This week, one day at the gym, the song started playing ¨Don´t worry, be happy¨. I don´t know why, but it made me really happy. I also felt good because I just got done running and lifting weights, but that phrase has become a motto for the week and my mission! I really don´t have very much to worry about, and I sure am happy!! Conference made me happy, the work makes me happy, and having such loving and supporting family and friends back home makes me happy. Thanks everyone.
This week we had a lot of success!! We took our investigator, Ramiro, to the visitors center of the temple!! It was a really awesome experience, the Spirit was so strong there, I learned and felt a lot of love from My Savior, and he loved it so much he said he wants to go back. His desire to be baptized and his testimony has grown so much since we have been visiting him. He even brought his non member daughter to the visitors center! We realized how great of a tool it was to bring investigators to the visitors center, and we have started inviting all of them! We have a lot of cool plans ahead and I am sooo excited. I LOVE this area, the people here, and we are being so blessed and guided in the work. This week we will have TWO baptisms, one of Thursday for Henry, which is awesome, and another for Yael, the fourteen year old kid. Both of them already have strong testimonies, and it is a miracle and humbling to me to see their faith in Christ, their willingness to follow His commandments, and their desire to commit their WHOLE lives to Jesus Christ, and enter the waters of baptism. We also have many more baptisms planned in the future, but I am especially excited for these two this week, two people that we found when I were here, and are already baptizing them before the end of the cycle. Yes, this is week 6 of the cycle so that means I am getting a new companion next Tuesday!! I must admit, I will miss Elder Lopez a lot. We have had a lot of fun together, made lots of memories, and have had a lot of success too. I am greatful for everything he taught me these last 6 weeks and I pray and hope that my next companion too, will be willing to work hard and have fun with me too just as Lopez and Johnson have. But I must admit, WHERE DID THESE LAST 6 WEEKS GO!! Time has been going by sooo fast, it is crazy. Somedays I wonder if I am just going to wake up in my own bed one morning. Also this last Sunday for conference, we had EIGHT investigators come!! Wow, I was just so happy, I was smiling the whole time and so excited to see their faith and commitment. Thanks to sister conception, the BEST 74 year old memeber missionary, we found a LOT of new investigators this week, and she single-handedly brought 3 investigators to general conference herself. I am so greatful for her service and example in this ward, I wish all of the memebers would be as motivated as her to help us with the work, because with her help alone, we will have a TON of baptisms in this ward. Man am I excited!
I also learned some pretty valuable and cool lessons this week. One day in particular, I think it was Wednesday was kind of rough. We walked a ton, up and down hills, it was really windy and hot, the dirt was blowing in our faces. I felt uncomfortable, hot, and tired, but I kept going. I was waiting for something good to happen or a ¨blessing¨ because we kept working, but nope. All of the appointments we went to were either dissapointments and the investigators didn´t want anything else from us, or the people I was looking forward to seeing weren´t there. I remembered going back to the house to grab some papers, I got down on my knees, and asked him why I had a hard day, why he made us waste time and money to go to visit people who weren´t there, and if he was answering my prayers that day. Well, it wasn´t until night, when I was walking back to the house, when I learned he was actually teaching me a great lesson, and actually, a lesson I had ASKED for! I couldn´t believe I forgot that that morning I listened to a conference talk by Elder Uchtdorf (one of my favorite habits as I get ready in the morning), about patience. It was a really great talk, inspired me a lot, and then I got on my knees and asked Heavenly Father to teach me to have more patience. Well, I definitely got my lesson I was asking for. That night I appologized for getting down and discouraged, and doubting His guidance, and thanked Him for that great lesson of patience. Since then, I have definitely had more patience, and I marvel and the kind of patience He must have to have for each one of us. Wow, that´s a lot of patience. I know I will have hard lessons in the future, hard investigators, hard days and weeks, and maybe even a hard area or companion. But I have learned with His help and through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, I can have more patience and hope I will be able to endure these trials with hope, love, and this patience. Also, I learned a lot this General Conference, I loved it!! I must admit, it was a little harder in Spanish, and I missed hearing the actual voices of the prophets and apostles, and there are some talks I want to download and listen to again, but still, definitely the most inspiring and uplifting conference I have had in my whole life. I would love to share everything I had learned, but 10 pages of notes is hard to summarize. I will say that I had ALL of my questions answered, that I approached my Heavenly Father with in prayer, and looked for the answers in conference. I had a few questions about the Spirit and I loved Elder Ronald A. Rasband´s talk about being First Responders. I hope and pray for the courage and capacity to be a First Responder out here in my mission so I can always follow the Spirit and His promptings. Also I learned a lot from Joy D. Jone´s talk about covenants and promises. This wasn´t actually something she said, neither a question I had, but it was an unsolictied gift and knowledge from Heavenly Father through His Spirit, that the Spirit had taught me. I learned something about the Sacrament. When we take to Sacrament every week, we make a PROMISE with God, that we will keep the commandments and follow Jesus Christ. We make that promise forever, but I like to think of it as we make the promise and renew that baptismal covenant for the week, and we will try with everything we got to be like Him and keep His commandments ¨because we said so¨. So, through this promise every week, God promises us His Spirit and through His Spirit we can be cleaned of our sins, guided, comforted, and through our promises or covenants with God and through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can progress, make our weaknesses become strengths, and build within us a sin-resisting spirit so we too one day can become like God. The Sacrament and the Atonement of Jesus Christ has always been a topic hard to grasp for me, and to understand how can He love us so much or His grace and mercy be soo great that we can repent of our sins and recieve the SAME glory as our father in Heaven with our family. But as I study the scriptures and especially read and study every word of my patriarchal blessing, that goal and hope becomes a reality to me, something reachable, and inspires and motivates ME to work harder and harder, to keep his commandments, and help me and my family and as many other people as I can recieve this Exaltation- The maximum state of happiness in the Celestial Kingdom (according to the Scripture Guide). Something reachable and hopeable.
Well, that about wraps it up. This week I reached a very large and great milestone in my life. I reached 100 STREET TACOS in the mission!! Wow, I wonder if I can get to 1000 by the end. I have been eating a lot of street tacos here though. I have running AND lifting weights everyday in the gym and it makes me feel great. Also, I recieved a great and marvelous revelation this week in a dream. I realized that for my hour of exercise in the morning, I could go to the church and play basketball!! I hope my next companion likes basketball because I am going to buy one this week and go there instead of the gym somedays! I am so greatful for this divine inspiration. Well, I am pumped for our baptisms this week. Happy Birthday to Lindsey, Khloe, and Cole this week!! I hope you guys all had great birthdays. To close, I would like to echo the words of Elder Uchtdorf, I really enjoyed his talk this conference. I wouldn´t want to be living at any other time of the history of the world either. I wouldn´t want to be with any other companion, in any other area or mission, or with any other mission president. I wouldn´t trade my family or friends for ANYONE else in the world, not even a chance to meet Kawhi Leonard (Although that would be pretty sweet... maybe I would haha. jk) I wouldn´t ask for any other situation in my life because I too sometimes want to just drop to my knees and give thanks to my Heavenly Father for EVERYTHING I have in life. I literally have so much. We have been so blessed as members of the church, and I personally have been so so blessed in my life. I love, miss, and pray for you all as always. Til next week family and friends!!
-Elder Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment