Knock again

We had a really good week! Our investigator who's on date for baptism is still doing great and we found three more people to teach this week. The first one was kind of cool, we were doing our planning for the day and I had a thought that we should go to a street called Olive. It's a really small street that only has 15 or so houses on it and I had already tracted there twice and talked to most of the people there, so I almost just dismissed the thought. Then I decided that it would be silly to not put it in since we had just prayed for the guidance of the spirit and I had the thought pop into my head. I somewhat begrudgingly put it in the schedule in the morning, and we went and knocked doors there. At first it was just like I figured it would be and nobody was interested in listening to us, but then we knocked on one door (which I almost skipped because I was pretty sure I'd already talked to someone there), and a woman answered. She told us that missionaries had talked to her husband a while back and told him they were going to come back, but they hadn't seen any missionaries since. She told us they were still interested in hearing our message so we set up a time to meet with them on Friday. The lesson went great, they're going to read the Book of Mormon and pray and we're meeting with them again next Saturday. It turns out I was actually the missionary who had stopped by the last time all the way back in December when I first came to Birch Hills so... whoops. I think we stopped by two or three times when they weren't home and just moved on, but I honestly can't remember. I think that God's hand was in that too though because they had a kid in between the first time I met them and now, so that probably would have been a good chunk of time we wouldn't have been able to teach them, and I feel like I'm quite a bit more competent at being a missionary and teaching than I was four or five months ago when I met them. 

Friday I realized that we were kind of close to our alotted miles for the month, so Friday and Saturday we planned all the places we went to be pretty much within walking distance of each other. We were really tired at the end of both days, but it was also kind of nice to have so much proselyting without interuptions from driving from place to place. We can't teach anyone the gospel while we're sitting in our car.

That's about it! This week was really good, but there wasn't too much that would really be interesting to read about. I love you!

-Elder Clark

District

This week was really great! I typed up a response to your email, but then Gmail deleted it and I don't want to type it again, so you're just going to get what happened in my week.

So that guy who came to church with his aunt last Sunday? We taught him twice this week and he's basically the coolest person I've ever met. I know it probably seems like I say that about everybody, but it's true. In the very first lesson he told us he believed everything we were saying because it all made sense and he was feeling a peaceful feeling he's never felt anywhere else before. We invited him to be baptized in the end of May and he said yes! He's the first person who's committed to a baptism date in Birch Hills in a long while, and I think he's going to do it. I don't think I've ever seen someone who's so excited to learn more about the gospel before. Plus he answers my text messages and makes me feel like there's someone here in California who actually wants to talk to me. His name is Ali, keep him in your prayers, we're really excited to keep teaching him!

After we taught Ali on Thursday we met two cool people who mostly spoke Spanish, but knew enough English for us to have a pretty good conversation. Both of them were pretty interested in learning more about our message so we got their contact informantion to send over to the Spanish speaking missionaries who cover our area. Before we sent it though they called us and excitedly told us that they had just been able to contact another Spanish referall we'd sent over there and they were able to go inside their house and teach the entire family. It was cool to hear that they were teaching one of the people we'd found because we usually end up sending off referalls and never hearing about them again. 

In the evening still on Thursday Elder Baker (one of the assistants) called us up and told me I'm going to be a district leader now! I'm nervous, but also excited. I'm sure it will be a good experience for me and I'll learn a lot, I just hope I'm able to help the missionaries in my district learn a bit too along the way, because I still feel like there's so much about missionary work I still need to learn. I'm sure as long as I do my best and put my trust in the Lord I can't do too bad of a job though, so it should be fine.

Saturday we stopped by Ali and read a chapter of the Book of Mormon with him and he loved it and told us he was super excited to go to stake conference the next day. Then, while we were out tracting I stepped up to a door and knocked on it. As I stepped away I noticed a spider moving around up above me. I kept an eye on him to make sure he didn't try anything funny, and after a little while he stopped moving. I stepped forward to ring the doorbell and as I passed under the spider it lunged off the ceiling and repelled down towards my head! I jumped out of the way just in the nick of time and stared at the creature dangling in front of me for a little while. Since then I've been checking all of the doorways for spiders before we knock, lest one takes me by surprise and comes down on top of me. You might say that's pretty paraniod of me, but that's actually the second time I've had a narrow miss with a spider who spiderwebbed down way too close to my face, so it's not an irrational fear, it's a reality. 

On Sunday we went to stake conference and it was super good. One big thing that stood out to me was when the 1st councillor in the Stake Presidency mentioned the value of re-reading/re-listening to things because different stuff sticks out to you and you'll see stuff you might have missed the first time. I thought that tied in really well with President Nelson's last message from general conference. In response to his committment at to study the messages of the conference frequently/repeatedly over the next six months I've started listening to a talk and reading along each night before I go to bed. As I listen I've been especially looking for the times when they gave us specific invitations to act. I highly recommend giving it a try, it's made the conference a lot more real to me and I have noticed a diffence in my life as I've focused on not only listening to the words of our living prophets, but actually going out and putting them to use. 

I know that this is the Lord's work and I know that he's going to keep helping me as I try to further it more this transfer (Oh, to answer your question from last week, no we don't get to pick if we get tranfered or not, and this time around I get to stay here for another one). I love you guys!

-Elder Clark

Pictures:

The first two pictures are of our zone at district meeting and at a breakfast we had with President and Sister Golden. Three transfers ago our zone got 39 new investigators in the transfer, so we set a zone goal to really step it up and get 50 investigators. We got 54 the next transfer and the zone leaders made us breakfast to celebrate. The next transfer President Golden told us if we could beat it the next transfer breakfast would be on them at the mission home, and we tied it at 54 again. They said the offer still stood for this transfer and we swept it with I think 68 new investigators, so that's why we had breakfast there. The next one is a door mat I saw. Elder Durtschi didn't think I'm very funny, but I thought it was clever. The last one was my dinner on Wednesday, because I had cheese and crackers and it made me super happy. it's probably because I'm super childish, but it was one of my favorite meals on my mission to date.

Bee. April 2

What a week! All I could really remember after watching conference was the things that happened in conference, so I was thinking I wouldn't have much ot write about this week, but then I looked through my journal and realized that quite a lot happened. I'll just talk about a couple of the things we did. 

On Monday for the zone activity we played capture the flag with nerf guns, it was a ton of fun. I got way too into it and ended up getting sweaty and gross, so when we went back to the apartment I got ready to take a shower. Turns out that the people running our apartment decided to turn off our hot water. long story short, I took one anyways, and it was probably the coldest a human can get here in southern California. 

On Tuesday we got back into our car after knocking on some doors in our area, and I started the car, put it in drive, and looked down to see a bee sitting on my leg just above my knee. I screamed in a rather undignified way and completely forgot that the car was in drive, so my evasive actions caused the car to lurch forward, starting up the curb and towards a tree. Fortunately I pulled myself together before we actually hit anything, but it was quite the experience. In the meantime the bee was perfectly content to remain on my knee and watch me panic. It was very uncool of him. In the end I put the car in park and shooed him out with a water bottle and we went on our merry way.

Wednesday I had a pretty cool experience. We did a pass off lesson with the college age kid we've been teaching, and he asked a question about our belief that the Bible was not a complete record of all of the words of God. I then explained it in a way that I never had explained that before and quite frankly hadn't even really thought of before he asked the question, yet my response was smooth, coherent, and complete as if I had taught it that way a thousand times. I know that the Lord really does place words in our mouths as long as it's His wil and we're doing all we can to follow Him. 

Then this weekend we watched conference! How blessed we are to be able to hear from and sustain a living prophet and apostles! I'm so grateful for the words that they shared and the spirit which I felt. We certainly saw the next step in the hastening of the Lord's work in these last two days! President Nelson seemed to have a new historic announcement every time he stood up to speak. In three words Elder Holland summarized the bulk of my thoughts rather perfectly, "What a prophet!" Like him, I encourage you to "study the messages of this conference frequently, even repeatedly throughout the next six months." The spirit at the conference was almost palpable, let's continue to feel and act on that spirit as we press forward in the work of the Lord these next six months.

I love you guys!

-Elder Clark

Easter April 9 2018

It sounds like you had a pretty good trip. That institute class is the one I took over the summer, and I would definitely reccomend it. I think that class is probably the main reason I hurt my shoulder and couldn't do YCC, because if I remember right it was the same day as YCC practice. And if you're studying those conference talks you can't go wrong, it was a really great conference. Maybe it's just because I'm out on my mission and I'm studying the scriptures a lot more out here than I was at home, but the talks all seemed a lot more meaningful this conference. It's actually my second conference, the last one was a week or two after I got out here, but I liked this one more. For the most part we watched it with the other missionaries at the stake center, but a member let us watch the last session with them at their house. 

This week was really great! The father of the family we're teaching just had his work schedule change, so we weren't able to meet with them this week. Hopefully we'll be able to figure out a new time to meet with them because they're a really cool family. Last time we talked to them the father was reading the Book of Mormon, so I'm pretty sure they're still interested.

We did exchanges with the district leader this week. It was a really good, he gave me a few ideas for new things to try when we're knocking on doors and I got to meet a few of the investigators they have over there. We taught three or four lessons which was more than we ever get to teach in one day in our area, it was super fun. I almost didn't want to go back to my area when we were done. 😉 It was a good thing I went back anyways though, because the next day was pretty much the best day ever. In the morrning we set a goal to hand out a Book of Mormon to someone because we hadn't been able to give anybody a Book of Mormon for two weeks or so. Then at the very first door we knocked on we met a really cool highschool kid who took a Book of Mormon, set up a return appointment, and told us he wanted to tell some of the people on his baseball team about the Book of Mormon too! So, since we accomplished our goal so early in the day, we got to just go back inside and nap all day long! Just kidding, we kept going and an hour or two later we gave another person a Book of Mormon! He wasn't quite as solid as the first guy we talked to, and we weren't able to set up a return appointment, but he was really grateful for the book and said he'd definitely read it. But wait, there's more. After dinner our ward mission leader called us and said his two daughters both needed a Book of Mormon for youth conference, so we dropped two off at their house. So those two don't really count because they just went to perfectly active members, but we nevertheless had two less copies than we did before. After we gave them their books, we went to another street to go tracting. There were an unusual amount of people who were just hanging around outside, so we decided to do some street contacting instead. We had one or two good conversations, then met a really neat guy who thought it was totally cool we were talking to people about God so he took a Book of Mormon and set up an appointment for Wednesday. We wrapped up at that place and drove to the last road we were going to that night. We opened up the trunk and realized that we were fresh out of English copies of the Book of Mormon! All we had was two bibles, two El Libro de Mormons, one Romanian Book of Mormon (long story), and one copy in Farsi (a slightly shorter, but still fairly long story).

Friday through Saturday were pretty uneventful, then on Sunday one of the members of our ward brought her nephew to church. He's from Africa and was raised going to a Catholic church. He really liked our ward and he took a Book of Mormon and we're meeting with him on Thursday of this week. It was a really great week, we actually have quite a few lessons set up to break up all of our finding this week and I'm really excited. 😃 I mean, don't get me wrong, knocking on doors is great, teaching lessons is just even better!

But yeah, that was more or less my week. Hopefully as we keep working hard this next one will be even better!

Love you guys!

-Elder Clark

Books of mormon

It sounds like you had a pretty good trip. That institute class is the one I took over the summer, and I would definitely reccomend it. I think that class is probably the main reason I hurt my shoulder and couldn't do YCC, because if I remember right it was the same day as YCC practice. And if you're studying those conference talks you can't go wrong, it was a really great conference. Maybe it's just because I'm out on my mission and I'm studying the scriptures a lot more out here than I was at home, but the talks all seemed a lot more meaningful this conference. It's actually my second conference, the last one was a week or two after I got out here, but I liked this one more. For the most part we watched it with the other missionaries at the stake center, but a member let us watch the last session with them at their house. 

This week was really great! The father of the family we're teaching just had his work schedule change, so we weren't able to meet with them this week. Hopefully we'll be able to figure out a new time to meet with them because they're a really cool family. Last time we talked to them the father was reading the Book of Mormon, so I'm pretty sure they're still interested.

We did exchanges with the district leader this week. It was a really good, he gave me a few ideas for new things to try when we're knocking on doors and I got to meet a few of the investigators they have over there. We taught three or four lessons which was more than we ever get to teach in one day in our area, it was super fun. I almost didn't want to go back to my area when we were done. 😉 It was a good thing I went back anyways though, because the next day was pretty much the best day ever. In the morrning we set a goal to hand out a Book of Mormon to someone because we hadn't been able to give anybody a Book of Mormon for two weeks or so. Then at the very first door we knocked on we met a really cool highschool kid who took a Book of Mormon, set up a return appointment, and told us he wanted to tell some of the people on his baseball team about the Book of Mormon too! So, since we accomplished our goal so early in the day, we got to just go back inside and nap all day long! Just kidding, we kept going and an hour or two later we gave another person a Book of Mormon! He wasn't quite as solid as the first guy we talked to, and we weren't able to set up a return appointment, but he was really grateful for the book and said he'd definitely read it. But wait, there's more. After dinner our ward mission leader called us and said his two daughters both needed a Book of Mormon for youth conference, so we dropped two off at their house. So those two don't really count because they just went to perfectly active members, but we nevertheless had two less copies than we did before. After we gave them their books, we went to another street to go tracting. There were an unusual amount of people who were just hanging around outside, so we decided to do some street contacting instead. We had one or two good conversations, then met a really neat guy who thought it was totally cool we were talking to people about God so he took a Book of Mormon and set up an appointment for Wednesday. We wrapped up at that place and drove to the last road we were going to that night. We opened up the trunk and realized that we were fresh out of English copies of the Book of Mormon! All we had was two bibles, two El Libro de Mormons, one Romanian Book of Mormon (long story), and one copy in Farsi (a slightly shorter, but still fairly long story).

Friday through Saturday were pretty uneventful, then on Sunday one of the members of our ward brought her nephew to church. He's from Africa and was raised going to a Catholic church. He really liked our ward and he took a Book of Mormon and we're meeting with him on Thursday of this week. It was a really great week, we actually have quite a few lessons set up to break up all of our finding this week and I'm really excited. 😃 I mean, don't get me wrong, knocking on doors is great, teaching lessons is just even better!

But yeah, that was more or less my week. Hopefully as we keep working hard this next one will be even better!

Love you guys!

-Elder Clark