January 19

Hey mama:) do you know how much i love you? I hope you know that i love you a lot and miss you a lot as well! The mission is so weird haha I am literally living in the Philippines and you are over there in Ferndale Washington haha and we are just in two total different places. It is weird to think about the life I am living right now and comparing it to the life that i lived before i left. It is a whole 180 degree turn and just living not even close to the way i lived before haha. But, life is so good here and I just wish that you all could do a day with me here to just know what it is like because I have to say haha I am probably in the best place of the world right now. The Philippines is so dope and i truly love it so much here, for example, the main two pets for people here are dogs, and monkeys. I at least see one monkey a day haha I will take a picture with one soon so you can see too:) I want to send you pics right now but this computer is way slow to send pics so i dont really have time but I will try really hard to send them still and hopefully i can because i know it has been awhile with no pictures so i will try and send some:)
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> I am happy to hear about the family and I just how good you are all doing, i really love and miss every single one of you! I have a cool story for you all that I cant wait to tell you!!!! So there is this area called bangaloa in our area here in Santa Terresita and Bangaloa is the farthest area for us to go to but there is a lot of people there and huge potential. Other Elders went out there before but they said they stopped because the church was to far from them, which isnt true but i mean it is pretty far but I know Heavenly Father has a way for all his children. Anyways Elder T and I decided to go out there and see what the Lord wanted us to get done out there and the first person we talked to accepted baptismal date after literally 4 minutes of talking with him and teaching him. The guy was really humble and he said he has been looking for a true religion and we just extended the Bdate and he took it and ya but that isnt the really cool part of the story...... So we walked into the main part of bangaloa but dont think of city when you think of this place haha think of the Jungle and just a bunch of little houses and we were at the part where there was a lot of little houses and by houses i mean tin roofs and tin walls or cement walls and tin roof and then we also were just surronded by rice fields. Anyways, all the kids just got out of school so they pretty much came home at the same time and they saw us and just the expressions on their face was like......" wow who is this fat filipeno and americano" because usually people think Elder T is a fat filipeno but he is just Samoan so i know you understand hahaha. Anyways we start talking with these kids in Tagalog and Hilikano "the other language" and there is about 12 kids from the age of 9 untill 18 and then once they invited us to sit down just outside on a porch type thing there was about 20 more kids that ran over to meet us and there was about 10 teenagers from the age of 15 to 18  and then just a bunch of little kids and we were getting to know all of them and just laughing and having a great time and then as soon as we noticed the whole little town was outside of their huts wondering what was going on and then a lot of them came over to get to know us and then there was about 10 adults in the group as well and even more kids came. We got to know them and laughed and then we shared our purpose to them and being missionaries and the spirit was so strong. We literally went from laughing and just getting to know each other to this silence of peace and quiet and we just shared our purpose as missionaries and they were all so excited to listen to us. We asked them if we could say a prayer to start so we did and then we just taught about Heavenly Father and his love for his children and tied it all into families and it was probably the coolest experience that I have ever had in the mission. We shared to about 40 people and they all said to come back and we also had 3 adults come up to us and ask if we could come and share to them. The spirit was so strong and everybody was so attentive and they loved listening and it was truly super super powerful and i really cant even express so amazing it was. I am so blessed to be here in the Philippines and i love the work here so much and i am super happy.:)
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> Transfers are next week so we will know on saturday what will happen to us elders here in Sta. Terresita but I just am hoping that Elder T isnt leaving here because he is the man. I have had some great companions but Elder T is for sure my favorite that i have had haha we have a bunch in common so it is so easy to just click with him and get along. We have not had one feeling of contention in our companionship and that is a huge blessing and for real our teaching is super good because we just know eachother really well so we just teach with each other really well too. And of course we have the help from the Lord and he is the real reason why we feel confident in our teaching.
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> I love this Gospel, I know it is true and i love you all as well and i hope you all have an amazing week and i hope you enjoyed the email.\
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> Mahal kita ingat kayo palagi:)
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> happy days, all is well
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> Elder Clark