Week 6

This week was pretty normal and fast... I can`t belive it is already week 6 of this cycle, either me or my companion could be having changes next week (although I hope not) and now I will only have 2 cycles left, 3 more months to go from tomorrow! I can`t believe how quick time is passing by, and when I think it can`t be going faster, it somehow goes faster.  It is truly interesting to me that the more you enjoy life or where you are, it seems that the faster it goes, almost unfair, but I guess that is the trick to life, just learn to enjoy it all, and always think positively with a grateful heart.  This week I am going to be more focused on being positive and stop myself everytime I am have a negative thought.  Sometimes I feel like I am so far away from being like Christ but I know that one day we will get there, although it won`t be in this life.

This week I did have a couple of cool experiences, on Thursday, I felt like we needed to walk by the church on the way to lunch although my companion wanted to go a diffrent way.  As we walked by the church a lady with an 11 month old baby approached us, with lots of fear in her eyes, and saying she was just abused by her husband, was ran out of the house with her baby and a suitcase, and was just looking for help... Apparently a lot of different places didn`t want to take her in to help her, so for some reason, they sent her to a Mormon church, I am not really sure what she would have done if we weren`t there.  So we called our bishop and relief society president to see if anyone could help us, our bishop was really working hard but was out of town for work and couldn`t do much... Unfortunately, we couldn`t find any members who would take them in but we bought them some food, and spent the next few hours looking for a place where she could go.  I felt so much compassion for her as she told me this was the most alone she had felt in her life, no family or friends who could take her in... I wanted to help her so bad, and wished that somehow I could let her and her baby into my house, and I remember thinking that I would just give anything so that they could be okay.  Unfortunately we couldn`t find much luck, so we paid for a taxi to take her to a humanitarian aid place as from then on we could only hope and pray for her.  We didn`t end up eating that day, and we walked away a little sad from the situation that we couldn`t do more, but we gave her a Book of Mormon and I hope she has been okay since.  It is definitely experiences like these in the mission that humble me and make me truly grateful for the wonderful, blessed family and friends that I have in my life, and my heart goes out to those that haven`t been blessed as much as me.  I have seen it my whole mission and it has truly changed my life.  Well this week we also had a baptism for an 8 year old boy, and the bishop asked us to organize it all so even though it wasn`t our baptism, it was a less active family that we have been working with and we were very happy that his older brother, who is a priest, was able to have to sacred opportunity of baptizing his little brother.  That family was so happy.  We have also been teaching this one lady who has a mom with alzheimers and we love going over there and making the old grandma laugh.  We always joke with her that she is still 20 years old, and she was very excited to get cake and some presents on her birthday this last week.  Even though it is a little sad, it is cute seeing old ladies like that who are truly just like little kids.  We also were able to take Alma (an investigator) and her husband Alejandro to the visitors center in the temple this week which was a really special experience for both of them and Alma is really excited to get baptized.  And to top of the week we had 7 investigators at church this Sunday which was really awesome and gives us a lot of hope for next cylce!! This cycle has been kind of hard for some of our investigators to progress because they have been remodeling our church building and everyone has to go to the stake center which is further and more expensive, but in one more week our normal building should be ready and we are hoping to start filing people into the baptismal font soon!! I love this work and it was nice to see a lot of our hard work pay off this week with some investgators at church.  I am definitely going to be sprinting through the finish line these last 3 months.

Well, that is about it for this week, we had a YSA and youth activity on Saturday where we played a little soccer and basketball and gave them a tour of the church building.  We had a lot of success and a lot of the people were really impressed with the church.  This week we are hoping to find lots of more investigators.  And today we went to the centro and found some cool souveneir stores and places to shop for when I go home.  Other than that, we are just ready to work hard another week.  Love and miss you all and keep on enjoying summer!!

Elder Tyler Clark