Converting Vegas One Casino at a Time: It's Getting Cooler in Vegas (in the 80's)

Hey everyone,

Well another week has flown by and it has been truly amazing. There have been some hard times, but overall there have been many miracles. The start of the week was a little slow. On Tuesday I was on exchanges and that went well and I got to know some other elders. Wednesday we had interviews with the president. That took up most of our day!

The biggest news this week for us was that we get 500 less miles on our car each month then we thought we had. So we got our bikes out and biked a ton this week!! Our area is huge and we have dinner appointments out of our area, but still in our branch. There has been lots of sweating, but it has been truly a miracle to be riding bikes more. We talk to so many more people and that is awesome! My mission president told me that my companion is one of the best street contactors ever and that I should really try to learn from him. It’s true, and I am getting way better. This week we contacted 136 people about receiving a blessing through a prayer in their home or a giving them a picture of Christ.

Our area is pretty close to the strip and one time while driving our GPS took us to the Airport for some reason, which is out of our area and very close to the strip. Once we realized where we were we started freaking out and turned around immediately. It was super intense to see the buildings get bigger and bigger! And if you are ever biking on Las Vegas Blvd., avoid looking in the boxes that you think hold newspaper because I am 100% sure that there are not newspapers in there!

Friday was a bit of a crazy day. Since our miles are less than we thought, we spent over a half hour calling members to try to get a ride to our appointment that night since it was ten miles away. We finally got someone and we were going to meet them at the church later that day. When we arrived at the church we called the member just to let him know where he could meet us but he couldn't find us. It turns out he isn’t in our branch anymore and he lives over a half hour away-Oh no! We had 20 minutes before our lesson started and so we started calling anyone we could think of. We only had our bikes and our house was over 4 miles away so it would take us a while to bike back. I was pretty frustrated! As we were making calls, we heard a crazy loud noise and tires screeching. We ran over and there was a pretty good accident that happened right by the church. We ran over there and my comp called 911. We were trying to help the people. One guy was super mad and yelling at the girl that hit him. There happened to be other members there also. After the cops showed up, we left and the member who was helping us with the accident said he would give us a ride back to our apartment. That was a huge blessing! We wouldn’t have met him without the accident occurring. (Not that that was a good thing, but hey, tender mercies, right?) We then got in our car and hurried to our appointment. We ended up being 40 minutes late and when we arrived our investigator, J wasn’t there. His daughter was and she is in her late 20s or 30s, maybe. We ending up teaching her on the porch and just as we were finishing the lesson J and his wife showed up and welcomed us inside. We taught all three of them and they all committed to be baptized. It was amazing to see how all of the events of the day led us to be able to meet with all three of them. If we would have been on time they probably wouldn’t have been there and we would have missed this great opportunity. The Lord truly knows what He is doing.

We met some really amazing people this week and it’s crazy to see how the Lord prepares people to hear our message. The members our wonderful! They are super nice and this week we got in better contact with them and will have more coming out with us! They feed us a ton of food! Our small little branch takes care of 7 missionaries. It is just truly amazing!

At church I bore my testimony in Spanish and talked about the importance of faith. I related this to fishing, of course, in broken Spanish and then shared a passage of scriptures in Hebrews 11:33-38. It talks about how because of faith all these amazing things happened and people were given great strength. In Nephi, it talks about the faith Nephi had in getting the plates. It said that he went with the spirit not knowing beforehand what he would do, but nevertheless he went forth! Faith is needed to do the Lords will. We don’t always know what we are supposed to do or we might not have received an answer yet, but if we act and show faith and go forth we will receive strength in all we do!

I hope all is great back home and I pray for you all every day. I get to go to the temple on Friday and I am so excited!

I love you all!

Elder Clark

I wish I knew the story behind this picture, but nevertheless, I LOVE the smile!

We asked the other elders in our branch for a ride and we biked part way and met up with them. All the cars have bike racks for two bikes but we had to load up four bikes. It was quite interesting and funny!