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