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