Converting Vegas One Casino at a Time: Week 3 from the CCM

Hola,

This week has been the fastest week of my life! I feel like it was P-day just yesterday. This week my eyes have really been opened and my heart has been truly touched. I have felt the spirit very strong and have felt a desire to be the best missionary I can and repent of all the things I fall short on.

To start, the days get very long as there is not much variation during the week besides P-day and Sunday. Classes and teaching in the morning and then the same thing at night, but we are learning so much. Saturday I asked our teacher, Hermano Romero to share a mission story. He served his mission in Los Angeles. He decided to share his conversion story instead of a mission story. He was baptized at age 11. The part of his conversion story that really touched me was that the elder who baptized him and his family is now inactive and into a lot of bad stuff. My teacher started tearing up and said it is really hard for him to see the very same testimony of an elder that converted you now falter. But then he said that he knows now that it is just an opportunity to share his testimony with him and help him. He told us to never, ever lose our faith after our mission and to endure to the end because you never know when your investigator is watching and the impact you can have on their salvation after your mission. Last Sunday we heard a talk from Elder Holland on a similar subject. It was a very powerful message.

Then that night my companion and I had a really good talk. We really bonded and I think we became much closer and now have a lot of Christlike love for each other. Things that may have bothered me before I can now easily shrug them off and we can focus on the work!! The spirit can truly work with you when you have no contention. We get along great and talk about sports and health and all types of crazy stories. And we work out hard! I am getting my shoulder back. I am up to 65 pushups so that is good!

Sunday was an amazing day!! The spirit is just so strong on Sunday! Sacrament meeting is great and I am understanding more and more. The best part of the day are the devotionals and the movie. They show talks from the apostles that only missionaries can see and they are the best talks ever! Elder Bednar was the speaker and he talked about being a preach my gospel missionary and it was a truly inspiring talk. He shared a story about meeting with someone who was struggling with an addiction and told him that he could overcome this and that God was with him. He then told us, "I know you can do this. YOU CAN DO THIS!! Jesus will walk with you every step of the way as you turn to Him and He knows you can do this." It was very powerful.

The movie we watched was also amazing! It was about the Salt Lake Temple and how that came about and the construction and all the trials that occurred. It truly and clearly bore testimony about the sacredness and the joy we receive from temples. I am so excited to be able to go through one again, hopefully very soon. I have a unshakeable testimony that families are eternal and that God gave us families so that we could learn and grow and return to Him. Without a family, we have nothing. Death holds no bonds because we know there is life after this and if we live in this life how we need to be then all will be okay.

We are almost to Alma in the Book of Mormon in Spanish! I has been a lot of work to keep up with it but I know it is helping my Spanish a ton!

So some funny stories to end!! The first one is like a week and a half ago we convinced these two newbies that we were from Mexico. We just started sprouting out Mexican tongue twisters. It is so funny because they still think we are from Mexico. With all the Latinos we talk to we always say, "soy de Whacka" which means I am from Whacka or however you spell it and they all just start laughing.

One of the Elders in my district is a rugby player which is really cool. He is going to the Reno mission. He has said some of the funniest things in Spanish. In his first week at a lesson he was trying to tell the investigator that happiness doesn't come from beer. He accidentally said "cervesa es no feliz navidad" which translated is "beer is not merry Christmas". It was really funny. The same Elder was talking to some Latin Hermanas and was trying to explain to them that another elder scares him every morning. To be scared is tener miedo but he was pronouncing it wrong and was saying tener miado which means to pee. So he was telling them this story in broken Spanish and said this elder pees on him every morning and that he pees himself. We were just rolling in laughter!!

Me and my comp booby trapped the classroom by putting tape across the door down by the feet. Our district leader came in and he saw it and stepped over it and had this look of triumph on his face. He then walked to his seat and as he was gloating he ran straight into another piece of tape we put by his chair. It was the funniest thing ever. He just started laughing and we were all dying because we got him so good!

It is pretty crazy in Mexico. A few people have been shot right outside the CCM and we hear all the cops going around. There is also some guy always yelling into a mega phone about tacos!! It's great!! Hasta Luego!!

Elder Clark

Logan being normal: