What a truly fantastic week for America as we won the biggest rivalry match in the World Cup.  It was a suspenseful night for me.  We aren't allowed to watch the games and the game was on at 10pm anyway but the guy in the house next to us was watching and it was loud so I could hear from my bed pretty well.  it was pretty sweet.  We finished planning and I turned on my ipod and turned on the national anthem a little before 10.  Elder V. and I just stood with our hands on our hearts and then not even 30 seconds after it finished we hear through the window "Hey! The USA scored us!" It was a fantastic night.  He closed the windows around half time so I was in the dark but then I heard the world go crazy and I knew they scored and I didn't know we scored again until I had to pee and then I heard and man I started jumping and yelling and hooting and hollering.  What a blessing, I really didn't want to be in Ghana if we lost.  All the grief we have been getting since January when it was announced and now beautiful silence.  It's nice.  

Well, we chose to postpone the baptism until next week.  K. is a really sweet guy who is preparing for the same day, the 5th.  Saturday we did have a baptism though. One is this old woman that is an absolute hoot. She's got a great heart.  After the baptism she comes up to me and says "Elder Clark, why didn't you baptize me?  I wanted you to do it."  I was touched, made me feel really good.

We had a zone activity this morning and played soccer.  That was also fun.  Now I'm pretty tired.  

Really don't have much to say about the week.  Love you all!

Elder Clark

Happy Father's day!  Sorry I didn't know it was Father's day until yesterday when people started wishing me happy father’s day.  Sounds like it was a good one!  Don't worry, I was with primary yesterday so I was up singing the song with them, they do it during the 3rd hour so I got to go and sing to all the fathers the father’s day song.  It's been a long time since I've done that. Great day!

Well, just like that June is half over.  Time is really starting to pick up.  This week was pretty crazy.  The world cup is full swing.  The big game is tonight.  We have a little bit of a hard time teaching in the afternoon when the games are on but we do the best we can.  We have 4 Americans in the district and we got US jerseys that we've been wearing all day today.   We were getting some looks but I've had people chasing me with machetes before so it should be alright.  We're gonna win tonight.  I can't wait either.  

We went to a park to play some basketball and ended up playing and soccer game US vs Africa and we WON.  I haven't had adrenaline like that in so long it felt so good.  None of us have really played before and all these guys have played since before they could walk and we didn't just win but we smashed them 5-1.  Good times, I'll remember this day forever.

Last week was pretty good.  We didn't have a whole lot of people come to Church today because the games for the world cup play at 1am and times like that so people are like yeah, we watched the game and slept through church.   Our man is looking set to be baptized next week on the 28th.  That's pretty exciting.  

We got 2 new missionaries this week.  One from Nigeria and one from South Africa.  Its good to have the district equalized.  

We met this really cool Nigerian this week.  We were contacting this one street and guess what, the last house on the left that we contacted.  Actually it was a compound and we went in a knocked on one door and got rejected then he walked out of another door and invited us over to sit down.  Had a nice lesson.  Went back 2 days later and invited him to be baptized and then he came to Church on Sunday.  God has the best timing.  

That's about it though.  

Love you all, Have the great week!

Elder Clark   

June 9 2014

June is basically half over.  This week is going to be super busy preparing some awesome investigators for baptism next 2 weeks.  Hopefully we’ll get there.  They are 2 sweet guys.  One is a referral from a recent convert, his son.  He is so cool.  We had some really powerful lessons.  The other is a guy who had been coming to church for a month before I came and the missionaries had done nothing about it.  Crazy but we met him and he should be baptized.  He's super cool.  We will be pretty busy with that but I love being busy.  Last week was one of the hardest working weeks I have had yet.  We are really trying to build this area and it’s a little tough but we're gettin there.  

Highlight of the week was Thursday.  It rained all day.  Literally all day.  It didn't stop at all.  It a little rough but me I'm always wet with sweat anyway so it made no difference to me but people just didn't want anything.  The only upside is that we were able to catch some people who couldn't go anywhere and had them into a lessons.  Best part was in the evening.  It was raining pretty good so I was letting us hide under a little tin roof.  It what right on this rough, rough dirt road and this little taxi starts going up in and gets stuck.  The little guy didn't stand a chance.  I'm not one to stand around so I ran over and pushed in out and for some reason the guy thought he could make it and kept trying and I kept pushing him out.  Finally I told him to stop and he left.  But another came so back out into the knee deep water to push him out.  Happened several times.  The second was the best.  That driver was so sincerely grateful.  He said anywhere I wanted to go he would take me there.  I just told him to come to church on Sunday.  I really hoped that he would but he didn't.  But it was a lot of fun

Heard the package came.  I hope everyone loved their pictures.  They've got some cool stuff.  I was worried about that package.  I forgot to put in the letter but the bag and kente strips are for Maddy  as a graduation present, the scripture bag is obviously for Hannah(I ordered others but they never came...) The fabric is enough for each girl to make a skirt,  they should make some nice skirts.  Enjoy:)

We contacted one cool guy this week.  He was born in Ghana but when he was a kid he was adopted by some dutch people so he grew up in the Netherlands.  Then he spent 7 years in Spain and a few in the US and now he is back for a few years.  Super smart guy.  He met the missionaries before.  I guess we will see what happens.

Love you all!

Elder Clark

This week we met a really cool guy.  We were out one night and doing some finding because our appointments fell through. We passed by this one guy standing by and I felt prompted to contact him. Turns out his mother had been taught by missionaries before but nothing came from it. Anyway the guy is really cool and really interested. He had 2 follow up lessons that week and accepted to be baptized in July. He came to Church on Sunday and really seemed to enjoy it. I have pretty high hopes for him.
 
Another high point for the week was our district council meeting. It was a great meeting about weekly planning and how important it is. It was actually pretty spiritual. Really cool.
 
Another cool thing this week was one lesson was had with a Muslim guy we contacted. He doesn't want to learn a lot about the church but he taught me so much about Muslims. So many people have no idea what they teach.  The core beliefs are actually very similar to ours; just that Muhammad said that he is the last messenger from God. That's a little important. Funny how Satan will take something so incredibly close to the truth and get so many people to follow after him. At any rate we have a return appointment and we gave him a Book of Mormon and he gave us a Qur'an.
 
Small status update. I got us some district ties made for some unity and bought way too much fabric so I got some "Knickers," made. They are some sick shorts. Love them to death. Very colorful. No pictures though, sorry.
 
The district was expanded this week too. Friday while I was one exchanges with another Idaho boy, I got a call from President telling me they are bringing 2 more missionaries to the district and ward. So now my apartment of 2 is 4. I really like it and am really excited.  An Elder from Idaho came here along with a ward missionary. It’s pretty cool. Hopefully we can do some really good work and be effective.
 
We did contact one guy. He was really cool for the lesson. He saw us and called us over and we taught him there at his house. He had a lot of questions about repentance and we had a really nice spiritual lesson. He doesn't have time for us to meet him again though.
 
This week marked a radical shift in my mission. We were reading from the white handbook and we read that we aren't supposed to teach women without another man present. Oops. In our mission probably about 75% of investigators are women. So we had a big change in proselyting and dropped some people and started doing thing different but we were doing finding and I got a little frustrated with the area so we just started going out to another part of the area we have never been to before and it was sweet. Lots of cool, cool people and families. I'm so excited to contact like crazy out there this week.
 
Upside, one of the new Elders brought with him a ping pong set that goes on the table. We were playing for a while today. I'm getting a little better; hopefully I can become a ping pong champ someday.
 
Got my ties finally. They are really cool. I was actually able to contact people with my Ghana ties because people would see me wearing them and stop me and ask me where I got it. "Oh by the way I teach people about Jesus Christ..." Just gotta create the concern and people will come to us!
 
Yep really just trying to focus on working hard and trying to teach with the spirit more. That's something we can always do better at, but we are working hard. Love you all!
 
Love,
 
Elder Clark