Mission Adventures of Elder Clark Lovell

Hola todos! My birthday card from Dana (based on my MTC photo) I hope all has been amazing for your Christmas Day everybody! I hope you have taken some time to reflect on the reason for today, and the humble birth of our Savior this day. I always think of the hymn "Silent Night." In my mind, no other hymn gives as much sacred reverence to that event than this song.  My birthday Ding Dong I don't have a ton of time. I just want to publicly thank all those who sent me gifts for birthday or Christmas. I greatly appreciated all the messages on Facebook that my mom showed me, as well as all the prayers said on my behalf. I'm humbled by your thoughts and prayers.  My graciously given gifts       I got transferred to my second area earlier this week. My new area literally has a huge part of the valley. The farther west you go to The Strip, the more hood you find. The farther east you go towards the temple, the more ritzy you ge...

Hola mi gente! Well, another transfer has come and gone and I will be.... Leaving Washington Avenue! Yesterday afternoon I also learned from a certain phone call from President that I will be the district leader in a new district! Who woulda thunk it! My new area is going to be two wards called Freedom Park and Christy Lane, and my new companion, who came out with Elder Troya, is from Honduras! His name is Elder Carpio, and he is fantastic! I'm so excited, and a bit nervous, but that's neither here nor there. If I learned anything from the past two transfers, it is that the Lord qualifies who he calls . That has been made very clear to me the past few months. He qualifies whom He calls. He has qualified me to be a trainer, and I know that if I am worthy of it, He will qualify me to be a district leader.  Oh yeah, Elder Troya is going to good ole Blythe, CA to be companions with our old zone leader, Elder Lawson. He is pretty darn excited. I re...

Hola todos! I really don't have a ton of time to email today. We had a Christmas Social yesterday for half the mission, and so they cut our P-Day in half. Here is my top five for the week in no specific order: Elder Troya and me 1. We had Zone Conference last Wednesday and the Mission Christmas Social yesterday. I learned a ton of spiritual awesomeness at zone Conference. At the Social yesterday, we had a great time watching a talent show. One elder from Australia somehow got a hold of a French Horn, and played a great piece. One elder did a spot on impersonation of Bing Crosby singing White Christmas, only he sung a parody of it called "Beige Christmas" since we are in the desert. Elder Dougal, my former companion, did cool stand up and magic tricks. We also did a nice service project, painting wooden toy cars for blind children, and a gingerbread house making contest.  2. We were contacting in a neighborhood, and I felt prompted to knock...

Hola todos! "If I only had a brain" in someone's front yard It's been a great week! We had exchanges with our district leader, Elder Rodrigues, and we learned a lot about finding people, and just regular mission stuff.  About the title: when we were on exchanges, we met this lady with the coolest  front porch in the business. Her husband had built their entire patio, and built a life size tin man, and scarecrow. I will attach a picture of it. It was pretty sweet. Saturday night, the guy who called me "7G" because of my Latter Day Saint Heritage, had us over for dinner, but after awhile, it was clear to us, that he just wanted to bash on our religion and beliefs. It was pretty pathetic at times, but what can you do? The teenager side of me wanted to fire back with argue points, but the missionary side of me told the teenager side of me to be quiet.  I won't say the things he was saying, but it wasn't pretty. He wasn't...

Elder Troya and me today at the temple Hello everyone! Sorry this is going out so late. We went to the temple this morning as a district, and it's been a crazy day since.  All I really want to share is this funnyish cool story from my Sunday night. We felt we should knock on this one door, and when we did, a teenager opened the door, and thought we were the cops (not again!) So he got his dad. I was like "here we go again, another door closed on us" Quite the contrary, his dad's face lit up when he saw us. "Ah mormons? How ya doing? Want something to eat? Come on in!" He feeds us dinner, and asks us how long we have, or our family has been in the church. Elder Troya is actually a first generation member, his parents joined the church when he was a baby. I had to pull out my family tree app to find out. Apparently my family on one side has been members for about 7 generations. So he was like "Whaaat? 7 G's?" So he ju...

Hello everyone! ¡Feliz Día de Acción de Gracias! I'm getting transferred to Transylvania!  Just kidding. We did meet this crazy transylvanian woman who hated America and when we asked her about how long she had been in the US, "Too long!" I love talking to interesting people.  Oh yeah, sorry about not emailing on Tuesday, Happy Pdaysgiving! We also saw the rock lady twice this past week. She stared us down the first time, and we backed away slowly. *Cue the western showdown music* She was the same lady that almost stoned us a couple weeks back. We didn't want to repeat the experience.  We had interviews with President Youngblood yesterday. That was cool. He is quickly becoming a father figure to me.  We had a cool experience on Saturday. We were teaching Jesus Galindo, and we were thinking about dropping teaching him, because he wasn't progressing. But when we got into the lesson with him, we both got the impression that we c...

Hola mi querida gente! If you don't feel like pulling out the Google Translate again for my email title, here's what it means: "I almost died again...and again..." Our district Seriously it's been an awesome week!  Transfer call happened last night, and....I am staying here in Washington Avenue! Yay! And elder troya is staying with me! Double Yay! And Elder Cluff, my MTC companion, is coming to my district from Blythe, California! Triple Yay! We had three crazy experiences this week that I will share.  1. On Wednesday night, we were just coming out of a Spanish class that we help with in the ward, and were about to head home because it's almost an hour walk some nights from the chapel, but we got a really strong impression to smart sort to see if there was anyone left to visit. We did, and found a lady on the list that lived at the farthest corner of our area. We walked over there, and the lights were off. We still felt st...