Ventura begins! 22 October 2012

Well, I'm here! The last plane flight seemed to take forever; I sat next to a woman who, soon as she saw me, jammed earphones rather violently in her ears and turned to read a book at the window. Yikes! But you know what? We don't try and convert you if you don't want to listen. That's not how Christ did it.

Showing up here was AMAZING though! The Santa Barbera airport was drastically different from the other two we went through; it was like a spanish ranch house with airplanes on the side. The air was beautiful; after 3 years of lung-cracking dry Utah air, it actually felt great to breath in the heavy, sea air in Santa Barbara. We met President Castro and the A.P's, and then they drove us out to the mission home. At the mission office (in Oxnard) we filled out a bit of paper work, and then Elder Jenkins and I went out to "Declare" (which is Venturian for tracting) with Elder Van Tassle (Who doesn't speak Spanish.) It was neat but really hard, not because we weren't willing to do it, but because we couldn't understand most of what the first hombre was saying! He had his car out running, he was mumbling, and he spoke spanish with a seriously thick mexican accent. We had a blast though, and it was a real pleasure to teach a real person with Elder Jenkins, after all that time spent in the MTC. I had my interview with President Castro who is the Man! I'm hyper excited to work for him and gain his trust. That night we stayed with a member family in Ventura. Their house was sweet, it was like a roman villa setup, very similar to my future home. ;)

The next day we went out to a gorgious church building in ventura. I've NEVER seen a chapel like this one, it had a chandelier, some kind of sparkely cieling, etc etc. The building itself looks more like a spanish mission from the outside than a church building! Anyway, we had transfer meeting, where the oldest generation gave their testimonies and "died." We got our trainers and areas. Elder Vaca Guzmán is my trainer, straight from the land of Bolivia. He´s hyper excited to be training for the first time, and he really knows how to love and help the people. We got a ride from a recent convert to head to Taft California, which is a small town just outside of Bakersfield. It´s pretty sweet though, there´s a river that runs through the middle of town, and it´s really green, it´s like a rainforest out here! I´ve included a picture, so you can see just how gorgeous it really is.

At this point you´ve probably seen the picture already. It´s something of a tradition to tell the greenies when they head out here just how vibrant and lovely taft really is. Actually, the main deal out here is the oil fields. There´s miles and miles of the big old drinking rigs. That´s the reason Taft survived the economic crash rather well. The air is fantastically awful, I think it´s worse than smoking. The town is literally surrounded by mountains just about as close as the wasatch front is to Clinton, but you literally can´t see them. There´s some kind of purplish white haze in the way. Not only that, but I´ve learned a bit about a wonderful ailment known as ´´valley fever´´ some kind of fungus grows in the dirt around here, and if it decides to move to your lungs, you´re pretty much finished. Ay ay ay! But seriously, I actually really love it here. The reason is entirely the people. I'm running out of time, but I'll give a quick overview.

The first thing is that it's a little bit difficult here, because the Elder I'm coming in for was seriously rebelious.   So we're constantly apologizing, and striving to represent better. We work almost every day with a recent convert  from guatemala. He's a very humble, kind man who just wants to help everyone. We're hoping that in a year from March, he can go to the temple and go on a mission. If he does, the MTC is going to explode from sheer intensity. (Although from the E-mail, it sounds like it's going to anyway) We have a decent sized pool of investigators to teach, and a TON of Less-active-Recent-convert work to do. One of the coolest things to be going on is we have two baptisms in a single family coming up, a sister and her daughter. These two have been investigating off and on for FOUR YEARS! They're getting baptized this Saturday, but the coolest part about it is that her husband; a grouchy old mexican, is getting baptized on November tenth! We were at his house, and every day for the past week, we've asked him "Have you quit coffee yet?" And he'd say "No, I'm not gonna quit coffee." I wondered why he'd say it with such gusto, when we asked him this time, and he said "Actually, I've quit coffee for 6-7 days." He'd been teasing Elder Vaca Guzman so bad! It was hilarious, and he was laughing pretty hard. At any rate, that night Elder Vaca Guzman shared a powerful lesson, and I committed him to baptism. When we suggested he get baptized in December, he said "Do I have to wait THAT long!?" It's been amazing to see.

Thank you so much for the letters and the love: any more mail should be sent to the mission office in Oxnard; we get same day forwarding from there. Keep up the good work, it sounds like Stake Conference was pretty amazing! Have a great week, be careful, and work hard!

Con Amor;
Elder Clough

Missionary work For the Win!!!

I can't believe it's my last P-day in the MTC!!! The Japanese speaking elders that board with us, Carter Choro (Elder) and Searle Choro left just this morning. I'm e-mailing early, because we decided to help carry their bags down to the travel office, and since we've got so much time, we figured we'd do our laundry now. It was simultaneously hyper-exciting and very depressing to see them off. We've really grown to love and appreciate them, and I know they'll be powerful forces in Japan!

It's also kind of crazy to think that this time next week, Elder Jenkins and I will be getting ready to head off to California. I forgot to bring my Flight Plans down to the laundry room, but we report at the travel office at 6:00, then hop a plane to Denver Colorado, and transfer to another going to Santa Barbera. (Weird huh? We'll go east a whole state before going west.) I'll send a brief e-mail later today detailing the flight plan more, but I'm not actually sure if I can call from the Airport. I was under the impression that the Elders call if they're going out of country. I'll find out, and either way I'll let you know what's going on. Also, funnily enough, I'd bought a call card at the book store the same day I recieved the package. So now I guess I've got two of 'em. :) Thanks so much for the packages by the way, we've had great fun sharing the candy. It was a most pleasant surprise.

General Conference was phenomenal. I really don't think I've ever listened and learned so much from Conference before. I have twelve full pages of personally applicable notes! The announcement concerning mission ages totally caught the MTC on fire. I can't believe that in 3-6 months, this place will be flooded with 18 year olds! It's so awesome that the women's age got dropped to 19 as well. Maybe now I won't have to wait till I'm 29 to find an RM. ;) I would seriously encourage everyone who's able to get out here, as soon as circumstances allow. Take advantage of your youth and this oportunity! This change in the requirements was made for all of you, who are much more prepared, and much more willing. The work is going to accelerate to the breaking point now. It can't be long before everyone's heard our message.

I was absolutely land-blasted by Elder Hollands talk. I don't know how it happens, but every time that Apostle speaks, I swear it's directed straight at me. The two scriptures he quoted are HIGHLY sacred and important to me.  It really re-awakened me to a sense of the work to which I have been called, not just for two years, but for my whole life. I'm never taking up "Regular Fishing" again.

Cool spanish fact: The word for work is usually "Trabajar" but the word for missionary, temple, or other "artistic works" is "obra." It is no mistake, nor coincidence.

As far as things that could help; my electric razor stopped charging in the first week we were here, so I bought a little "Mach 3" and Gillete, and now I've got really awful looking razor burn on my neck. How do I get this to go away, when I still have to shave every day?

con grande amor!

Elder Matthew Clough

Que pasa? (What's happening?) Monday October 1, 2012

Hola otra vez! (Hello again!)

It's been crazy how fast this week has flown by. I've been really busy, but as usual it's all kinda blurred together. I'll see what I can do to remember.

Spanish is coming along well enough, I've really been able to see the Gift of Tongues here. My strength is DEFINATELY listening. I've found that I've never really had to translate what I hear into English, I just kind of sit back and relax my focus and I can understand because I don't think in words, I think in ideas and feelings. We've been teaching a native speaker, Jorge, who is really helping our ability to understand. When I've listened to him, I've understood a lot of words and phrases I've never heard or seen. Thank heavens for the help! Speaking is awful though. >_< I speak in present tense SIEMPRE! (AGAIN!)  Spanish has something like 13-14 tenses, and each of them have their own irregulars, and conjugating gives me nightmares. Nonetheless, I'm grateful of the challenge, it keeps me working. Another thing that horrifies us all are false cognates. (words that sound like an English one but mean something totally different) Dad can attest to the "Embarasado" principle. (For those who don't speak Spanish, it DOES NOT MEAN EMBARRESSED! [It means pregnant.  It is a funny story from David's mission where a sister missionary thought she was saying she was embarrassed to be speaking and instead said that she was pregnant and that it was all the bishop's fault.] ) You never know when you mean to say one thing and wind up saying something totally horrific.

Speaking of which;  two Elders in our district had an hilariously awful experience with the importance of proper conjugation. In a lesson with Marcos, they wanted to say: "We would like to...", but instead of "Nos gustaria..."  said "Nos Gustamos". Which is NOT okay. (I'll translate this one for added inhibition: "We please each other." It's a weird way to say "We are romantically in love") Their investigator was laughing his head off for half the lesson.

On a more serious note, we've been doing a lot better teaching. I've tended to dominate lessons in the past, leaving little room for Elder Jenkins (or the spirit for that matter) to work with me. Lately, though, we've had pretty good lesson balance, and we've DEFINATELY brought the lightning of the spirit to a few lessons. Isabel is getting "baptized" this Saturday, and Jorge has a tentative date for 3 weeks from now. (Unfortunately we'll be gone) We haven't taught Marcos in AGES though, things keep coming up that are out of our control.

We watched "The Testaments" yesterday. Ugh, that movie is powerful enough at home; here I was crying my face off during the very last scene. Ay ay ay! I love it though.

Thanks a heap for the addresses; I'll use them soon.

Con amor,

Elder Clough
 

Third lap of the mile

That's what this week is. I just realized that we have three Sundays left here in the MTC. Que Loco! (It's crazy!) The district that left today is the last one that was here when we came: from now on, we're the Viejo's. (The old ones) The only ones in our zone that have been here longer than us are the two Hermanas(Sisters): Hermana Moeller and Hermana Spivey, and that's cause they had to stay an extra week for visitors center training. Which sounds absolutely mad, by the way. Hermana Spivey was telling us that visitor center missionaries cover all the same stuff we do, but they only have 5-10 minutes to do it. Good thing they're better at it than we are!

Some cool stuff happened this week: We attended the Brigham City temple dedication. It was really cool to sing The Spirit of God (Go Ensign Ward!) with all the missionaries. It was a beautiful temple, too. Elder Jenkins and I also did Sealings today, and that was quite incredible. I had a small insight into just how incredible it's going to be to get married for time and eternity someday. (In ten years or so) :) I'm not gonna lie, it was a bit rough to get the news on how some of my best friends are struggling. It helped me to see, in a small way, how my own family had to be feeling when I went through my own trouble last year. I'm absolutely, terribly sorry to have put you all through that. I know, however, that the Lord helped me back from myself, and that He will do the same for them. I don't know if any of them read this, but I want them to know that I know something similar to how they feel, and that the Lord knows EXACTLY how they feel. I know He will help each and every one of you. Don't make my mistake: Remember Who You Are!

Another thing we did lately was watch Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration. That movie is incredible. Even if you're not LDS, I encourage you to watch this movie, and admire his sacrifice. I'm pretty sure I bawled for 25% of it, but that's all right. His life was definitely one of the most difficult, yet most powerful. During a meeting with the Branch President, we analyzed the reason we use his exact words when teaching about the first vision. He showed us how the words are very precisely chosen. He also helped us recognize common false doctrine concerning it. For example, Joseph didn't ask which church was true. He asked two questions: Which of all the Sects was right, and which he should join. It really helps show the honesty of his desire to know.

Sorry if I don't cover all the stuff y'all want to hear. I don't have a ton of time to write, and the weeks seem to blur together. That's why a lot of my e-mails are just a bunch of scrambled facts. I'm not really all that sure WHAT happened THIS week, I just know it was awesome. I'll try harder to answer more questions and tell more information as it goes on. In my defense, however, I have been keeping a daily journal, even if one or two entries are three sentences. :P

By the way, I saw Elder Jacob Cameron (Senor Taco!!!) and Elder Frank Owens. It's good to see people showing up and taking off. I'm really proud of their work.

I'll try to write letters more diligently. I'm not very good at it, but I can hardly expect letters if I don't write any. Can I get the address for the families we used to home teach? I feel bad about taking off without saying bye. Can I also get an address for Eric? His or his parents would do. I'd love to contact him and see how he's doing. Also; can I get the address for Zach and also Tyler? I've thought about them a lot, lately. One more: I want to write Petyr, but I don't have his address either. :P Sorry for the giant list! Also; if anyone could let me know how to contact Elder Snyder, Elder Seawell, Elder Guerra and Elder Martin, I'd greatly appreciate it. I've written the Girardin's once or twice, but I'd also like to contact a few of the old Ensign ward families (Snyders, Seawells, Dannemans, Meiers,etc) once or twice so if any of their addresses can be found, I'd be most grateful. Sorry again for the essay assignment! ^_^;

Also, I don't suppose you (Brittney) know what Stephen's been up to? Is he getting ready for a mission, or did I miss him?

One last thing: I'll be sending my camera card soon, e-mailing the pictures is just too much of a hastle. I'll include an explination, some of them are a bit... needing of one. :)

Take care, family and friends. I love you all, and hope you all are feeling joy!

Con amor,(With love)

Elder Clough

Buenos Tardes! (Good Afternoon!) 17 Sep 2012

That's not quite as cool as Bula Vinaka (Fijian from his cousin Paul's mission), but it's still fun!

This week was pretty crazy.  Our old district leader got released, and the new one is Elder Doermann.  He's an awesome missionary with a really pure spirited attitude.  Funnily enough, our old district leader; happy as he was to be released, is the new zone leader! Heh heh!  And now Elder Jenkins is the senior companion, so I'm free! (I guess Matthew had been the senior companion up to this point.  He neglected to inform us about that!)  I can relax and focus on teaching and stuff.

I always think about so much stuff to write about during the week, and then I get here and poof! I've only got thirty minutes to write and it's gone!  Maybe I should start writing them down somewhere.

We've got a ton of investigators now (for the MTC, that is.)  We've got Isabel, Marcos, Jorge, and one other that's actually one of the other missionaries in the district. (Don't know who he is yet.) 

At any rate, I'm going to try and send some pictures, but the computers around here are a little sketchy.  We'll see if it works.We didn't get any pictures so I guess it didn't work out.  Too bad :(

Con Amor! (With love!)
Elder Clough

Mi Familia! (My Family) 10 Sep 2012

It's been another crazy week at La CCM! (MTC) I'm not really sure what I've already talked about, the weeks just kind of blur together.  It's good though, I can't believe we've been here this long. 

We've been really busy here.  It's a good thing too, because it keeps us focused (sorta) :P  We still get a little off topic, but a good hymn gets us back on track soon enough.  We've listened to a lot of really good lessons this week that really helped us figure out who we are and what we do.  We watched a stellar talk by Jeffrey R. Holland that he gave in the CCM (MTC) a few years back, that was about obedience and a line I really liked: "Don't you waste a single chance to be apostolic."  It really got me thinking about how we're supposed to teach.  We're not here to say; "Hey, uh, you know, I've got a message that you might kinda maybe wanna hear."  We're supposed to represent the Lord, Jesus Christ.  We're supposed to teach with power and authority the most important message anyone we meet will ever hear.  It's kind of mind-blowing.  Granted, over the past few weeks, my mind's been blown so many times I'm surprised I have one left. 

It was really great to be able to go to the temple again today.  We feel the spirit almost all day long here in the CCM (MTC), but it's still not the same.  I had some really great impressions today, that should help me to be a better missionary.  We're really kinda impatient to get out of here, even though we love every minute of it.  I really just want to start teaching real people who have no clue who they are. 

Thanks for the letters and support.  It really keeps us rolling.  Sorry I don't hand-write back very often. I don't have a whole lot of time for that, and I'm not very keen on it anyway.  I sent a few over the past week though.

Nos Vemos! (See you later!)

Elder Matthew D Clough

Como le va? (How is it going?)

Sep 3, 2012 10:07 AM

Hola familia y amigos! (Hello family and friends!)   Holy Hannah bannana, I can't believe it's Septiembre (September)!  The days still fly by, and I'm having a hard time remembering everything that's been going on.  We've been working our tails off by studying like maniacs.  I was led to believe that at the MTC, more than six hours each day is spent studying the language.  Wrong!  We spend TOPS 3-4 hours.  Every other second of the day is geared in some way towards studying the doctrine or practicing teaching.  We had a bit of a hard time focusing the whole time this week, but we've still been doing awesome.  Hermano Hopoate is really proud of us.    We have two "new" investigators: Isabel and Marcos.  We've only taught Marcos once, but it went really well.  We've taught Isabel twice, and the last time was a real doozey.  We wound up teaching next to nothing of what we planned to.  Instead, we talked about how it's hard for her to have trust and faith in God when He took her son from her.  Fortunately, the spirit was very strong with us that day, since we were able to console her about it, and help her understand that through the gospel of Christ, we can be together as families forever, and that wanting to have faith is the first step.  My companion, Elder Jenkins, is a real life-saver during those kinds of situations.  It seems like he can pull a scripture out of thin air in any given moment to share.   Teaching in Spanish is difficult, because you know what you want to say, but you don't know how!  It's getting a lot better though.  This fast Sunday, I bore my testimony completely in Spanish, and I THINK I got the grammer mostly right.  It was fascinating to me that I've learned enough already to be able to share what I want to in Spanish.   I've met my cousin, Elder Jacob Clough, about thrice now, but I haven't had my camera on me in order to take a picture. :/  We have great fun exchanging "Hello Elder Clough!"s.  I've also met Elder Egbert, Elder Hayward, and unexpectedly, Elder Preston Williams from Syracuse High.  He's the district leader of the Jovenes: The new district.    I've been doing a lot more singing in the MTC than I have before.  Our district sings in the Choir at every practice we can, and we start every class time with a Spanish hymn.  For all the missionaries getting ready to go: Sing in the Choir.  It's one of the most amazing things we do here.  I love the way some of those are written.  Elder Ripley has also been setting up a boy-band style rendition of "Oh Holy Night" that the whole district sings in.  Me and Elder Summers sing low bass, and it's one of the coolest things I think I've ever done.  We've joked that in two years, we should come home and call our group "District C"  We've performed it for President Ricks; our branch president, and for our Maestra; Hermana Christiansen, who wants to record it.  I'll have it E-mailed back if we ever do that.   I've got another joke for you folks to try and figure out.    Que hace una pes? (What does a fish do?) Nada nada nada! (Nada can mean either nothing or he swims, so it is nothing, nothing, nothing or swims, swims, swims)   It's kinda weird, but it's hard to imagine life being anything except what I'm doing right now.  I'm so grateful to be out here, and I can't wait to be out in the field.  Yo se que el Evangelio de Jesuchristo es verdadero. (I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true.)     Nos Vemos! (See you later)   Elder Clough   P.S. I'm having a hard time filling up the memory card to send home.  I want you all to see the pictures, esp. of Elder Jenkins and my district, but I'm working on it as fast as I can. Lo Siento! (Sorry)