Changing lives, including my own!

Hey hey hey! 

Family, you guys are so dang great. I loved Adam´s and Dad´s pinewood derby car..... most realistic. Nice. Also, that foto of the basketball court made me miss home almost more than I´ve missed home in my entire mission! Mannnn. What a great foto. Also Katie, CONGRATS on your young womenhood recognitions award!!! Wear that medallion with pride..... it makes you girls look more attractive, trust me. You´ll get the guys.

                So this week was seriously a great one. We had some more divisions with Elder Gonzalez earlier in the week, and later (Thursday) we all went to Chorrera (!) for a multi-zone conference to hear from Elder Duncan. Man! Some good stuff. Elder Larsen and I sang a special musical number "A Poor-wayfaring Man of Grief" - half spanish/half english, and that was pretty cool. Elder Duncan also shared some AWESOME stuff. Two things I wanted to expand on: 1) he said the church did a study and it resulted that, on average, a church convert, previous to their baptism, had had 8 prior experiences with the church, or with missionaries. 8 times! 8 times before the time to get baptized finally comes. Elder Duncan talked about how God has a mini-plan for each one of His children, and that the baptism - the actual baptismal ordinance - is just one moment in that plan, that journey through this life, and that we as missionaries shouldn´t ever be discouraged because when we aren´t helping others with baptism, we are always helping them move along in their "plan" and God has put for them. I also saw this to be true recently, Mom, when you told me about how Dad had had so many previous experiences with the church before his conversion. It was a pretty awesome lesson learned. The other thing that he said to us was "Four years ago.... you always thought about yourselves (teenage years)..... and now today, where are you?" Ponder that question - it´s pretty great.

                 Allright well my time is flying fast, but I wanted to talk about our baptism this week!!!! It was super awesome :) Abdianis got baptized by Elder Aguirre. It was a really really great day for her and her family as well. Not being members and all, they LOVED the service, and her little cousins left the service begging their parents to get baptized.... hahah :) It was awesome. We went and visited her yesterday night after she´d received The Holy Ghost, and she was so happy!!!! Pure smiles. I really feel like she had a real change when she received The Holy Ghost. So beautiful what The Lord can do for us. He can change us!

                 Allright well I´ll write more next week, but for this week, have a wonderful one! Hope you all enjoy spring break! 

Love you all!

-Elder Clarke