Monday, March 28, 2016

46 - Easter

Email address (preferred):
rachael.clark@myldsmail.net 

Mission address:
 Sister Rachael Geniel Clark
 California Long Beach Mission
 6500 E Atherton St.
 Long Beach, CA 90815


Where do I start for this week. Honestly, all that has been going on in our area is getting to know literally everyone on the few streets we have, lots of cancelled appointments, and lots more cancelled family history appointments. Yep, lots of tracking!

We did however get to have Sister Lambson from the La Palma ward over because her companion Sister Apple had to go home because of major migraines for 3 months straight and it wasn't getting better at all. Because of her leaving, we are short more sisters, and we had to work in Sister Lambson's area and ours, juggle two cars (because our car miles are sky rocket high and we are running out. Normally it isn't bad, but with so many family history appointments cancelled, we can't count on those free miles saving us). We also helped her clean out part of her apartment since a couple days ago we were surprised again when they said they will shut down her area and move her to Cerritos 1st ward, my baby area. We were hoping she would stay a week since our companionship got along so well with her, in fact better than usual odd enough, but that's life.

Easter went super well. I got to see Debbie once again, and I missed teaching after baptism lessons with her... In fact, with all my recent converts as well. I also got to see people from the La Palma ward I haven't seen in a long while since I am no longer with the STL's and don't get to go on splits some times when they were in meetings.

We didn't get to do service at the Habitat for Humanity after all this week, sadly, due to some miscommunications, and we got booted out because they had too many volunteers. We did however get to help Park Anaheim with making big paper eggs and decorating them with the residents.

Today we did get to go briefly to Virginia's gift shop and the bakery at knotts marketplace, it was real fun! I got a book and squashed penny, my other companions got a bracelet and a coin purse. The chicken dinner restaurant was too packed to even be able to try and get food there sadly. That was the highlight of the week as far as P-day fun goes, especially for Sister Lambson since it's her last day in this zone.

Sister Hinckley and I have just been going back and forth for lots of odds and ends this last week, weather it is meetings last minute to things for Sister Lambson, all the way to picking up things for family history. Lost of unexpected things, so not much in the way of progress with our investigators. It's also hard when it is Easter weekend and hardly anyone wants to spend even a minute with us.

Miracle of the week, we met Mike, a father of two adorable girls who used to date a member. He also works as a chef at Walt Disney land. He never finished reading the Book of Mormon from when his ex-girlfriend gave it to him, but he listened to us for awhile and thought it would alright to listen to more of what we shared with him this week. He is super prepared, so we are excited to see how things go with him and hopefully his family as well!

Monday, March 21, 2016

45 - Mexican party and Easter eggs

Email address (preferred):
rachael.clark@myldsmail.net 

Mission address:
 Sister Rachael Geniel Clark
 California Long Beach Mission
 6500 E Atherton St.
 Long Beach, CA 90815


We had 3 family history lessons this week, it was so much fun. We also got a nice GPS to use from the office that we are in the process of customizing no go zones so it will never take us outside our mission boundaries as well! I was worried we might get stuck with a cheap $30 one that constantly breaks and takes you the long way around and in the wrong direction (which happens very often).

We have gone to Long Beach West (bro zone as it is termed, which is cool to be the ONLY sisters who have ever been there) to teach a bilingual family, helped the Elders in our ward, Buena park; with Jessica. Don over in Huntington beach, who has the darnedest stories you have ever heard that are all true! It has been a blast this week. I hope we can get to the point were we schedule 2 a day, that would be the greatest!

One of the greatest things to see is the missionaries and investigators/recent converts change when they go on and experience it. So many comments on how easy it is, how fun it is, they love how similar it is to Facebook, only for people living and dead! The biggest is how you can put on memories of anyone you put in there and can connect with everyone around the world for free! Spanish is a bit hard since there are VERY limited records available, but other than that, it is great! So many missionaries after the lesson are excited, or at least less nervous about doing the first lesson we do with other people, Which is good!

Other than that, we haven't found many other new investigators. We met with Reynold a couple times this week, sadly last minute he cancelled on church, but we hope to see him next week!

AISHA IS GETTING BAPTIZED THIS WEEK!!!!!!! FINALLY, this is so exciting. I get to help out with a talk and come. Even though I wasn't the missionary over her to the end, it still counts in my heart.

Its been an interesting week. We also got to do service at park Anaheim making baby ducks and baby chickens for the residents.

Miracle of the week is when we crashed a Mexican party (talk with everyone commitment, so awkward in this case) and just as we were about to leave, Johnny came up and asked who we were. He was confused how two young fair skinned girls were lost at their party and was about to offer directions if we were lost. We talked about the new Easter video #Hallelujah and how we and our loved ones will be made alive just like Christ did one day. He was stunned that a Christian church believed in that and had this look like he hit the lottery since just before seeing us he was just thinking about his cousin who died less than a week ago and missed him a lot. After that, he really became interested in our message and church, and even though he was Catholic, he was open to listen. Sadly he lives out of our mission, but hopefully he takes the lessons wherever he lives. Earlier we had an option to go there, or stay on that same street, and I felt we had to go to another street. If we didn't, we would have missed him. So amazing how if we follow the spirits promptings, we won't miss out on opportunities to share the glad tidings of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ with others.

Today for sports we are dying Easter eggs! Fun stuff. I am trying out Ukrainian egg style, hopefully it works!

Monday, March 14, 2016

44 - New apartment and training missionaries

Email address (preferred):
rachael.clark@myldsmail.net 

Mission address:
 Sister Rachael Geniel Clark
 California Long Beach Mission
 6500 E Atherton St.
 Long Beach, CA 90815


This week has been crazy weird and busy. My new companion is Sister Hinckley, and she is from Alberta Canada.

We moved into a brand new apartment, had to purchase an entire apartment's worth of supplies, and that alone took up our first day. After we had good parts of the day spent at the mission home and/or office, working with President and Sister Tew working out the details of our new assignment. Looks like it will last a couple transfers then we will go back to normal.

We will work with the missionaries in the ENTIRE MISSION and their investigators in 1-2 lessons to help ALL investigators find at least 1 name to take to the temple within the first month of baptism. The goal is after a lesson or two the missionaries in that area will know enough to be able to take over all other family history lessons and every missionary in this mission will know how to do family history. The hope is to have greater retention in this mission and change the culture of being a recent convert in this church since most older members seem to avoid if not hate family history without even giving it a try, and they aren't attending the temple like they should. (With exception to the Cambodian ward, they always are on top of things and love attending!) There is a great need for the hastening of the work here, so this should help a bunch.

Lately we have seen some good improvement in our ward members due to a new change in the ward. Our entire ward was split into committees according to their interests and talents: 1. Proclaim the gospel; 2. Temple and family history; and 3. Perfect the saints/care for the poor and needy (service). We saw that when the ward members were put into those committees, they seemed to care more for the work they discuss, and were much more willing to participate in the work they are over, more so than 1 or 2 people being assigned to a calling. They then support those in the specific callings and more things happen in the ward like it should. We hold those meetings every 5th Sunday and its been fun so far. Took a month for everyone to get used to, but since the whole ward is doing this, not just a few, almost everyone feels like they can help out instead of making excuses. Bishop is now more interested in the work our companionship is doing in now that he got assigned to the family history committee, so that is wonderful. Before it was less than what it is now, so improvement is always good! Lots of great things are happening in this ward!

No service this week due to trainings we gave to the whole mission and preparations we took to get it done where Sister Tew liked it and President put his stamp on it (sort of speak). Sounds like we will do MANY short training's possibly in the future as we go along and refine how we do things. I have never used up so many miles before, it's worse than STL mile status! Thank goodness we have to put on the paper log how many were for family history that will be deducted from our normal amount. Elders in Long beach who had our car before HOGGED tons of miles already, so this should get interesting. Our apartment is 1 mile out of our area, right next to the highway (which is great for travel around the mission) and is a nice and safe complex. Not as noisy as my last one oddly enough, too. We ended up splitting my last area, and now we are over 1/3... which is about 1/7 the size of the ward... UBER TINY.... Even more challenging is it is a nicer area with barely any investigators, potentials, less actives, or even members. I hope missionaries start using us soon, since we are running out of streets to tract in the meantime.

The first couple days were real hard adjusting, especially since I am sort of follow up training as well, so it's always hard for adjustments from one's first area and companionship. Sister Hinckley had a hard time getting used to how we had to drop every plan we had to get things done for our apartment with Elder and Sister Grossnickle, lots of travel time, and changing plan at a moment's notice if necessary. It was hard getting used to STL, or even YSA missionary lifestyle of constant re-planing, planning travel time, or dropping plans when something came up that we have to do. We are learning to get along, but it's been a bit of a rough go at the start. I hope it will get better as we get going the rest of this transfer, which is the 7 week transfer due to MTC time changes)

Good news is that Aisha will get baptized and even though I am not teaching her any more, and we will be able to come! They weren't able to find names of those involved on her record for the supposed baptism, so she was cleared for baptism in 2 weeks!

Other than that, we picked up a few new investigators. Most of them we had to pass off, but we hope that we can work with Michael, Gina, and Reynold still!

Monday, March 7, 2016

43 - Special assignment

Email address (preferred):
rachael.clark@myldsmail.net 

Mission address:
 Sister Rachael Geniel Clark
 California Long Beach Mission
 6500 E Atherton St.
 Long Beach, CA 90815


I found out I am staying! Odd thing is that I will be splitting my area up and I will get the smaller area of the two. Sadly I won't get hardly any good people to teach that we have so far. It will be hard to be so close to any recent converts and less actives I have taught (or have allowed us to teach them) and yet not be able to see a single one. And live outside my area.

Good news though,This is all happening because my new companion Sister Hinckley and I got a special assignment of Family history missionaries, FOR THE WHOLE MISSION! (As far as I have been made aware of.) We will be working closely with Sister Tew and will train all the missionaries on family history and any converts (or soon to be) one on one. The whole goal is that all converts have a name to take to the temple before they are baptized so they can have the goal to make it to the temple with that name before the first 2 months are over. All the stake presidents are in on this Idea, so it has been neat to be apart of this special assignment! I will still be a Proselyting missionary and do regular work, which should be an interesting thing to figure out. After a few transfers, the other goal is for my companion and I to work ourselves out of a job so that EVERY MISSIONARY in this mission knows, teaches, and helps out their investigators and recent converts to do family history work the same as we do; on their own.

Other than that, Marlyn and AC Dalaguit had their confirmation this Sunday and we also did wonderfully at the musical fireside. Not much turnout on the music fireside, but it impressed the stake president so much he suggested it be done quarterly!

Sad news is due to things out of our control, we had to put Aisha's baptism on hold. Some records popped up out of the blue and put a kink in our plans the NIGHT BEFORE.... we will be working it out with the Spanish branch and Salt Lake to figure things out. Good news is that it isn't the first time this has happened with that branch, so it should be a couple week fix to sort things out. We still had an amazing time with her family and friends for a dinner and had amazing Pupusa (which President Tew always gets for departing missionaries, and I was sad that I would never get the chance to have some once the change in presidents happens).

This week's miracle is that we were able to get things put together for the musical fireside as well as we did. We had some last minute cancellations, no before run through, and stress all around for my companions putting things together. We hardly had any lessons at all due to meetings and other things out of our control.

Other than that, lots of packing, LOTS of cancelled appointments, and Lots of goodbyes with my Companion Sister Skelton going home. She is off to Australia come tomorrow!

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

42 - Foggy temple and baptisms

Email address (preferred):
rachael.clark@myldsmail.net 

Mission address:
 Sister Rachael Geniel Clark
 California Long Beach Mission
 6500 E Atherton St.
 Long Beach, CA 90815


It's that transfer again, we got to go to the LA Temple! It was Super foggy though, made for some unusual photos outside. We had to get up SUPER early to help get some other sisters where they needed to be so it looks like a nap will be in order instead of sports. It was all worth it in the end though.

This week Marlene and AC Dalaguit were baptized. This one was extra special since AJ was given the priesthood during the first part of the baptism meeting and was able to Baptize AC and Joel baptized his wife Marlene. It was so special to see the entire family in white! It will be a day I will never forget! We had amazing talks, testimonies, and memories made that day. Definitely the spirit was felt by the whole family and all those who attend. What a rare thing for me to be honored to take part in the lives of so many amazing converts baptisms. I will definitely miss Buena Park when I leave, just as much as I do Cerritos if I leave this transfer. Each of the people I have taught mean so much to me, and it hurts to say goodbye every time I have to leave.

Two miracles this week. First was we picked up Tiffany again this week. I was on splits with another sister, but my companions felt prompted to visit and she told them that God answered her prayer for us to come again. She got a car finally and so many other small miracles led her to conclude to come back to church with us. So exciting!

Second miracle was again when I was on splits, this time with Sister Tew, the mission president's wife. We were going to a back up potential, but it ended up being in an adjacent area and was put in the wrong page, so we went there and no one was home. As we were heading back to the car, a black car came up and stopped right along side ours. Then faster than fast Aarti and Diya ran out yelling, "Sister Clark!" and gave me and Sister Tew a hug and asked us to come visit them just around the corner in their home. There we met Aarti's Mother who is also an RN, only retired. She made us AMAZING Indian food (Sister Tew was impressed and loved it!), and we were able to try and figure out where they were in their reading The Book of Mormon and how they were doing. It was so great. I even was able to give away the Hindi Book of Mormon my companion insisted to shove in my bag earlier that day. It was great since their mother understood Hindi better than English, which is one of the 4 languages she knows from being a nurse in India and America. MIRACLES ALL AROUND THIS WEEK. I missed them all so much, and it was good to see the progress they have made. Diya has faithfully continued to pray and read The Book of Mormon every day since we first met her and was in Alma 13, such an amazing accomplishment for someone her age. (I know I wasn't that great about reading when I was her age.) Diya even said she knows God answers her prayers, since she prayed that we could see each other again; and we did. Too happy to teach them both again!

We also have been helping out the Spanish elders and YSA elders a lot, we heard that they are teaching some wonderful people who are on their way to baptism, which is wonderful that we were able to find them and pass them along to those missionaries.