rachael.clark@myldsmail.net
Mission address:
Sister Rachael Geniel Clark
California Long Beach Mission
6500 E Atherton St.
Long Beach, CA 90815
Things are doing alright here. The ward is a lot like my ward at home, if not identical. That is nice, although they seem more busy in their personal lives to visit with us than my last ward, and I still don't quite feel like I belong, but hopefully that will change as time goes on and I meet more people. Its so strange to not have to worry about the ward list since it's updated weekly and we get a new one weekly as well (too much wasted paper in my opinion). We also don't have to worry about the calendar, although I liked having our own and being in charge of it if anything suddenly pops up, we can see who is down for the day and make other arrangements on the spot instead of playing phone tag. They also don't feed us as much either, although they haven't had Sisters in the ward for almost a year now so its probably unusual for them to worry about another set of missionaries to feed. I thankfully have lots of food to cook now that our apartment has a WORKING stove and oven.
Our new apartment was a 3-4 month vacant ELDERS apartment outside our area (1/12 the size of my last ward, one day I imagine they will have missionaries over stakes like they do in Utah down here). We spent a couple days slowly in our free time cleaning, de-staining the carpet, de-molding the bathroom (bad humidity 90% and above this year), and deep cleaning the fridge and kitchen. They left food for the next elders around the place and it clearly didn't get word to them that they would be the last residents till we came to use it..... I hope this is my last Elders apartment, three in a row isn't fun to clean. Al least this one had a check list of cleaning that I can post in all the area books. I am at to let others know what to do in the future. We also found that there was no information about the area, no shopping locations posted, no places to avoid or anything, so we were really whitewashing this area. Last one at least I knew most things before hand. At least we have an apartment of our own now, before we were WAY out of our area with two other Sisters and things were cramped and noisy. Driving was hard too and packing twice to move was a nightmare. We also got the Elder's car so that helped too.
We met 1 less active Marie, she is real nice. She stopped us on our first day and invited us over. Our other successes were finding multiple Do Not Contacts to report back (they were nice unlike my other area where they made you want to cry they were so awfully rude and insulting or slammed the door in your face). We did meet a few good potentials. One man gave me a wooden pen, it was so neat. he was over 90 years old and loves woodworking. Even though he wasn't interested, and deaf from hearing loss, he still gave us a pen he made and said if we ever lost ours we knew where to get another.
Another one was Sophia. We felt prompted to talk to some people then on our way back from walking and talking with them we met her and talked about prayer. She liked us so much she gladly gave us her information and hopefully we can have lessons with her! If I didn't suggest seeing someone on the street, then we wouldn't have been around to meet Sophia! Its amazing how that works out if we follow the Spirit's promptings.
We also got to see the lunar eclipse, missed it turning red sadly, but we did get view of it all black. So cool and eerie, Sister Culala loved it! She had never seen that before, and in Utah it's usually to late in the morning so I miss it or wake up too late.
We walked around and MANY people were out, mostly having moon viewing parties, or busy, but we met an atheist man who kept trying to prove us wrong, but we got him to accept a Book of Mormon and gave him a Moroni's promise bookmark and asked him to not take our word for it but to try it out for himself by praying, reading, then asking in prayer if it is false. He said he would. I doubt we will hear from him again, but he was nice and let us use his binoculars to view the moon earlier. He kept going on about science and logic and stuff like that but since I love science too and know that with this example: if the Wright Brothers had it in their head that their attempts at flight would NEVER work, then of course they would fail. If you pray and read the book of Mormon that way too, you will find similar results. The Wright Brothers didn't yield to others mocking or logics of the time. They went forth with faith that their plane would work, and eventually it did! So too is like finding out the truth of scriptures and belief in God!
It may not be the first time or even the second you will know it is true, but after awhile or even the first time you will know. Its the Light of Christ in us that tells us it is good and it is from God! Nothing dark or evil comes from him, so only peace, comfort, and love can come. The enemy might try and stop you, but its your decision to keep on going and don't give up!
Sort of reminds me of this video, SO GOOD! its about a man deep in despair in his life and his true story, very good locations, imagery, and one of the best videos I have seen so far that's a documentary.
https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-07-006-the-hope-of-gods-light?category=topics/prayer&lang=eng
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