38 - Standard of Excellence

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


Things are going fairly well out here. We finally made the standard of excellence by being perfectly on time with studies, mornings, and nights. We also had to have at least 3 progressing investigators at church and one of them had to have been new...... Quite the task to get all of the above in one week's time.

Our car keeps giving us trouble. Each transfer we have to go without a car for a couple days and it creates chaos each time.... I really dislike Fords.

We met many new people and sadly had to drop quite a few as well. It was real hard saying goodbye to Aarti and Diya because they weren't progressing enough. Due to Aarti losing her baby and her culture, she can't go to church until she is done grieving. If it were only my choice I would still teach her, but my companions insist on moving on to other people who are ready NOW and not in a short while. Diya is all progressing, if it weren't for her being unable to go to church alone. I know she will make it one day, it's just hard to say goodbye to people you have grown close to.

The Dalaguits surprised us by saying they wanted to be baptized in the middle of our last lesson and even more by picking out their date. Marlene will go on her birthday (Joel says it is the birth of her salvation also jokingly) along with AC. AJ however wants to be baptized on valentines day! We are going to make it work, and we are so excited for them!!!!

Eddie got a lesson while on exchanges with Sister Culala and he understood so much more in Tagalog and that was so helpful! We haven't been able to meet with him since, but he accepted to be baptized so we hope all is well with him until we see him next.

Everyone else we kept missing or they got sick and had to cancel, but it has been a good week overall. We also found a shortcut we never knew existed because in older maps it was covered up in two of our areas (sections of our area) and that will help save on miles and time. I finished working on the new map for our ward boundaries so it should help a lot with navigation and helping the new elders on the other side of the ward figure things out (their new map wasn't the most accurate or good sadly) so I am very glad to have done that and finished it finally. I knew that extra effort would bring rewards, it just took time.