Bedroom in Riga

Study in Riga

Tiny Toilet

Living room in Riga apartment

Sarah and her companion got off the bus a few stops early to contact people and a freak rain storm came up! Wow!

Sunset from the apartment in Riga

Sarah and Sister P

June 10, 2013

Hello all!

This will be short. I''m sorry. I only have about 20 minutes to write it. :( but all is well for me here in Rīga! :) We stay very busy, my companion and I and we work hard! We have about 8 investigators right now and we have 7 inactive or recent converts we are looking after as well as members that we are meeting with each week. We teach a ton!! But I love it! We got three new investigators this week. I told you a little about Madara, but we also have Inese and Sindija. I love them both already. We also will be picking up two other new investigators hopefully this week if they will come to their appointments.

I want to tell everyone this week a little bit more about my mission and the big things that are mission is working on. In the past our mission has been known as a low baptizing mission, but we are changing that this year. President Boswell and all the missionaries in leadership positions met last year to set a goal for baptisms this year. It as a hard meeting and a lot of things were discussed. In the past year this mission had 90 baptism for all four countries, and that was a high number for this mission. Well, after much discussion and some divine revelation, the number was set at 153. That is a big number! So far this year we are double the number of baptisms they had at this point last year. We currently have 49 baptisms and we have a goal for this month of 28. It is so amazing and humbly to be apart of this change and the amazing missionaries here that are doing it. We are all working harder than we ever have before and are working to find those that are ready for baptism. Me and sister P want to have one of our investigators baptized this transfer. We pray every day and hopefully soon we will. We work hard and want so badly that are investigators could see the eternal significance of our message. Elder Nelson was visiting Russia this past week and talked to President Boswell and he said that everybody (meaning the first presidency and the quorum of the twelve) have been wondering what we are doing over here to have such a huge increase in numbers! It is amazing to me! I am humbled to be apart of this!

Well, I still love love Rīga and I love the members of the branch here! They are awesome and while I still can't understand them, I feel their love and just there pure spirits and testimonies! I feel like I know them already. I'm sure I knew these faithful members and some of my investigators before this life. They knew I would be coming to their homeland and talking to them about the gopsel. Something else I love about our mission that president Boswell told us is that we literally are gathering the lost tribes over Israel over here. He said he was in a meeting with a lot of members who had received patriarchal blessing and he said 6 of the 12 tribes of Israel were represented and none were Ephraim or Menassa. They were all rarer ones! What a great work the Lord has entrusted me to do! I love you all and this will be it for now. I'll try to leave more time for writing next week. :( Sorry it isn't longer. Just know the work is hastening. Heavenly Father knows us, each and everyone of us individually, personally, and perfectly!

Know as well that I love you and that I know this church is true. I also know with all my heart that the Book of Mormon is a true book and if we study it and live what it teaches our lives will be blessed exponentially!! I love you all so much!

Ar mīlestību! (With love)

Māsa Klauvarda!

Dear Parents,

Your missionaries have all safely arrived in the Baltic Mission.  We are thrilled to have them serve with us.  Don't they look great, all happy and smiling! Monday is preparation day and the day the missionaries email their families.
It is sunny, warm and beautiful in Baltics, a great time of year to begin a mission!

Love,
Sister Ballstaedt
Baltic Mission Office

View from her apartment in Riga (1st area)

View from the front of her apartment in Riga (1st area)

Sarah and one of her best friends, Leah Black (Sister Black now!)

June 3, 2013

Sveiki!

This letter won't be very long, but I'll do my best to tell you as much as possible.

Hello all! I'm in riga and I love it here already! I'm serving in Riga, the east side, with Sister P. She is from Vernyl, UT and went to BYU for three years before her mission studying History. She wants to be a history professor at some point and get a PHD in history. She has been on her mission for ten months. She has served in Riga for two months and served in Liapaja for six months. She has only served in our current area for two transfers though. Before that she was in Imanta (still Riga, but the other side of the river). She is amazing and has been an incredible trainer so far! I love her and am so grateful for what she has done for me so far. She is so patient, but also pushes me to learn and do hard things. I've done a lot of hard things so far. But honestly I love it! While it could be overwhelming, I won't let it become that way. I'm going to push through and do the work that the Lord put me here to do.

So, to answer questions and tell you more about Riga.We are the only sisters in Riga, but on the other side of the river (imanta) there are two more sisters. Riga is divided in Half by the river and on the riga side there is a latvian and a russian branch. on the imanta side there is only a russian branch right now because they combined the imanta branch with our latvian branch. So, i get to see those Māsas as well. Sister O is in Imanta with Sister N.  I live in an apartment complex that is pretty nice. It is in an apartment building called a dome (at least that is what the missionaries call them). we live on the top of five floors. I love the aparment so far. We have a washer and we dry our clothes on a rack. It is a good situation and works fine for me. Our apartment is really pretty good sized. It would be considered a two bedroom apartment in America. We have a small oven, but no microwave, but I have no complaints. I love the apartment and it fits our needs.

Next questions, what was church like? Honestly a little overwhelming, but wonderful! There are a ton of people to meet and I'm doing my best to get to know them as soon as possible. It is a branch of about 50ish i think. It is small but good. There are a lot of inactive people and also, school is out so a lot of people go to the "country" for the summer.  The branch is done completely in Latvian and they offer translation for the mission president (he knows bits and pieces of all four languages of our mission but he doesn't understand or speak any of it really) so a missionary translates for them. I didn't understand everything, well hardly anything at all, but I understand more than I thought I would and I know that the understanding will come eventually.

The food: Well, we pretty much will always cook for ourselves. First off, becuase if you don't prepare the fruits and vegetables well here you can get sick and if we drink the water before it is filtered we can also get very sick. So, in general we don't really eat with the members. Also, the members are very poor and can't afford to feed us anyways. I love the breakfeast cereal here. Most of it is granola and they have a good variety of kinds. Also, the fruit here is pretty good. I love the apples! So sweet and juicy. The yogurt is good. It is drinkable yogurt and I love it. The milk is different and I haven't tried any plain but so far it hasn't been to bad. I don't know, but so far I like it. We ate at a restaurant that the mission president arranged for us and that was really good. They got some super spicy curry something that I wasn't able to really eat because it had a TON of ginger and I had a reaction to just one bite. Luckily they had some food in the fridge left over from the night before that I heated up and ate. So, that was good. I love the pizza here. It is different and hard to describe, but delicious!

I'm almost out of time. Here are some interesting things I've already learned about Latvians.

1. they love animals. lots of people have dogs as pets. Also, there are tons of stray cats and they feed them so that are well taken care of. The pigeons are also fed and taken car of and they are SO FAT! It is funny to see. Pigeons also aren't scared of people so I can walk right next to them and they don't move.

2. Latvia is hot and humid. It has been ninety the past few days and then it is humid on top of that, so i'm always wet. It is hard to get used to, but I'll do my best. It is supposed to rain a lot this time of year, but so far it hasn't really. We'll see what happens.

3. Latvians don't really talk to strangers. No one says hi to each other on the street and they don't really make eye contact with you. So, it can be pretty hard to contact when walking on the street because you have to stop them and just talk to them, and most times they just keep walking and either ignore you or say "nav laika" which means I don't have time. So, it can be hard.

Quickly, I'll end by talking about our investigators. We have 4 from before I got here and I've only met one of them so far. Only one of those four are progressing investigators so that is sad. He can't get baptized yet because he has MS and his aunt (who he lives with) has say about what he does and has rights over him. So, he has to have her permission to get baptized and we aren't having much luck there yet. He does have permission to go to church so now we are working on getting him a wheelchair.

We hardly ever get time to go contacting because we teach a ton. We have a large area and have a lot of "retention" lesson. So, we teach a lot of the recent converts in our area as well as we teach a lot of inactives. So, that combined with our investigators takes up all of our time.

Well, on Saturday we had a rare three hours of contacting time and we were able to get a new inverstigator. That means you give them a lesson (we gave one to them on the street together) and set up another appointment. So, it is Aiva and Kristine. It is probably a mother and daughter. The mom looks about ~50 and the girl looks to be about 12. We have a lesson with them this week and we are just praying that they come!

Also, we got a new investigator today as well. We don't usually teach on preparation day, but two of the Russian elders got a number for a latvia girl that wanted a book of mormon a long time ago and haven't been able to meet with her for months. Well, finally today they could meet with her, but we needed to come because we will be teaching her from now on because she is a native latvian and she lives in our area. So we met them there. She was 45 minutes late for the lesson but came. The elders stayed for a little bit, but had to leave to meet with someone else. Well, we did most of the lesson in English which was good for me. This investigator, her name is Madara, is so ready to hear the gospel. I'm just going to pray that we can help her see the need to be baptized. I wish I had more time to tell you about her, but I will do that next week.

I'm out of time. I love you and I will tell you all more later! I have so much to tell you all!

Much love,

Māsa Klauvarda

Remember Heavenly Father loves you and that he wants to hear from you. Pray and he will listen. Listen and he will answer you back as well.

Love you all!

Candid shot taken by another missionary. She looks so happy!

Purple day at the MTC

Not sure what she is thinking here!

May 23, 2013

Sveiki!

Hello everyone. I'm sorry but I don't think this email will be very long. The time is flying buy and there is SO much to do today!! For those who sent me letters in the past week, I'll do my best to respond to as many as I can today, but you might be getting your next letter from me from Latvia. We are flying out of the MTC Monday morning and I'm so excited! We leave the MTC at 4 in the morning on Monday and we fly out of Salt Lake at 8ish. I'm excited! We are flying to Washington DC, then to Frankfurt Germany, and then to Riga, Latvia. We'll land in Latvia at 1:35 there time on Tuesday the 28th! It is so crazy!

Well, this week has been crazy and there isn't a lot to tell about. Sorry. We've just been so busy that I don't remember a lot of what went on. I do know that this week was incredible though. I loved it! It was a spiritually uplifting week with lots of teaching and sadly, already some goodbyes. One of teachers taught for the last time on Saturday and we had to say goodbye to him. It was so sad! I didn't like it at all, and I hope I see these amazing teachers when I come back, from my mission because they were amazing people! It is likely that as long as they are in Utah we probably will see them because they have a big get together every conference the Friday before conference. So, they get together as many as can from the mission every six months! I thought that was awesome! That makes me so excited! I'm also going to miss the other people in our district since we have three missions represented in our district. I'm not looking forward to saying good bye to them. That will be so bitter sweet!! We are going to do out best to have a district reunion when we all get back from our missions. One of the members of our branch presidency we also had to sang goodbye to this last Tuesday. That was so sad because Brother Parrish and his wife are so dear to me! They both said that they want to be their when we all get back from our missions. She said that she had never worked with a group of missionaries like ours before and she is so excited for when we come back becuase she wants to hear all of our stories. She said that we are the only group so far that she has wanted to see when they get back and to keep in contact with while we are out. That was so sweet of her and it touched me so much. I'm also excited to get together with our district when we get back because we have some pretty incredible missionaries in our group and they are going to do incredible things!

Well, this week we got to hear from Sister Mary Edmunds at our Sunday night devotional. This is our second time being able to hear from her and it was amazing! She is so funny, but also has a great message to share. I'm so excited to got out and serve now because she always gives us such hope to be a missionary and that we can serve an honorable mission well and do incredible things. I'm so excited to be a missionary and go out and bring people unto Christ their savior and just try to help them see the importance of my message. I know though as well, that I am never in this alone! I know that is so true! None of us are ever alone unless we choose to be.

Also, this last Tuesday we heard from Elder Nash and his wife. They both shared so much incredible things with us. Elder Nash spoke with such incredible authority, and I know everything he said was true. He talked about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the importance of that in our message, but also, the importance of that for us now, and how we need to live the gospel of Jesus Christ daily in our lives. How we apply faith, repentance, baptism, the holy ghost, and enduring to the end in our lives right now. I wish I could share it all with you but there was a ton of information. Just know that I know that this church is true. I know that we have a Heavenly Father who loves us and wants what is best for us in all things. He want to hear from us in prayer. Pray to him and I know he will listen and I know that he will answer if you have faith and are patient. I know that Jesus Christ lives. He is our Savior and we can do all things through him. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I know that He restored the fullness of the gospel on Earth for us know and I know he received and translated the Book of Mormon. I know that the Book of mormon is true. I love the book and the joy I feel when i read it. I know that reading it can bring so much joy and so many blessings to our lives!

I'll quickly write my testimony in Latvian (a simplified version):

Es zinu, ka Jēzus Kristus ir mūsu Glābējs. Jēzus Kristus mūs mīl. Viņš mirsta mums, ka mēs varam atgriezties Dievam. Es zinu, ka šī baznīca ir patiesa. Es zinu, ka Džozefs Smits tulkoja Mormona Grāmatu. Es zinu, ka Mormona Grāmata ir patiesa un Dieva vārds. Ez zinu, ka Dievs ir mūsu Tēvs. Es zinu, ka Dievs mūs mil. Dievs grib lai mēs lugtu viņam. Lūdzu, lūdz viņam. Es zinu, ka ja jūs ludzat, jūs jutīsit mieru un viņa mīlestību. Jēzus Kristus vārda, āmen.

I know that Jesus Christ is our savior. Jesus Christ loves us. He died for us that we could return to God. I know that this church is true. I know that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. I know that the Book of Mormon is true and God's word. I know that God is our father. I kno wthat God loves us. God wants us to pray to him. Please, pray to him. I know that if you pray, you will feel peace and his love. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I love you all! Have a great week!!

Sister Cloward

May 16, 2013

Sveiki!

Hello everyone! Life is going really well! Things here at the MTC are coming to a close and it is crazy!! I don't even know what to do about it! It is so weird and stressful that time here is coming to a close. The language is far from ready, but I'm definitely doing my best to have it ready! I study a lot and hardly do anything else! This week has been awesome! We continue to teach, but nothing super special has really gone on with our teaching this week. We are still teaching the investigators and struggling to learn how to be good teachers. We have our good lessons and our bad lessons, but we do our best to learn. I'm not sure we are getting better but I'm doing my best to really get this done and to learn all I can now! It isn't always easy, and I have my down moments, but I keep the faith that I am doing my best and I can't do more than that. I just have to rely on the Lord for everything and never falter. There has never been a time where I have had to depened on the Lord more than I do now. I depend on him to help me with everythign that I do!
Well, this week we are been so spiritually fed. First off though, this Sunday I was an accompanist for a violin duet! They did amazing and I enjoyed being able to help them out. We just played for our branch, but our branch isn't so little anymore. Last Wednesday we more than doubled our branch. We had 15 and added another 22 missionaries going to Indonesia, Malasia, and Singapore. And then yesterday, we got another 14! Our Branch is going to be huge for a couple weeks and then 11 of us leave in a week and a half. I know part of the new group is going to Madagascar, but I don't know where the rest of them are going. So, our branch is now very diverse! It is awesome though! I found out that other branches do their meetings partly in the language that they are learning, becuase they'll have a big group of French speakers or Spanish speakers. That was so weird for me to find out because we do everything in English, because now we have 9 languages in our branch! And they are all so completely different!!

Also, for relief society on Sunday we were very priveledged to hear from Janice Kapp Perry. For those who may not know who that is, she has written one of the hymns in the hymns book and tons of primary songs! She was so great to listen to! She talked a lot about how music changes her mission with her husband. She also said that there is a two fold purpose of a mission, 1: to bring people into the fold, but 2: to sanctify the missionary. She said that this is important because the mission will be a stepping stool for the rest of our lives and will affect everything we do from here on out. We also sang a lot while she was with us. We stood and sang a medley of primary songs that was beautiful, all of which she worte. We sang, A child's prayer, I love to see the temple, I belong to the Church, I'm trying to be like Jesus, Army of Helamen, and Love is spoken here. It was beautiful! There is a lot of power when sisters all stand and sing in unison! Also, she and a committee of people are working on songs for sister missionaries. She said that the church is excited for all the sisters that are going out. I thought that was pretty cool. I didn't know that the church is as excited as I am about the opportunity that I have to be a missionary. So, at the very end of the meeting we ended with one of the new songs she has written. She changed the lyrics of her song as Sister of Zion, to be The Sister of Zion. It was all about sister missionaries and what we are doing! It was beautiful and it held so much power! I cried through the whole thing because it perfectly stated my testimony and feelings about being able to be on a mission. I didn't really sing at all. I wish I could share the words with you, but I don't remember any of them. I just know that I am so excited to be in this wave of sister missionaries going out to serve the Lord! I love being a missionary!

Also, this Tuesday for devotional we were very priveledged to hear from Elder Russel M. Nelson and his wife Sister Wendy Nelson! What a spiritual feast that was and I learned so much! I wish I could share it all with you, but I will share some highlights of the talk. The general theme for them both was family history and missionary work and how they are related. I already have a HUGE love for family history, but I thought that I wouldn't be doing much with it these next 18 months, but they made sure to point out that a huge part of my mission will be family history work as well, and helping others with their family history work. Just like there are tons of people that I need to find that are living here that need to hear the gospel. There are even more people on the other side just waiting for their work to be done. And if I can just bring one person into the fold and help them do their family history work, then I can bring thousands into the fold! I thought that was so amazing! So, I just need to focus on helping as many people as possible! Sister Nelson siad that we need to pray for help from the other side. Especially we need to pray to the ancestors of those that we need to teach. She said exactly, "Pray to be led to people who's ancestors in heaven are praying for me." I thought that was so cool. She said the people on the other side are very awayre of what we are doing. She said that we can pray for specific people to attend us each day when need that extra help and that we will have angels surrounding us. I thought of Grandpa Darrell at first (my mom's dad) becuase he is so special to me and how I know he would be right there to help me out. Also, I got a letter from Grandma Sharon that evening and at the end of the letter she talked about her dad and how much he loved mission work and he loved his mission. She said at the very end that he is pleased with me and what I am doing. I cried pretty hard over that because I know my grandpa Leland Foote is watching over me. My namesake is watching out for me. He is an incredible man, and I'm glad that I have him to help me and to assist me in this great work.

Well, I don't have a ton of time. I'll just end with the fact that I love to be a missionary! I know it is something that is so important! She said that mission work will go on whether we are here or not, but it will go faster if we choose to serve and we will be changed dramatically if we do serve. We will make waves in what is going on. I want to challenge all who read this to support the missionaries in any way you can. Pray for them, contribute to the general mission fund, or if you are able, go on a mission. The Lord needs missionaries now! It is so important that we all do our part to assist in the Lord's work and to help his children find their way back to Him through His son Jesus Christ. I love you all and this is so important. I know this church is true and that Jesus Christ is our savior. I know that we much strive to do all we can to become like him. I also know that we can do it! God loves us and he wouldn't give us anything that we couldn't do. Always remember that. You are loved and we can do everything through Christ. Pray and use the atonment to receive strength and guidance. He will give you what you need to do what he asks. If we are obedient we will see success in our lives, and if we are exactly obedient we will see miracles. I know that is true and that if we follow the commandments exactly and remember the Lord in all things, we will experience miracles in our lives! Again, I love you all and thank you for all the letters and support! I will do my best to respond! You are all amazing!!!

With much love and gratitude,
Sister Cloward

Tag for the mission field. They can't wear it in the MTC

She certainly does look happy to be there!

May 9, 2013

Sveiki, visi cilvēki!

How is everyone doing? They weeks are just flying by. I am down to two and a half weeks left in the MTC. I have three sundays left and 2 preparation days! It is crazy and I'm not sure where the time has gone. This week has been wonderful, but not a lot different has gone one. We (all the sisters going to Latvia) got a letter and a postcard from two of the companionships in Latvia right now. They gave us some advice and gave us encouragement. Also, one sister was just in the last group of missionaries from the MTC and will be one of our trainers when we get there. She has only been there for twelve weeks so that is pretty cool. There will be four sisters in Latvia and four sisters going so we are doubling the mission. That will be pretty cool. It will be fun for all of us to be over there together. Well, some of the advice that the sisters gave us is they told us about the music allowances over there. They said that we are only allowed to play music that could be played in the halls of the temple. So, Mormon Tabernacle choir, and maybe instrumental if it is soft and uplifting. So, if anyone wants to help me out I don't have any CD's with me. So, if you want you are welcome to send me a CD with your favorite Mormon Tabernacle choir music. That would be greatly appreciated. Also, I found out that the we aren't allowed to eat with the members really, so if you would also be willing, I would love recipes! The sisters said that grocery stores over there are pretty much the same as they are here so I should be able to get everything I need. :) So, if anyone wants to support some sister missionaries, I would love recipes and CDs! Thanks!

Also, this week, I got to sing in the choir. I love singing in the choir! It is so fun! We sang "Come Follow Me" and I loved it! It was beautiful! Also, I forgot to tell you but a week and half ago I was asked to be in charge of music for our branch. So, I am in charge of coming up with a special musical number and making sure that someone is playing the piano and I pick the hymns. I really like it. I've used my abilities with the piano a lot more since I got here. I love that. I also was asked by two sisters in the branch who play violin if I would accompany them on a violin duet. It has been a lot of fun so far. We tried out this morning to do a big musical number (like in one of the devotionals or something like that). We'll find out sometime next week if we got it. We are also playing the piece in the Branch this week. It is a mix of Sweet Hour and Prayer and I need thee every hour. I love it! It is beautiful. The sisters are both very talented violinists.

Also, this week our branch finally got bigger. We have been just 15 missionaries meeting together every week and now we got 22 new missionaries this Wednesday that will be in our branch. I'm looking forward to that. And next Wednesday we get another 14, so we have a pretty good sized branch now. I love it! It'll be nice to have some more missionaries. And all of the new ones, but two are elders. So, finally we'll have more priesthood in our meetings. Before we only have 4 elders.

So, this week, we are still teaching three investigators. Lauren asked if we are teaching real investigators and we aren't. We teach our teachers who pretend to be investigators that they really taught. They are very good at being investigators and it feels pretty real. We teach two in Latvian, and one in English. They are incredible opportunities to learn. I love it! We are getting better because we are learning to listen to the spirit more as we teach. Last week we had a great opportunity with the spirit. We were teaching one of the Latvian lessons to someone named Aivars who is awesome! He has a strong testimony and desire to serve the Lord and keep the commandments. We were teaching about fasting and it was really cool to listen to. As we got to the end of the mission, I had the strongest desire to talk about testimonies and testimony meetings. It was pretty incredible! The spirit was strong as I in my halting Latvian did my best to explain what a testimony was and what testimony meeting is. It was hard and as I struggled the spirit helped me to know what to say. I also have great companions. My companion Sister Ormsby and I teach together along with the solo Elder, Elder Webb. We are getting really good at teaching with each other and teaching with untiy and as we work to teach with unity the spirit is stronger and stronger in our lessons. We also had a great experience with our investigator, Renārs. When we started with him, he didn't believe in God and had no concept of prayer or what that was. It was really hard to teach him at first and our first lesson with him was like talking to a brick wall. He was catching on to anything we were trying to teach him. Well, we went into our next lesson and talked to him more about prayer and what it is and who God is. By the end of the lesson, he was truly listening to us and we were able to really touch him and talk to him. At the end of the lesosn, Elder Webb asked him to pray. He was pretty resistant, but Elder Webb persisted. It was incredible! He prayed right there and distinctly asked, that if there was a God and he was God, that he wanted to know if he was there. He then thanked God for his family and asked for a blessing upon us and his family. It was incredible! The spirit was so strong and afterwards we talked about what he was feeling and helped him recognize that that was the spirit and it was testifying of the truth of this stuff unto him. And since that lesson we have seen a change in Him as he is really beginning to want to read and pray and do what we ask him to do. It is awesome and I love to see the change that the spirit can make in our lives and has made in his life.

Well, to end my letter today, I'll share an insight that I gained from the Tuesday Devotional talk. The talk was by Elder Gavarret of the seventy. He talked about the gospel of Christ and what that was. It was awesome and it was a strong talk. It held a lot of power and I loved it! It cumilated at the end to a point for me. I realized that I'm teaching exactly what Christ taught when he was on the Earth and what he continually is teaching us. I realized that that makes me one in purpose with my Savior Jesus Christ. I realized that that means that I am on with Christ. Just like how Him and Heavenly Father are one in purpose, so they are one in each other and can speak and act for each other. It is the same for me and Christ. I am his missionary preaching his word. I am one in Him and He is one in me. He will truly be with me as I preach His gospel and will be my support mate and friend as I teach and through me, He will touch those that I teach. It makes me very excited to go and preach in Latvia!

Well, I love sending these emails, but even more than that I love getting emails and letters! The language is coming and I feel your love and prayers! You are all amazing and you are loved by me and even more than that, you have a Heavenly Father who always loves you way more than you can comprehend!

Love you all! (Es jūs mīlu!)

 

Māsa Klauvarda

 

aka Sister Cloward :)