The Dog Days Are Over

Reminder if you send a letter or anything else to Elder Samuel Clark please put his first name on it... There are 4 Elder Clarks in the Scottsdale mission.

October 16, 2013

(On Sunday Samuel's father was released from being the Bishop of the congregation back home.)

First off I cannot believe Dad got released! What a strange thought, of him not as the Bishop anymore. Thank you Dad for all the service and the example you are to me! Bishop Duersch, I know you will be an absolutely wonderful bishop! wow... and tell Brother Schilling that (Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy) is one of my favorite hymns because of that experience on High Adventure too! I think about it every single time I hear it! Holy cow what a change...

So, I bet your guessing why I am emailing TWO DAYS LATE!! Well... It was transfer week and we have P-day on Wednesdays so here I am. I was transferred back to my old area with my old companions and we picked up a brand new elder! So, there are now four of us in this area and 6 of us living in our apartment! It’s awesome, I love it here.

Sister Hogenson and Elder Clark
She is the niece (on the other side of the family) of Elder Clark's Aunt Michelle Christensen

The mountains were good, just slow work and really quiet... pretty cold too. We woke up Tuesday morning to head down to transfers and it was 25 degrees. crazy cold... Most of the things we did were service projects, we split wood countless times and moved lots and lots of stuff. The best part of that area was the reservation. We had a lot of work up there, 31 less active/part member families, so we would spend most our time up there walking around trying to find these families. The catch was, there are more dogs than people up there! THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! I wish my camera was working at the time because one day we had 5 dogs walking around us following us and then 4 dogs at different houses barking at us. I had to go buy a big knife in case of an encounter. The wild dogs where so kind and the chained up ones were the vicious ones... most rottweilers and German Shepards and a few pit bulls. There was one dog that was huge, we named Bear, and he loved us. He spent most of the time with us and we felt so much more safe because we had this giant dog that all the other dogs seemed scared of... Man I wish I had pictures.

Elder Clark, Ready to Strike

We got a lot of good work going and met a ton of people, so I hope it continues that way, that area needs help, the reservation feels like a whole different country... feels like just a step above a third world country... the natives do not have very much. The reservation was kind of a scary place at night too... we were driving down a road and there were 6 hooded people, walking in a straight line, covering the whole street, with various things in their hands like a golf club, or bat... needless to say, we did a quick u-turn and booked it outta there.  

I made a Navajo Battle Club with "Grandpa" though! He is a native and makes stuff like that for a living. Its pretty sweet, kind of big and heavy so I don’t know to get it home....

Elder Speirs, "Grandpa" and Elder Clark with their Navajo Battle Clubs

I am back in Scottsdale and there is so much work to be done!  The weather has cooled off to the 80s, which I am grateful for because I am now a biking missionary! Gonna get quads of steel!

Life is great in Arizona, still waiting on the visa and still working hard.

Love you all!

Not in Scottsdale Anymore

Yes, it is true. I am no longer in the great city of Scottsdale. Last Tuesday the mission president called me with some exciting news! No, I didn't get my visa. But I had to be emergency transferred to Pinetop, Arizona because an Elder up here got extremely sick. Where is Pinetop you ask? That is a very, very good question.  It is about 3 hours north east of Phoenix, in the middle of the mountains, in the middle of nowhere. It is extremely different, an entirely different world. I feel like I am camping. It is complete country here.  We have a truck to get us places because 50% of the roads are dirt roads, sometimes we have to drive 30 minutes from house to house. The work is different too, we do more service than anything. Saturday we spent the time in between conference chopping and stacking fire wood. Fire wood in AZ? Yupp..

Missionary Truck

Link to Google map of Pinetop: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=pinetop+az&safe=active&ie=UTF-8&hl=en

There are actually trees up here!!!! I forgot to tell you this but our area has part of the Apache Reservation on it! The left side of this picture is the reservation! The natives are so nice, but their

dogs are not. There are tons of dogs that run wild on the reservation... some are super kind, but some are terribly mean beasts! They chase us....

It’s cold up here. The temperature gets in the 70s and 60's here but is dropping fast. It is actually beautiful weather right now so I can’t complain about that. I do miss talking to a 100 people a day. It’s impossible here because we are driving on country roads all day. The work is A LOT slower and we really have to rely on the members here to give us people to teach/do service for because we hardly meet anyone. It also doesn't help that this is a summer home destination for all the people to escape the heat from the valley, so now that summer is over, most of the houses (which are all cabins, some mansion cabins). My new companion is awesome, he has been out for 18 months and is a stud.

 There are some interesting people up here. Last night we had dinner with an older couple who are some of my favorite people I have met out here! His brother is literally Mr.Clean, like legit the man on all the the products, and he looks like it too, just super old. He is a big game hunter and has been all over the world to hunt. He had a trophy room but they are remodeling so everything wasn't there. But, he showed me pictures and he had an elephant  multiple bears, a lion, zebras and 100's of other animal. It was kind of disturbing but totally awesome at the same time. 

Another family has like 1 billion goats and gives us goat milk all the time, which is actually pretty good. This same family as 19 kids.... they adopted 15 Russian children! They are all grown up now but still, their family pictures are nuts.

Conference was amazing! Loved every single session, but I do have to agree with you mom, Elder Uchtdorf was my favorite, both on Saturday and Priesthood. I learned so much, and a lot of it is exactly what I needed to hear. This gospel is incredible!

Elder Dieter Uchtdorf, Apostle

http://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch/2013/10?lang=eng&vid=2721983168001&cid=12

I love this work and I love the Lord! Pray for me! I am living the mountain man life and it is getting cold! 

Love you all!