August 19, 2013

This has been a good week! We asked one of our investigators to get baptized, and she accepted! She has a testimony of the Book of Mormon, and luck is on our side because she stays at home all day with her little 2 year old, so has plenty of time to read :) She is in Ether! Unfortunately, so didn't come to church yesterday.... We have decided to revamp our church invitations by actually teaching about the commandment of keeping the Sabbath Day holy and why we go to church. Yeah. That should help. It is funny. In the MTC I felt like "Wow. How on earth will I think of things to teach for as many lessons as people will need before baptism! There are only 4 lessons!" Little did I know. Everyday I just wish I could see the same people. It has been interesting trying to figure out how to convert people to Christ. It is definitely not enough to be converted to the church or the people in the church. I have been thinking about it a lot and really want to figure it out. I know that I do the things that I do because I love my Heavenly Father and Savior and want to be like them and keep their commandments. I try to sacrifice for them out of love and obedience. Teaching the lessons doesn't help people learn that! So what does? Now I am seeing what commitments are important. As a missionary I need to help them make habits so that they can receive those experiences that truly convert them. This is definitely not the easiest thing in the world! The Spirit testifying is truly the only thing that helps my investigators. We had a neat experience the other day. We found this family and were thinking they were just great. They are 7th Day Adventists. Well... The lesson turned a little into a moment of bible bashing (which is really interesting in the Spanish culture because they are the most polite people I have ever met in my entire life). For our return appointment, we decided that we would just drop them, but we wanted to leave them with the Plan of Salvation. We prayed very earnestly that the Spirit would be with us and decided that we would just leave if the Spirit left. What a blessing that lesson was! I watched as the Spirit testified truth to the father and he realized that he had questions that had never been answered before, such as about baptisms for the dead. We didn't bring up the Book of Mormon, so next time we are going to see if they are willing to read, and if not, we will have to leave them in the area book to be re-found when they are ready. Our sister training leader had apparently taught him before and said that we needed to be really careful because he would try to sway us and convert us. Maybe this last lesson is the last one that will happen with them for a time, but I feel good in my heart knowing that one more family has heard the truth about The Plan of Happiness. The Book of Mormon is amazing. If I ever have doubts or fears, I can read the Book of Mormon and read of the prophecies that are being fulfilled right before my eyes. It is neat to be able to witness these prophecies being fulfilled.

With love,

Hermana Clark

July 31, 2013

Dear Family,
ALOHA! I mean..... HOLA! The funny thing is, here in this ward, most people are English. Yesterday there was a Polynesian family that I thought was Hispanic. Apparently they don't speak Spanish.... My companion is Sister Huchendorf from Idaho, Ohio, and on and on. She went to BYUHawaii. Pretty cool I think! She has been here 4 months and speaks really good Spanish. She studied spanish for 3 years in junior high and a semester in college. I hope that I can get to speak as well as her. It can be a little hard in lessons because I have a hard time contributing when I can't speak, but she doesn't have any problem so she just goes at it. We have met some nice people but we need to find more investigators. I realized that when I thought about missions I always thought about missions outside of the US in third world countries. Well pretty much I am in Auburn and it is a lot like..... Logan. Hahaha. I am sitting in the car with her today (P-Day) and I am like... "So what do you do on P-Day?" She says "I am still trying to figure that out." I am thinking we need a cultural experience, but the only draw back is that the culture seems to be the same here. There aren't children starving on the streets or houses breaking down. I got an email from one of the elders from the MTC. He is in Guatamela and his baptism font broke so he had to do the baptism in the ocean! Yeah. Two different missions. The people here have been pretty nice. The coolest thing about being here is that I think my faith and conviction grows the more that I have to tell people that. It can be little scary going around talking to random people, but it has been okay. The spanish people are so much nicer. I would much rather knock on a spanish persons home than a white persons home. They are so willing to talk about Jesus. The hard thing about teaching them is that our lessons are way too long. I talked to my companion and we decided we really need to work on taking control of the conversations. She isn't very aggressive, so I sometimes feel like it is up to me, but the trouble with that is I can't say anything in Spanish. I am trying to learn how to love everybody around me and desire to share the Gospel with them. I haven't quite figured out how to successfully start Gospel conversations. I sometimes just can't think of anything to say. Or I say "could we share a message with you?" and then I don't know what to say so it is just weird. I don't really know what to share with people! Ambree and Daniel. Learn the Scripture Mastery verses. And study the scriptures in Preach my Gospel. I always felt like I knew the Gospel pretty well, and I think I still do in action, but scriptures are the best way to provide validity to my words and I feel like I don't know them near as well as I should. BUT. I just keep moving forward. The first few days were really hard, but it gets better everyday. I love you all! Glad to hear the family is well!

Love,
Hermana Clark
P.S. It can get really confusing when I call myself Sister and Hermana Clark. I always get confused about who I am.

July 16, 2013

This week at the MTC I had the opportunity to switch companions for a half hour and practice teaching the commandments. We taught about the law of chastity, tithing, the word of wisdom and keeping the Sabbath Day holy. It was pretty fun! We did it all in Spanish (of course). There were some interesting moments when we didn't know the vocabulary.... It was neat to get to share some of the experiences I have had with those different laws. I never realized how blessed I am to have so many experiences. I didn't realize that I have had some experiences that some other missionaries have never really had that make the laws real for me. The Lord also took care of me this week when I was having a hard day. One of the other hermanas in the district noticed I was having a hard time (one a P-Day, don't worry! I am not wasting the Lord's time having bad days!). She took about an hour and just talked to me and asked how I was doing. I felt really blessed because that was exactly what I needed to feel better. Now that I am trying to spend so much time learning Spanish, I am noticing an increasingly difficult obstacle trying to communicate in English. Imagine that! I will get to the field and be unable to speak in Spanish or English. In my scriptures I have been trying to really study and notice times where different topics are talked about. I never realized before how much emphasis is put on baptism in the Book of Mormon. There is also much about the Atonement (naturally) that I never really noticed. I love reading my scriptures. I met this nice elder who was born in Mexico and he talked Spanish at me. It really was at me, because I think I only understood about 1/3 of what he said. I am thinking I better start praying for the gift of tongues a little harder if I plan on helping people! Truly the Lord already blesses me a lot to know as much Spanish as I do after so short a time. I also had the opportunity this week to help one of the hermans feel better by talking to her. I love feeling like I am helping someone and look forward to the opportunity to help more people in Washington. I can't even imagine what it is going to be like there, but I am about to find out next Tuesday! Time is flying.
Love, Hermana Clark

July 9, 2013

Buenas tardes! The MTC is just peachy. I eat pineapple everyday. Anything of interest this week? Well.... we get our travel plans for Washington at the end of this week. I can hardly believe it! I have been here for four weeks! We taught some members again on Friday. One of the members didn't show up, so I we ended up teaching one of the teachers. I didn't quite get that he was being himself, not a fake investigator, till about half-way through the lesson. I said the prayer and thanked Heavenly Father that would could teach him, but forgot his name right before I said it, so I had to say "this member". Ha. I hope he forgets soon. We picked up two new investigators, got dropped by one, and are going to have two "baptisms" on Saturday. It can be pretty interesting, pretending like I am attending a baptism. I think I am most excited to get into the field so that I don't have to pretend that the people I am teaching are actually going to have real outcomes. It is a good opportunity to learn about teaching. Our district is being disolved, so our first counselor was released yesterday. Kind of sad because he reminded me of Dad and now "Dad" isn't here anymore.... Hm. Oh well. The district isn't being completely disolved until we leave, which is Monday after next. So pretty much the presidency is being picked apart week by week. Next week the second counselor will be released. I am loving studying the scriptures here. I really could read for 15 hours straight and want to keep reading. For how much I read, you would think I would have finished The Book of Mormon since being here, but instead it is becoming quite the rainbow as I highlight different topics. Yesterday I saw one of my friends from high school and he told me that my other friend just got back and is strong in the faith. I felt like Alma and the sons of Mosiah when they met each other again and we filled with joy because their were still brethern in the Lord. It gave me some hope for the future because I felt how it feels to know someone has accepted the Gospel and it has changed their life. I look forward to when I can help families come together and accept Christ as their Savior. I am really interested to know who my next companion is. I just am really curious. I hope the family is doing well and is safe and sound. Love, Hermana Clark

July 2, 2013

For a family home evening, you should see if you can watch "The Character of Christ" talk by Elder Bednar. He gave it at the MTC last year or something. It is really good.

Our song went really well and I think our "investigator" liked it. He committed to a baptismal date next Saturday. Dan sent me another song in Spanish about baptism, so I think we might sing that to him too! So on Saturday, the music coordinators for Sacrament (the other two hermanas in our room) realized that there was no musical number for Sacrament Meeting. So what did we do? Hermana Boyack rented a violin from the MTC, and we played a song in Sacrament meeting. It was so fun! She is a violin major at BYUI and pretty good. I surely enjoyed it. I hope that I did it justice. We didn't have that much time to prepare.

So the highlight of the week is that we got to teach members. We had twenty minutes to share a message with one member. (We did it twice). The neat thing was that we went in with nothing prepared. I had no idea what we were going to say and I was a little nervous. We got in there, started talking to the first woman, Sister Ramero. She is divorced and her daughter and her are the only members in her family. The rest of her family is in Venezuela. I had no idea what to share, and my companion didn't have anything, so I decided to share one of my favorite scriptures, Alma 7:12. It was all in Spanish, so my companion told her to read 11 and 12 on accident, and then Sister Ramero ended up reading 10-12. It was perfect. She started crying and we talked about how the Lord loves her and her daughter. I tried to tell her to think of one blessing from Heavenly Father and share it with her daughter and her daughter will feel God's love also. I don't think it worked very well, but she wrote something down, so the spirit must have got a message across. The next lady has her family in Mexico and they are all baptized. I knew less of what to say to her because she has a lot of faith in Christ and knows of His love and blessings for her. I just opened my scriptures and looked for something highlighted. I found a scripture in Mosiah 18? That was about being of one baptism, one faith, and preaching the Gospel. I thought "Okay, we will just talk about how her family can be more unified through Christ". I think she started crying too and told us that her brothers are inactive. She said that she was going to start praying for them. It was pretty neat. Our Spanish was horrendous with that lady, but she felt the Spirit. The neatest thing about these experiences (called TRC) is that I don't feel like we really taught because our Spanish was the least effective thing about the lesson. Really, the Spirit taught those members. I really enjoyed teaching them and it lifted my spirits a lot. I really look forward to when we will be in Washington helping real people.

Love,
Hermana Clark

June 25, 2013

It has sure been exciting here, if that is the right word. As my companion says, "The days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like weeks." The day seems really long because we get up at six and go to bed at 10:30 and study the whole time. I can hardly every remember what I did that morning. But the weeks are flying by. It is crazy to think it has already been two weeks here at the MTC. My Spanish is greatly improved. I got to meet my mission president on Saturday. He is really nice. Him and his wife are here getting their training for being mission presidents. There was a world-wide broadcast on missionary work on Sunday. Did you go to it? I tried to be in the choir but there were too many missionaries so they had to tell probably two hundred of us that we couldn't be in the choir. It was a little sad, but hey, I can sing on my own. The two sisters in our district were in the choir and were on t.v. That was cool! I can hardly believe how much I had learned here. I think back to what I could say two weeks ago.... oh yeah, absolutely nothing. Except "Hola" and "Como esta?" Now to think I actually know what we say that and what parts of speech they are.... it is crazy. I have been trying to pray very specifically lately for the gift of tongues and the interpretation of tongues. My mission president said that we should pray for specific things, so I did. I have been praying for help in remembering and retaining all the words, and I have been praying that I can understand the grammar. It is so much easier this week than it was last week. I am not the best spanish speaker ever born, but I am feeling pretty alright about it. Back to my mission president - he grew up in the Federal Way Area. It was crazy because when he got his call he emailed church headquarters to ask if that was the right place. His parents and extended family apparently still live up there. The people went and asked the Quorum of the Twelve and they said "Yup! That is an inspired call!" So here we all are! Going to a mission where our mission president has spent nearly all of his life! It turns out that one of the elders in our district, Elder Ballard, just happens to be from our mission! He is going to Spain. He grew up in Ording (or something like that). It is just south of Federal Way, right smack in the middle of my mission! He got on the interactive map on the church website and he showed us the area and his house. He is pretty excited. You would think he was called there! Right! We were talking about my mission president. Him and his wife have two missionaries out right now. One is in the MTC and we just met her when we met President Eaton. They are very nice, real people. I think they are kind of goofy :) They just joked around and were very kind. Sister Eaton brought banana bread for us. The area I will be serving in will only be about 45 minutes wide, I think. Unless more spanish branches open up. The entire mission is about 2 1/2 hours in either direction. I enjoyed meeting them. They are just normal people who are trying to serve the Lord. I think that they will do a good job.

Let's see. What else is new? My district tried to do an "English Fast" on Friday. That was interesting. We all did a service project that morning. Hermana Biggs and I shined the trashcans in a building. Interesting service project, huh! I think that maybe they have a few more missionaries than they know what to do with...... We looked up trashcan in the dictionary and promptly started using it in our language ("escoria"). Later that day we went back to our classroom and were talking to one of our spanish teachers, Hermana Wilson. She kept asking us what we were talking about when we were telling her about trashcans. Well.... apparently we don't know how to use a dictionary because she told us the real word for trashcan. The one we had been using meant "worthless people". Phew! That could have gone bad in a lesson. Besides that the Spanish is going pretty well. The "English Fast" helped me learn a lot because I was forced to only communicate in Spanish. I can speak a lot better than I thought I could. I am beginning to feel more comfortable teaching and explaining gospel principles to investigators. We finished teaching "Constantino". Guess who it was? Our afternoon spanish teacher, Hermano Bulloch! The day after we finished teaching him he started teaching us in class. The teachers all just choose someone that they actually taught in their mission to be to give us practice teaching. They all do a really good job of being someone else. Yesterday we went to knock on our new investigators door "Nicolas". Nicolas (Hermano Bulloch) opened the door and the lights were off and he had just gotten up from a nap. He was really tired because he goes to classes all the time. We started getting to know him and teaching him about Christ and what do you know but his dogs start barking like crazy! (Hermano Bulloch put dogs barking on his phone and had them go off). We just keep teaching along, wondering if we should say something. I told him about Sparty, as best as I could. Sometimes it can be hard to pretend like they are real people. But then I think "If I can teach with the Spirit to someone who already knows the Gospel and believes in it, I can definitely teach with the Spirit to a real person!" That is probably the hardest part. I have been teaching a lot for the last few years of my life, but it is a different ball game trying to teach the Gospel. People don't just listen and take what I say as truth. I really have to try hard to work with my companion and bring the Spirit to testify. It is really hard! It is getting easier as I learn more spanish because I don't have to think as hard.

Like Justin Meyers said, we really do get to play beach volleyball all the time. Hmmm... anything else? Not sure. Like I said "Days are like weeks and weeks are like weeks." I can't think of anything else, yet I know I have done a lot of things in the last 7 days. Well. I guess that is it!

Love you tons!
Hermana Clark