Elder Clark's email on March 10, 2014

I can't believe how fast this week flew by..... It seems like yesterday I was writing my last blog email....  It's been a great week here in the Avenues. The weather has seemed like spring, so I've mostly been wearing just my white shirts. The baptism on Saturday went great! Mario is such a great guy. He has had so many trials come into his life in the past month, but he has hung onto his testimony the whole time. He asked me to baptize him, so that was really special to me. I feel like we became friends really fast, and it was crazy how fast I grew to love and care about him. He's living in a really bad part of downtown. There's homeless people everywhere, drugs, prostitution, and all of that, so it's kind of scary when we go down there. But we always seem to find someone who wants a blessing or copy of the Book of Mormon. So now we're just gonna try to work with him and the church to get him out of there. Sooo, my crazy story for this week..... We were going to an appointment at an apartment complex on State Street right across from Temple Square. We were riding up the elevator and when we got to our floor the door opened and Elder Oaks was just standing there. My companion and I were so dumb-founded. We didn't know what to say at all. He was just like, Hey Elders! It was so cool to see an apostle of the Lord in such a casual experience. Apparently he lives in that building, and was going a floor above his to borrow some cold medicine for his wife. SO COOL!! Who knew an apostle's wife could even get sick?!?!?! Anyways, we had a mission wide temple session this morning at 6:30. It was so cool to be in the Salt Lake temple. It's so gorgeous and it's really cool to think about the history behind it. The live session was different.... I think I prefer the video. It was cool to see a lot of the missionaries that I was in the MTC with though! I love my mission presidency. They are all such spiritual giants, and my mission Mom, Sister Eberhart(which is the wife of the mission President) is so funny. She's such a ball of energy and just cracks me up every time I see her. The work is picking up the more we're here. We don't have anyone on date as of now, but we know we will shortly. We're working with some real solid investigators right now. We had dinner with the son of the Presiding Bishop and one of our ward mission leaders is the son of a general authority. Needless to say, I'm surrounded by very spiritual people. We had Stake Conference in the Tabernacle on Temple Square this past weekend. That was a really neat experience. How many missionaries in the world get to have a church service in the tabernacle??? It's so awesome to be so close to church headquarters. I've toured Temple Square a few times already. It's such a good tool to use for our investigators. I can't believe it's already been over a month since I've been out. Time seems to go by so much faster here. Thank you everyone for all the support and love you've been sending me. I really appreciate it! I will remember to keep everyone in my prayers. I love and miss all of you!! I love and miss Taylor and Ralphie soooo much!

Love, Elder Clark

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