Hey everyone,                                                                                              July 29, 2013

First off, Happy Birthday Hannah!!! I hope you have a fantastic day. I will have to celebrate for you here in Ghana. It is a tradition here to buy somebody a small gift for their birthday but before you give it to them you pour a cup of water on them so watch out for your 25th birthday!

Well, just another week in paradise for me. We spent one day in the apartment because my companion was sick and then another day we were on exchanges and I came back early because I was sick.

This week was pretty normal, President Hill bought all the apartments microwaves for us to use. It was pretty exciting until we realized that we really don't have anything to microwave.  My companion said he used a microwave back home to grill chicken in.  I'm thinking I'll try that sometime. We may pool some of our money to buy another chicken to grill it. Maybe I can use some Soy Sauce to marinate it or something. We'll see how creative I get. Usually we don't do a whole lot of cooking, just the normal rice or spaghetti with stew. This week I'll be making bean stew this week though.

Saturday we held a baptismal service for the first time in Oda 2nd Branch. We baptized 2 into our branch and 1 into the other branch. One of the people is a sweet man. He is 68 years old. He is one of my favorites because he really has a testimony.  After the service he asked if he could talk for a few minutes and he basically just bore his testimony to everyone and thanked us (the missionaries) for being so patient with him and answering all of his questions and working with him. He is a really sweet guy. It was a really powerful moment.

Our branch is small now.  Ours starts at 8:30 and the other branch starts at 11.  I had the opportunity to do the doors for our branch during the sacrament like the teachers do and then my companion and I blessed the sacrament in the other branch too.  I was really happy to be able to bless the sacrament again; it has been a long time.  Our branch only had 3 Aaronic Priesthood members at church but we have a lot of elders so we make it work.

The work goes on here though.

That’s about it from my end of the world. Keep on keepin on.

Love,
Elder Clark

                                                                The adventures continue

July 22

Hey Everyone!                                                                  

Man, what a crazy week! Things are going well over here. My companion and I are getting things established and working on getting the work going in our new area. The work is picking up. We are finding some  good people to teach and teaching some powerful lessons.  Man we had some good days.
Monday was the normal P-day and we did our washing for a few hours. The best part was Family Home evening. We usually go to a the home of a man in the Ward . He is a great guy. He was the branch president for 8 years then in the district presidency for 10 years. He has us over every week. For the lesson he wrote things down on paper for each person to do. Some people had tell a joke or something.  Mine was to sing my favorite hymn haha. I ended up singing a solo of Be Still My Soul and nobodies ears were bleeding so I guess it wasn't too bad.

 

Tuesday we had some really powerful lessons with some people I contacted. We went to an appointment but the people had gone out and we were about to leave and I wanted to go and contact the neighbors in the room next door. We did and ended up teaching about a 2 hour lesson to one woman and her brother about the Book of Mormon. The spirit was so strong in that lesson. After we finished we road our bikes out to the main path and we both just stopped and looked at each other for a few minutes and just took it in.  It was fantastic.  We have seen them one other time, I don't know if anything big will come from the lesson anytime soon but we planted the seed. Sometimes it just takes time for seeds to grow into flowers. I guess you can tell I'm pretty excited about it if I'm getting poetic like that haha.

Thursday one of Elder D’s investigators gave us a chicken. That was pretty exciting. Friday morning we butchered it.  It was my first time butchering a chicken.  It was an adventure!  Anyway we are having a member of the branch cook it for us nicely so we will get it today.

Sunday President Hill came to the area.  He split our branch which is super good. We are really excited.  I know the new branch president pretty well and he is a serious man so we will get a lot of work done with him.  I can't wait for all the changes that are going to be happening soon.  President Hill challenged us to set our eyes of a goal of building a stake in Oda.  He said he already picked out places he can have another chapel built. We have our work cut out for us but I know if the members are willing we can do it.  I was just excited to be here for the split. The work here is incredible!

I think it was Thursday night I had a pretty good crash on my bike. We were all riding fast and we went into this turn and all the roads are dirt so we all love to lock up the back tire and drift in the turns.  So that is what I did and then I shifted and the chain came off the gears and got tangled in the frame and the pedals locked up and I hit the ground pretty hard.  I've got some pretty nice cuts on my arm and leg.  I did rip a small hole in my pants, sorry Mom haha. I think my recent convert  can mend them for me though. We'll see.

Well this week was an incredible week of memories and moments. Thanks for the emails, sorry it’s pretty boring back home. You're always welcome to come to Ghana! It's not even very hot here right now.  I don't sweat tons.  It’s the cool season now so it’s pretty nice. It’s actually cooler here than it is in Idaho from the sounds of it and it’s not humid at all. It’s like the spring in Idaho.    I love you all, have a great week!

Love,

Elder Clark

PS Members make all the difference in the world in missionary work, if you meet somebody, don't be afraid to open your mouth, we're all brothers and sisters down here :)

July 17, 2013

Hey everyone,                                                                                July 17, 2013

We are starting to get more rain.  We had a few days spoiled last week because of the rain.  It sucks but there's not much you can do about it.  My companion and I had a good week although the work is going a little rough lately.  Opening a new area isn't easy.  We went to a 2 new towns that are in our area. They are just as big if not bigger than Oda so we have a ton of work to do. We had some really sweet guys that we met. We were going to Achaise yesterday and 2 guys in a tro tro picked us up and gave us a free ride. That doesn't happen very often. They were sweet guys.  We gave them Plan of Salvation pamphlets and they said they would come to church this week.    They let me be the "mate." He's the guy the open and closes the door and collects money from the passengers.  It was pretty fun. There were only 2 passengers, me and Elder A so no money was collected but it was pretty cool. We actually had 2 free rides yesterday which was awesome. We went to Achiase to meet J's family. If you remember J's is the first man I baptized. We have been promising to come and meet his family for 3 months and it was so good to finally do it. He was so happy to have us come out and meet his family. I have met his daughter at church but his wife does not come to church with him so we met her the first time.  It was really good.  He was really happy I could tell.

 

We met a really sweet woman in another town in our area, Swedro. It was crazy how we met her. My companion was prompted to contact this shop on the side of the road. While they were talking we found out that they knew a member. They lead us to her place. We never would have found her. She owns a bar way off the road, somewhere we never would have gone too before. It was so crazy.   In January she fell and broke her leg (she’s like 70 or something) and she couldn't come to church.  She walked to church every week, its several miles. She said that since she broke her leg nobody has visited or called her and that she was so happy for us to come. I was so touched, I wanted to cry.  All of this was in Twi so all I could do was smile but she knew that I cared.  She said something I will never forget.  She said that  "It's not the members that she worships at church and that when she is able she will be walking to church again." Man, the faith of that woman. It was awesome to meet her.

 

That was pretty much the highlight of my week. It made a hard week good. Anyway, I love you all, I'm going to send this now because it is raining and the power could go at any moment.

 

Love,
Elder Clark

Hello All,                                                                                        July 8, 2013

 

Is it July already? Where does the time go? I celebrated the 4th by buying some cookies and Orange soda haha. Not the typical bbq and fireworks that we're used to but it was fun.

 

Well, this week was pretty good. We had zone training again on Saturday with the new president.  He seems like a really good guy.  He's very serious about the work and has some really good ideas to help the work go forward here.  We had interviews with him so he could meet us one on one and it was really good. I like him a lot.  I look forward to serving under him too.

 

Other then that the week was pretty normal I guess. We just do finding all the time. This next week we are going to be traveling to the farther areas of our area.  In the map there was an arrow to Swedro in our area and past that is a place called Awisa and then past that is another town that is all part of our area. That is where we are going to start focusing on. The teaching is coming along.  We did find this really cool family that is fun to teach. We have only been really teaching the wife but we met the husband this week. They are a sweet family. We also had a man just come to church on Sunday which was awesome. We we're expecting any investigators to come to church but we ended up having 2 come that we didn't know. That was sweet because I was fasting for investigators to come to church.  We are trying to focus on finding the members and working with them to find and get referrals but so far our efforts haven't found success. One cool thing I did this week was I taught a 100 year old woman this week. That was pretty sweet. She is the oldest person I've ever met.

 

This week I tried 2 new foods. One was Ken-Kay.  It's basically the same this as banku but it’s cooked a little differently.  I ended up eating quite a bit of it though because I ate Elder C’s for him. He's new from the MTC last week and couldn't finish it. I also tried a Muslim food called Kosi.  It tastes just like chicken nuggets. I love it haha.

 

Last night I got into a water fight with Elder D. and Elder C. We started using the squirt bottles they we use for ironing and then I started filling cups with water and chasing them around.  It was a good time.  We try to have fun in our apartment but we're always super busy.

 

As always thanks for the love and support. Sounds like a fun time with everyone back at home for a couple of weeks.

 

Love,

Elder Clark

July 1, 2013

Hey Everyone,                                                                         July 1, 2013

I experienced a little bit of America on Wednesday.

Wednesday was transfer day. I knew I was getting transferred because my companion was training. Since I was transferred I had to go to Accra to pick up my new companion.  We got a new senior couple. They stay in Asamankese, it’s on the way to Accra.  So we called them and decided that they would meet us there and carry Elder M’s luggage to Accra and we could ride in the pickup with them (a Ranger, made me miss the truck ).  Riding with them was SO nice.  Air conditioning... it was nice. We got their early and decided that we would go to KFC.  It was just like in America except the KFC is 3 stories.  I spent 19 cedis and got a chicken sandwich, 2 pieces of chick, fries and a drink.  It was SO good. I had tears of happiness. Totally worth the 19 cedis.  As it turns out I am still in Oda. I got a Ghanaian companion.  We are opening a new area, Oda 3.  I had no idea it was so hard to open an area!  All we do is finding, finding, finding, I love it but I do miss teaching lessons. We have found some pretty sweet families.  I love my new companion, he can speak the language so we can teach a lot more people but. He's really good about it though because he stops and explains what is going on and asks if I have anything to say.   We have 2 new missionaries in the apartment.  Elder C. and  Elder G. from Idaho Falls. They are both really good guys. I feel so old on mission compared to them though. The new mission home address is P.O. Box 12741 Accra North Ghana. Please send that out.

This week was really good. The 2 brothers did end up getting baptized. We baptized 2 girls too.  My companion and I went to meet her and her family. They are so sweet. I love them.

This morning we played soccer with the Branch. They play this other church, New Testament. They have played 4 times before this morning. The first 2 it was a draw. The 3rd was 5 to 1 them and the 4th was 8 to 6 them. We came to win today but alas, we failed. The final score was 4 to 2 them.  I played for one of the 40 minute halves as left defender; I was really impressed with how I did actually.  I wasn't even tired after the 40 minute half.  I was sweaty but smiling.  I did pretty well if I do say so myself against all Africans who were born with a soccer ball.  I proved myself pretty well.  I was the only white to play in the whole game too.   It was really sad that we lost but I had a ton of fun and was smiling.

We haven't had any really any crazy adventures this week.  My companion and I just ride our bikes all day trying to learn our new area.   I love the area.  

Thanks for the prayers and support, it really does help.

Love,

Elder Clark

June 24, 2013

Hey everyone,                                                                                                  June 24, 2013

 
Well I just finished my letter to you and the computer decided to delete it.  This last week was awesome.  The baptism didn't end up happening.  One of the brothers was in Accra when the Zone Leader came to do the interview so we pushed the baptism until this Friday.  This Wednesday is transfer and my companion is training so I knew since last Tuesday that I would be getting a new companion.  I, thankfully, am not training.  I did not feel ready to train yet.   We are opening Oda 3 so I won't be leaving Oda just yet.  I will be leaving my area though so I won't be able to see any of my investigators anymore which is a bummer.    We are really blessed in Oda with a nice apartment.
 
 
This week was great, we taught a lot of people but we need to do more finding.   Last Tuesday my companion went to Accra for trainer’s council so I was on splits.  We ended up spending part of the day setting up the new room which will be my room.  Some people from the mission came and dropped off all the pieces so we had to put it together.  Today we are going to see the Big Tree.  It is the biggest tree in West Africa.  I'm pretty excited to see it.  I'm kind of expecting to see a tree like the one in that movie Avatar if you remember it but I know it won't be like that.  Wednesday I get to travel to Accra to meet my new companion.   We are planning on stopping at Shoprite on the way there to buy some good old American food like chocolate doughnuts haha.  I'm pretty excited for that. 

 As always I love you all, thank you for the prayers and support.
 
Love,
 
Elder Clark

June 17, 2013

Hey everyone,                                                                                              June 17, 2013

First off: Happy Father's Day

Hmm, what is new in Ghana? Well we have these goats that love to come and run into our compound.  This week Elder M. hit his one year mark so he made a ton of food. We had boiled egg, fried chicken, fufu with soup, and Jal-of-rice.  I LOVE jal-of-rice.  It may be my favorite food in Ghana. Oh we also found a place that sells chocolate cake! So he bought 4 cakes a little smaller them Mom's meatloaf tins. It was SO good. I love chocolate but I paid for it.  You can't suddenly go back to that much sugar. Anyway jal of rice is super good and it’s something I'll be able to make in the US with what we have there.  It’s basically rice cooked in a tomato stew.  It's really good.

This week was very good. We rode in a tro tro for an hour Sunday morning to get to Asamankese for District Conference.  We had 5 investigators come to Asamankese for church!!!  It was awesome! 2 of them are getting baptized this week. They're really good guys. I can't wait for them to get baptized!!

 

Tuesday was zone training so we also went to Kade this week. We had 24 hour splits with the zone leaders too so my companion went to their apartment in Asamankese.  It was super fun.   

Speaking of water, this week the water pump in the well broke. So we didn't have water for most of the week. A week of showering from a bucket.  The worst was cooking, we didn't have water to cook with so we would have to go and buy water and carry it back to the apartment.  It was a fun adventure.

Love,

Elder Clark

June 10, 2013

Hey everyone!                                                                                June 10, 2013

What a crazy week! Things are going very well. We are preparing to have another set of missionaries come here are transfer which will be good. That being the case my companion has been busy because he is getting the area ready to split.  This next week is District Conference so we have to travel early Sunday morning to Asamankese. The mission is splitting in 2 weeks which is crazy that it’s already been that long. It’s busy here in Africa.

This week was the best.  It was my best Sunday on my mission. We had 6 investigators come to church yesterday and they're pretty serious. 3 of them are the kids of a family we are teaching. The Father lives out of town but he just came here yesterday so we were able to teach him and he said "I've already been baptized but can I be baptized again?" We said yes.   It was fantastic!  If I get transferred and don't get to be here for the baptism I'll be so bummed!  The kids were awesome at church, they're great kids and all of them are old enough to be baptized.  Another investigator was a 15 year old boy of a family we've been teaching. He said he really likes the church and what we do.

We're teaching one man, we visited him 3 times this week. One night we just stopped by to teach him but the ECG took light so we just gave him a Book of Mormon and asked him to read it. The next morning we stopped by and he had read the introduction and part of the first couple of pages! Man, he is such a sweet man.  We have some really sweet investigators which will make it hard to leave if I get transferred but I don't think I will.

Yesterday was a crazy crazy rain storm. We were teaching that man and his family and it started raining so we ended the lesson so we could try and get home before it came. We made it to the street when the down fall came.  It was literally 10 times more water than our shower puts out. We had to call a taxi and then we had to run the 50 feet from the road to our apartment. I was soaked! The dirt path had turned into a river that was several inches deep. It was so crazy.  It was raining cats and dogs.  It was the most rain I've ever seen in my life.  Easily as much rain as Idaho gets in a year. At that point umbrellas don't do anything hahaha.

I saw Italy made it into the confederation cup this year, that’s pretty sweet. We might be able to watch them play some. The family of that boy that came to church always has us over for food and likes to watch football games.  When world cup comes... it’s going to be crazy when Ghana plays. I may need to buy a USA jersey... I saw the US beat Germany in DC a couple of weeks ago, awesome! We should do pretty well in the next world cup.

Well, that’s pretty much it, have a great week. I love all of you.

Love,

Elder Clark

Hello everyone,                                                                                     June 3-Is it June already???
 
How's life?  I am trying to take more pictures so I can always remember the great times I'm having here in Ghana.
 
Welcome to June, the rainy season.  It hit this week on Tuesday or Wednesday.  It has rained every day, real rain, not this Idaho rain.  If you've seen the Top Gear where they go to Vietnam and they are
riding up that mountain in the rain, it's a lot like that.  It rains so hard that you can't go outside.  It rains like crazy.  We got stuck at investigators shops and houses because of the rain and sometimes we can't really leave the apartment.  We were out on Wednesday and we wanted to go see somebody before lunch and on our way it started raining.  We were soaked.  I had my umbrella out but there not much you can do about it.  I felt like Forrest Gump, "The rain came from above, the side, there was ever rain coming from the ground."  I hope you get the reference.  We have fun and take rain baths though.  They usually end up in water fights.  We have a lot of fun in our apartment.  With the rain, comes the coolest lightning storm.  They are HUGE!  You've never seen lightning like the lightning we get over here.  It's incredible.  We had one storm that was right overhead and it was so loud.  You see the flash then it sounded like artillery was landing outside the apartment.  Everything was rattling like there was an earthquake.  It was incredible.  Because it is the rainy season it is also much "cooler."  It’s probably still 80 plus degrees but it feels so much cooler.  It actually gets cold here.  I thought I wouldn't get cold for 2 years but I have.  The other night I even got out a second sheet because I thought I might need it.  I didn't but still.  It's pretty much fantastic.
 
This last week was crazy, we had Zone Conference with Koforidua Zone. We had to wake up at 3 and ride a tro tro for 4 hours to get there. We didn't get back until 8 that night.  It was great to go there.
Only one of the guys from my MTC is in that zone but it was good to see him again.  The APs taught then President after lunch.  I love listening to the President teach.  He talked about the new mission a lot.  We'll see which mission I'll be in a couple of weeks.  I got the package this week with the mashed potatoes and cheese mix.  I LOVE it.  I really love the conference talks though.
They are my favorite part of the package.  I've only had the time to read the first 3 talks of the Saturday morning session but they are so good.  Elder Packers talk is so good.  It kind of sounded like a good
bye talk to me though with that poem.  Like how President Hinckley’s last talk was.
 
We had some great lessons this week.  We are teaching these 2 brother.  They are awesome.  They've come to church every week since we started teaching them.  They love the gospel, I can't wait until they are baptized, they will be strong members.  We also started teaching another man.  He's awesome. We've only taught him once but he loves to learn.  He’s the type of investigator that loves to ask questions about what we're teaching which is the best.  It makes the lessons so much better!  I also had the worst lesson of my mission so far.  We were teaching some women about prophets and they were getting angry that we were saying there are prophets on the earth again so we were trying to end the lesson and I bore my testimony about prophets and the church and one of the looked at me straight in the eyes and told me to never say that again.   It made me want to cry.
 
My companion and I have fun together.  He came from the city he likes to ride bikes (I don't because Oda is like Hillsdale) we race a lot. He usually wins but I give it my best shot.  One time I went to pass a
car that was going through the pot holes and as I went around the side I saw these 2 huge pot hole right next to each other with only a narrow strip of road going perpendicular to me.  I slammed on the brakes and I went sideways and pretty much drifted in between the pot holes.  It was pretty crazy.  You had to be there.  He showed me these biscuits that he likes to buy.  We put them in a bowl and pour some
powdered milk and sugar on it to eat.  Boom, grammies-n-milk in Ghana. Who knew?  He knows how to make a lot of the traditional food so he is going to teach me.  I'm excited to learn how to make Red Red!
 
A lot is happening.  We got our new branch president, he was the Elders Quorum president before and I really like him.  He'll do a great job.  The branch is going to be split in a couple of weeks and we are going to get 2 more missionaries in our apartment soon.  Life is amazing over here.  I love you all, have a great week!
 
Love,
 
Elder Clark

Hey everyone!                                                                                                   May 27, 2013

 We are having lots of light troubles now because of some troubles up at the dam I hear. We're back to how it was right before I came, 12 hours on 12 hours off.  I pray that it’s on during the night.  Sunday night it was off until 1 in the morning.  I woke up when the power came back on and my sheets were wet from my sweat.  The fans we have make a huge difference.  I heard the President  requested generators for the bush apartments. We are all praying that that gets approved. It would be the best thing ever!

I hope you guys get to Italy safely and have a fun time. Take lots of pictures and eat lots of good food.  Eat lots of ice cream.  I actually got an ice cream cone here in Oda last week. It was about 3 inches tall and had a total of about 1 spoonful of ice cream. It was super good and only 15 cents so you get what you pay for.

Tomorrow we are traveling to Koforego for Zone Conference.  We have to get up at 3 tomorrow morning to ride a tro tro for 4 or 5 hours to get there.  We've also heard that there’s some flooding on the roads so hopefully we can actually make it there.  I'm excited though, I heard that they sell this really good chocolate bread there so hopefully I can get some.   

This last week went really well. We had another baptismal service on Saturday.  

Anyway the work is going forward. We contacted these two men, they are older and they love learning.  We contacted them last week and taught them the whole first lesson which they accepted and they came to church on Sunday and we taught them the 3rd lesson. They are really good guys. We contact lots of people. My companion talks to just about everyone so we meet lots of people. It’s interesting being able to see how different my 2 companions are from each other. Elder E challenges everyone to be baptized which is really good.

Today Elder M got to see his father. His dad works for the church and is doing some program in Ghana so he came here and came to Oda to visit him today.   It was cool to see them be able to hang out and talk for a little bit.  I tasted jello from it for the first time in almost 10 years and guess what? I loved it.  (Don't tell Byron ;)   I like pudding too.  I bought a can of custard powder that you can make.  It's just like pudding but it’s not flavored, you have to add your own sugar.  I like to eat it while it’s warm with Tea bread.

That's pretty much it from my side of the world.  I love you all, be safe and have fun!

Love,

Elder Clark