Well didn't get to have dinner with the Otts but we rescheduled for
this Wednesday
so fingers crossed! We're going to make playing cards but with the ten
commandments and go in and play spoons or something with them after
dinner. I hope we can teach their kids! It was kind of a slow week. We
had to push back Tiffany's baptism date to
March 1st
because she needs to figure out what she's going to do with her fiance.
She's super funny though. Since we've taught her the law of chastity
she says she sees that word everywhere, like it's taunting her haha. And
then we were showing her
mormonchannel.org
and the first video on the home page is the parable of the ten virgins
and she was like oh my gosh that would be there. She's hilarious. We
watched the Prophet of the Restoration with her and she had so many
questions and she was like I know this is all true. She's just the best!
We've been getting a lot of media referrals but none of them ever
come to be anything. We got 2 this week and they both had the same
address. Different names and different phone numbers but the same
address. And we realized that a previous referral had the phone number
of the media referral we got this week! So somebody in Salt Lake is not
doing their job right because the information is all messed up. Anyway
we had this referral for this guy named Glen. He's in a war with the
city of Huber Heights. It's lasted 25 years! They just give him random
tickets all the time and they convicted him of 37 felonies! None of them
were violent or immoral they were just stupid and the judge said if he
pleads guilty he won't do any jail time. I'm not really sure why the
police department hates him so much. He says he wakes up in the middle
of night thinking of ways to get back at them haha and he's suing them
for $10 million. His stories are so great. And he has 5 cats. Which, by
the way, I think I might be allergic.
We had dinner with a less active family, who are the coolest people
on the planet. So nice and they're all super crafty and artistic. You
should see some of the paintings they have in their house. That they've
all painted! And they have like a dungeons and dragons lair in their
basement with a big table with a map on it and little figures and actual
battle axes and stuff. It's so sweet. AND the dad hand paints all the
little figures. They're no more than 2 inches tall and he paints them
and puts them together. And he's obsessed with cats. He was just showing
us cat memes all throughout dinner. They're just the funniest people
and we're hoping we can get them reactivated.
We're going to start riding the bus! We got the schedule and
everything. I'm so excited. So next week I'll have some pretty good
stories I hope. We had quite a bit of success at the end of the week
finding some potentials. Our whole Saturday
was full of appointments. That's never happened to me before!
Unfortunately, nobody was home for their appointments and we actually
got members there. We did have dinner with Mariola and Joel though on Friday
and we taught them the restoration and read the Book of Mormon with
them and they really liked the Book of Mormon! They're going to keep
reading it! One day they'll join the church I just know it.
We went to Brian and Angie's and Matt and Jill's last night
during the super bowl hours because people in Ohio LOVE their football.
Really, the superbowl should be a national holiday or a state holiday
or something in Ohio because it's just not productive to go out and see
people when a football game is on. They get really ornery. We invited
Matt and Jill to the Valentine's dance the ward is having and they
seemed pretty excited about it. Brian and Angie had their daughter and
son in law there so we got to meet more of their family. Basically we're
just building relationships with these people and Brian and Angie are
like my adopted parents here. Of course both of them had the game on so
Sister Loder got to see how bad Denver was losing. She was pretty upset.
But we didn't really pay too much attention to the game because Brian
always asks us lots of questions about the church when we're there. And
he tells everybody about us so a lot more people know who we are! It's
so great!
It was a whopping 48 degrees on Saturday.
I didn't even need a coat! Unfortunately it all froze overnight and the
streets were a sheet of ice but we survived. I think it's finally going
to start warming up. Hopefully no more negative degree weather. Also I
just really love the people here.
Love you!
Sister Clark
Well my week was good. Hard, but good. We had our mission winter Olympics on Monday
and I got to see Sister Hicken! And Sister Tueller gave me some
sweaters haha it was really nice! We decided to ride the bus this week
as a new way of finding. So Tuesday
we set out to do just that. One problem. There's two stops: one for the
south bus and one for the north bus. We were standing at the wrong sign
and watched the bus drive past us. Good thing our car was just right
there. So the whole bus thing didn't work out too well that day. But we
did some 2-2-5ing and found a few potentials! In our, what we call,
"dead zone". There was a house that had a chalkboard by the door to
write messages so we drew the plan of salvation! Went back a couple of
days later and it was all erased and the chalk was gone haha. Oh well!
Gotta get creative! So Tuesday
night the sister training leaders called us to inform us that they were
coming to our area for surprise exchanges. Sweet. Good thing it dumped
snow that night so all we had planned was to shovel snow. So Sister
Buhler and I set out to find some driveways and this one lady asked us
to do hers! She wanted to give us money but we said if she just gives us
10 minutes of her time that will be enough. She had a lot of great
religious questions and she accepted everything we told her! Funny thing
is I knocked on her door about 3 months ago and she was totally rude.
Funny how service softens hearts! People just really don't like you on
their doorstep. And Sister Loder found an awesome family shoveling snow
as well!
Thursday we
decided to try the bus again. Success! It's expensive, though. So
don't know how often we're going to do it. We rode again on Friday
and I ran into a former investigator! She said we need to come back!
And we found two people that met with missionaries before and one almost
got baptized. The only problem is they both live in Dayton. That's the
downside of riding the bus since the route goes out of the mission we
meet a lot of people out of the mission. Funny story about the bus. I'm
always paranoid about getting off at the wrong stop because we don't
want to walk forever to get back to our car. Well we got off a few stops
early and we forgot where we parked the car since we caught the bus in a
neighborhood. We walked around for 45 minutes looking for our car! We
were so cold and poor Sister Loder lost the feeling in her toes. So our
ward mission leader came to rescue us and then they took us to dinner.
But we were thawing basically for the rest of the night.
Saturday we had a
great lesson with Melinda, the one who we were afraid got offended at
church, and she's totally fine! I'm pretty sure she has a testimony of
the church and she wants to keep meeting with us! She thinks her husband
is done, though. But he was glad that we kept reaching out to her
because apparently that means we're real missionaries and we don't give
up that easily haha he's a funny guy.
We had dinner last night
with a family and the wife knows the Walkers! Her sister is married to
Owen Jr.? And she was roommates with Candace McCain her senior year at
BYU. Small world. We also found a part member family yesterday.
Just knocked on their door randomly. Most days are really hard and
pretty slow but there's always one little miracle we get out of each day
and I think it's Heavenly Father's way of keeping us going.
Love you!
Sister Clark
