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)
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