Hello everyone!!! This week has flown by so fast, it's just absolutely crazy... First off, my new area is downtown Salt Lake City. I'm in the Avenues!!! My companion and I, out of the entire mission of 180 missionaries, are the closest to the temple and to the capitol building and just basically all of downtown. It's really cool. I definitely lucked out. Apparently this is a highly wanted area for missionaries. My companion and I cover the Ensign Stake which is one of the oldest stakes in all of Utah. Our stake has 5 wards and 3 branches. Needless to say, our Sundays are super busy going back and forth to sacrament meetings and ward councils. Two of our wards meet in the Joseph Smith Memorial building in temple square, so that was really neat to go to. Soooo Elder Holland and Elder Oaks both live in my Stake and attend wards that we go to as well.... No big deal... Elder Holland lives like a block from where we live. Anyways, we live in an older man's house upstairs. His name is Brother Wilson. He's really interesting. He was a cancer surgeon for a number of years and he and his wife sang in the Tabernacle Choir as well. So my new companion is amazing... He's basically the best missionary in the field. everyone has told me that i got super lucky to have him train me. His name is Elder Ackley from Gilbert, Arizona. He's been out 21 months and was an AP for like 6 months.... That's crazy. We're both brand new to this area though. That's called being white washed into an area, we replaced the two missionaries that were here before us. They don't normally do that because one will stay behind to help the new missionary get acquainted to the area, so we had a hard time the first couple of days. The main problem was that the missionaries before us didn't leave any records of who they were teaching or anything like that. We had to get all the information we needed from Bishops and Ward Mission Leaders. But it's all good. We're on track now. We already got our first baptism!!!!!!! We baptized Jaydon Allen on Saturday. It was really cool. We only met with him twice before the baptism, and one of the times was for a baptismal interview. He's fourteen and a really good kid. I spoke at his baptism on baptism... haha it went great though. I've only been here a week, but i'm already starting to see miracles happen. My companion and i got a referral last night from some Sister missionaries for a guy named Mario. He's living in a homeless shelter downtown that is out of our mission, but since 2 of our branches in our stake are homeless branches, we got to go teach him downtown. Anyways, we get there not knowing what to expect but he told us his story and said that he's been going to one of the homeless branches and has a Book of Mormon and has enjoyed it so far. We just talked to him about the Gospel and he said that he's been having a really hard time lately, but going to church has been helping a lot. So we just invited him to be baptized in two weeks and he said yes!!! It was amazing. The spirit was so strong while we were teaching him, and it seemed like he was really soaking up what we were saying. My companion and I have really good chemistry and when we teach, the spirit seems to flow and guide us really well. So we bore our testimony to him and set up another appointment with him tomorrow. I'm so excited to go back. I have met so many interesting people. Most of the people we are going to be working with in this area are less active members, so we won't see too many baptisms. That's okay though! We have a goal to gain the member trust in this area and to really boost their missionary work. Everyone we've met so far seems to really like us, so i guess that's good. We visited one of our ward missionary couples last night just to meet them and get to know them. They were so great. They're just a young couple that's going to school and working part time, but they are also in charge of setting up our dinner appointments for this week. We are so blessed, we have a car, a great place to live, and dinner appointments every night of the week. Anyways, the husband asked for a blessing while we were there, so i gave my first blessing.... So nerve racking. It was a blessing of comfort. I felt the spirit so strongly through the whole thing, it was amazing. I wish i could go on and on about the people i've met so far, but i just don't have the time. I'll try to get my address up on here, so if anyone wants to write to me or send me stuff you can. I love and miss you all. I pray for everyone back home on a daily basis. I love and miss Taylor and Ralphie soooo much. I smile every time i think about them. 

Love, Elder Clark