Email received Jun 28, 2010

Couple of cool connections this week: The building our wards meet in is the Stake Center for another stake who was having it's Stake Conference on Sunday, so our wards were all switched around. Our first ward met in one of the buildings that was temporarily deserted for the conference, and as usual Sis Knuteson and I stood at the doors to the chapel passing out programs and greeting people. When I saw people I didn't recognize I naturally chalked it up to summer visitors or confused members, but there was one family that was different. As they walked in the father said "Sis. Cloward, where are you from?" Now this is not an unfrequent question for a missionary, but the quick succession perked my attention. I noticed the man had a polynesian look about him and guessed where it was going. Sure enough, his name is Darryn Wong and he knows the Clowards in Hawaii; Cary Cloward was his sunday school teacher when he was a boy and currently lives in their stake. (Editor's note: Dad's uncle raised his family in Hawaii.) It's so cool to meet people who actually know people I know rather than "the Clowards in Nebraska?" "Nope, but we're related!" or "so-and-so Cloward was my great-great-grandmother." That's great, I only know a few names from that far back...but we're related.

I've also had a vain hope of seeing a teaching record with the name Conrad or Knieser (Editor's note: Boys in our ward in Connecticut who served in Nevada.) or possibly even Cloward on it (Editor's note: David served in Nevada while waiting for his visa to come through for Hungary.), but since the whole program has changed since then, our records don't go back that far. Plus, only Mark (Knieser) was in this mission, and it's a big mission, so he could have been anywhere. But on Sat we had a lesson with a recent convert in the single's ward. He lives with his grandmother who joined the church several years ago, but it took him until just this January to come around for himself. I asked him how they first got introduced to the church and he said: "Oh, way back when I was about 14 or 15 we were just doing whatever when the missionaries came to our neighborhood and Elder Knieser knocked on our door - " at which point I said "Elder Knieser?!?!?! Was he from CT? Was this about 2002-2003??" They replied in the affirmative and I continued to gush that "I know him!!!" We chatted about him for a few minutes and I told them what I knew post-mission (which isn't much, I don't know how may kids they have now); apparently the grandmother didn't get baptized until 2004 or 2005 so I don't know if Mark even knows about that, let alone the grandson. I just think it's so awesome that not only do I get to see a bit of what he did a-way back when, I also get to help teach one of the same families. You have to admit that's pretty cool.

I don't think I mentioned last week, but Sis Knuteson and I got to go to Girls Camp for an afternoon. We counted it as service because the craft lady is in our ward and said she needed our help, how could we refuse? We helped the girls make bead rings for an hour or so (they're very pretty) and then had some free time to go exploring. Now I have more photo evidence of just what sister missionaries can do in skirts and illustrations for Jeremiah 16:16.

 

It was funny to see the girls (and leaders) all bundled up because "it's so cold on Mt. Charleston!" I will admit, if you sit still in the shade it's rather cool and after the sun goes down it started getting quite chilly (maybe even in the 50s) I would definitley want an extra blanket at night, but if you're sitting in the sun or running through the hills, it's actually quite pleasant to a little warm. People were so concerned that our legs were going to freeze because we had come up in skirts, but we were happy as clams. Much nicer than the 100+ in Vegas!

I believe I've mentioned the Lords family before, we were having lessons at their home every Mon night; they are awesome and we love them so much!!! Well, their oldest son just came home from his mission on the 18th and Sis Lords asked if I would sing this song (Homeward Bound, Track #3) the next Sunday as it had become one of his favorites on his mission. Somehow I got roped into singing it in the Singles Ward this past Sunday as well, I don't know if I did as well, but it's all in the Lord's hands anyhow. Enjoy, but don't get any ideas, I've still got another 7 months before I'm on my way.

-Sis Cloward

P.S. We finally put our spider in the freezer and he died. Now we have two dead spiders sitting in a tupperware container on our counter, I'm not really sure why.


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Jeremiah 16:16 Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.

Email received Jun 21, 2010

To start with, imagine a father's day card. There were lots of Charlie Brown/Snoopy themed ones this year that made me think of you, Dad, but as I told my companion: Not spending $5 on a greeting card shows my love for my father. And for David, the father's day card of all father's day cards: you're walking through the store, you walk past the card aisle, all the father's day cards are displayed in front, your eye is drawn to one near the top, there on the cover is...Darth Vader. It doesn't even matter what the card says, that's just awesome. Some more thoughts for father's day, Sis Knuteson and I went to visit a referral a couple weeks ago who wasn't so much interested in learning about the church as he was in telling us we were wrong, but in a very pleasant and friendly manner. His son, who is a preacher, gave him a dog named Moses who says his prayers: he puts his front paws up on a chair and lays his head down on top of them; but the best story was when they showed this off to a random black lady they met on the street one day, "Praise JE-sus!! I've just seen a Dog that says his Prayers!" We chatted for a while and most of what he said was just his interpretation of all the religious studies he's done (he's chosen a mainstream Christian religion) but the phrase that pierced our hearts and won't leave our minds was "I am not a son of God, nor will I ever be a son of God." This has literally come up in conversation at least once a day since, with many references to scriptures and hymns and "See, right there, Child of God!" The thought hit me the other day that while chatting to him about other topics was very enjoyable, that was a fleeting sort of happiness, but knowing who I am, what I really mean to my Father in Heaven, and my true potential brings a lasting joy that nothing can take away. Nothing. I was grateful yesterday when many of the talks (we do go to three Sacrament Mtgs now, don't know if I mentioned that) focused on our Father in Heaven, and one even quoted from a story by Pres. Monson, "the worth of a human soul is its capacity to become like God." If anything, run-ins with people like this only cement our testimonies and drive them deeper into our minds and hearts.

Last night at dinner our host was telling us a story about a nephew, I believe; he was sitting by her and said "I can speak Spanish!" "Really?" "Yeah," as he picked up a fork, "Fark!" He's from Utah. We all laughed ourselves silly. Another home we were in recently has a full band player piano. She turned it on and I just sat in fascination while scents of specialty candies and fancy coffees danced through my head. Only this one didn't require a quarter and there was no plexiglass barrier, I actually sat down and played a little on it, it was awesome. (Editor's note: She's referencing an old-fashioned candy store we used to go to as kids which had a plexiglass encased player piano in the back.)

I don't mean to alarm you, but there's a black widow in our fridge, it's the one we caught last week. We actually caught it outside in the driveway, but we figured it was best to catch it outside before it had a chance to find it's way inside. The only problem is now we don't know what to do with it. It sat on our table for a while in one of those small Glad containers (perfect for spider catching) but we've since built a larger spider home...no, it's not a pet, it doesn't have a name...okay, it's Thad, and we may have put one of the other dead spiders in there to see what would happen. It was like watching the Discovery channel right there on our kitchen table, the horror on our faces obviously overcome by the fascination of watching it live. Now we've put the whole thing in the fridge because that apparently slows them down so they aren't quite as lively and eventually we need to put the real lid on so we can have our object lesson baptismal font back. The exciting life of a missionary in America, oh the drama. Really though, cockroaches are the drama bug; someone from our ward came and sprayed all around our apartment and the next morning we counted 15 ginormous, ucky bugs dead or dying on the sidewalk. Everything else is content to die in their little flowerbed homes, but the cockroaches have to come out so everyone can see. Get over yourselves.

Oh, I plum (plumb?) forgot, we're without a car until Wed. Someone had to borrow it to drive north to train a new car person up there, so we walked a lot on Sat, our feet hurt and we were very tired, but we really feel like missionaries. And today we had an excuse to hang out with Sis Johnson and Sis Mack so they could give us rides to the library and shopping and stuff. Okay, my comp is done so we should head out, now we have to find a ride home and figure out what to do with the rest of our day. Fun!!

-Sis. Cloward

Email received May 17, 2010

Not much of note this week, except it felt like an eternity from one Sunday to the next; Wed felt like it should be Fri and by the time Fri came it seemed like a whole new week, Sat alone was at least three separate days. On the mission front the elders invited us to help them with a family of nine that want to be baptized this Fri (Dad, Mom, girl 11, boy 10, girl 9, girl 8, girl 7, girl 6, boy 2) only problem is Mom and Dad aren't married and even bigger issue is after living so long without the gospel there are consequences and issues that would probably take several years of intensive counseling & gospel study or a couple mighty changes of heart to overcome. But what can you do in just a short few weeks time? Pray awfully hard and be glad it's up to the Lord, the bishop, and the elders. That's another annoying thing about sin, the only options it leaves you with are hard and just-as-hard, how do you choose?

On the more lighthearted side: On Fri someone told us they were taking their kids to Robin Hood; Sis J: "You mean Red Robins?" In my head: "Maybe it's some local activity place?" Bro Moffat: "No, Robin Hood, the new movie with Russell Crowe!" Oh, yeah, that one that none of us have ever heard of because it wasn't even a twinkle in the writer's eye when we came out on our missions, gotcha, thanks. So we went inside and got keifer buds from Sis Moffat, yes keifer buds. Now we can make our own yogurt, exciting, huh? I think so. Apparently there are multiple ways to make yogurt, but I'm wondering if these are any relation to delicious Kefir yogurt drinks. I'll let you know if I figure out the recipe. Seeing as how they're live cultures, we weren't sure if they should count as illegal pets and if we should name them (Sis K. used to have a crush on a boy named Keifer, and the name Keefe came to my mind), but since they seem to grow pretty fast it would be hard to keep track of them so we decided to just consider them interesting. We're still experimenting with how they work and how much yogurt we will actually use any given day, but it's pretty cool.

I sang in one ward yesterday, but my camera wouldn't record for some reason, good thing I'm singing the same song in the other ward on the 30th, hopefully I'll get you a good copy then. I guess there were some other great lessons and visits this week, but I haven't even recorded them in my journal, I can't seem to be able to think of too many topics per email for fear of my brain exploding. Oh well, hopefully my brain lasts long enough to be able to share everything when I get home and show my slides all night like missionaries do.

Thanks for the emails and updates, keep staying out of trouble and try to stay healthy! Love you for eternity!

-Sis Cloward

P.S. The sister hike has been rescheduled to next week, so it may be a short email. Sending plenty of love this week.

Elder Powell tries on the armor in it's preliminary stages

While my companions were talking to their families Sunday night, Andrew Moffat roped me into playing Pirates of the Caribbean Stratego (wasn't to hard to do.) He was pounding me the whole game until the end when I just barely managed to pull ahead and give him what-for

Abby Lords models the finished armor

during the lesson

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Elder Jones and I sing Because He Lives at Zone Conference

Yet another email received Apr 28, 2010

(written 4/19/10)(Yeah I know, confusing.)

We got to go to part of Youth Conference last last week, it took place over several days. On Fri (the 9th?) they had a musical/spiritual speaker thing (a capella group - check out the final song AWESOME!!!!!) (Editor's note: It's at the bottom of this post.) then a carnival in the church parking lot; Sat morning was the service project; Sat night was an awesome multi-stake formal for Priests and Laurels; Sun morning was a sepcial testimony meeting.

Carnival pics

This last Fri/Sat (16/17) was the stake play; in previous years they've done Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and The Ark, this year they did kind of a Broadway review loosely tied together with a spiritual message...loosely. But it was Amazing!!! We were so glad we had several people to invite so we just had to go both nights, oh the sacrifice - really it was, I've been humming the tunes all weekend...some of them have spiritual messages.

1. Hairspray

2. Annie

3. Just one song from Footloose, but it was so high energy and fun, it just stole the show the first night (the main singer is in one of our wards)

4. Wicked (the two girls are sisters, how cool would that be!)

5. Les Miserables (                 no words, absolutely no words)

6. Mary Poppins (they had so much fun with the last song I just had to capture a little bit of the coreography) (Editor's note: The embedded video has the sides cut off, to see the whole image, including what the guy on the right is doing, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg_1D9GFooc. Also, they're spelling supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. It took me a while to figure that out.)

7. Almost Dr. Dexter - the vehicle (or excuse) for presenting such a variety of musicals.

This has been such a weird two weeks with transfers and the temple so I've been bad at writing everything down that I want to remember to tell you, I can either go in depth on a few things or just briefy mention a dozen. And now I'm running out of time. To continue our Broadway theme a young girl we're teaching in one ward was in Guys and Dolls at her Catholic Junior High and we got to go to support her (we stood in line behind probably the only other LDS people here, it was great). It was very well done, and again we still find ourselves humming the tunes (she's the one in the blue dress on the right end of the middle row.)

We are without a car for an unknown amount of time due to very good reasons on our part - one of the new elders in our district had his appendix out his first day in the MTC and his second day in the mission field he passed out, fell off his bike, and landed in the hospital for two days; needless to say, his mother wasn't very happy so we gave up our car to him and his companion until further notice; better to do it now when we can still walk around outside than in July when we're all puddles. Did a Sis Powell ever call to get Aunt Kathy's info? I just happened to sit next to her the first night of the stake play and she recognized my name - only the second person I've met who actually knows someone I know (and it's always Uncle Bob's family.)

Hmmm, what else, oh at Zone Meeting yesterday Sis Johnson and I got asked to volunteer for an object lesson: she was the missionary who had to teach and guide me (the investigator) to make a pancake that looked like the example pancake. I was blindfolded the entire time (mixing, baking, and decorating). The topic was that our investigators can't see the end result and we have to be able to guide them through the whole process. I think our pancake looked pretty good, and I didn't even get my jacket dirty (mine's on the left, the original is on the right).

I'm enjoying being in a trio again, though it's a bit of a squish in the apartment - it was just perfect for two, now Sis Knuteson has a fold-out bed that only fits in front of the door. But it'll be great for stories when we get home!! Gotta go - Don't forget to read your scriptures every day and try to spend at least 15 minutes outside, it really will make a difference!!

-Sis Cloward


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"A cappella song"

Email received Nov 16, 2009

It's nice to see an email from home in the inbox when I log on. Yes, I did get your nice, long letters and the pictures, they were wonderful. I laughed out loud and still can't help smiling whenever I think about the news of Castle/Firefly. (Editor's note: This is in reference to the Halloween episode of Castle which I told her about. We are big Firefly fans.) Is it turning out to be a good/decent show or just another investment of time & interest that may be canceled at the end of the season? I've walked into several homes wherein the tv was playing Medium, Ghost Whisperer, or Bones, but I think the hardest was yesterday when someone was watching Serenity (Editor's note: The movie sequel to the TV show Firefly). I was highly tempted to take off my nametag and plop myself down on the couch. But it's not all bad, sometimes our Zone Leaders get permission to show video clips for our training meetings; this last week they showed pretty much all the highlights from Rudy - very inspiring; at my first Zone Conference two months ago we actually watched a clip from Bourne Supremacy, that was exciting.

(Personal note removed regarding our brother in the Navy.) Speaking of seamen, one of our investigators up here is everyone's favorite curmudgeony old sailor. He's been meeting with missionaries for six years (his wife got baptized at the beginning) and has made leaps and bounds of progress but still insists on dragging his feet. When the area got transferred to sisters a couple years ago there were three sisters so he started calling them his 'angels'; now after the first meeting we are officially dubbed 'angel' and thus we will be forever more, it's quite on honor. I hope one day y'all can meet and he and dad can swap sea tales (he's quite a storyteller). Did I mention, there's a Navy base in Fallon...okay, so it's an Naval Air Station, but still, I'm sure they'd have an NFCU branch; in fact, several of the homes we go to have NFCU magnets on their fridge, it's very heartwarming. So, the question is: Why Fallon? But my bigger question is why is there an Army Base in Hawthorne? (another small town to the south) Oh well, who can say why the government does what it does. We do cover the military housing in one of our wards so sometimes when we head that direction we can see jets flying circles in the sky, other times we just hear them. Kind of makes me homesick for Las Vegas as our area was in direct flight paths for a lot of the planes taking off or landing at the airport, we got to see a lot of low-fyling underbellies, I miss it. I also miss the warmth (not the heat - just the warmth) as it's getting quite chill up here in the north. I bought a nice coat, but it can only do so much after the sun goes down, I plan to do a lot of layering through Jan & Feb and stay inside as much as possible (pray we'll have a lot of people to teach!)

(Personal note removed.) Thanks so much! Keep on being the wonderful family you are!!

-Sister Cloward