First stop...Federal Way

Hello Everyone,

So i've been in Seattle for a day.  Seems like a week though. My companions didnt get to have P-day yesterday so were doing p-day activities today.  My companions are Elder Bunton (North Carolina) and Elder Park (Utah).  Elder Bunton is getting close the end and Elder Park has only been out for 6 months. They are the zone leaders, which means were busy all the time.  And food is not a priority most the time, we didnt eat dinner last night. But its great.  We leftt the mission home around four yesterday and by 6 clock we were visiting a non active member, who has a daughter that is not baptised who is 9.  They seemed open last night. We just got to know them and shared a short message.  We also visited Brody, who is in the same situation.  He is 15 and his mother is non active but he has a good desire to be baptised.  We got back around 9:30 last night but then we had a conference call witht the mission president and the other zone leaders that went to 10:30.  Im serving in Federal Way, Seattle its a car area.  Which in the past has been pretty successful, so thats exciting.  Seattle is really beautiful, theres so many trees.  And the past two days its been in the 80's and the sun has been out.  My mission president is really good, he's pretty direct and bold. Federal Way area has a little bit of everything in it.  There is a lot of appartments and thats where are two lessons were last night.  I went contacting with Elder Oh this morning.  Because my companions had a zone meeting.  Elder Oh is from South Korea.  He's really funny.  Since he usually doesnt drive with his companion he asked me to drive.  I said he probably should cause I dont know where Im going,  And he was like "ok, but i dont want kill greenie," he knows english alright, he's in a korean ward The first door I knocked, a guy answered and said before we said anything, right now is not the right time, i just lost my wive and I have three kids and I dont have time for anything and slammed the door.  Its sad because thats exactly the right time for him, and our message would have given him comfort about his situation.  But that was not exactly how I thought my first door knocking would go.  But we have 3 or 4 appointments for tonight and were always busy with the zone leaders responsibilites. But anyway I hope everything is good in Kansas and that everyone is having a good time in school. I'll email again on monday. I love you.

 Elder Clark

Load em' up, Head em; Out!

Hi!

So this week was pretty good, except for the fact that i've been sick all week. I have this cold that i cant get over.  Tomorrow we leave in the morning for Seattle.   We have to be ready for the shuttle at 5 am.  I still have to pack, but we pretty much arn't doing anything today since its preparation day.  Yesterday was our last sunday, our district sang Come thou fount for our going away song.  I also had to give a 5 minute impromtu talk on baptism.  Our branch president just asked me to give a talk right after sacrameeting.  It wasn't too bad. 

Before I forget i need more contacts.  I dont think i need anything else.  We had infield orientation last friday.  It was a long day, the only day that felt long since the first couple of days.  We had class from 8am to 930pm with 2 hour lunch and dinner breaks.  We just went over finding, setting goals, what to expect the first week, and they told us about the new program.  Which is the new missionaries take the lead on some things at the beginning instead of the senior companion doing it all.  Not a lot went on this week.  My companion and I got all our investigators to commit to baptism, so that was good.  Oh, look up Tanner Appleton. I've become pretty good friends with him.  We eat meals together and he has the same gym time as me so we always play basketball.  He's from Portland. He played basketball at a school in north california.  He has one of the best shots i've ever seen.  He's the only person i've got to know that wasnt in my zone.  He's going to Brazil, but he hasnt got his visa yet, so he might be going somewhere else if he doenst get it in a week and a half.  Make sure you start using my Seattle address which is:

Elder Clark

Washington Seattle Mission

10675 NE 20th St

Bellevue, WA 98004

We get to the mission home around 10am tomorrow and we can call home..i was wrong.  We get a 15 minute limit though in the airport. So thats prettty exciting.  Well im sure my next email with be more interesting.  And I just sent a couple photos home. So you'll get those soon.  I have to go do laundry then hopefull take a nap..which im looking forward too.  Thanks again for all the letters.  Love you.

Welcome...again

Hey!

So this week went by super fast! It feels like yesterday was monday.  This whole week feels like one big day, all the days get jumbled together.  But it was a good week.  If I thought my first teaching exp. was gonna be my worst, i was sadly mistaken.  We had a pretty bad lesson.  It was our first lesson with one of our investigators and we just totally bombed it.  We were trying to answer all his questions with homeruns, when we should just gone for singles.  We had no flow to the lesson..also my companion was having a rough day.  So all those things together made it pretty bad, but we recovered nicely and our next to two lessons with Matt went really good.  Every day we have 2 three our classes with different teachers, and we teach 2 investigators everyday.  But i'm still exhausted at the end of everyday.  Sunday was nice and relaxing, Brother Heaton spoke on what it means to have "success"...very enlightening.  And we watched the new restoration video.  Oh and thanks for all the letters, its nice to read at the end of the night. 

Funny story though.  When new missionaries come they get orange stickers to put on their nametag. And everybody during the first day says, "welcome elders" or "hi". So me and one of the guys in my zone kept our orange stickers from the first day on the back of our nametag.  So when Wed. came we put it on the front of our tag and everybody said welcome to us.  But on Sun. at lunch I was looking for a table because our normal spot was taken and I saw two random spots.  Me and my companion went to those.  After I got settled in I looked around the table and Kyle Collingsworth was sitting directly in front of me..So i got to talk to him for 10 minutes before he had to leave. Which was really cool. I didnt bring up the missed free throws in the Florida game however.

I'll try and reply to all the letters we only get 30 minutes to email..which is short.  I cant believe we leave for Seattle in 8 days. 

The biggest lesson I learned this week was that Heavenly Father really does love us.  And we need to trust him.  Joseph Smith is a great example of that.  His last day in Nauvoo, he says, "I go like a lamb to slaughter, but i'm as calm as a summer day."

Have a good week. Love you guys

  So its been 6 days, good but very long.  The first 24 hours were the longest of my life.  Everyone just says make it to sunday, so we shall see.  The days are starting to go faster thou, and I'm working hard. Waking up at 6 30 is brutal, but Im starting to get use to the schedule.  We have to be in bed by 1030 and im usually asleep by 1033.  It seems like i'm always exhausted.  I do 50 pushups and 30 pull ups every morning..im tryin to stay in shape.  The Mtc food is alright.  Definitely not as good as grandma made it out to be.  We get ice cream wed. and sundays.  Last night i had three bowls, two vanilla and one strawberry.. it was break the fast and I had been fasting since 445 on sunday. 

     My first teaching exp. was humbling.  We tried to stick to the lesson plan too much and didnt get to know the investigator well enough and didnt focus on her needs.  I was a little down after that.  By the way my companion is elder boyle.  He is from Monticello, Utah.  Small town, his graduating class was 48. Good guy, we get along pretty well, he was just made district leader. 

  Our second teaching exp. was a lot better.  We got to know the investigator really good and was able to give a message that he needed to hear.  We watched the testament last night after devotional.  Which was a good change of pace.  I really like that movie, you can definitely feel the spirit when watching. 

   I made some friends playing basketball.  We have the same gym time so we play together everyday now, their pretty good. So its good competition. 

   Oh, and theres this thing called dearelder.com and you can write me letters and they'll print it off and put it in my mail box, so if you want to do that that would be cool. Hope everything is going good. 

   Love you guys.

   Elder Clark

So this is where it starts....

Brayden entered the Missionary Training Center on August 3, 2011 to begin his 2 year mission.  He was called to serve in the Washington, Seattle Mission.