Converting Vegas One Casino at a Time: Week 2 from the CCM

Hola!!

Week number two is done and once again I don't even know where to start. I have been writing in my journal every night, so maybe next week I will bring that with me for a little refresher. The weeks feel like years!! We get so much stuff done in just one week it is crazy-but it flies by so, so fast!

This week was actually much harder for me then the first one but it was also more spiritual!! I think that is Heavenly Father's way of showing that our work does pay off and that we really do have to do all that we can do to see blessings in our life. He is so quick to bless us if we are obedient and humble ourselves and ask for help.

Last Wednesday the lesson that I was preparing for and hoping to bring the spirit went very well. I bore my testimony from my heart just off the top of my head and the spirit was very strong. I could see in the eyes of our investigator tears forming and he wasn't a guy prone to show emotion. It was super awesome and then my comp bore his testimony from memory and at one point he told our investigator that we loved him like Heavenly Father did and that was very powerful!.

So after you teach your first investigator five times he becomes your teacher. Ours is so so so cool. He is so funny but really spiritual too. He went to California for his mission. He just recently got home and so he has a lot of great advice for us!!

Sunday was a very spiritual day! I love Sundays here. District meeting is the best! I have an awesome district and we really have the spirit during these meetings. We have great discussions and get to hear lots of amazing and very touching testimonies. We also have a movie we watch on Sunday nights and we watched The Restoration! I have such a strong testimony about Joseph Smith. He is truly one of my heroes. The things that he endured because he had faith in the Lord are just incredible. It shows me what my own faith can do in my life with my own struggles.

Monday night our teacher challenged us to have a fast in our language. No speaking English for 24 hours!!! So we all decided as a district to do it the next day. So yesterday I didn't speak much English. We had a few slip ups and by dinner everyone had broken the fast, but it helped us think first in Spanish and try to say things. It was very difficult and I felt depressed all day-most likely because I like to talk and I couldn't. Haha!!

Me and my companion have made a very large goal! We are reading the entire Book of Mormon in Spanish aloud before we leave the CCM! We are already in 2nd Nefi and have to read around 22 pages a day!! It is super hard but super rewarding. It brings us closer together. There is a talk by a general authority that says if you read the Book of Mormon in a foreign language you will be fluent in that language. So that is our goal and we are going on faith!! We are also memorizing 100 vocab words a day!! Lots of work!! See if you can find that talk; I would like to read it.

This morning we went to the temple! It was awesome. We couldn't go inside, but the visitor center was still amazing. It is so cool to see all that the church does for teaching people about our religion. It is such a nice place with lots of cool exhibits. Our tour guide was an Hermana in the area and she was super cool! She talked to us about how the spirit has guided her in learning English! We watched a movie about families that the church has and it was very, very touching. It made me miss you all so so much!! I know that families are eternal and that they are the center of God's plan for us. There was one part of the video I really liked it said, "God shows his love for us through families". I thought that was so so cool! I can't wait to teach people that they really can be with their families forever and find great joy in that.

One thing that we have been learning a lot about is not teaching just about baptism but the temple as well. We should try and progress our investigators so that they will go to the temple in a year. An apostle said it is not endure to the end but "endure to the endowment". I thought that was really neat.

So Sunday was also a very sad day!! All of our Latino friends left. We took tons of pics with them and had a great last day with them. There are some pretty funny pics too. Unfortunately, they are not on my camera so I will have to get them from my comp soon! It was sad to see them go. They are some of the greatest people I have ever met. They have such strong testimonies and a great spirit about them - I just know that one is going to be a general authority!!! He is also a baker so he is making my cake for my wedding haha!! One was 25 and so I called him abuelo - which means grandpa! He was the coolest guy ever!

The classes surprisingly go by super super fast!! Four hours just flies. It is hard work and you have to really focus but it is a great thing!! The classes at night can get super long and we are all super tired but we learn a lot of amazing things. We get a lot of free study time which is spent reading the Book of Mormon and studying vocab and grammar and anything but Spanish! ha We don't always use our time wisely during the free study times, but you can blame us we get pretty worn out from studying. It has been hard for me because I have never been a big studier, but I know the Lord is blessing me.

It is super hard being with the same person all the time, but he is an awesome guy and I just pray to love him like my Savior does. We play rugby and he teaches me some basketball moves. I can do a cross over now and I have got around some people so that was pretty cool!! We are both pretty energetic guys so that is awesome!!

Oh, I forgot to mention the food!! It is, well, let's just say not bad, but not good. I haven't lost a ton of weight, but I haven't been enjoying every meal. Me and my comp do a lot of studying in the bathrooms! We will just leave it at that. They have pizza every Tuesday night so we eat a lot of that and we are learning how to add things to make the meals taste better. I have never had Nutella before now. I have a PB and Nutella sandwich in the mornings it is really good. Inside of the Nutella caps there are Spongebob stickers. You have to be fast to get them before other people but I already have three of the four!!!

I love you all and hope you have a great week!!

Elder Clark

P.S. It is much better if you send letters through Dear Elder. It is a website that you just send an email to the Mexico MTC and they print it off and give it to me so I can read some more stuff from you guys during the week!!

Pictures of the Mexico City Temple