Transfer #6

This has been such a crazy week! Its hard to believe that everything happened in just one week. Monday we barely even had a P-day because we had so many appointments with people who wanted to say goodbye to Sister Weinstock.

Me and what I like to call  "The Stock" since no one can say her name.

 

 

We went from house to house and wished farewells. Sister Weinstock was super sad! I was really thankful to be staying here. I love this area. It is a really great branch. Tuesday morning came to fast. Sister Weinstock had to be leave by 9 to be at the training meeting at the mission home at 10:30. She hadn't finished her packing yet because we were so busy. We spent the whole morning packing. There are some Sisters who are down about an hour further south than us in Toms River who were headed to the training meeting as well. They came and picked up Sister Weinstock. Sister Houghten and Sister Weinstock were training, so they drove up together and Sister Houghten's companion Sister Bair stayed in Perth Amboy with me for a few hours until we needed to leave to Morristown to make it to the transfer conference at 3.

 

I had a fun morning with Sister Bair. We just had our studies, then we did my laundry which I had failed to do on our way over packed P-day then we headed out to lunch then from there headed on the long drive to Morristown for transfer conference. I had never really met Sister Bair because she is an English sister, but she was super fun to spend the afternoon with. This transfer conference seemed so different than all of the transfer conferences. I don't really know why because we did all of the same things. I think its because it was in a different building though. It was in Morristown rather than in Shorthills where it normally is. Its so weird how little things like that can throw us off. Sister Jeppson cracks me up though, she came up to talk to us and she just goes, "well, this transfer conference is going to be a little bit different than all of the rest" then she looks at the back doors as if she is talking to some elders out there and says, "OK, do you want to roll in the iPads now?" We all gasped and kind of lost our breaths. We were so excited! But Sister Jeppson couldn't hold in her giggles that long before she blurted out "APRIL FOOLS!" We all just started cracking up. She got some of us pretty good. She told us that April fools is one of her favorite days of the year and that President Jeppson dreads it and can't wait for it to be over. She's so funny. Well, now the information you have all been waiting to hear. I am serving in Perth Amboy with Sister Throckmorton. She has been on her mission for a little over a year and has served in Eatontown and in Dover. She is from South Jordan UT and is about the same height as me and is so sweet. Its going to be a great transfer! I'm excited. I had never really considered having her as  a companion!

Me and Sister Throckmorton

The first week of the transfer is always kind of interesting because you have a lot to get used to. It didn't help that it was such an odd week either. Thursday we had our zone conference, plus our no walking day and weekly planning. So we didn't really get any lessons in. It was fun though. Our zone goal this week is consecration, so we are all leaving be hind 3 things that keep us from progressing to consecrate ourselves more fully to the work. Well see how this goes, its going to be hard for me. I need to learn how to be a morning person. I'm going to work on it.

The Saturday and Sunday conference sessions were so amazing! General conference is one of my favorite things in the whole world. I took like 15 pages of notes or something. Its harder when you cant just go look up the talks on the Internet the next day. I do have to say my notes are very impressive, color coated and creative. I had to keep myself busy. I have never colored on my notes so much. I would have to say that I loved the talks by President Uchtdorf, Bishop Stevenson and, of course, our sweet prophet, President Thomas S. Monson. Elder Bednar had a really great talk as well..... They were all good :) I am excited to be using them in my teaching. I love it when the apostles and prophets give commitments to the members.... Speaking of commitments. I have to do as Elder Ballard said and FOLLOW UP with all of you. How is your sharing the gospel with 4 people a year going? hmmmm? I hope you're thinking about it! Also, do you all own a Preach my Gospel? Its time to get one if you don't! Such an incredible manual that will bless your lives. I know it will because it has blessed mine!

Other than that the work is still going! It's getting a little bit rough around here. We are finding people, but they're not all really people who are willing to act and do what we ask them. So, we are going to be dropping lots of investigators, leaving us with very few and doing some major finding. We need people to teach. If we're contacting and talking to everyone, we'll find someone, I'm sure. We do still have some very, very good investigators with Celenia, Maria R and the new family that we found a couple of weeks ago, Ramon and Estrella. They're all progressing very smoothly. 

P.S. Y'all remember my trainer, Sister Martin? She's in my zone now! She is in East Brunswick with sister Haddock!! I am so excited that she is right next door and I get to see her every week at district meetings. Woooooo. I also have to give her a shout out for being a GREAT missionary and having baptisms for the last 3 weekends in a row!! She's the best!

 

Well, that's about all I have to report on this week! I hope you all have  a great week! Love ya!

 

 

-Sister Clark

The Last Week of Transfer Number 5!!

So the last week of my fifth transfer is now over. It went by fast. Unfortunately it wasn't really the best week we've ever had. As far as missionary work, we didn't get a whole lot done. I mean, we worked, but we have just been so successful lately that it seemed like we didn't do much even though we were just doing the mission standard. If that makes any sense at all. Although it we didn't have any huge miracles this week like we have had in the past, we enjoyed all of the joys of being a missionary. I really learned how to enjoy the small things like pillow talk with companions, running out of money because its the end of the month, being really creative with food because you have no money, end of transfer apartment cleaning (TAC), transfer planning, eating too many dinners and deserts in one night and paying the price, awkward street contacts, exchanges, awesome neighbors, listening to the lower lights in the car, fun Hispanic parties and the list goes on and on and on. When times are hard here on a mission, enjoying these small things are crucial! I had a lot of fun this week even though the work was really slow. I really do have a lot to be thankful for. Being a missionary is the BEST!! 

Story time: During the last week of the transfer, missionaries are the most anxious people ever!! Seriously, our lives are just a mess because we are wondering what is going to happen with transfers the next week. I cant even explain what it is like to be in one area on Sunday having no idea where you re going to be in two days on Tuesday. ITS CRAZY!! Like you want to pull your hair out crazy! And we just have to pack up everything in one day and say goodbye to everyone that we learned to love so deeply and leave, just like that. It's so hard, but it is so fun at the same time. All the things missionaries do that some people just don't realize. Well anyways, rant over. So, we were going crazy all week, wondering what was going to happen to us. Sister Weinstock and I have been together for 2 full transfers now and Sister Weinstock has been in Perth Amboy for 4 transfers or 6 months, which means that the chance was pretty high for her to leave. BUT, our area is doing so well and we have been working so hard, so that meant that she had a chance to stay too, so we were just going crazy with the suspense. On Friday night we were at a members home. We call them the Abuelos because they're super old and all of their kids and grandkids are in the branch as well. We were over at their house and Abuela was getting her hair done, she had all of these curlers in her hair (she has nappy Dominican hair) and we were just reading with her and her little granddaughters while she was getting her hair done. It was about 5 o'clock. We were deep into reading and discussing when all of the sudden our obnoxious phone starts ringing. I grab it out of my pocket to silence it (we don't answer phone calls during appointments). When I grabbed it I saw the words lit up on the screen. 0.0 President Jeppson. MY HEART SKIPPED A BEAT!! I realized that it was Friday and that training calls go out on either Thursdays of Fridays. Without even thinking about it further I jumped up off the couch and ran to the kitchen to answer the phone. I answered the phone "Hello this is Sister Clark". I heard these words: "Hello Sister Clark this is President Jeppson, I am calling on behalf of the Lord to extend to you a call to train a new sister arriving from the Mexico MTC on Monday"......



SILENCE

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SILENCE

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CRICKET

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APRIL FOOLS!!!

hehehehe ahhhahahahahhahahahahahaha I crack myself up!

But really though, this is a true story. We were at the Abuelos and President Jeppson called, my heart skipped a beat, I jumped up and ran to the kitchen like a crazy lady. I answered, we talked about my medication and the weather for a second, then I heard the familiar words, "well Sister Clark, may I speak with your companion for a moment?" I walked back into the living room. Sister Weinstock was sitting on the couch. She looked super scared. Her face turned white when I told her it was for her. We put the phone on mute. We freaked out for a second. Then she answered. He called her to follow up train a sister who has been in Princeton. She accepted so she will be heading off to Princeton this  Tuesday and I'll be heading down to Morristown to get a new companion. I'M SO EXCITED!! I love getting new companions. All of the Spanish sisters are excellent so I'm not to worried about it.

I really thought I was going to train though. I'm kind of old and I haven't trained yet... Actually the mission is really weird right now. Me and Sister Schaefer and none of the sisters who are two transfers above us have trained yet... Sister Weinstock is the first of her generation to train. Then the only generation older than her are the 2 above that... so there is really only 4 generations older than me.... And there are like 8 of us who haven't trained, but then Sister Martin's generation, the ones who are the oldest have trained like 2 or 3 times and are sister training leaders. IT IS SO WEIRD!!! We have to be training soon. There are 4 Spanish sisters coming in next transfer. A lot of people have told me that they think I'll be training. We'll see. I kind of want to train. We have to be training soon. We're the only ones left. If we don't train, there will be no one left to be sister training leaders. You have to have trained to be called as a Sister Training leader. Oh well. I'm not going to worry about it. It will all work out. But, I'm just guessing that I'm training next transfer or the next. It has to happen.

Well, as far as training for sister Weinstock. You get training calls on Friday and you usually have to attend a training meeting the next morning in Morristown. So we were up bright and early to head out to Morristown (an hour and a half drive) to make it to the meeting on time. ew. ew. ew. It was raining so hard. I hate driving in the rain. Especially to Morristown. The roads are crazy. My theory is that someone dropped spaghetti on a map and called it good. But really though. That's what the roads look like. So we headed up to Morristown and I stayed in Shorthills with the Sister training leaders up there while sister Weinstock was at the meeting. Their names are Sisters Smedley and Boudesoque. Its always fun to get to know some sisters better. We had a fun morning together. We did studies and they made me gorditas for lunch. SPANISH PROGRAM IS THE BEST. We always have the best leftovers in our fridge. Sister Smedley is getting released as an STL this transfer though so that means that she could come down to Amboy with me. That would be super fun. I would really enjoy her as a companion. That is my transfer wish..... but well see what happens. I'll be happy with whoever it is. THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!! I just wanna know already. blah.

After that we headed back to Amboy and got some ice cream with a member, then headed off to the Relief Society Broadcast. WOW such a good session. One of the best ones I have seen by far. I loved it so much. I loved watching it and knowing that my family was watching it too. Especially my two cute nieces Savannah and Ava. I hope they liked it. It was very inspired! I especially loved how they talked about teaching and learning from generations of women. It's so true. I was sitting right next to cute Sister Smith. I am so thankful for her. She is 79 but she has so much to offer us Sister Missionaries. Then I looked around at the other people I was sitting with. We were at the Scotch Plains stake and it was PACKED! We were sitting with a couple of other missionaries. And I looked and I saw some of the other sister missionaries who were sitting ahead of me. There was just so many of us!! The sisterhood was so real. We need each other. I'm thankful that I felt at home in that moment, like I was with my sisters in the mission and with my sisters at home.

Well, other than that, we just had a pretty normal week. Teaching, studying then teaching some more. I loved every second of it though.

I hope you all have a fantastic week and that you can all listen to general conference this weekend. Ill be listening too! I love you and miss you!

-Sister Clark

Feliz Cumpleanos Hermana Clark!!

Hey friends and family, guess what!! Today is my 8 month birthday in the mission!! Can you all believe it has already been 8 months!! I can't believe that. I feel like the weeks are just going by faster and faster. I love it but I hate it at the same time. Next month I am going to be at my half way mark. We made it half way, family!! Now we just need to do that all over again, then I'll be home. See how easy that was? hahha Just kidding, definitely not easy, but I know there are GREAT things in store for the next 10 months. Things are still just getting better for me! Every week gets better and better, I don't know why but I'm thankful.

This week I started out with the goal of either giving one Book of Mormon away every day or setting one return appointment every day. President Jeppson promised us that if we carried a Book of Mormon in our hands every second and if we contacted using the Book of Mormon, contacting at least 10 people a day, our teaching pool would double. I made myself trust in that promise and I really wanted to put it to work. I gave out 5 copies of the Book of Mormon this week! It felt good, I felt like with that goal that I had the Lord was putting me in places where there were people who were prepared to receive the book. 2 of the people were English, so we had to give them as a referral to the English elders, but the elders are actually teaching them now and one of them is still texting us, telling us that she is reading it and meeting with the elders and she likes having them in her home and having them pray for her. The English one we were led to in a really weird way. We had planned to go to a specific apartment building where there are a lot of Hispanics and just knocking around and contacting, but for some reason I was just not paying attention and I missed the turn, so in the process of trying to turn us around to get back over there, (which is impossible with these crazy New Jersey roads, but that's another story for later) We had to turn onto this street which led to a jug handle. While we were on that street, we found some apartment buildings we had never seen before. We got lost down there trying to find the jug handle to lead us back to the other road, so we decided to just park and knock at least 1 door. We parked and we walked down a couple of rows of doors looking for one. We chose one and rang and this young girl answered. We talked to her and she was so sweet. We explained what the Book of Mormon was and handed her a copy.. She looked at it then looked up then looked at it again, then looked up at us and just said, "is this really for me?" and we said absolutely, then she got the hugest grin and said THANK YOU SO MUCH SISTERS!! and gave us a big hug. We gave her information to the elders. :)

My favorite Book of Mormon miracle for the week: On Saturday we started out the day fine. We had two lessons with members by 3 o'clock and it was just an ordinary day. After our lesson with the second member, I started feeling so weird. I just felt so unmotivated and just down right WEIRD! No words to describe the way I was feeling, but it wasn't good. So we just kept going for 2 more hours doing our normal stuff then we came home at 4:30 for dinner, we had planned 30 minutes of phone time before dinner at 5. While we were on our way in, our neighbor girls and their mom came out and they were talking to us for 30 minutes which took our whole phone time. Normally I wouldn't care, I love playing with them and talking to them, but I was just feeling so irritated. I was so bugged! I was just so bugged about everything and I had a bad attitude and I had no idea why! I came inside and I just layed on the floor and I was just whining and acting like a child on whining on the ground flailing my arms and legs around.... Funny right? hahahaha My companion was just laughing at me because I was acting so weird! I didn't know what was happening to my mood and we were just laughing. Then she started feeling that way too. So together we were just feeling weird and unmotivated. We took an extra 20 minutes of dinner time and we were contemplating just going to bed because we just felt so weird, but it just didn't feel right! So we just pushed ourselves out the door, turned on our favorite CD and blasted the music and made our way up to Carteret.

 

 

We had it in our plans to visit this member named Irma who is ALWAYS home. We planned her because we were both just feeling so weird and we decided that we would rather be at an appointment than just knocking doors. So we get to her house and her son answers and told us that she had just left to go shopping, so we couldn't come in. We were so bugged!! But we had some other people to try. We looked at our backups and we had the media referral penciled in for that time. We didn't really want to go over there, but we decided that we had better follow our plans. It was so weird, we just had these random ideas to go to different places than to this lady's house, but we had decided a few weeks ago that we were going to try our best to follow our plans without changing them, so we went to her house. We knocked and she wasn't home, like always, but her neighbor answered the door. He stepped outside and shut the door behind him. We asked him if he knew when his neighbor would be returning, he told us she was working in New York and that she was only home on certain days.

 

 

We then introduced ourselves and we told him that we help people come closer to Jesus Christ and we teaching using a book called the Book of Mormon, which is another testament of Jesus Christ. He looked at us for a second then he said, "excuse me for one second" he opened the door and yelled in to his wife and said "hey, there are two young girls here who teach people about Jesus Christ, is it ok if they come in for a couple of seconds?" She came up to the door and said "oh claro que si!" and they invited us inside. We sat down and they had 2 bibles sitting out on their coffee table. He explained that he had just bought his wife her own copy of the bible and they were studying together when we had knocked. I explained to them that the message that we teach is very unique and a little bit different, but it was still centered in Jesus Christ and we asked permission to share it. They anxiously agreed, so we began the restoration. They were listening very intently and on the ends of their seats. They were asking questions and they understood everything so clearly. We were talking about Jesus Christ and how he organized his church and how there was one lord and one church and how he gave his apostles the authority called the priesthood, then we talked about how the world fell into apostasy. We explained what that meant, then he looked at me and said, "so this means that the church I have been going to isn't true, doesn't it" And I said yes. We told him that all of the churches teach good things and they have incredible people, but they don't have the fullness of the truth. They were in deep thought and it looked like they were accepting this concept. Then he asked "so wait, is the world still in apostasy then?" I LOVED THAT QUESTION!!! THEY UNDERSTOOD SO PERFECTLY!! We told them about Joseph smith. We read in James 1:5 and we recited the first vision to them. It was completely silent for about a minute after that. They were just so deep in thought. Then he just let out this "wow, that is so incredible". We taught them about the Book of Mormon and how it was written by prophets and how it contains the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and how it tells us everything we need to do to receive salvation. We gave him a copy and he held it and looked up and said, "Sisters, I have seen Mormons in the Dominican Republic and I have heard of the Book of Mormon before, but I did not know what it was, I thought it was a book about Joseph Smith. I thought you worshiped Joseph Smith, I am so glad that I know that is not true anymore." We asked them to be baptized after that. He thought very hard about it and said that He wants to be baptized, but that this was a lot to learn in one night. He said he was going to read the Book of Mormon and ask if it was true and keep learning from us. They said that if they keep going and they feel like it is the only true church on the earth, that they would absolutely be baptized. We left them with a chapter to read and they invited us back this week. We were there for almost 2 hours and they didn't want us to leave, but we were going to be late getting home. We ran to the car and on the way home, (about a 20 minute drive) we were just so full of joy and happiness and the weirdness that we were feeling earlier that day was gone. We felt that they were very specifically prepared and that our Heavenly Father was very pleased. We know that there was so many weird forces against us that day trying to keep us from finding them, but I am so thankful that we went anyways. It truly explains the weirdness that can't even be put into words that we were feeling that day. That night we experienced one of the neatest miracles I have seen on my mission.

Second neatest Book of Mormon miracle: The Z family. I'm not sure if I should put their name on here because they speak English... But the Z family is what I will call them. Their last name starts with Z :) The Z family is a family in our branch that have been less active for a couple of years. We have records of the missionaries visiting them frequently for the past year and maybe a little bit longer, but they really haven't come to church very much. So they really weren't progressing towards being active very much. They prefer English and they love having us over for dinner usually about once a week. They would usually end up arguing with us during our lessons though because they are very intelligent and full of character. They don't usually read out of the Book of Mormon and we have been trying to get them to read for AGES!! Last week we visited them and we were talking with them and Sister Z said that she was ready to start strengthening her testimony and she wanted to know for sure if this church was true, because she didn't actually know for sure, she just felt like it was good, but she didn't feel like she had gotten a real answer. We asked her to read Joseph Smith history. She said she might, but hey that was good enough for us. We came back and she had  actually read. That week we asked her if she would start reading the Book of Mormon. She said absolutely. She texted us during the week and told us she had been reading. We had an appointment with her on Thursday and since we knew she had read, we planned to teach her how to apply the Book of Mormon. We go over and we talk a bit the way we always do (they're so fun to talk to) then she just says, Ok, sisters, so when are you going to ask me how my reading was? she had the hugest smile on her face!! "I read 4 chapters of Nephi and I read Enos and Jerom and Words of Mormon and all the small ones!! She was so excited!! She said that she had prayed the way we said before she would read and asked that she would be able to understand the words on the page. She said she had read 1 Nephi so many times but she just didn't understand what was being said. She was just reading words on a page. But this time she actually understood the story! That Lehi left Jerusalem with his sons, then Nephi cut off Laban's head! She said that as many times as she had read that she had never actually understood that story!! Her face was just lit up!! Then we asked her, OK so now you know what is going on, so now how do you apply it. She said, "I really have no clue, I guess don't get drunk or else someone will cut off my head?" then we all laughed and we just said, you know what, its perfect that you don't know, because that is actually what we planned to teach you.

 

 

I felt really impressed to share this random experience from this week. It goes like this: We are teaching a family and we are trying to get their kids to read in the BOM so we promised one of the kids that if he read every day last week we would by him a 3 musketeers bar. He did it so we bought him one and we were planning to give it to him the next time we visited them. We had an appointment with that family the day before and Sister Weinstock set the candy bar next to the phone, thinking that when I grabbed the phone to leave I would just see it and remember that we needed to take it. As we were rushing out the door to the appointment I grabbed the phone and we left. While we were on our way there Sister Weinstock asked me if I got the Candy, I said "No I thought You had it" She told me that she put it next to the phone because she thought I would see it. Well, I didn't see it because I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for it, I thought she had it. So, this experience relates to studying the scriptures because we only see the things that we are looking for. There is this huge candy bar in the scriptures but if we aren't looking for it, were going to miss it. She just looked at me and said, wow that is such a funny story, but that actually makes so much sense!! We taught her about reading the Book of Mormon with a theme or a specific question that you want to learn about it. She was so excited to get started. Then at church this week she was excited to tell us that she had been reading more and that she is trying to look for specific things! SHE IS SO AWESOME!! Her whole demeanor changed. Instead of arguing with us, she is truly searching for the truth and putting in the effort. She has changed so much! It is so cool. I don't know how many times I can tell you all this, but THERE IS GREAT POWER IN THE BOOK OF MORMON!!

Well, those are pretty much the highlights of the week. It was a pretty good week full of learning for me!

Well, gotta go, my times up! I'll talk to you all more, probably with many more miracles from the power of the Book of Mormon. I hope you all are reading every day. If you're not, repent. I am calling you to repentance. START RIGHT NOW! I promise you that you will be blessed.

Love you and hope you have a great week, and read the Book of Mormon!!

-Sister Clark

A Busy Week!

Wow, this week was SO BUSY!! I loved it. We got 28 lessons this week! My record so far. Were going to beat it though. We have been contacting people like crazy and giving out Books of Mormon and doing some street lessons. Its so fun. It is amazing how prepared people are, I was just to scared to talk to them. Man, I wish I would have known how fun and easy it is to just talk to people or just knock on the door, yeah sure people reject us a lot but it is so worth it when that one person talks to us and we are able to give them a Book of Mormon. Yeah, we might not teach them but someday in the future they could run into missionaries again. I love how that works.

On Tuesday we had an exchange with our Sister Training Leaders Sister Varble & Sister Webb. I went to East Brunswick with Sister Varble and Sister Webb came here to Amboy with my comp. I learned a ton from Sister Varble we taught 5 lessons and we had a really good time contacting people. It is always so interesting going and teaching lessons in English with English sisters. It is so different than in Spanish, the gospel is a little bit different in Spanish in a weird way. I am always so grateful to come back to my Hispanics. I love them. But I learned a lot about teaching from Sister Varble, I really enjoyed watching her teach and taking some of her techniques and putting them into my lessons. It was fun getting to know some of these Jersey people. We went to visit this older lady who was born and raised in New Jersey so she was a total Jersey girl, she had that accent and the sass, I loved it. She was having some health issues so she asked me to pray for her at the end of our visit so I did and I don't know where it came from, but I said one of the most sincere prayers I think I have said in a lesson and at the end she just thanked me over and over for such a beautiful prayer. It made me feel good to think that I helped her, I really liked visiting her. We then went to visit a really neat family from Haiti. They are converts and our zone leader actually baptized them. He always tells the story of how he found them. He was training and he and his companion had about 15 minutes to get home before curfew and he walked by this guy in a car and he got a prompting that he should go talk to him but he just walked past. He stopped then he walked back and this guy rolled down his window and said "I was wondering why you didn't come talk to me" then they taught him and he and his wife got baptized. It was cool to go and teach him and his wife and hear their perspective of the story. They had a special spirit in their home and they had special testimonies. We taught them about faith we had a really deep conversation with them about it and he just kept on nodding his head and saying "yes, I like it!" it was so cute. As a mission we are trying to contact 10 people a day and so at the end of the exchange day, it was about 815 and Sister Varble and I needed to do 2 more contacts, so she just goes, "hey do you want some ice cream?" So we went to McDonald's and contacted the two people at the window. hahahaha. But then when we got home we felt like we should go visit a former investigator who lived next door to them who just kind of disappeared. He let us in and we taught him and he said he wanted to start taking the lessons again. He also had this friend over who no one knew about, but his friends name was Alex and he was from Hungry. He had this think Hungarian accent and he didn't speak English very well, but when we got our Books of Mormon out his face lit up and he got a Book of Mormon out of his bag. We were so surprised because Sister Varble had never heard of him before. We don't know where he got a Book of Mormon, but he is very interested in it and he loves reading, but he just doesn't understand English very well. We went home and ordered him a Book of Mormon in Hungarian for him. It is so comforting to know that the Book of Mormon is in so many languages and we can get anyone a book in whatever language they need. We prayed that night and thanked God for the gift of tongues so we could have so many Books of Mormon available to us to give to his children.

The rest of the week was just the ordinary work in Perth Amboy. Work work work and eating some AWESOME food. On Saturday we had a fun activity for the Anniversary of the Relief society. Everyone came in their pioneer clothes and we had the first relief society meeting. It was fun. Then on Sunday we had the relief society presentation, it was very well done. We have a truly amazing relief society and I am so happy that I get to work with them on their visiting teaching. It has been a lot of fun. We went and did some visiting teaching last night and it was really fun just going out with some of the sisters and helping them befriend and serve one another.

Today we had a Sister Activity in Morristown. All of the Sister missionaries in the mission came, there is about 100 of us. The theme was shoes, so we got there, did some exercising then we painted our toe nails then had lunch then President and Sister Jeppson talked to us. It was so much fun being with all of the sisters. I'm so blessed to be in the New Jersey Morristown Mission. I love hearing president and Sister Jeppson talk, they are really great speakers. Sister Jeppson always says cute little poems and she just says cute things. She is very creative. She talked about how as women we all have a natural attraction to shoes, but we all wear our own shoes and we should be comfortable in our own shoes not wanting to wear someone else's. It was very cute and very inspiring. Then she and President Jeppson sang a song together like they do at every meeting. That is my favorite part of every meeting. President Jeppson gets his guitar out and he and his wife sing songs that they write. Sister Jeppson always changes the words to popular songs to things that fit the theme of what we are talking about and they are always cute. WE always laugh, that is one thing that I love about our mission, we laugh together A LOT! One thing that us sisters talk about whenever we are together is how much we all love the way that President Jeppson looks at his wife. They are a good example to us of how marriage should be. I am very thankful for all they do and really just for everyone who works so hard in our mission to do nice things for us. SO blessed!

Well, I think that's about it for now. We've got a good week to look forward to, we might be seeing some changes here in Perth Amboy soon. This is the 5th week of the transfer, so that means only 2 weeks left of this transfer... SO, I could be getting a new companion soon. It's gonna be fun! I love change!

Have a good week, love and miss you!

-Sister Clark
ALSO!! I forgot to include this in my letter. The coolest thing happened this week. I called sister Orton in West New York just to talk to her, she told me that the Desiderios (I don't know if you remember them: Less active family we were teaching, they hadn't gone to church in a couple of years. Pablo wanted to start coming back to church, he switched jobs to start coming to church, his wife didn't want anything to do with church but we promised him that if he started coming to church, his family would see it and they would come to church) ... The Desiderios, as in Pablo and his wife Amada have come to church every single Sunday this year.... It is such a huge miracle. My heart swelled with joy when I heard that. I was so excited! I am so so so happy for them and so so happy that I was able to help him come back to church and because of that his wife came back to church too. It is so much fun to get little updates on how my ward in West New York is doing. I ate lunch with Sister Orton and her comp Sister Ballard and they updated me on everyone. Everyone is doing great and all of the less actives that I was working on visiting are all back to church. I'm so happy about that! I miss that place!

Hay poder en el Libro de Mormon

Well familia, another week has come and gone. This week FLEW by. I don't even know what happened. Time is going by so fast, we are already half way through this transfer. Today is the start of the 4th week of the transfer. I don't want this transfer to end it has been so good! We are going to get a baptism if it is the last thing we do. THE ENEMY IS REAL! we have two investigators we have been teaching for a long time who are SO READY!! They are just impossible to dunk for some reason. Something always comes up! We're working on it though. I am not letting these two get away, I love them way to much. If they don't get baptized this transfer, they will FOR SURE the next transfer. I just want Sister Weinstock to be here for it. We think she'll probably leave next transfer, this is her fourth transfer here in Amboy.
 

Everyday I am loving Amboy more and more, I just love this branch and I love it here in a very different way that I loved West New York. I will always love WNY and it will always be a place really special to me, but I love this area in such a different way. I feel like I am finally to the good part of my mission. I know the language, I have teaching skills, I've finally just bloomed as a missionary. I'm not just going through the steps anymore, I'm working because I love working. Its not even work, its fun.
 

I LOVE New Jersey. I cant wait to bring you guys up here after my mission. It is such a different world compared to the west. My companion and I renamed New Jersey as "the pothole state" because we have seen a whole lot more pot holes than we've seen gardens. hahaha oh man I hate potholes. You cant even drive the speed limit here because they re so bad! Y'all wouldn't believe your eyes. As missionaries we always joke around about all of the weird New Jersey things that we are going to say when we come home. For example, I'll probably never use the word bus again, In New Jersey its called a wawa. It is so funny to hear people just talking about the wawa, especially in Spanish. They'll just be speaking Spanish then all of a sudden they throw the word wawa out there and it sounds so funny. "trabajo en nueva york y me voy por la wawa" I don't know. It sounds something like that. It makes me smile.
 

This month our monthly focus for the mission is on the Book of Mormon again. I am so excited. President Jeppson said that he wants all of us to have a Book of Mormon in our hands at all times and to be contacting AT LEAST 10 people a day and trying to use the BOM in all of our contacts. He promised us that if we do this the teaching pool will double for the whole mission. It is such a neat to have such a powerful promise from our mission President. This week we saw some HUGE blessings from this challenge and we also had some super super funny moments, some of those moments that I am always going to tell when people ask about my mission.
 

MISSION MILESTONE: I got the door slammed in my face for the first time on my mission. In the most literal sense. Slammed in my face. It was so awesome, I was so excited. Sister Weinstock and I were in this one neighborhood in Woodbridge trying to get our 10 contacts for the day we had 9 and we needed 1 more then we were going to head to an appointment. We walked up to this house and I lifted up my hand to knock on the door and right then it flies open and this lady is standing there and she screams, "YOU DON'T KNOCK ON THIS DOOR!!" then she slammed it... I didn't even have time to put my hand down. My companion and I just looked at each other then ran down the steps and ran down the street and just started laughing so hard. It was hilarious. We have no idea how she knew we were out there, we didn't even knock yet! She must have seen us coming from around the corner or something. hehehe.
 

Then right after that we were still just feeling giggly and we were walking back to the car and we saw a man walking toward us. We get excited when we see people walking on the street because in our area everyone is always inside and we don't really get any good street contacts. So we see him but I noticed that he was looking pretty ratty and he was walking very crookedly so I could tell he was drunk, so I said, "hey Sister Weinstock, he looks pretty drunk, I don't think we should talk to him" so she said yeah, ok lets just keep going to the car, then he got closer and closer and he was passing by us and Sister Weinstock just couldn't handle letting him go so she says to him, "Sir can we give you this card?" so he turns around and he smiles at us and says absolutely then he asks us where were from and all the regular stuff then we could tell he was VERY DRUNK. We were looking at each other trying to figure out how to say bye to him then he just says, "you two ladies are looking fine today, are you married?" I just gulped and looked at Sister W. and she looked at me and didn't know what to say, so before I could even think I just said "YES!" then he started walking towards us with his arms out like he was going to hug us and we both started backing up and he noticed so he just put his hand out and said "I just wanted a hand shake" so we shook his hands and took off. We took off without looking back and got in the car. We almost died laughing about how I told him that I was married. It was so bizarre. We had two really really bad contacts in a row within the same 5 minutes. It was so awesome and we got a really good laugh out of it.
 

We had a two miracle contacts the following two days though. For the first one, we were in Carteret and we were knocking an area that is a little bit sketchy and has a ton of apartments and smaller houses. Most of the Hispanics in our area live in the Carteret area, so this is a great place for us to contact and knock. We were knocking doors and we were on contact number 8 and we really wanted to get in a contact lesson. I got a feeling that we should go to this one door in this apartment complex. We go to the door and this lady lets us in. Her name was Lucy and she loves cats and she has really strong faith in God because she just recently beat cancer and loves learning about Jesus Christ and was excited to talk to us. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and we testified of how it has brought us closer to Christ. We could tell that she wanted one, so we gave her one and told her that it was free. She looked at us for a second and said "wow, are you sure this is for me?" and we said, yes, it is for you, we have more. Then looked up at us with these big tears in her eyes and said, "wow, thank you so much sisters, I am going to read it".
 

The second miracle contact was yesterday in the same town, Carteret but in a different area. We had never really been to this area before and we weren't sure what kind of people lived there but we decided to give it a try. We had about 20 minutes to our next appointment and we had already contacted about 7 which were all rejections so we decided that there was a lot of doors so we had better let the spirit tell us which doors to knock. We were staying on one side of the street so that we could remember which doors we had already knocked for when we came back in a couple of weeks. As we walked down the street I was looking at each door closely, trying to chose one, then I got this prompting that we should cross the street. I kept going a few more steps then I got it again but stronger. Right as I was about to open my mouth to ask if we could cross the street, my companion beat me to it. We had both felt the prompting super strong. We chose a door and no one answered. As we were standing at the door step, the neighbor walked outside to take her trash out. Before I could even think about it I was walking over to her. We talked to her and she was so kind. We introduced our message and she was very interested. We gave her a pamphlet about the restoration and explained a little bit about it. She asked us if we could come back and teach her about it. We told her we would be happy too. We whipped out our planners and before we even had the chance to ask her she gave us her phone number and asked us to call before we come over. We left and headed back to the car. We both knew that she was the reason we were both prompted to cross the street. I'm super excited to teach her next week.
 

Well, that's about all I've got time for this week! I love and miss you all! Have a good week!

Pictures!

I haven't been able to send pictures in such a long time so I forgot which ones I've already sent.

The day Jose got baptized. I was so happy for him and he is doing GREAT!

Me, Soccorro, Elder Vargas and Elder Larson. (Is it just me, or does Elder Larson kid of look like Eric?)

The Martes Family, super cool family. I loved teaching them.

I had some AWESOME food this week: a lady in our branch bought us these puposas. One of the best puposas I've ever had.

I got really sick this week and somehow our neighbor ton found out.  We got home that night and as we were kneeling down for prayer, our phone went off. We had a text from her that said "hey, I heard Sister Clark wasn't feeling very well, so I made her some soup. You can come over and get it." So we went over and she had 4 huge containers full of her homemade chicken alphabet soup. It was so good. She takes such good care of me!

Me and our old branch mission leader, Ezekial, at his farewell. He just left for his mission in Mexico this week. He's going to do awesome!

Hermana Angel and me.

 

 The church all decorated for the Valentine's Day dance. Such a fun activity and it was really fun to decorate for it.

 

Us mixing the drinks!

I <3 Perth Amboy!

Sharon and me last week at our ice cream family home evening. Sharon is one of the leaders in the Relief Society Presidency and she's only a year older than me! Love her, she's awesome.

Another Pretty Good Week



The sisters in my zone with the one mascot "Cleatus."

There wasn't anything that happened that was too out of the ordinary this week. Just regular missionary work. Knocking doors, teaching lessons, driving around Perth Amboy all that fun stuff. BUT, last Monday our President issued the challenge to have at least 10 contacts per day and he promised us that if our mission started doing that we would all be blessed with people to teach. So, we took that commitment and promise pretty seriously. I LOVED it. In West New York we would contact people, but only when we felt impressed too or something like that, so we weren't really trying to just go around contacting people, so really up until now in my mission I haven't really set a goal for myself about how many people to contact a day so I really just haven't been focusing on contacting people. Because of this challenge though, we have been putting specific time and specific places to knock. Just to knock not to go try anyone in specific and we have seen such great blessings from it. We have been talking to so many people and about their lives and about Jesus Christ and we have found so many ways to serve people. I have come to realize that its not just missionary work, but it's life. This is how life should be. We should always be making time for people and we should be telling God exactly what we are going to be doing every day and where we are going to be and asking Him to put them in our paths. If we do that and we are listening for the promptings of the spirit, we can be of great help to people.

I was reading in preach my gospel this morning in the first chapter "my purpose" underneath where it says "a successful missionaries" - It said that a successful missionary is one who shows kindness to everybody and offers their service to everybody whether they accept your message or not. I have come to realize how true that is. IT is not about whether or not they accept our message, it is about doing what Jesus Christ would do and loving them the way Jesus Christ would love them if he were there talking to them. Soooo, I guess that is the big thing that I learned this week... That I actually love knocking doors. At the beginning of my mission I hated contacting and knocking doors, but now I love it. It's not about me, its about them.

A fun lesson that we are doing tonight. I'm excited.

We started teaching our new investigator that we found last Sunday night at 8 o'clock pm. Her name is Lucia and she is from Mexico. She is the SWEETEST woman. It was interesting, we scheduled her appointment at a bad time for us and we really wanted to change it for an hour earlier so that we could make it somewhere else at the time that we scheduled her for, so we kept trying to call her to change the appointment but she wouldn't answer. We just decided to go over an hour earlier anyways because new investigators usually never remember their appointment times. So we went an hour earlier and she actually remembered. She opened the door and said, "didn't you sisters tell me you were going to come at 4?" Sister W and I just looked at each other and we wanted to crack up. The one time that we change an appointment with a new investigator and think she won't remember, she actually remembered. Oh well, we all just laughed and she welcomed us in.

We had a really powerful lesson with her. She listens very intently to what we are saying and she tries really hard to understand her. We ask her a lot of questions to check to see if she understands and she always answers back perfectly and she understands what we have taught her. We went back two days later and taught her the restoration and about the Book of Mormon. She was so excited and she felt the spirit. We asked her if she wanted to know for her self if Joseph Smith was a prophet and if the Book of Mormon was true. She said she did and we committed her to read and pray. She is so so awesome. I'm excited to see her progress. We hope to put her on date for baptism soon.

Modesto and Celenia are both doing VERY WELL. We resolved Celenia's concerns and she fasted last Sunday to get a baptismal date. She came to church and I was so happy. I have never been so happy to see someone at church. She is doing very well. Modesto still has his baptismal date and is working towards getting baptized this month. I love them both so much and I have loved seeing these changes take place in their lives. Its truly amazing.

Well, I'm out of time on this computer, but I love you all and thank you for your prayers and support. Have a good week!

-Sister Clark

Paula's family. Cutest kids ever. They made cookies.