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