Week #5

This week was so good! We have just tracted like crazy. We walked all day on Wednesday and it was 40 C out (104 degrees) and we tracted all day....oh wow that was the hottest day of my life. Lisa is no longer getting baptized. But that's OK because I trust the Lord. I think one of her sisters talked her out of it. But I knew that we would be able to find more people and so our goal this week was to find more investigators. It happened too! We have been teaching Gus and he's 60 and does a lot of work with tools so I was able to talk to him about welding and different tools because Hector taught me all about it. And Gus came to church! So that's really good. Then we met this girl Brittney and when she opened the door, she said she's been waiting for us. I was like what? She wants to get baptized, which was so good to hear. 

Elder Ronald and I decided for personal study to try and find scriptures that would help our investigators, especially Brittney. When I was praying I asked that I would be able to be guided to know what to study and when I was done this thought came into my mind to go to the questions of the soul in Preach My Gospel. One of the questions really jumped out at me and gave me a scripture reference in Alma 36. So I'm reading it and I think to myself where is this going this doesn't seem right. Then, when Elder Ronald and I asked each other what we both studied, we ended up studying the exact same thing but only different scriptures....It was a great experience for me. It grew my testimony about The Book of Mormon that day I just remember looking at it and just feeling my heart pound and warmness overcome my body. I know that The Book of Mormon is truly the word of God.

On Thursday we met this guy Bryden on the street and asked him if we could come visit and share a message and he said yeah for sure. So we went over there on Sunday and just talked to him and our lesson was just super powerful. This Sunday was fast Sunday and I told Elder Ronald we should fast for one of our investigators or potential investigators to get a baptismal date. On Sunday when we taught Bryden we invited him to be baptized and he said yes. He said that he wants to even talk to his girlfriend and have her get baptized with him. It didn't hit me until after we got to the car that the Lord answered our fast. I was so happy. I am growing in the scriptures and just getting to know them so well but more importantly I'm growing in Preach My Gospel. I love doing this work. I'm seriously giving it my all and relying on the Lord.

Also, we met this hardcore thug. Like, I mean hardcore. We sat down and talked with him about the Gospel and later he said he'd been praying that someone would just talk to him because he needed someone to talk to. We ended up giving him a hug. So I can proudly say I've given a hardcore thug a hug. I mean, you should have seen this guy and just listened to the things he was saying. It was actually kind of scary. We also ran into the Manitoba Warriors last Monday. They're a native gang. They're actually pretty hardcore. These are some wicked guys. But we just talked to them and they were nice. You gotta love missions sometimes!

One more experience we had: we tracted into a Born Again Christian who wanted to Bible bash with us. It was my first time so I was a little quiet at first. He tried to prove that the church was false and a cult and that The Book of Mormon was false. He went around everything and went around The Book of Mormon, but never talked about what was in it. We bore our testimony again and again about the savior and that The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ and that on every page you will read that it talks about Christ again and again. It was so neat because he couldn't say anything back to us. He just said, "well my mind is drawing a blank here because I haven't been studying as much", but I know that it was the spirit that was blocking his mind. After that day I decided that I would never be that quiet again, and that I would defend the kingdom of God and testify of Christ. It was a neat experience. It was scary but it was really good.

All is well

-Elder Clark

P.S. The guy Ron who we've been teaching... he is seriously like Batman. He'll come and find us on the street on his motorcycle. And then we'll talk to him and teach him a little bit and then we ask him if we can set up a time to visit (like a specific day) and he says "Oh, I'll be around" and then rides off on his bike exactly like Batman. It just leaves me laughing.