Elder Clark - Indiana Indianapolis Mission: January 9

I brought out the hot packs this week! Their were just a few nights I slept without them. It was the best to come in from a cold long day and grad a hot pack for the rest of the night. As a Zone Leader you have a lot of added things you have to do, you have to decide how many miles each companionship needs and what places need full time cars, or whether they'll share. You have to check up on the missionaries in your zone and make sure they're doing good, answer their questions and get them their packages and supplies. We went out this week and just offered to shovel people's driveways, no one would let us! You'd be surprised, people just tell us no haha. We do something called a "Jesus Walk" and we just bundle up and start walking around and try and find people to teach. We walk down Georgetown Road and stop at all the bus stops and find people to talk to. That way they can't run away from you, they have to wait for their bus ;) haha we found 1 person doing that, and met him there the next day and taught him some more. His name is Charles. It turns out he lives in downtown so we gave him as a referral to the missionaries that cover there. This week we had a lesson with Sheila, we're helping her overcome smoking. She was going to have us over for dinner on my birthday but she got pretty sick and was in a lot of pain so we're going there for dinner on Wednesday instead! It gets dark around 7 at night, so it's always good to have lessons set up in the night so we can visit those people and teach them. That is one thing I've learned, don't go tracting and knock on doors at 8:00 pm, it got the cops called on us, but that was in Martinsville :) On Wednesday we had a lesson set up that turned out to be a great lesson. We taught the man and woman about the whole plan of salvation and answered their questions. We had MLC (Mission Leadership Council) and that went from 10-4, long meeting, but it was good! And we got lunch courtesy of Sister Carlson :) That night we had a way cool experience! So it was about 7:30 and we stopped by an investigators house, but it looked like no one was home, all the lights we're off so at first we decided to drive away and then as we're driving away Elder Abhau decided since we had already driven to the house, we might as well knock on the door, so we did, and the people were peeking out the window, we didn't think they we're going to answer and then they did! They invited us inside and it turns out they're from Africa and speak Yoruba so I said "Bawoni" to them which means Hello and I showed them my Yoruba nametag and they were shocked that I knew about Yoruba, they thought I was from Africa or something hahaha they let us sit down and we talked about all kinds of things! What missionaries do, the Book of Mormon, what places missionaries go, what we believe and they want to come to church! We gave them an English Book of Mormon, because they speak very good English but we're going to take them a Yoruba Book of Mormon as well. At MLC President Carlson told us to not underestimate the power of prayer in finding people that need to hear our message and the people that are prepared to hear it. On Saturday we spent the day in Downtown with Elder Fonohema and Elder Howlett. It was a lot of fun, I love going on Exchanges. This week at church their were 5 investigators at church, and Elder Chapple and Elder Mason were sick and couldn't even come. People at church joked that Elder Chapple got sick now since I'm not his companion because I'm not helping him be clean, they all realized I like to wash my hands.. but I never get sick! I think it's because I take a lot of vitamins and wash my hands and eat healthy. Our longest day this week was on Sunday, we were in suits all day at meetings, at 7:30 am we had ward council, church till 12 and then we got a lunch break but then headed straight to our meeting with our ward mission leader, and then in the evening we had a meeting with President Carlson, A high councilman and someone from the Stake. This is the funniest part of the week. So at MLC President Carlson asked the 3 new Zone Leaders to introduce themself, tell where they are from and something interesting about themself. Elder Quick says "I'm from Bountiful Utah and something Interesting is I don't have hair". Then it was my turn and I told them something interesting about me is I helped Elder Quick get hair vitamins" and President Carlson says "Well it didn't work!" hahaha President Carlson is such a funny guy. I love you guys so much and thank you so much for the birthday gifts!!! :)