April 6

This week, just like last week, was crazy and hilarious and filled with many many miracles. I don't even know where to begin! Last night Hermana Nielsen and I thought of these letters we're writing now and just LAUGHED .... CRYING. We had so many funny things happen this week.

Case in point. We went to a members home (wonderful, love her to death!) to eat who's in our branch. She made a delicious meal: chicken cordon blue .... I don't remember how to say it in spanish. Well she dished it and put lots of cuzcuz to the side and then a salad. We start eating and my companion is kind of eyeing me and then she asks, "tiene un microwave?" My first thought is .... we haven't been sitting here this long ..... she's so rude! She just told Hermana her food isn't hot enough! Well then I put the two together ... a microwave cooks the food. Her food was NOT done .... at all. Oh my gosh, we hope she didn't catch on that's why she wanted to use a microwave. Hermana Nielsen had this look of (how I interpreted it) .... I am a missionary so I will not get sick ... but just to be safe .... I really don't want to be eating all this pink stuff that should be white. I was so close to losing it so many times while at the dinner table. Having a big picture of freshly squeezed lemonade inbetween Hermana and I helped :)

Anyway, just one example. I need to tell you the Walmart story too. That was the MOST AWKWARD MOMENT ON MY MISSION. It's never good when someone (a man ...) walks up to you and asks "Are you married?" More ... later but today I'm going to run out.

We contacted a referral from the Easter Pageant and they are GOLDEN. Tuesday I woke up, sort of still dreaming, and remembered I had a dream we were teaching a family. We were teaching them very powerfully .... something I've really wondered how to do while in Spanish (where is my faith?) All I could think of Tuesday morning was "we need to find them!" I don't know if this is who I had a dream about, but it was the next day we taught them and WOW we have never taught a lesson like that.  As missionaries we have authority and power. We receive authority when we're set apart but we don't have power unless we are worthy of it (I don't know how to explain that really well right now).  We hardly got to teach them because we were getting to know them but what we did teach was prayer. When we said "cruzamos nuestros brazos" ALL 4 OF THEM PROMPTLY FOLDED THEIR ARMS, out of excitement! I had never seen anything like it! They had family that joined in the branch next to ours who grabbed the gospel and have never looked back. We are excited! Renato and Juana and their kids, Denisse and Renato. We went to teach them again and brought a recent convert, Cecy and it turns out Cecy's daughter, Dianna, is in Denisse classes at school and Denisse was more than excited to find this out. Anyway, they haven't found a church they like here, but you can tell they are THIRSTING for the gospel. Unfortunately this Easter weekend was crazy for them but we are super excited to teach them and introduce them to the gospel. Ohhhhh boy some people are prepared and ready! And a family! We went home and didn't know how to control our GOZO!

We watched all of Conference in spanish! Fun but I know I didn't understand everything. Oh the Spirit was strong though. Watching it in spanish reminded me of how the most important thing is to listen to the whisperings of the Spirit.  An overall thing I got from it, especially Sunday morning, was "I'm Trying to be Like Jesus" as the Primary song says it. He is "the way, the truth, the light, no man cometh unto the Father but by Him" (or however that scripture says it exactly). 

One more funny story. The Brysons (we live with them!) went to Conference so we had a mansion to ourselves for the weekend! Ralphy - the dog, got a hold of one of my dryer sheets and was chewing on it. Well, we saw that and so we tried to get him away from it .... in the end .... Hermana Nielsen got bit! Big puncture wound on her middle finger in 3 places! Blood! Ok so it wasn't completely horrible, but ayyyy! Kind of scary! Only continues the fear Hermana Nielsen has of dogs. Not completely, but enough. Something about missionary just breeds fear in the dogs. Everytime we walk in the trailers it's a choir of dogs barking ... kind of like my 5th grade special community band thing I went to. The director would say we're going to play something special for our parents (at the end of our practice one night) so then he'd direct us and we'd all play any note we'd like as loud as we could ..... it was quite .... ugly!

Ok that's all the time today! Zone Conference tomorrow! We have incredible leaders in the mission from President and Sister Bassett to our Zone Leaders to District Leader to my amazing companion, Hermana Nielsen! We are so blessed!

Thank you for the love, the prayers, and the faith! Happy Easter (I forgot to write about that....)! LOVE LOVE LOVE Love always, Hermana Clark