Dear Mom, Papa, family, and the rest of you who read these letters,
JD got his mission call!!!! Wooo hoooo!! Give him a big hug for me, oh man, I am so excited for him! He will do great in Ecuador. How fun for him and Josh to be out at the same time! What an awesome experience!
I’m so glad that the weekend with Sister Fox was so fun! I love her! What did you make at the quilting seminar? You are becoming so good at quilting I’m excited to learn more when I come home! Do you think you could make me a bookmark quilted? Maybe with "Sister Clark" engraved with that machine you have? Would that even be possible? I loved the pictures of the quilting though, so many women! How fun! Did your hands hurt after that much sewing?
Mmmmm, rhubarb pie. My favorite. Would you mind sending me the recipe? Maybe we can give it a shot.
My new companion, Sister N (the c is pronounced tz), is AMAZING! She is from Croatia, and she is so so wonderful! She is 23. We love working together, and I feel really blessed to be with her. She speaks amazing English, because she has been learning it since she was three years old, and she is a convert of TWO YEARS! Amazing? YES! She used to be a super devout Catholic. Like wanting to be a nun. And then she met the missionaries, and because she loves learning about other religions, she agreed to listen to them.
After a year, she was baptized, and served a two month mission before she came to England. She been on her mission for 6 months and has been in whales the whole time. So this is her first taste of England, and she of course loves it. Our ward is amazing, and the people are amazing, and so how could you not LOVE it?! And the best thing is we have so much fun together. We work SO hard, but while we do, we are happy and talking and laughing and enjoying the work. We correct each other's English relentlessly, and try to speak clearer and better every day. I love it. Everyone thinks she is American because of her accent. She watched a lot of cartoons growing up, that's her excuse. Ha-ha. She taught me how to say the Croatian alphabet last night, and I am practicing reading out loud when we cook and stuff. Croatian is a beautiful language. Let’s see, what else? She is the only one in her family who is a member, but I think they are pretty supportive. They think the mission is good for her English and to see the world. I love her, and the ward already loves her. I hope I stay with her for a long time! I don't know if I have many pictures, but I will try to take more this week. Oh, and I am the driver because she doesn't have a license, and if you don't have a license from before, you can't drive on your mission. Speaking of which, I have to start working on getting a British License. Oh, fun. The first one hundred dollars comes from my personal account, so there goes that money. Oh well, it will be cool to have a license here.
Oh - the bishop's wife here is so SO amazing. I love her so much! Her name is G Au and she is lovely. She has us for dinner every week, and I get so excited because it feels like home there. One time I mentioned how much I love Charles Dicken's "Bleak House" and she found a really old beautiful copy in a charity shop and bought it for me! She wrote in it, and I can't wait to read it! So far, all I can do is look at it and smell it, because it has that wonderful old-book smell to it. Oh I do love her.
This church is on the other side of the street from the library. Yes, it's wonderful here!
This week has been crazy. Since we found out about transfers and Sister B moving, we did have a lot of cleaning and packing to do.
Goodbye to Sister B.
Sister B wasn't messy, but packing up makes a mess, and so we wanted it to be clean for sister N (remember the tz). I started driving last week, and it's easy. I thought it would be hard or weird or something, but it's completely natural, and it's going just fine. We have a sat nav (gps) and that helps a lot. We have a huge range of places we cover. Transfers were fun. I had to introduce myself like I was still a greenie, because I wasn't here for last transfers, but it was fun.
Introducing myself with all the "real" greenies. Ha-ha.
While I was there, I was meeting other missionaries, and I met a Sister Strein who looked so familiar. Finally I figured it out! She was one of my first harp students at BYU. The world is SO small. I can't believe we are in the same mission. How fun! The rest of this week, we have just been working really hard. Sister N has been able to meet most of the ward that is in town, many are on holiday at the moment though. She loves sister MacK just as much as I knew she would. It’s hard not to fall in love with her, and she loves this area.
So the funny thing that happened this week was that at about 5:00 in the morning on Saturday, J texted us saying that she worked all night, and wasn't going to get off in time to get to the bus (they say coach here) that was going to the temple, so could I find her a ride that was going later? Well, first of all, the coach was leaving at 7:00, so I would have to call people super early in the morning. So uncomfortable. But I knew that she wanted to go, so I decided to call the people that I knew would be up for the coach. I only woke up a few people, but after I did all that calling and finally figuring out a ride, I just crawled back in bed and covered my head. What an awful job! Never again do I ever want to wake anyone up. Fortunately, the people I woke up have forgiven me, and we are all ok. I think J had a good time at the temple. Sister MacK spent the whole time with her and David (the recent convert from Hungary) and it was really wonderful of Sister MacK.
On Saturday morning, after all that calling we had personal study. Right now I am in Alma, and I was reading alma 24 about the army who was converted and covenanted with the lord to never raise their swords again, so they buried them. Then when the army came upon them, they had a choice between taking up their swords and breaking that covenant, or dying. They were so converted that they knelt and prayed and the army came and slew them. But then the army stopped killing them, and eventually became converted. More people were converted unto the lord than that had died because of those righteous people's examples. I love that! I have read this story before, but this time it hit me, that it has so much to do with our lives! We all have things in our lives, our swords that are keeping us from keeping our covenants with the Lord. They may be small, but none of us are perfect, so we all have those things. But if we are like this army, and are truly converted unto the Lord, we will take those sins that we continually do, and we will bury them, and do them no more. Even when Satan is coming at us and attacking us, if we keep hold of our faith and our covenants, by our example, we will bring others unto Christ! I loved this! I barely could contain my excitement when I shared it with sister N, and we both discussed it and then taught it to some people who we knew could use it. I love that! I love reading the scriptures and trying to apply them to my life. They certainly come so much more alive when we do that!
This week will be wonderful! I can't wait! Next week is zone conference, and Elder Kapishka is coming. He is the area general authority, and it will be a wonderful day! We are so excited! I love this mission, I love the gospel, and I love teaching these people. I will write more next week about the people we are teaching! We are still teaching them, don't worry. But I don't have much time on the computer. I have so much I want to say, but limited time. I love you all! I love your examples. I am so thankful for all of you (Joseph and Ofelia, Matthias and Rebecca, Lucy and brain, David, and Samuel) for serving missions and supporting missionaries (Rebecca and Ofelia). I appreciate it so much, and I love all your examples! I know this church is true, and I know this work that I am doing is amazing. We are all missionaries! Try to think this week of someone you can give a Book of Mormon to with your testimony written in it! I promise your testimony will grow from that experience, and rekindle the missionary flame! I love you!
love,
Sister Clark
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