A Stripper to a Saint, Saints and Soldiers

Well it's about time that I share some pretty awesome miracles the Lord is blessing us with!
 
We are seeing people truly change their lives! And the name of the blog my mom has for me
is converting one casino at a time, and so I am not totally doing that as we can't go into
casinos but I am doing the second best thing. 
 
We have been teaching a stripper and it's amazing to see the progress she has made! She
totally knows this gospel is true! She has even started teaching her sister and friend and
they both are going to get baptized in April! She just throws down on her friends in lessons
and tells them how it is! It's so cool. So she will hopefully be baptized soon. We are trying to 
help her get a new job! And so it's just such a cool experience - all the miracles we see!
She loves all the activities the ward has, and she is just friends with everyone! We even use
her to fellowship our other investigators. She sits by whoever at church for us and she says
hi to everyone! Haha And last night, it was cool in our lesson, we were talking about a new
job for her and she wants to go into real estate and the member that was with us was in real
estate. And the class she was normally going to take was 2-3 months, the class to get their
license at our members place is two weeks! And so hopefully she jumps on that opportunity!
 
We also had a guy we have been teaching who is in the army get baptized this last week!
He is so, so awesome. He has just known it was all true and has a huge testimony. He has
just moved so fast! We have only taught him for a month and he read all through 1st Nephi
and taught the plan of salvation to his friends! He is just eating up everything the church
has to offer!
 
Things are going really great in our ward! We have some pretty awesome investigators and
some awesome people going to get baptized soon!
I hope you all have a good week!
Elder Clark
La Abuelita de Logan
Jason's Baptism










Lesson by the pool
We call him Santa Steve
The Lawters had us over for dinner. Logan met them in Quartzsite.
Missionary work is tiring! Can't have boring planning sessions.





I asked Logan for a head shot for the missionary map at church and this is what I got. 
No, I didn't put this one up...or the next one.

Valenheart

Hey everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's been a good last couple of weeks. I have really enjoyed being back with Elder Thorne and working with him. We have a lot of fun together. It's a lot different being in the office and I am still trying to get used to that. We are really separated from the mission. I mean we are in a zone, but not really. Everything we do is a little different and so it is a different point of view. I am really learning a lot and I know this will even help me more in the future.

The first week of the transfer we are busy with the old missionaries and then with the new ones coming in. We have new leadership training meeting right when transfers are over. And then from there we were just running. We had departing missionary testimony and dinner with
them. It's really weird to be part of all the going home stuff without actually going home. We also had to take everyone to the airport and then pick up the new missionaries. It's pretty cool to see the whole scale in one day, going home and coming in!

We still have a proselyting area we are responsible for. It's a YSA ward. And so that is pretty sweet! This transfer we will actually have quite a bit of time to proselyte. So, that is still cool all the normal missionary stuff we get to do. When zone conferences come up in April we will be very busy, but until then we just mostly have exchanges with the ZLs! It is fun to work closer with the office staff and with President and Sister Snow. You definitely get to know them a lot better!

We have had some pretty cool miracles happen in our area. And some cool stuff.

One night we were just out visiting people and we got this text. It was at 6:20 at night and the text had been sent like two hours earlier. But because our phones are dumb, we received it late. Which was a miracle in it of itself because the text was this random guy asking to meet us at 6pm and we had had a set lesson, but that fell through and so when we received the text we were open and able to meet. He met us at a park that was conveniently located by a church that was open due to mutual. And so everything fell into place to meet with him in the chapel. We had a super awesome spiritual lesson. The member we had with us was able to relate to him, and so we set him for baptism and he was super excited to change his life around. Sadly, we haven't seen him since but we keep praying he will return our calls.

Another one was with a member, the appointment had fallen through and we asked the member to pick any door in the complex, and she picked a door and as we walked over to it a lady was about to enter. We began talking to her and it turned out that our member and this ladies brother were like super good friends in North Dakota. It was just so cool out of all the doors to knock on that was the one and with that member! Man miracles happen!

We had another crazy lesson with a lady who is really caught up in her own church. When we went back to the return appointment she had two of her "friends" over from San Diego. My companion and I just felt a bad spirit. We knew that these two men were going to try to bash and argue with us. We talked a little bit about random stuff and the one guy opened us up with a prayer. The whole time he was praying, I was praying in my heart to know what to say. I began to think about my study that morning. I had just read in the Book of Mormon where Alma and Amulek contend with Zeezrom and how they discerned his bad intentions and were able to testify to him. The Lord gave us strength. After the prayer I said, “We are here to share with you what we believe and know to be true. We are not here to argue and if you want to argue we will leave. We will only share with you these things if you truly want to know about what we believe." My companion said that the girl we are teaching, she is in her early 20s freaked out. He said her expression was just priceless. I never saw it but I guess she was surprised that we were able to discern what these men were here for and that we didn't believe the story that they were just guests visiting her.

During the lesson, one of the guys who had been the most talkative at first, never talked for the remainder of the lesson and it actually seemed like he was sincerely thinking about what we said. But the other guy, of course, tried to argue with us throughout the lesson. It was amazing to see how the Lord blessed us to confound him at every turn. He didn't accept our message, but my testimony grew that day as I saw the Lord use his servants just as he had in the Book of Mormon. We are still working with the lady and we hope and pray she comes around. In our next lesson we will see if we keep teaching her or not.

I hope you all have a great week! It's so crazy how fast the time really goes! I know these last 6 months will just fly by and I hope and pray that I can accomplish all that the Lord has for me to do!

Love Elder Clark

Photos  - transferring from the Whitney Ranch Ward to the office.

Momma Bowers

Back with Elder Thorne

Hey everyone! 

Sorry it has taken me so long to get an email out. I have a few extra minutes before bed and so I wanted to make sure I wrote one. 

I am sure most of you know, but I was called as the new assistant to President Snow and I am with my MTC comp, Elder Thorne! It's so sick! It's super fun being with him a year and a half later. I have seen him a bit, but we have never served around each other. We always are just laughing about the good times we had in the MTC. Man those were the days. 

Last week Wednesday night I went in with the APs while my comp three-packed with other missionaries and was with members and I was gone until Saturday afternoon when transfers came out. It was fun to be in a three-pack with the APs. We had a fun time, and I got to meet the ward a bit. I am serving in a YSA Ward and so everyone is super cool! We had a meeting with the president about transfers and got that stuff all ready. It is pretty neat to see all the work that goes on behind the scenes. There sure is a lot that needs to get done just to run a mission. 

I was then able to go back to my ward for Sunday and say goodbye to everyone! That was fun. I had a few good families I really liked there, but I had been there such a short span of time I wasn't really super close to them. But there are some pretty sweet investigators there that will be getting baptized soon! And then Sunday night the APs got me. I was all packed up and I officially moved out. On Monday, we had our weekly meeting with the president and worked out all the transfer stuff we needed to. Afterwards, Elder Thorne and I picked up a bench and weights to bring to our apartment! We are going to get jacked in the mornings! 

We got to meet with a super awesome member that I will talk more about and send some pictures, but let's just say it is awesome! I'll keep it a surprise--haha! 

This week is a very busy one! Already today we went to the temple and then trained a new district leader and sister training leader, went to the departing missionary testimony meeting/ dinner and then had some awesome lessons and then planned all the rides for the airport tomorrow, dropping people off and picking up people. 

We taught an investigator tonight who is so awesome. He is 18 and was talking to kids at school and he taught them the plan of salvation. One guy was sort of contesting him on it and he was like, man you can just go to the second kingdom if you want then! It was so, so funny! He is going to be a great missionary! 

I am excited to serve the Lord even more and I hope and pray I can bring to the table what the mission needs! There is so much work to be done! We had 97 baptisms as a mission this last month. And so it's only up from here! I love you all! 

Elder Clark