, we're super excited.

Then, to finish out the week a less active member we'd been working with and his daughter finally came to church, so that was really neat. I was happy.

And, that just about wraps it up! Hope you all have a great week! Love you!

-Elder Clark

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Wow Conference

Got the tablet back! Our maintenance guy knocked on our door during personal study on Tuesday and said, "Is this yours?" He's my favorite person now, I gave him many thanks. 

Conference was great though! And all our people that watched said it sounded like they were talking right to them, we're so blessed to have the opportunity to listen to God's words so frequently. We didn't watch the Woman's conference, but I am planning on listening to it in the evening later. I'm super excited to hear Dannika's been reading the Book of Mormon. The Gospel really is such a big deal, it changes lives more than anything else out there, and it is the only thing that can bring us true, lasting joy.

The people we're teaching are all super awesome right now. We had three lessons scheduled on Tuesday and all three of them actually happened! They're just the best, we're seeing very obvious changes in their lives as they start living the Gospel and it's so cool. 

Today we found out that our trio life was short lived. One of the Elders in another zone went home, so Elder Tua'tonga is going over there to be with his companion. So, we haven't had much time today for emails. But, I'm doing great out here. Conference was great, the mission is great, everything is just great.

I love you all!

-Elder Clark

Lost and found

Hello! Lots has happened this week! First off, the family that came to the English ward the last couple of weeks set a date to be baptized! And they are inviting a bunch if family to come and be at the baptism, so they're really committed to it. They're such an awesome family, we're really excited for them. 😊 Then, a few days later, another person we're teaching in the Samoan ward also set a baptismal date! We showed him a video of the Savior being baptized, then at the end we asked him how he felt, and you know what he said? "It makes me feel like I want to get baptized." He's so ready to take this next step towards Christ!

Then, in other news, transfers came. Elder Vaivai and I are still in the same wards, but the English ward used to be split in half with another set of Elders, and now we are covering both half and we're in a trio! Our new companion is Elder Tu'atonga, and he is also from the islands. That's 4 Polynesian companions in a row! Definitely not what I was expecting when I got called to California, it's pretty neat. 😃

We also had a Vietnamese person give us another dragonfruit! I was asking him about how he grew them to start a conversation, and he didn't really understand what I was saying. Then he said the ones on the vine weren't ripe, and he walked inside and grabbed one from his fridge to give to us! They're super yummy, it's texture is like a kiwi, but the taste is more tart. They're really delicious if you sprinkle them with a little sugar. There's a lot of Vietnamese people here in Garden Grove. They are always super nice, they're just super bad at speaking English, and I'm even worse at speaking Vietnamese. So, our conversations never go anywhere. 

Then today we had more adventures. I finally went and bought brown shoes. I also bought two pairs of slacks because I ripped a pair and a belt that matched the shoes, which came out to about 90$. It's crazy how fast that stuff adds up, the prices were super good on everything, but it still came out to be a lot. But anyways, we got back and realized I left my tablet in the laundry room at our apartment, so we rushed back to look for it, but it seems pretty gone. So we're going to wait a few days and see if it shows up at the leading office, but if it doesn't I might have to buy a replacement device. I'll let you know. It's unfortunate, but the rest of the week was so good it's be a shame to let one bad thing ruin it! So yeah, I'm excited for our people, and I'm excited for conference! It's a good time to be a missionary here, I'm really enjoying it. 😃

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Let me know what you need. Tablets are spendy but who knows maybe it will show up. 

Yeah, we'll probably give it about a week and then see about getting a replacement. I think since all the new missionaries come in with smart phones instead of tablets now I'll end up with one of those. Which is too bad because I like the tablet, but at least I'll be up to date with what all the kids have these days. 😉

Love ya. 

Dragon Fruit

 We had a really good week this week! Here's some stuff that happened:

The family we've been teaching came to church! And we used stratagem and got them to stay for all three classes, which was super great. The kids really liked primary, and the father who is a returning less active member said that was the first time he went to a priesthood meeting in 30 years, it made us very happy.

We were tracting in a neighborhood that was pretty dominantly Hispanic. I was the best Spanish speaker in our companionship, so our conversations were pretty simple and not very fruitful. Then we came across some little kids that asked us if we could get some of their stuff off of the roof. They supplied us with a broom, an extendable metal thing, and a somewhat unstable yard chair, and we set to work. We fastened the broom and half of the extendable metal thing together with tape, then taped the other half to both parts to stabilize it. With that contraption I was able to stand on the chair and reach the roof, and with Elder Vaivai directing me we were able to retrieve the green squirt gun and the Shopkins notebook. It was actually a lot of fun.

I also ate a bad watermelon. It looked kind of weird when we cut it open, but I tried a little and it tasted good, so I went ahead and ate a bunch of it. Then about thirty minutes later I was feeling really sick, so we had to come in so I could nap for a bit. 

Then today we went to the temple, so that was a great way to close out a really good week and a half.

So that's my week! I love you guys, have a good week!

-Elder Clark 

The pictures are me with our toy retrieval device, me at the temple, and a dragonfruit. There are so many people growing dragonfruit, and I really want to eat one, but I can't seem to figure out where to aquire one. Someday soon I'm going to get one though. 

Update: I got one!

Pit Bulls and Gangsters

Actually funny story with the shoes. So the problem with the shoes was that I wore down the inside of my left shoe super badly, but I didn't wear down the outside of that shoe at all, so it made me walk super lopsided. So, I went to get new shoes, and I tried on a whole bunch and didn't like any of the ones they had in the store we went to. We were pretty low on time for the day, so we decided we would try another store the next week. The next morning I was looking at my shoes and thinking that if I could just take the part that isn't worn down off, the shoes were in pretty good shape. So I grabbed a serrated kitchen knife and chopped it off to make the shoe level again. I figured if it worked it wouild preserve the shoes for a while longer and if it didn't work I would just be buying new shoes anyways, and it worked great, so I'm still using those shoes. 

Now, I don't have a ton of time, but there was a lot that happened this week, so I'm going to skip the transitions and try to cover everything. 

First I was made fun of for trying to speak Spanish. Usually what I do is I talk to people as much as I can, then if they start saying too much stuff I can't understand or I'm not having any words come into my head I just say "¿Podemos darle un folleto?" (Can we offer you a pamphlet?) Then I wish them a good day/evening/night and move on to the next person. This time however we had run out of Spanish pamphlet. So, I started the conversation, then a little ways in I was really sure where do go and didn't have a cop out. So I stood there without saying anything for a couple of seconds, then I told them sorry, I don't know very much Spanish. Then this woman asked me if I had schooling. I kind of nervously chuckled not sure if she said what she thought I said, then she told me to go and learn more Spanish. I was pretty surprised, I'm not sure if she didn't think I knew what she was saying or if she just didn't want us to talk to her. So we talked to her friend who aparently could speak perfect English the whole time for a bit, and went on our way.

The next day we talk to two gangster guys who were pretty cool with us. They weren't very interested, but they did tell us if anyone ever gave us any trouble we just needed to let them know and they'd take care of them. 

A few doors later there was a house with a gate around their yard and a Beware of Dog sign. I rattled the gate without opening it to make sure I wasn't going to get eaten, and a dog started barking inside of the house. I figured if the dog was inside we were safe to go into the yard. I opened the gate and walked halfway to the house when the door opened and a very large pitbull came out and stopped a few feet in front of me. I had heard you were supposed to stand your ground and keep your hands low in that situation, so I stood there and braced myself to get mauled. For a period of time that felt like a a very long time but probably was actually only a few seconds we both stood there with him barking but neither of us moving anywhere. Then the dog turned around and walked back to the house and kept barking at me, which I took as a good opportunity to turn around and duck back outside the gate. I'm not sure what the owner was doing throughout this whole thing, but I didn't die, so that's as favorable an outcome as I think I could reasonably hope for. 😉

We had a general authority name Jorg Klebingat come and talk to the mission yesterday. He was super awesome. He started off the mission by telling us that he was from Germany and he did not have the gene that made us Americans sensitive and worried about hurting other people's feelings. He didn't mince words at all and had an excellent understanding of the scriptures, so I learned a ton. I would love to say more, but I am super out of time, so I'll just leave it that.

Have a great week! I love you guys! Also next week P-day won't be until the middle of the week because we're going to the temple, so we're excited about that! Things are going great here, hopefully it's good for y'all too!

-Elder Clark

Oh, also looking through pictures I remembered I broke a mirror this week. Remind me next week and I'll tell you how it happened.

bring him to the church 9/3

Hello! That does sound like an eventful week. We had a pretty good one too, we've mostly been going around meeting the people the other missionaries were working with. Some of them are super cool! It's really been a blessing to move into this area. We met one kid who's friends started bringing him to the church on Wednesdays that we get to teach once a week, a family with one member who was inactive for a while, but is coming back and all of his family has been coming with him and are wanting to be baptized, then last night we met a family where all of them except two members of the family got baptized a few weeks ago, and they want us to start coming over on Fridays and teaching the other ones so they can get baptized too! It's super cool, we've also been meeting other people who are interested every single day, it's a really prime area for missionary work, and we're super busy every day. That's all I really have time to say, but I'm doing great and I love you guys! Have a great week!

8/27

I know that it's a lot of money to fix a window, but that's pretty funny. I imagine that I would probably panic a bit if I did that too. 😉 I'm doing well. This week was pretty eventful. First of all, my new companion Elder Vaivai is fantastic, we get along great. The area's super cool too, people are really open and we've been able to have a lot of really great conversations with people. 

The other big news this week is that Elder Vaivai had surgery on Thursday for an injury he got in a bike accident a few weeks back. So we've kind of just been hanging around the apartment most of the time while he rests and recovers. I've studied a bunch, and cleaned the apartment quite a bit because the last elders left it kind of messy. The refridgerator looks really great now. That's about it. The first day in the Samoan sacrament meeting was an adventure, I didn't understand a word they were saying. But things are good, we're having a good time, and I'm super pumped to work in this area, things are really moving along great here.

Love you all! Tell Ammon not to break anymore windows! 😉

-Elder Clark

Learning a little spanish 8/13/18

Hello! It's been pretty good this week. I bore my testimony in the Spanish sacrament meeting. I think my pronunciation was probably pretty terrible, but they laughed when I told them I had been praying for them to have the interpretation of tounges so they could understand my bad Spanish, so I'm guessing people could understand what I was saying. ;)

We also had Elder Carlos Godoy (from the Presidency of the Seventy) come and speak to our mission. He was so awesome, he told us his conversion story and it was super funny and taught me a lot. It was really awesome to have him come visit us.

That's about it for this week. I'm learning new Spanish words every day, but still don't know nearly enough to have a decent conversation with someone. It's fun though, every day is certainly an adventure.

Love you guys!

-Elder Clark

Also I have a picture of something I found behind my pillow from one of the previous missionaries who lived in our apartment. I thought it was pretty funny

Samoan ward 8/20

We had transfers today. I'm not staying in the Spanish ward. They moved me to the Samoan ward. So good thing I've been practicing Spanish for the past two weeks. 😉 I'm pretty excited. And pretty nervous. I was really expecting to stay in Esplanade for at least one more transfer, so it's quite a surprise. My companion is Elder Vaivai, and he is also from the polynesian islands, but he's from Samoa, not Tonga.

In other news, the program that monitors our devices decided to uninstall most of the apps on everybodys' devices, including our planning app which stores all of the information for all of our people. For some reason Elder Vaivai's device was not affected, so we're one of about six companionships in our mission that still has information on the ward and the people we're teaching. Hopefully it'll get figured out soon, because I'm pretty confident that it's a pretty widespread thing, not just something for our mission. 

That's about it though, I forgot my journal again and since I don't have area book I really can't remember what we did this week at all. I'll let you know how things are going in the Samoan ward next week. Love you all!

Lost sheep July 30

Hi everyone! This week was really good! We had some great days with a lot of really good finding, and aside from the day we were in the doctors office all day waiting for them to look at Elder Talanoa's shoulder I was able to go out and work like normal the whole week. It's good to be feeling better. We had a cool visit on Wednesday night. Our ward mission leader came out with us to a lesson and just went with us to visit people for the rest of the night. It was a lot like the thing in the video from Elder Bednar where he's describing ways that we recieve revelation where he describes recieving revelation as being like a cloudy day. We had two people in a row that we felt like we should go to who didn't make very much sense at that time of day, and just like we expected one of them wasn't there and the other one was having dinner and told us to come another day. But, going to both of them put us in the area of someone Brother Barbour had gone with the missionaries to teach in the past, but they had lost contact with. He suggested that we try him, and he ended up being there and told us that he had just been wondering to himself what he could do to become a better person less than 15 minutes before we got there. He very readily told us to come back on Tuesday, it was super cool. Friday was super neat, I was on an exchange with Elder Jorgensen and we finished the night by teaching a two people I met with Elder Vaitai way back when, and they were super cool. We only made it through the first half of the restoration, so we came back again the next night and there was a third member of the family who sat in, so we ended up teaching three new people, and they're super cool! They said they're going to start reading the Book of Mormon as a family to find out that it's true, it was the best. Then, to finish off the week we had Leanne come to church for the first time. She even had somewhere else to get to, but she went a little late to make sure she had time to at least go to sacrament meeting, it was really awesome. Sorry the emails all over the place, but I have 0 time, so this is what you get. Have a good week!

-Elder Clark

Espanol? Aug 6

So things are about to become an adventure, one of the missionaries in the Spanish ward that covers the same area we do is going home mid transfer tomorrow, so his companion, who happens to be Elder Vanweerd from Sky View is going to be joining us and our trio will be covering both wards. So I'm in a Spanish speaking ward now! I'm super pumped, I've really wanted to learn some Spanish, and even though it's probably only for two weeks until the end of the transfer I'm hoping I'll pick up at least a little. 

The rest of our week was pretty uneventful. We met a couple cool people, but pretty well every one of our lessons we had scheduled this week fell through, so there isn't much to report there. 

I think the only other thing we really did this week is I made an oragami chess/checkers set one night because Elder Talanoa wanted something he could do to distract him so he doesn't snack at night. We've played a few games, I never realized how bad I am at checkers, but I'm getting a little better. ;)

That's about it. I'll let you know how speaking Spanish goes next week! Que tengan una buena semana!

-Elder Clark

Here's a picture of the chess set:

Learning a little spanish

This week was fairly uneventful. We had a few good lessons and met some cool people to refer to the spanish missionaries and to the YSA ward, but that was mostly all that happened. I was still feeling sick, so there were two or three days that we were stuck inside. The mission nurse finally had me go into the doctor on Friday. I was thinking that it was probably a sinus infection that was causing a bunch of other symptoms, but then the mission nurse was saying all this other stuff and having me check for strep throat and things. Anywho, I went to the doctor and she asked two or three questions and said I had a sinus infection that was causing my athsma to flare up. So she gave me amoxacillin and sent me on my way. I told the mission nurse what the doctor had said and she was told me she didn't realize I had athsma and if she had she would have sent me in sooner. Sometimes I forget that athsma can make it so I have different symptoms than most people. You live and you learn though. So yeah, I've been taking my medicine since Friday, I'm feeling quite a bit better now, and that pretty much sums up our week. Oh, and on Saturday I went on exchange with the Spanish speaking missionaries in our district. I'm actually getting quite a bit better at understanding Spanish, (still super bad at speaking it) but something interesting I realized was that it is really exhausting to listen to people speak Spanish! First thing in the morning we went to a meeting with their ward mission leader, and I understood the majority of what everyone was saying, and it was pretty cool. Then throughout the day about half of our contacts were in Spanish and about half were in English, and I noticed that by the time we were heading back for dinner I felt completely exhausted and wasn't picking up a single word either of them were saying. It was kind of weird, I never really recognized that my brain could get tired before, but mine definitely did. That's about it! This week I should get feeling better and things'll hopefully be more or less back to normal. We'll see how it goes! Love you guys!

-Elder Clark

Transfers

Wow, sounds like a pretty crazy week for you guys! My week was pretty uneventful. We had a lot of meetings since it's the firest week of the transfer, and I've been sick the whole week, so there were three days we didn't go out and proselyte at all. I've literally had different symptoms every single day, so I have no idea what's wrong with me. The good news is I did get my 60 day tempory lisence in the mail, so we can drive again. Oh, and since there were transfers I have a new companion now, his name is Elder Talanoa, and he is awesome. He also is from Tonga, and went to the same highschool as my last companion, so that's kind of cool. 

I honestly can't think of anything else to report from the week. For my permanent licence I do need a bank statement from the last 60 days to confirm that I still have a Utah address, but I think that's about it. Oh, I got the Reeses. Amazon sent them with an ice pack in the package, and since I pulled that out before the candy I thought you just sent me an ice pack. I was like, c'mon, I've been good, I haven't gotten hurt since I got out here. ;) That's all though, I love you guys!

4th of July Trials

So, this week was a crazy week! It started out really great, on Tuesday we had a lesson with our investigator Leanne, and she committed to be baptized on the 11th of August!! She's really cool, we taught her the Plan of Salvation and she loved it so much! She especially liked it when we taught about the Gospel being preached to those who are dead. It just made so much sense to her, and she had always wondered what God did about the people who live their whole lives and never even hear the name Jesus Christ. I've really come to appreciate how much the Plan of Salvation testifies of God's love for us. In the pre-earth life He made the plan and sent us here so that we can have the opportunity to experience the blessings that he has. He knew that Adam and Eve would eat the fruit, so He sent Jesus Christ to pay a price that none of us could and showed us the path we need to follow in order to return to live with Him. Then after we die, the Gospel is preached to the dead because God loves all of His children and wants all of us to have the opportunity to choose to follow Jesus Christ. Then, even if we choose not to follow Him, our Heavenly Father has still prepared a place for all of His children to dwell for the eternities. I'm so grateful to know that I really am a child of God, and that He truly does love us and want what is best for us!

The Fourth of July was pretty fun. We had a ward breakfast in the morning, were part of 100 missionaries who marched in a parade holding American flags, and talked to some people on the streets. They had us be in at 7 for safety reasons, and all night long it sounded like a war zone outside. I couldn't believe how many fireworks there were here, it was crazy! There were also a couple of times when I would here a firework go off, then hear a car alarm start, so that was kind of funny.

Then Thursday was the day the week really started to get wild. We got up in the morning and got ready to leave at 8:00 because Elder Vaitai had a dentist appointment at 8:30 in Anaheim. When we got to the car, I noticed that I had forgot to lock the car and that the stuff from our glove box was strewn across the seats. Unfortunately, this happened on the one day I left my wallet in the car because I had had too much stuff in my pockets when we went to the parade the day before and stuck it in there. It was tucked away underneath some stuff, but the person who broke in was pretty thorough and they found it. So, after Elder Vaitai's dentist appointment I spent most of the day in the mission office canceling my debit card and trying to get replacements for the rest of the things that I had in there. The real unfortunate thing was that my companion doesn't have a US driver's license, so I asked our vehicle coordinator, and he recommended that I talk to President Golden and see if he wants to have us exchange with someone who can drive or figure something else out. President went with the latter and told us to find some bikes. So we spent the rest of the day getting rides from the zone leaders for our appointments and trying to hunt down some bikes. We were able to find two that were pretty functional by the end of the night, so the zone leaders loaded them up in their truck and at the end of the night dropped us off at our apartment with the bikes. 

The next day we had a member who needed to be moved out of their house by 4 PM, and they needed our help. So we hopped on our bikes and rode to the opposite side of our area from our apartment. This happened to be on the day when the temperature reached a record high for southern California, so we were riding our bikes and moving boxes outside in temperatures up around 118°! I don't think I've ever felt so hot in my life, and we were out there from about 10-3 with only one break for lunch. The members we helped were so grateful though, and there's definitely no way they could have got it all out on time by themselves. We loaded up the last trailer full of stuff, then hopped on our bikes to start home. We made it about a half mile, then the pedal fell of on my bike. So, we found ourselves stranded five miles away from our apartment in uninhabitably hot weather with one and a half bikes. Getting home was an adventure, I won't give you all of the details because this email is already really long, and because I'm not the greatest writer and the story is a lot funnier when I tell it in person. But, to summarize, over the next couple of days I rode my bike like a scooter way more than is recommended to try to ride a bike like a scooter, "fixed" the pedal by using duct tape as thread tape, got us stranded again because it didn't actually fix my bike to use duct tape as thread tape, walked a lot more miles than the children of Israel were allowed to walk on the sabbath, and had a homeless person try to fix my pedal with a paper clip. It's been quite the adventure, definitely nothing like anything I ever experienced back home. But, I know that plenty of people have had it harder, and the work here in the Esplanade ward will continue. I love you guys, and I'm looking forward to the adventures I have next week!

-Elder Clark

Pictures:

100 missionaries with flags

The ginger missionaries

(Most of) the Placentia district

My pedal on the ground

Temperature gauge (it's not the highest it got, but it's when I took the picture)

Bible

Wow, sounds like a pretty cool week. The old testament is pretty cool, I never really read it much before my mission, but my first companion was super into the old testament, so I learned a lot about it from him. It's super cool that they made the tabernacle, that would be really cool to see. As far as things to get me, it actually would be good if you put a bit of money in my account because my brown shoes are pretty trashed. 

Unfortunately I forgot to bring my journal with me, so this'll be a short email. All I can remember is that we had a really cool lesson with someone at the beginning of the week. At first he was a lot like most people we talk to, friendly, but no interest in changing. He was also low key trying to convince us we were wrong. So normally I would probably politely try to end the conversation with those sort of people because they just want to argue and it doesn't go anywhere, but we really felt like we should stay and teach him. So we kept going, and at first it was a pretty rough lesson. Then near the end of the lesson we got to the part where we shared the first vision. The spirit was so strong when we shared it with him, and even though we couldn't get him to admit he felt anything, but his attitude changed for the rest of the lesson. He was so much less critical, and at the end he committed to reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it. It was so cool.

That's all I've got. I remember it was good, but the days blend together so much and I can't remember what happened if I don't have it written down. Love you!

-Elder Clark 

you never know when you'll be the answer to someone else's prayer!

 

I tried to make the ginger snaps, and you didn't put molasses on the recipe you sent me, so I currently have a bowl full of almost cookie dough in our fridge and I bought a jar of molasses today, I'm just not sure how much to add. It was funny because I put in all of the things you sent me and was looking at a bowl full of essentially just dry ingredients and I was like, now that can't be right... ;) Then I still wanted cookies, so I threw together some peanut butter cookies without a recipe, and they actually turned out okay! I was very proud of myself.

As far as the rest of the week, we didn't really meet anyone super interesting, but our investigator Terry we've been teaching has been doing really well. He's been thinking about the things we teach him a lot, and he's been progressing slowly but surely. When we first brought up the sabbath day he told us he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to do it, and in our most recent lesson he committed to try to keep it as well as the rest of the ten commandments. Then he came to church on Sunday, and it was like every single speaker prepared their talk specifically for Terry. One person even stood up and told us that even though he hadn't ever done it before, he was going to put away his prepared talk and speak on something else because that's what the spirit was telling him to do, then proceeded to talk about a bunch of Terry's concerns we've been trying to address. It was so cool, always act on spiritual promptings, you never know when you'll be the answer to someone else's prayer!

That's all I really have to report this week. Happy late birthday to Ammon and happy early birthday to Josh! I hope your day was/is amazing! Life is good, the ward is great, and the mission is fantastic. I hope you all have a good one!

-Elder Clark

Fathers Day

So this week was an adventure. It started on Tuesday when we were finishing up our daily planning and our phone decided to factory reset. It did it while I was in the middle of writing a text message to confirm an appointment for the night, so I tried to set it back up then and there so I could at least send the message, but we needed wi-fi to finish the setup, so we did our studies then got in the car to drive to the misison office and get it figured out. As we got in the car, Elder Vaitai pointed out that my floormat was missing, and I realized I had left it at the car wash we went to on Monday. So we decided to go to the car wash first to see if they had the floor mat, then go to the mission office. To get to the car wash you have to drive past it and U-turn because there's a median and you can't turn left, and when I was making the U-turn another car pulled out where I was trying to go, and in the process of watching him and making sure I didn't hit his car I wasn't paying attention and took the U-turn too sharp, causing the bottom of the car to scrape on the median. I drove the rest of the way to the car wash and we got out of the car to assess the damage. We found a small rubber part that had come loose. We weren't really sure what the purpose of the part was, so we figured we'd just ask the vehicle coordinator Elder Tolley what to do about it when we went to the mission office to get the phone fixed. We asked the car wash people if they had our mat, and two different guys were searching all over for it for quite a while, but they didn't have it. However, it turns out that one of the people who was looking for it was a manager for the car wash, and he was a really nice guy. He gave us two free car wash coupons for our trouble, so that's pretty cool. We went back to the mission office and Elder Tolley was outside. We told him I had lost the mat and gone over the median, and he pulled the mat out of a car they were about to sell and came over to assess the damage. He looked at the rubber thing, wiggled it around a little bit and it came off in his hand. He told us it didn't really do much anyways, so he just kept it and told us we were all good. We went in to set up the phone, and when we finally got it up and running all of our previous texts and contacts were gone. Fortunately most of the numbers we need are in our area book planner app, we just have to plug them back in. So we've kind of just been making profiles for people as we go along, it's been quite the adventure. Then as we were wrapping up Elder Tolley came inside and told us that we had missed something while we were assessing the damage. He led us back to our car and pointed out that I had scratched and dented the bottom of the car by the driver's side door, so I had to fill out and accident report and he switch us to a different car. The good news is it was characterized as a "serious accident" so I'm still allowed to drive, I just feel really silly for not being smarter. :P

Other news for this week:

▪I tried to make a stir fry with noodles, and discovered that I don't actually know how to make a stir fry. I ended up with something that kind of resembled egg noodles. It didn't taste at all how I wanted it to, nor did it look great but it was alright. Do you think you could email me the process you're actually supposed to follow for stir fry? I'm guessing I missed a step or two. ;)

▪We taught our investigator from Germany who is super Catholic, and after we finished our lesson he was slightly more educated on the Mormon faith, and still super Catholic. The tentative plan is to bring a certain member from our ward who was going to be a Catholic priest, but converted to our church and let them chat for a little bit. 

▪We also were able to give our investigator who has the fears about changing a blessing, and it went really well! He fell off a ladder while he was picking fruit and hurt his back. We gave him a blessing and he felt and recognized the spirit when we did it and is feeling much better now! He also came to church on Sunday and really liked it, it's super exciting.

▪I went on an exchange with the Spanish speaking misisonaries in our district, and Elder Dalton taught me how to conjugate present tense verbs in Spanish. 

▪The maintenence guy came in and fixed the light in our bathroom. It's one of those long, skinny light bulbs like they have in schools, so we had to wait for the leasing office to send someone to fix it. In the meantime, we needed light in the bathroom, so we pulled one of our full sized lamps into the bathroom. The only place the cord reached from our one electrical socket that didn't block the door was right smack in the middle of our bathroom, so that's where we had it for about a week. (picture included)

▪We took a selfie in front of a gigantic house in a crazy neighborhood we knocked on. When I found out I was transfering to Santa Ana and Tustin I thought I would be in a poorer and more humble area. I was wrong. (picture inluded)

That's my week! Until next time!

-Elder Clark