Reefiest Cycle Ever

Hello Family!

Sorry guys, this week will be pretty short.  On Saturday I found out that I will have changes and be leaving the zone... I have been trying to pack up all of my things and saying bye to everyone.  Honestly, I have been a little sad lately as I am leaving an area I love, people I love, and especially a companion that I love.  But I couldn´t be more grateful for all of the great memories, success, all the people I could meet, and how really, nothing could have gone any better this cycle.  It was definitely as we call it, "The Reefiest Cycle of Our Missions".  Last night we were reflecting back on everything we accomplished, and even made a "Top 15" moments of the cycle.  We even had to cut out some pretty awesome moments but I sure am grateful for all of these opportunities I have had and wouldn´t change anything.  I feel satisfied leaving my area without regrets and willing and ready to go work and be a zone leader and example to a new area, in Nezahuacoytl (try pronouncing that one) with Elder Polacios.  I suppose I can only hope for, pray for, and expect the best!

We were sad because all of our baptisms fell again this week, literally just a couple days before!! One of our investigators got bronchitis and the other 2 we just couldn´t get a hold of.  But as I was saying bye to everyone, I realized how much I had helped them and made a difference in their lives. I could feel their love and appreciation and also Heavenly Father´s approval of my work here. I recieved confirmation of the Spirit that I did a great work in La Perla Zone and in the Chimalhuacan ward specifically.  It was really exciting though because as we were saying goodbye, everybody told us that they finally felt ready to get baptized and they wanted me to come back and baptized them! So if all goes well, I could be coming back to baptize a couple families next cycle and I couldn´t be more excited! As for food this week, we had my very favorite "Calle 6" tacos one last time, and a member took us out for some amazing huaraches for lunch one day.  I sure have grown to love these people and hope to fall in love with my next area just the same.

Thank you guys for always supporting me and I can´t believe I will be home in almost 8 months! Time sure is flying, especially this cycle, which will be one I will never forget. It sure was legendary. Wish me luck in my new area, you will always be in my prayers!

T-Clark Out.

Volcanic Rock Surfing

Family and Friends!

Wow!!! What a WEEK!!! What a DAY!!! Elder Warnick and I along with some other friends might have just invented a new olympic sport... Volcanic Rock Surfing.  So today we left at about 6:00 to hike up a volcano in our mission.  Elder Boynton, Craner, Lopez, and Warren came with us as we began our early morning hike (and let me say, it felt like I was getting ready to go snowboarding with my Dad on those early mornings, it was super easy to get up and I was sooo excited).  It honestly wasn´t too long of a hike, about 1 hour up, and once at the top, we could see almost ALL of Mexico City!! It was soooo cool and pretty! We took a lot of fun pictures and videos and was definitely the best hike I´ve ever seen out here in Mexico.  But the intense and fun part hadn´t even began... Going down.  Usually going down from the hike is one of the most dull, slow, most tiring parts- but not this hike! Maybe for that reason it is one of the top 10 hikes I´ve ever been on! (Maybe... I have been on a lot of sweet hikes before). Anyways, since it is a volcano, the way down is just 4 feet deep of pure, loose, volcanic rock.  So literally you can run down as FAST as you want, and it is nearly impossible to fall.  With dust flying up into the air and our legs just chugging down that mountain super fast, we realized we may have just invented a new sport. Plus it only took us about 15-20 minutes to get down the mountain, making it only about a 2 or 3 hour trip in total. I had never really experienced anything quite like it before and if anyone is down here in Mexico City ever, I DEFINITELY reccomend. Heck, I am definitely going back 2 or 3 times before my mission is over! It was an awesome memory, and I am so grateful for P-Days like these to help me relax from the heaping mountain of work we have to do during the week and have a chance to enjoy some of God´s amazing, wonderful, breathtaking creatings.  Speaking of amazing, wonderful, and breathtaking creations, we also got to play lots of basketball afterwards with some of my best friends, and got AL PASTOR tacos.  I am pretty sure basketball and street tacos definitely make it in some of the top creations of God. And for that reason that I got to have so much fun in one day, it may even be the BEST P-DAY of all time.  Again, just maybe because I have had some other pretty awesome P-Days in the past.  I am just grateful we all made it home safe and alive :)

As the last few weeks though, Warnick and I have still been ON FIRE!!! We have got 17 more progressing investigators since the beginning of the cycle and now have 8 people with a baptismal date and goal so that would be awesome to see all of those guys go through!! It is kind of sad to think that I could be leaving this awesome ward, area, and companion this week since changes are next week but I am so grateful for all of the time that I did have to work here and for so many blessings of success, and great companions.  We were able to find TWO new families this week that really love us and what we do and have the potential to be baptized.  We were also were able to use the movie "Coco" that we saw a few weeks ago in the movie theatres to help teach someone about family history and temple work, and EVER came up with a new song! (Definitely not as cool as the 12 planchas of Christmas) but we sang the compromisos of the week in our district meeting, so we might just go down being known as the singing zone leaders.  Of course not for how well we can sing because we both have pretty bad voices, but our songs are pretty hilarious and help get our point across so much better haha.  Lastly, we had a really cool experience in a lesson this week.  We have been teaching a mom and daughter (Macrina and Alexa) for a while now who have gone to church and have a baptismal date.  Since the beginning though they have always been worried about Macrina´s husband (Arcelio) who isn´t really into religion, and doesn´t want them to get baptized.  We´ve had two lessons with him the past few weeks and even though he has been pretty shut and not super accepting of us, he has been listening to us.  Well this week, we were teaching the Plan of Salvation and had a BOMB lesson.  We used lots of examples that made them laugh and understand, and the spirit was definitely super strong there. At the end we bore our powerful testimonies about the Plan of Salvation, the importance of families in this life, and then sang "Families can be together forever" I don´t know if I ever felt the Spirit more powerfully while singing this hymn and it seemed to turn out so good I leaned over and whispered to Warnick "Hey, I think we should invite the husband to be baptized" He didn´t really respond to me and I could tell he wasn´t so sure about it, but I followed the prompting and extended the bold invitation after the closing hymn.  And to our surprise and excitement he boldy said, Yes! I want to get baptized! We put a baptismal date with him after that and left the lesson feeling humbled, excited, and so grateful.  Warnick even admitted to me afterwards that he wasn´t so sure about inviting him to baptism yet, but afterwards knew it was the perfect thing and was definitely a prompting of the Holy Ghost.  I am so grateful for the Holy Ghost to lead and direct our lives and to also help us fufill our callings. I know personal revelation from God is real, that families can be together forever, and am so happy and feel so blessed to have the Gospel in my life and have the chance to be a missionary and servant for the Lord!! Nothing better than this, and definitely have had so many experiences (fun, sad, spiritual...) that I will remember for the rest of my life.  And definitely have met people, both missionaries and converts, who I will have a strong friendship and love for all of eternity.

Well, among some other highlights this week, is that we made a bedtime story! Warnick and I compiled details of our whole entire mission up to this point, when we first met, and of course added a few tweaks to make it more interesting and funny and then turned it into a pretty ghetto story book type thing filled with pictures.  We may be a little weird sometimes, but I think things like these moments, the cactus garden, the 12 planchas of Christmas, our flying boat, inventing new olympic sports, and just having tons and tons of success in the missionary work define our legendary companionship and why we are so happy all of the time.  We also had a really REALLY awkward, kind of funny lunch with some members this week.  Just imagine that we sit down at the table with the mom, and then the dad walks in (actually a really cool and strong family of the ward) but he also invited his really drunk brother who just talked and spit on us the whole time, his really country, rancher dad, with his cowboy hat, his dad´s pastor friend who was really prideful and funny about his church and his bible, and then the angry aunt who randomly walked out of the house in the middle of lunch, yelled at everyone, and slammed the door.  Then multiply the awkwardness you imagine by 10.  Yeah, pretty awkward.  Of course we tried our best to meet these new people and try to share the gospel with them, but none of them were having any of it lol.  You could definitely tell the dad and mom were a little embarassed at the end, but we made them sure that we were grateful for the food and their example to their family.  Plus, makes for funny missionary stories to the fam! Anyways, we should hopefully (VERY HOPEFULLY) be closing this week and this cycle (Wow, I can´t believe this cycle went by SO FAST!) with 3 baptisms.  We find out about changes next week but I can only hope for and pray for another cycle in this area and with Elder Warnick.  Anyways, thanks so much for all of the emails, love, and support, and I will catch ya´ll next week! Have a good one!!

By the way, here are some pictures and I will get some more coming.

Yours Truly, 

Elder Tyler Clark

The 12 Planchas of Christmas!!

Dear Family and Friends,

This week was a HUGE SUCCESS. On Wednesday we had our zone conference and Warnick and I finally got to present the project we had been working on, or as Pres Mann would say, "The song of the century". And nothing could've gone better. Everyone really enjoyed it, some people were dying laughing, we had a lot of fun doing it, and we were able to bear our testimonies about obedience afterwards. I am super grateful for our mission President who let us present our idea and is willing to laugh and have fun with us too. The rest of the zone conference I got to teach in a station that each of the zone leaders had and that went great too! I definitely think you could say it was a very successful zone conference.

It was a little disappointing this week though because we were super pumped to baptize, but midway through the week grandma of the little girl getting baptized called us and said she got pretty sick so we will have to postpone the baptism, but in just 2 weeks we should be having 3 baptisms! (Fernando, Patricio, and Michelle). We also found a super cool and prepared family this week when we helped a family move houses (moving houses in Mexico is 100 times groser than any house in the US haha), but it was a great service project and I know we helped that family out a ton. It's amazing to see the difference that we can make in some people's life. I was reflecting a lot this week about how blessed I've been and how much poverty there is in the world, but after thinking more about our loving Heavenly Father's perfect for us I was grateful that there is way more after this life and was reminded that this life is only a very small portion of our existence and mercifully given to us to learn and grow. We also found several other new, promising investigators this week including William, who speaks perfect English and fought in Afghanistan in the US Air Force, wouldn't that be a cool convert! Also some people from a church called "La Luz del Mundo" let us in to share our message of the restored Gospel with them and even though they weren't the most open or willing to change, I just remember the power and spirit I felt as I testified that I know that this church is true  and was restored by the Prophet, Joseph Smith. Our testimonies are such powerful tools and no one can ever attack or deny a testimony when shared from the heart and with the Spirit. How grateful am I for the Restored truth and knowledge that we have in these latter days. How much I love being a missionary and doing the Lord's work!

Lastly this week, we reviewed received what Warnick and I like to call "a superiously dank compliment". We talked to our Ward Mission Leader one night and out of the blue he began questioning us about our obedience, (what time we wake up, if we do our companionship studies, etc..) and we answered honestly. Afterwards he said to us firmly and powerfully, "That's why!" He told us that is why we have been having so much success lately, and that is why we deserve the success we have. He told us in over a year and a half of being ward mission leader he has never been more proud, grateful, and blessed to have elders like us in his ward and said that you could just see it in our faces that we were happy, diligent, and obedient missionaries. I don't say that to brag, but I do know how good it feels it receive such an awesome compliment like that, especially from someone you respect, and I'd like to invite everyone to compliment everyone that they can. If we gave more compliments, even if they are small, I know the World would be a much better place. I would also officially like to announce that our cactus garden is finished and looking AMAZING!  We put our pamphlets up there but it and it was such a nice addition to our house. Definitely one of Warnicks and my top 5 accomplishments as companions haha. No, but it sure is fun having Elder Warnick and I will remember these days forever in my mission. We also got to go to Esteban's house today who made us BBQ pulled pork sandwiches (DELICIOUS) and had a good time visiting him. There definitely is a special spot in heaven for that guy loving the missionaries so much, and we all love him too. Also just barely got back from immigration today so that's why my email got out a little late, but I officially have my green card and they didn't deport me! Just less than 9 short months til I'm back home with all of you guys!! Let the countdown begin! Love you so much and have a great week!

-Elder Clark

Companionship Cactus Garden

Companionship Cactus Garden

This week, Warnick and I just kept adding to our great ideas and major accomplishments. We make our dreams become a reality. One day this week we were walking through the streets when we saw a lady selling little baby cacti in beer can halves. And just like any normal person would think, we decided it was the coolest thing ever and that we needed them for our desks. And the best part is that they turned out super cheap! It was 2 cacti for just 15 pesos (less than a dollar) so naturally we bought 2 and took them back to our house. As we decorated our desks with our new baby cacti, we received great revelation. Turns out, they were WAY COOLER than we ever could've imagined, and came up with the great idea of making a CACTUS GARDEN! So we went back to buy some more of course and thanks to my mom who always sends me packages, we carved a spare cardboard box. We now have plans to buy cool little pebbles to fill the box, decorate the box with desert animals, and water and nurture out beautiful companionship cactus garden. It is still under construction so no official photographs have been released yet, but the cactus garden will be completed by next week. So now we have a nice cactus garden to accompany our flying boat, our legendary song planned for zone conference, and our many many investigators. I just love being with Warnick so much, it seems like the good, fun ideas never stop coming, and I truly do feel like awesome ideas like the cactus garden gives our companionship more chemistry and we are just always happy and excited to work hard in the Lord's service. And apart from that, Warnick and I also planned on if we ever made a band after the mission we would name it "Cactus Garden". Even though neither of us are musically talented, it could still potentially be a future plan since we just seem to have so much chemistry at everything we do.

Apart from all that, the work has been amazing this week.  It was probably one of the most successful weeks I've ever had in my mission, at least the most successful since I went to Atlicpac.  We were up the whole week winning by 30 points and leading the entire game. We were able to put two new baptismal dates with a cool family we found (Macrina and Alexa) and they were super excited.  Macrina was worried that her husband wouldn´t let her come to church or get baptized in our church, but later in the week we had to opportunity to present ourselves with her husband and it was so cool to see his change of heart as he truly listened to our message and the spirit touched him.  He let his family come to church this Sunday.  Fernando and Patricio are doing amazing still and it is almost a guarantee baptism in just 2 weeks. There was only one time in the 3rd quarter (Friday) where the day was just dragging, super hot and sunny, all of our citas fell, and we were just really tired, but we just kept pushing through and working hard through it all.  We were about to let the other team start to make a run and close the gap on our lead, but I remember praying to my Heavenly Father pleading for Him to just give me the strength to keep going, finish the day with energy, and not to give up.  Early in the 4th quarter (Saturday), we just got on FIRE! We continued to contact the huge piles of old investigators that we have, and were able to find 8 new investigators who all accepted us in one day!! It was AWESOME!!! We ended up coming out with 21 new investigators for the whole week and a lot of optimism and potential coming into the next game (this week).  I think the best and my favorite part though was coming down the stretch, when you could tell the other team was trying to make another run and steal the game from us, but our defense was just too unstoppable, basically Kawhi Leonard defense.  At church on Sunday we had 5 INVESTIGATORS come with us, 4/5 of our baptismal dates attended including Macrina, Alexa, Fernando, and Patricio and we were sooo pumped!! So we definitely finished the game on a high note, won the week, and have a lot of chemistry, excitement, and fire going into the next game (this week), especially beacuse we are going to be baptizing this week!!! I hope there are no huge problems with the water or boiler this week for our baptism and are hoping to have a lot of members there.  It has been a while since I´ve gotten to get down into the baptismal font with someone, so Warnick and I are super happy to end that drought this week.  Honestly it just seems like everything is going right right now, and we are truly finding so many blessings and little miracles from our obedience, diligence, and hard work.  I just hope the chemistry doesn´t stop and Elder Warnick and my run can keep going a little longer, maybe even after this cycle too!!!

And just when you think the week couldn´t get any better, on Tuesday night an appointment fell but we were guided (I´m convinced by the Spirit) to maybe some of the BEST TACOS in the ENTIRE MISSION!!! Yes!!! One night, we were hungry, and our appointments fell, so we tried out a new place for dinner, and wow were they good.  Elder Warnick and I have had some of the "mission famous" tacos that are really well known to missionaries and these tacos that we found are AT LEAST in the top 3.  We got almost a whole kilo of al pastor meat with cheese, bacon, pineapple, and cilantro for really cheap, and pounded about 10-12 big tacos each.  Soooo good.  So definitely on occasions to celebrate, we will know where to go, and hopefully we can help this become a new "mission famous" taco place as well.  We are also super super excited for our zone right now. We have been working really hard doing divisions, putting good commitments, and doing zone attacks in the areas that are struggling a little bit, and this week we finally achieved our goal, every entire area in our zone had at least 1 baptismal date!! We were super excited because we found a couple of investigators contacting in the street that lived in one of the struggling areas, and they were able to go with them and set 2 baptismal dates!! We also did divisions this week and I went with an Elder to his area and was able to help him put a baptismal date too! I was excited to hear that almost all of these investigators went to church as well.  Even though it isn´t my area, I am so proud and happy to see other Elders, especially in my zone, have the success they deserve and strive for. So yes, I just hope this coming week will be as good as this one was and that Elder Warnick and I can continue being blessed for our hard work.  Today we also played basketball and Warnick and I were doing pretty darn awesome.  Thank you guys for still reading my letters every week, and for always supporting me.  Hope you guys all have a great week!!

Elder Clark

Starting 2018 ON FIRE!

Dear Fam and Friends!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So this week was honestly GREAT!! Warnick and I are literally ON FIRE! Okay, maybe not literally, but we are doing pretty darn good. I got everything and more that I wanted/needed for Christmas too except just still waiting for the Spurs to win the NBA Championship this year. But seriously Warnick and I are just super happy together, we are just working our butts off, laughing and talking all the time, and making some of the best memories I'll have from my mission. This is by far one of the happiest that I've ever been in the mission. Today for P Day we got to play a little basketball too, a little ping pong, and I feel great physically and spiritually! Warnick and I even hung a boat up in our house this week! Yeah, it may sound a little strange but for our mission gift exchange at the Christmas party, I got a 3D puzzle of a battleship. After finishing it, we realized it was actually pretty cool looking so we took a nail to the ceiling and hung it up with fishing wire, and it looks great! Definitely one of our many major accomplishments we've had as a companionship. Haha we have been doing a lot of organizing and cleaning around our house too though and I'm just feeling great right now. I love the mission!!

So this week, Warnick and I have actually gotten some pretty ideas and revelation. On of which is that one day, for companionship study, we cleaned out and organized the 3 Area Books we have for our area, and compiled over 150 old investigators! We spread them all out over the floor and put them into piles sorted by street names (sometimes it felt like we were playing twister) and then took 3 or 4 piles and put them together with streets that bordered them. We've already contacted every single person out of 1 of these piles (about 25 people) and literally just about every person wanted to accept us again! Plus we found some new people who recently moved in, or family members of the old investigators who also seemed really interested! I think it was a great revelation from God and we are definitely going to keep working hard with this until we've contacted every one of these 150 investigators! We are really excited and motivated for it too.  Another great idea Warnick and I had this week  was making a song. In President's last letter to us he put 12 things that he wanted to reemphasize so naturally, in the Spirit of Christmas, we created a song to the tune of the 12 days of Christmas and sang it for our district meetings It was a HUGE HIT!! Of course everyone thought it was super funny and then they were singing and remembering all of the rules and 12 things that Pres wanted us to remember. It turned out so great that we even asked President permission to sing and present it at zone conference. We were so grateful and happy to get that permission and we seriously could not be more excited for zone conference and make David Archuleta proud haha. So yeah, Warnick and I are feeling pretty good right now, we are going to see how many people we can baptize from past missionaries work, and get famous at zone conference. And apart from that, we have a for sure baptism planned on the 13th of January for Michelle and 2 more planned for the Lopez family later this month! We are super excited. Plus we are still getting, good, shorter exercise in the gym now and eating a good egg breakfast every morning and I feel great physically! I remember one night just getting home and everything felt like it was going perfect, I was so happy, and I remember turning to Warnick and saying, "Times like this make me just never want to stop being a missionary!" A sister even mentioned to us one day this week saying, “You guys are always just so happy and energetic when you come and it makes me feel so happy too!” Another companionship told us this week that we were the best zone leaders they´ve ever had.  It all just makes me feel so good and I love when the light and happiness we share starts spreading to other people too! So hopefully we can continue this hot streak we are on because right now we are winning by 30 points. 

Also ever since Warnick got here, literally every single day the sisters give us the spiciest foods. It's almost like they want us to suffer haha, but I will say I've gotten pretty used to eating spicy food. Another one of the great ideas Warnick and I had this week was a weekly Sunday breakfast. Since we don't go to the gym Sundays and that is what helps motivate me to get up on time, we made a Sunday pancake breakfast featuring Mickey Mouse pancakes! They turned out super good and it seems like the great ideas just never stop flowing. We also had the opportunity to go to the temple and see all of the Christmas lights and also a folklore Mexican dance performance. Of course we could only go if we had investigators but luckily some members were able to invite their friends to come with us and it was a really cool experience. The Mexico City temple lights don't quite compare to Salt Lake City, but it sure was impressive and beautiful. Plus I just love carrying on the Christmas spirit as long as possible, that is why Warnick and I decided we will not take down the Christmas tree until April.  We have also been going hard playing coup and qwixx this week (games that Santa brought me for Christmas.) We had a lot of fun on New Years as the last hour of 2017 passed on by and it is crazy to think that this year I will be home!! I remember the New Year last year and thinking that I would never make it home.  But it sure was a great year, and a great week and I hope that 2017 was magical and memorable for you guys too! My last invitation to all of you would be to make some good New Year's resolutions, one of mine is to read the Book of Mormon everyday this year, and I would invite you all to do the same! Have a great week and I'll be home to see yall this year! Happy 2018!!!!!

Elder Tyler Christopher Clark