Pools and adventures

Hi there! We had a really exciting week this week. I'll just jump right into it. on Tuesday we stopped by someone named Corbin, and he and his friend both let us teach them! It was really cool, they had a lot of great lessons. We taught about Jesus Christ and His church and were about to teach about the great apostasy, then Corbin asked, "Wait, so if you believe you're Jesus Christ's church, what happened to your church between Jesus Christ's time and now?" It was pretty perfect, we were excited. 

Later, we were able to teach one of the people from the football team we met last week. He was really sincere and liked the message a lot. He opened up about some of the struggles he's been having with moving to the new school and everything, and we were able to read some scriptures from the Book of Mormon with him. It was so cool to see him finding peace from the Book of Mormon, he told us he's definitely going to be reading more on his own. 

Then on Saturday I was able to go on exchanges with Elder Vaivai, and we met a lot of interesting people. We had one super cool guy who we met as he was getting off of the bus, and we were able to sit down with him on a nearby bench and talked to him about the Book of Mormon. It went really well, he's pretty cool. Then we went around the corner and started knocking on doors in a complex over there. The very first person we talked to let us in! We were excited... until we realized that he had been using a fair amount of Marajuana and was not in a state of mind to recieve the gospel. He beckoned to a table completely covered in stuff and said "Go ahead, sit down." We didn't sit down, but instead offered to share a scripture. He declined and offered to watch TV with us. We declined and began laboring to excuse ourselves from the situation as quickly as we could. It was quite an adventure. 

Finally, we finished out the week by going to the baptism of someone in the ward who the sisters have been teaching named Daisy. The baptism service started with a really nice talk on baptism and the Holy Ghost, then they announced that they were going to proceed with the ordinance. Daisy went her way, the person performing the ordinance went the other way, and the two witnesses opened up the divider to the baptism font. It was completely empty. No water at all! The drain hadn't sealed properly, and all the water had emptied out. So, they started playing some interlude music and the bishop and his counselors discussed for a minute, then they decided that rather than waiting 2ish hours for the font to refill, we would drive 10 minutes to Bishop's house and do the baptism in the swimming pool. So we all hopped in our cars and drove over there to finish the baptismal service. It was a beautiful ordinance, and the spirit was very strong. After the baptism Daisy bore a beautiful testimony and we sang I Believe in Christ while we were all gathered around the pool. As we finished up, I thought about the scripture in Mosiah 18:30, after Alma's followers were baptized in the waters of Mormon. Mormon talks a little bit about the place where they were baptized, "Yea, the place of Mormon, the waters of Mormon, the forest of Mormon, how beautiful are they to the eyes of them who there came to the knowledge of their Redeemer; yea, and how blessed are they, for they shall sing to his praise forever." I don't think any of us are going to forget how we felt gathered around that little swimming pool in the bishop's backyard, and I am grateful that I had the chance come to a little greater knowledge of my Redeemer so that I can sing to His praise forever. This gospel is true. This work is the Savior's work. I know that as we follow Him we will always be blessed. 

Have a great week this week!

Elder Clark

7/22

Hello, thanks for the update. It's good to hear Jessica's back at church, that's awesome. I'll keep praying for Norm and his family. 

We had a lot of the usual start of transfer business this week. A couple meetings, driving some people around and that sort of stuff. But, we had some good stuff happen with one of the people we are teaching named Alex. He said he likes listening to us, he just has a hard time remembering to read and stuff when we aren't around. So, this week we decided to try to have a lot more contact with him to try to help him out. We went with him to a ward activity on Monday, taught him a lesson on Tuesday, took him to institute on Wednesday, and taught him again on Friday. He works on the weekends though, which makes church a hard thing for him. 

Aside from that we had one of the main people we're teaching get a new job where he works seven days a week. He still likes the church and wants to get baptized, but he's a lot harder to meet with now. Then the other solid person we were teaching just up and moved out on us! We taught him one day, then came back a few days later and his apartment was empty with a "For Lease" sign outside. So that was a bit of a bummer. But, the work continues, and we did find a couple of neat people to follow up with this. We were finding at a complex near the college and there was a group of guys from the football team and a couple of girls with them. Elder Del'pontone asked if we could share a video about Jesus Christ, and right away one girl said no. But, another guy said he'd watch it, and his friend came over as well. We got talking to them after the video a bit about what we do and about the Book of Mormon, and they were really excited to learn more.

Well, outta time. I love you!

Pictures:

Stairs to nowhere

Park that is prejudiced against golfers

Elder Del'Pontone putting tortillas in the toaster

Probably the tightest parallel park you'll ever see. We had less than 6 inches total between us and the other cars. When the Lord needs you to park, you park. 

7/17

This week went well! It was a pretty hectic first week of the transfer, but we had a lot of good stuff happen too. There was a really cool little miracle on the first day after we transfered. We dropped all of the stuff off in our apartment and drove a missionary companionship on bike to their area, and when we got back all we had time to do was eat dinner and go out to talk to people. We decided to just walk down the street from our apartment and talk to people in the neighborhood down there. We had some really good conversations on the way down, including a woman who we talked to while she was sitting outside who wanted to have a tour of the chapel. After we finished talking to her we asked if she knew anyone who we could talk to. She told us that she hears the people upstairs yell a lot, so we should go talk to them. I've gotten similar referrals to that before, and usually the person is not very excited to talk to us. But, we went up and gave it a try, and he was super interested in our message! He invited us in right away and told us he's been having a lot of questions about God lately and he'd love to hear what we had to say. He asked us a lot of really good questions, and we were able to answer a lot of them and most importantly, teach him about the Book of Mormon. He was so excited to start reading it and by the next day when we followed up he had already read the first 60 pages or so! He's such a sincere guy, and he really is going to grow a lot by having the gospel in his life. 

We had another awesome miracle at the end of the week while we were knocking doors in a really big apartment complex by the college. We knocked into a man named Ferris and he told us he was busy but asked if we could come back the next day. We came back and he told us he had just started learning about God and was excited to keep learning more. The member we brought to the lesson invited him to a ward activity the next day and church the day after, so after meeting him on Thursday, we taught him Friday saw him at the activity on Saturday, and sat by him at church on Sunday. It was really awesome, he's super prepared to hear our message. 

That's pretty much our week! I love you all!

Elder Clark

6/17

 It was a pretty hectic first week of the transfer, but we had a lot of good stuff happen too. There was a really cool little miracle on the first day after we transfered. We dropped all of the stuff off in our apartment and drove a missionary companionship on bike to their area, and when we got back all we had time to do was eat dinner and go out to talk to people. We decided to just walk down the street from our apartment and talk to people in the neighborhood down there. We had some really good conversations on the way down, including a woman who we talked to while she was sitting outside who wanted to have a tour of the chapel. After we finished talking to her we asked if she knew anyone who we could talk to. She told us that she hears the people upstairs yell a lot, so we should go talk to them. I've gotten similar referrals to that before, and usually the person is not very excited to talk to us. But, we went up and gave it a try, and he was super interested in our message! He invited us in right away and told us he's been having a lot of questions about God lately and he'd love to hear what we had to say. He asked us a lot of really good questions, and we were able to answer a lot of them and most importantly, teach him about the Book of Mormon. He was so excited to start reading it and by the next day when we followed up he had already read the first 60 pages or so! He's such a sincere guy, and he really is going to grow a lot by having the gospel in his life. 

We had another awesome miracle at the end of the week while we were knocking doors in a really big apartment complex by the college. We knocked into a man named Ferris and he told us he was busy but asked if we could come back the next day. We came back and he told us he had just started learning about God and was excited to keep learning more. The member we brought to the lesson invited him to a ward activity the next day and church the day after, so after meeting him on Thursday, we taught him Friday saw him at the activity on Saturday, and sat by him at church on Sunday. It was really awesome, he's super prepared to hear our message. 

That's pretty much our week! I love you all!

Elder Clark

6/24

We had an extremely busy week this week, even more so than every other week when I say it was busy.  We had zone conference on Thursday, and the way they stuctured it this time had us teaching a workshop about sharing scriptures and teaching simply so that people understand. We were really busy with meetings and teaching people for the first week and a half, so we did most of our preparation for the workshop Wednesday. We got a lot done in the afternoon, but we had to go out before we finished, so we went to the Fullerton Junior college and talked to some people on the sidewalks by the college, then went to an institute class at a different college. After the class we had a coordination meeting with our ward mission leader, so we got back from all that at a little after 9 and kept working on our zone conference planning. It was like all of the projects I did last minute in high school, except this time around we were actually busy with a bunch of stuff, I wasn't just lazy. The training went really well though, aside from the slideshow we made not working for the first group that went through our workshop.

Then after zone conference on Thursday we went on an exchange on Friday and an exchange on Saturday, so those were both really good. We met quite a few really awesome people this week who we sent off to family wards, so that was neat. One in particular was a really neat experience. We were driving and Elder Del'Pontone pointed down a road and said there was someone down there who we should visit. So we turned around and parked the car to follow up on the spiritual prompting. The person he had thought of wasn't home, but we stayed in the area and knocked on a few doors, and we met a woman who had recently moved to the area. She's met with missionaries before and liked it, so we asked if we could come by and she said she'd like that a lot!

Other than that, the really neat person we met last week was in New York all week, so we called him once, but that's about it. He's excited to meet with us this week though, so that should be really good!

A little thought before I go. In the institute class we went to we talked about the signs of the second coming of the Savior. One person made a very profound comment that I thought I would share. We were talking about what it means when Christ tells the apostles to "Stand in the Holy Place" when they see the signs of His coming, and somebody said that we'll never have to get ready for Him to come if we always stay ready for him to come. We can't be hanging out in Babylon until we see him on his way and hurry and try to clean everything up. We need to have a repentance attitude and seek the Lord's forgiveness and mercy every single day. Don't ever forget to repent!

Love you guys!

Elder Clark

7/1

I don't have a lot of time again, but this week was great! Ferris came back from his trip to New York, and we we're able to teach him three times, and he came to church, and to an institute class that was all about the first vision! He also told us he believes that Jesus is His Savior and Joseph Smith is a prophet without us even asking him about it, he's a pretty amazing guy! He's got a couple hurdles to work through in order to make it to baptism, but man is he prepared to accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Other than that we're just working hard and talking to everyone we can. I love my Savior and I love this gospel! Make This week a great one!

Elder Clark

7/8

Our week went well, the California Anaheim mission and the California Long Beach mission are officially combined into one mission. Transfers have not happened as of yet though, so things haven't changed much yet. We did have a big combined MLC with all of us together though, so that was pretty exciting. Two missionaries who I had a pass off lesson with back in A3 were there, so it was cool to see them again. We got to talk about how to help the two missions merge as smoothly as possible, and it's really exciting. We have different strengths throughout the two missions, and I think with the merge we'll be able to learn a lot from each other.

We also had two earthquakes this last week. They were really big, but far enough away from us that they didn't hurt anyone. We definitely felt them though, they were pretty hard to miss. The second one probably lasted between 45 seconds and a minute, which is quite a while for the earth to be shaking. We did get to have a pretty good conversation because of it, it happened as we were talking to someone outside their house, and she told us to get under her doorway 'cuz that's what you're supposed to do. Then we got to talk with her for quite a while after that, and she ended up saying that she and her boyfriend should have us over for dinner so we can share a little more sometime, so it was pretty cool!

One other wild adventure from this week, then I probably have to go. I was on exchanges on Wednesday with an elder named Elder Feldman, and we had district council. We decided that after we finished planning we would go over to the church building and do our personal study there so we weren't late. It was a good thing we did, because otherwise we would have been suuuuper late. We walked outside, and I opened the back door of our car to hang up my suitcoat because I don't usually wear it while I'm driving. Then, lo and behold where I wanted my suitcoat to be hanging there was a gigantic, circular spiderweb that had been spun overnight. The architect of which was nowhere in sight. Elder Feldman and I looked around for a bit and brainstormed what to do. We decided we weren't adequately equipped, so we went back into the apartment to see what we had available to us. After poking around a bit we found a nearly empty can of raid and a couple of tennis racquets. So we ventured back out with raid in one hand and tennis racquet in the other. We opened all the doors and decided I would spray a little raid on the web to see if we could draw the spider out. So I gave it a little spurt and a gigantic, striped monstrosity crawled out from behind the handle above the door. A tremendous battle ensued from which we we're gratefully able to emerge victorious. So, we ended up showing up just in time for district council without any time at all for personal study. It was quite an adventure.

Well, gotta go! Love you all, make sure to make this week a good one!

Elder Clark