Mini Mexico

Hello to one and to all from Gainesville, Georgia, the poultry capital of the world. I know, very exciting. Its actually really good for us, because there are a few giant chicken processing plants here, and most of the workers are Hispanic. I've never seen so many Hispanics in one city before. There are trailer parks galore with hundreds of people to talk to everywhere! We'll never run out of places to knock doors, which is is pretty much what we've done these last few days.

My new companion, Elder Rallison, has been taking all the door knocking well. He's from Salt Lake City, and has the best spanish out of any new missionary I've ever heard. He speaks way better than I did when I was new. He told me the trick was that while he was in the MTC, he tried to talk the whole time in Spanish like you're supposed to, but nobody actually does. Elder Rallison's MTc companion, Elder Henson, is actually being trained by Elder Cram, so they're in the same branch. They both bore their testimonies on Sunday at Church, and Elder Rallison's Spanish blew Elder Henson's Spanish out of the water. I'm proud of my new companion. :) Everybody says we're like twins, not in the fact that we look like and are both tall, but personality and behavior. So that basically means we're both awkward.

For those of you who aren't counting how long out I've been out, today I hit 16 months.

On Sunday, Patricia got baptized. It was definitely a super quick turn around. On Tuesday, the day before I left for Gainesville, we invited her to be baptized, and she said she would. Then we invited to be baptized this last weekend, and she accepted. Elder Cram's new companion, Elder Henson, got to baptize her, his very first Sunday in Georgia.

We're still trying to find people to teach, but with the number of doors we're knocking, we'll find people.

Espero que disfrutan su semana!

Elder Clark

Patricia in white! Her kids would not look at the camera in any of the photo's. Elder Rallison is farthest away from me, and Elder Henson is the one in white.  

Why wouldn't you got to the church with 2 pies?

October 7th, the day it got cold in Georgia. That’s right, cold season is here, and Elder Cram is not happy about it.

So this has been a week of unexpected, from investigators to transfers to conference. 

I'll start with our investigators, because they're the whole reason I'm out here anyway. Our top investigator, Patricia, has changed a lot this week. It started with a dinner at a member’s house on Monday, where the member was able to help answer a lot of her questions. After that and coming to church, she seemed more interested. She even texted us one night and told us to pray for her that she can understand the Book of Mormon when she reads it. I've never had an investigator ask me that before. She was also doubting that there could be a prophet today, but after she read the Book of Mormon, she was willing to go to General conference. Even though she only saw the last half an hour of one session, it was President Monson she heard, so that worked out good. 

Now, for transfers..... This is going to blow your mind. We get a call from the assistants. We knew they were calling us to tell us Elder Cram was going to train. He answered the phone, but they wanted to talk to me. They told me I was training, and then hung up. We were so confused because I did not expect to train, and President Wolfert told Elder Cram already that he was training. So we sat there for 5 minutes with stunned looks on our faces, and then the assistant called again. I answered, and they wanted to talk Elder Cram this time, and told him he was training also. We're both training! So, I'm going to whitewash Gainesville, which is the other half of our branch. so even though I already said goodbye to the whole branch, I'm staying in it. Yeah, smooth move on my part. For those who aren't familiar with the term whitewashing, it means me and my new companion are going to replace both missionaries that are there, which doesn't usually happen, usually only one changes.

Conference was awesome! It’s so great that we have a living Prophet and Apostles, and that we can listen to them. 

Thanks everybody. You all are awesome! 

Elder Clark    

The photo is Elder Thompson and I on exchange. I'm not giving a thumbs down the the Book of Mormon, but to the fact it’s not Spanish

A long night in the arm chair

Buenos tardes a todos!

Another amazingly fantastic week has gone by. :) I just found out that my cousin received his mission call, and he's coming here, also speaking in Spanish! He's lucky because it’s the best mission ever, and it’s even better when you speak Spanish.

Elder Cram got sick of me, so he went on 2 exchanges so he didn't have to see me as much. (He's not really sick of me) I got to work with my son again, Elder Dudley, one day and one of the Zone leaders another. I felt bad for the Zone Leader, Elder Thompson, because he doesn't speak Spanish so he just got to listen to me speak mumble jumble all day.

We've been trying to rescue one of our investigators this week. By rescue, I mean get them to understand the importance of our message and not lose interest. We had a super Spiritual lesson where we threw down hard on the importance of the Book of Mormon and the church. (For those of you who don't know what throwing down means, it means teaching very boldly, not leaving any room for misunderstanding, while making it absolutely clear that this is serious business.) Well, we did a good job, and one of the daughters told us she had felt the Spirit during our lessons. We were disappointed however when they told us Sunday morning that they weren't going to come to church because they didn't want to. :( It very sad and disappointing when people have felt the Spirit, and still decide not to act or change. Still, it’s important to move on, and focus on those who are ready.

Like one of our new investigators. We were trying to find a former investigator, and his wife was there, and we explained to her the wonderful blessing it is to have the Book of Mormon. Well, she wasn't interested at all, but her daughter came up right after and asked about it, so we re-explained everything, and she let us in and we taught her. She's been searching for the truth and has had many questions that nobody else has been able to answer. When we taught her the plan of Salvation, it answered a lot of her questions. We weren't sure if she was going to come to church, but after missing the first 2 hours, and the first half of sacrament meeting, she came. Tonight, if all goes well, we'll being having dinner at a members house with her, and hopefully we can answer some more of her questions.

Since it was my last fast Sunday here yesterday, I took the opportunity to bear my testimony. Everybody cried when I told them I was leaving. Ok, not really. But since I was leaving, they decided last minute to have me give the closing prayer.

I'm super excited for General conference next week. We get to listen to the prophet! How awesome is that?

I hope you all tried your best to share your testimony with one person this week. If you have any awesome experiences, you should tell my parents, or write me at

Elder Jordan Clark
Georgia Atlanta North Mission
1150 Cole Dr. SW
Lilburn, Georgia 30047

If you didn't have the chance last week, do it this week!

Thanks everybody!

Elder Clark 

Mormon Power

Hola!

Well, this week went by super fast. There wasn't even anything super amazing, it was just a good week.

It was really cool to see the Lord bless us this week. We were striving to talk to 70 people during the week, but on the last day, we were short 17. Well, me being of little faith thought we wern't going to be able to get 17, especially since it was Sunday, and church took up 3 hours of the day. Well, we went to work, and it ended up being really easy to get those 17 contacts. It seemed like everybody was outside that day. I know that when we strive to do something, the Lord will make it possible.

After we talked to one person and started walking away, they yelled "Mormon Power!" I'm sure he meant something like the Book of Mormon gives us Spiritual power or something like that.

People's agency is a real problem, it has been since the fall of Adam and will be forever and ever. This week, our investigators choose to exercise their agency and not come to church. :( We'll be having a little encouraging chat with them this week about that. :)

I love being a missionary, I love being in Georgia, especially since the weather is cooling down a bit, and I love the Lord

Thanks everybody!

Elder Clark

P.S. I want to commit all of you to do something, since that's what missionaries do. I all of you to talk to 1 person this week about the Gospel or your faith in Christ. I promise that if you commit to do it, the Lord will provide you with an opportunity, and you'll be blessed for doing it. I know I'm more blessed when I strive to talk to more people about the Gospel. So, will you talk to one person this week? I'll follow up next week. My parents can also follow up. :)

Ah, Mira!

Hi! :)

Well, this week was awesome, and seemed to go by really fast.

For 2 days, I got to ride a bike again! Elder Cram has to go to leadership meetings, so I got to cruise around the town with 2 other Elders. I'm out of shape.... Anyways, it seems like I'm always district monkey. District monkey is the companion of the district leader, who always gets moved around whenever the district leader has to go to meetings or do or district leader type things. I've been district monkey with 5 of my 7 companions.

We have 2 families that have a lot of potential. We took one of them on a unexpected tour of the church. We had told them we were coming by on Saturday to talk more about church and how to get there. Well, we thought we were just going to explain to them how to get to the church, but when we showed up, they had their keys in hand, and said they were ready to follow us to the church. Well, its a good thing the church is only 5 minutes away from their house. We went around and showed them all the rooms and the paintings. We got to a painting of the story of the 10 virgins (See Matthew 25:1-13), and Elder Cram started explaining it,l then realized he didn't remember exactly what the painting represented at the moment. He made up something on the spot about us being the light to the world, and the family believed him.

The Book is blue, and the Church is true.

Thanks everybody!

Elder Clark

apples, cereal, a sandwich, and a chicken pot pie

Hola! 

You probably all can guess that I had another awesome week this week. It was full of finding new people, speaking Spanish, teaching awesome lessons, and with very good nights of sleep.

Friday evening, we had a Day of Nations event, like we did in my first area. There was food from a lot of the Spanish speaking countries, dances were performed, and tons of people came. I even got to see a few people from my first area that came to help in the dances. There was also one random bagpiper to start the even off. 

Some of the cool new people we found this week include a mother who said she wants to bring her kids to church because we have good morals, an English girl who has been wanting to go back to church, and took it as an answer when we knocked on her door, and the Brother of the Cordova family, who should up in the middle of the lesson with them, and told us he wanted to participate in further lessons. 

The Cordova family is the awesome family with the mom and 2 daughters. The younger daughter came by herself to church 2 weeks ago, and both daughters were supposed to go to church this Sunday, but the aunt decided to take them to the dentist instead. I've noticed that lot of Hispanics go to the dentist on Sunday.  

On Sunday, following the tradition of missionaries giving talks on every second Sunday, I talked about Charity. Charity is the pure love of Christ, is greater than all, and endures forever. Christ was and is the ultimate example of Charity. Everything he did was because he had Charity. He never complained, never thought "uuhhggg, I have to heal this person now." The Atonement, His great and last sacrifice, is the ultimate expression of Charity. The Atonement is the pure love of Christ, it is greater than all, and it endures forever. This is the work of the Lord, so we have to do it how he did it, with Charity. 

John 13:34-35

 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all menknow that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

When we have love, charity, all men will know we are disciples of Jesus Christ.

Love everybody you see!

Thanks to all

Elder Clark

The kids from our branch that danced

Great attendance, great decorations, and the bagpiper on stage

8 is a magic number

This part is from Jordan's letter to us.

Nick

"The Library may be closed on Labor day, but the stake center's family history center isn't! Ba-ha-hahahahaha

 I've gained like 12 pounds in 6 weeks, and its all MUSCLE!!!!! Well, maybe not all of it, but most of it"

Jordans Letter:

Greetings from Georgia :)

Well, we finished out spree of baptism this last week with the Jaramillo Family. The Mom and her 2 kids were baptized on Saturday and Confirmed on Sunday. The baptism went really well. Hermana Jaramillo invited her sister, mother, and boyfriend, and they all came. The Jaramillo family is another very special family. Hermana Jaramillo already acts like a long time member, helping serve the food and clean up at her own baptism. They're definitely going to be strong members in the church. 

We had another really cool experience with the Perez family this week. We asked how things were going after having been baptized and confirmed, how they felt. They told us that they felt completely different. They felt more happiness, more peace. One of them had been stressing about a lot of things, and they told us all that stress just went away. Satan had been working hard on them the few weeks before their baptism, even to the point that 1 hour before, one of them almost backed out because of the stress, but afterwards, it all left. That was a testimony builder to me, the importance of the decision to be baptized, the importance of the Gift of the holy Ghost and the comfort it gives us.

We've been really blessed by the Lord, and we're are continuing to be blessed by Him. We've continued finding awesome people to teach. We found a promising family that moved here form El Salvador 4 months ago, a mom and 2 daughters. Only the 12 year old daughter could come to church, and she came by herself. Church will be a little interesting for the 2 daughters because the youth are combined with the English ward, and neither of the daughters speak english due to the lack of time they've lived here. Somebody gets the fun job of translating.

Thanks everybody!

Elder Clark    

The Familia Jaramillo in white

The gateway 

We're tracting in the rain