September 30, 2013

Hello everyone!

I hope I can all of my thoughts expressed in this email. I have so many things I want to express and so little time!

First off: I am supposed to write more about the food. Honestly it isn't that much different than that you would eat in America except it is so much healthier! They don't use very many, if any at all, preservatives and all of their produce and dairy is pretty fresh! Their dairy is sometimes so fresh (and there aren't really preservatives in it) that is goes bad in just 2 days of having it. So on interesting thing then about milk here is they have something called Mužigais Piens (the means eternal milk) And yet, it can last a long time unopened. Once it is opened it last as long as most milk in america, about a week. But if it is closed it doesn't have to be refrigerated and can last for like six months! I don't know how that works, and I am not really sure I want to know. That is what we usually drink here, but the milk in general tastes very different from America so I don't drink it plain. Only for cereal. So, that then is where i start for what I eat everyday. Every morning for breakfast I usually have cereal with some fresh fruit (they have really yummy pears, plums, peaches, nectarines, and apples here). Other meals (lunch and dinner) are pretty much the same things I would eat at home. We use the same recipes and it is pretty much all the same. This last week we cooked a frozen pizza one day, had taco soup another day, and Latvian frozen food another day. The Latvian food we had is stuff that a local restaurant here makes and then sell it frozen (kind of like you would buy wantons frozen or dumplings). That is what the food is like that we buy and eat. I'll send a picture. Other foods that are super common here and eaten a lot is potatoes and mushrooms!! Latvians love mushrooms and we can find them at any store and there are tons of different varieties. Sadly, we aren't allowed to try a lot of the varieties because apparently as Americans, they would sit well in our stomachs. :( But that is okay, because I still love the ones we can buy! :) Yummy!! Anymore questions about food?? Send me some if you have them?

Second: (From Shayla Nuttall) So what is the perception of America and Americans there? Honestly it depends on who you talk to. In general it isn't lie we are that cool to them. :) We are Americans and a lot of the time they just think that we are weird. They mostly think that we are all obese and unhealthy. I can see why they think that because food in America can be very unhealthy, and they are very healthy eaters. They have to because they can't usually afford health care so they do all they can no to get sick. But overall, they don't have any bad perceptions of America. You'll meet the rare person who had awful opinions about Americans, but in general, they are just neutral. They do love Hollywood though, as in American movies and American music. So, that is always interesting to be grocery shopping and hear an American song (which is mostly all they play over the radio in grocery stores). 

Last thing: Conference and Hastening the mission work. :) Man, I am so excited to talk about this!! It has been way fun to learn about these things in the last week! So for watching general conference here is going to be a little different. We can watch it with the rest of the branch I think in two weeks. That of course will be in Latvian, then we can watch it in English on our preparation days. It'll take about 5 preparation days to finish conference. I found out a lot more about how the translation works which was way cool! I found out that before conference even is given, the talks are already written and are being translated. Lots of the members here help with the translation! It is way cool! We answered a few question for one member. We couldn't see that talk, but she asked us some questions about the meaning of some common American/church phrases that have meaning for us, but don't necessarily translate over. For example, one was, "Stand together and lift where you stand." It doesn't really have any meaning to them so we explained it so that she could then write it in understandable Latvian. It was really cool to see. So, anyways, all of these members translate the talks and then at the same time conference is being shown, several different members get together and read the talks in Latvian at the same time that conference is going on in America! It is so cool how it all works! So, they stay up late here and stay at the church and read the talks. It is really fun think and see how the organization of the church works and all that goes into making it possible world wide to be able to hear from a prophet of God! I know he is a prophet and it makes me so excited! As far as my little tidbit on hastening the work, and sadly, this is where I will have to end. :( I know that the Lord is hastening His work. He wants all of His beloved children to hear about the glorious news of the gospel. I have started studying and reading the new testament (I read a little everyday and I love it). But there are some scriptures that I cam across that I had never paid attention to before that are literally being fulfilled in our days! It is cool. They are in Matthew 9:37-38. They say, "Then saith he (Jesus Christ) unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore for the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest." The Lord is right now answering the members of the church, throughout all time, prayers. He is sending out laborers in plenty! The missionary age change started it and now there are more missionaries than ever in the field! But it isn't all, he has more directly than ever called every member to be missionaries! Take up the call and be a missionary. Be an example of a disciple of Jesus Christ and share this good news. The gospel is a happy wonderful thing and such an amazing blessing to bring into our lives! If everyone could truly realize how much joy the gospel of Jesus Christ brings, I think they would all want it. So, let us help everyone see that! I may be set apart as a missionary now, but I will be a missionary for life. I have the name tag engraved on my heart. 

I love you all and I am grateful for your support! Sorry that this is so long and I hope it is understandable because I had so much to say!! I truly know this church is true. God is our Heavenly Father and he loves us. Christ is our savior and redeemer  and also loves us! Turn to him and embrace the peace and forgiveness that he is holding out waiting for you to come take!

I love you all so much!

Love,

Sister Cloward

September 23, 2013

Sorry this will be short this week. I didn't leave very much time. :( Well, as for us in this area, Latvia has been super cold and rainy. Fall is definitely here. Fall in Latvia is rainy and windy. It stays about 50's at this time of the year, but has already dropped into the 40's and will eventually get that way more and more. The rain is the hardest part for me to deal with because I hate having wet feet and I most often have wet feet. I need to invest in some better shoes! But I don't mind the cold too much. I love wearing scarves and my coat and that makes it a lot of fun!

So last week, I wrote about our investigator J from England. He has been facing a ton of opposition from his wife. I hope that he can get baptized soon though. He has such an amazingly strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and of  God's hand in his life and he clings to that testimony. It is so cool to see. I hope that he will soon be able to get baptized as he so strongly desires. We hope to be able to meet with the wife soon and help her see that the church isn't a bad thing and that what J is doing can only bless them. 

As for the rest of my week, here is what I wrote my mission president this week, "Our other investigator is A who really likes the Bible. We had an interesting lesson with him last monday. We learned that he prays, but he has never prayed to find the truth about anything. We also learned that he more has "knowledge" of the bible rather than faith or a testimony of the Bible. We are going to have a lesson this week in truly having faith in christ. He knows about Christ and all about his life, but we are beginning to realize that he doesn't have faith in Christ. Through this experience I am seeing how closely faith and action are connected. Without action, the faith shrivels and dies. He doesn't do anything to grow or nurture the faith he gains from reading the bible. He lets it dies. He has great knowledge, but that is where it ends. I can see how what we do really is how our faith grows. 

As for me and Sister B, we are doing well. We are really going to miss having K and M (two girls in our area who are leaving on missions this week and next, one is going to temple square and the other to the Czech republic) in our area. They are going to make great missionaries, but they were a huge help on more than one lesson. I can't wait for them to serve though because they are going to do great things. As for our transfer goals, we have done really well at focusing on them. We have really gotten to work on our member cards and it has been really helping me focus on truly getting to know the members in our area and in the branch in general. It is wonderful to know about the little facts about people. Like what people's hobbies are and if they have pets or not. That makes it a lot of fun and I really feel like I am getting to know these people. Also, we have a goal for 75 percent of our planned lessons being member present and that has been so helpful. I believe we are at 80 percent right now and it is great! The members have been really great on rallying around us and helping out with the investigators. I am really gaining a testimony of the difference between member present lessons and other lessons, but also the difference between prepared member lessons and just member lessons. These members have strong testimonies and also a lot of them are good teachers, and when you really let the member know what your goal is for the lesson and what you are teaching to get there, they really can and will help much better then if you just invite them to be in on a lesson. "

Well, sadly that is all I have time for. I am not sure what I have time for, so send me questions this week! I want to know what you all want to know. :)

Lots of love,

Sister Cloward

September 15 photos

You know you have had a good study day when your desk looks like this!

Fairly traditional Latvian food. Potatoes, cabbage slaw, chicken kebab.

Freedom monument in Riga

Church in old town Riga

We made her a photo book from Shutterfly. From the tears, we think she really liked it!

This is fairly common graffiti called Saki. It literally means "say."

Sarah wasn't sure what this monument is for. She thinks it is a war monument.

September 15, 2013

Hello everyone! 

So there have been some changes in security for Eastern Europe so my emails are going to look a little different. I wont' be writing names, just initials. :) Just to protect people's security here. 

Here is what I wrote my mission president about my week. :) 

"We have had some problems come up with J. He has been having family problems and has canceled all of our lessons since Thursday and was also not able to come to church. So, because of that we don't currently have a baptismal date because he won't be ready by the 28th of September. We are hoping to be able to meet with him today to help get all of this figured out. We know he still believes the Book of Mormon, he just keeps have to cancel because of family obligations.

With H (our investigator who had a baptismal date, but failed his interview), he still hasn't been answering our calls. The Elders got ahold of him and invited him to church and he said he would come, but then didn't show up. We are working on hopefully getting a hold of him today. We hope he answers our phone calls. We don't know his address so we can do a drop by, but we do know the general area where his business his so we are hoping to be able to find that. For now, our plans for him are to do some really spiritual lessons with members and really just have him feel that spirit and desire to feel it more. 
With A (investigator that we are meeting with who contacted Sister B on a bus), it is getting better and better. He really is interested in what we believe, and has started to read the Book of Mormon. He also came to church yesterday and stayed for two hours. He didn't want to stay for priesthood. He has his understanding of the bible and when we teach him he is just really trying to align what we teach with what he already knows. WE are trying to help him see that all answers truly come from God and he needs to gain a testimony of the things we teach him for himself. We invite him a lot of read the Book of Mormon and pray about it to find out if it is true. We did challenge him to baptism, and he didn't say no. He wouldn't pick a date. He said he knows how serious baptism is and there are somethings that he will have to change before he can be baptized. He also knows that he won't get baptized until he believes what we are telling him is true. We are just going to keep working on him and doing as much as we can to help him see that the Book of Mormon is the most important thing if we want a testimony about this church and it helps to explain the bible and that the Book of Mormon and the Bible really work together."

So that is who we are working with in the way of investigators right now. With J, we met him for the first time just two weeks ago. He is from England. He is married to a Latvian, but doesn't speak a ton of Latvian so we teach in English. It is different to teach in English, but definitely a ton of fun!! He is progressing really well and really wants to be baptized! He has just run into a few small family problems, but we are hoping to get them figured out soon! In our second meeting with him (which was this last Tuesday) he had read quite a bit of the Book of Mormon and had a ton of awesome questions! It was great! He also said that he believed in was true and that he definitely thought that Joseph Smith was a prophet. It was so cool to hear! We told him then that if he thought that this was all true, the next step was to keep learning about these things and be baptized. He said, "Well, of course my answer is yes. I was actually going to ask you about that because I read a little bit about it on Mormon.org." AHH! It was so cool! He has really been prepared to hear this gospel and it made me so happy to hear! He is so awesome! The awesome thing as well, is he only started meeting with us when he met me for a second time on the street. HE ran into us again and said, "this is twice that I have seen you Sister C. I think I need to meet with you and find out more about what you believe." It was so cool to hear! He is wonderful and I hope we can get past the family issues soon so that he can get baptized soon.

Well, that was the most exciting thing that happened this last week. I am about out of time, but I hope you all know that I love you! Also, this work is true. Something I have learned a lot about in the last week is the atonement and how much it really applies in our lives. It applies in every aspect of our lives. I am learning that the atonement can help us overcome all sorts of things. Whatever we need help with the atonement can help with. Even more importantly whatever guilt or sorrow that we feel doesn't have to be felt. The savior felt that already and we can turn to him and use his atonment in our lives to have those feelings taken away. What a special gift from our father in heaven that we have. I feel so grateful that we have these blessings! I know this church is true and I know that Christ is our Savior. He loves us and wants what is best for us. We can truly learn about him by studying the Book of Mormon and the Bible. Study those books and come unto him. The blessings for that are undescribable and uncountable. 

with lots of love,

Sister C

September 9, 2013

Hello everyone,

Sorry this email might not be super long. We have had a slower week. We had a lot of contacting time which was nice. It was good because we found some new people to listen to our message. We currently have six people that we are working with! That is the most I have ever had! It is really awesome to know that i am helping people learn about there savior Jesus Christ and help them accept his restored gospel! What a special privilege!  I love it! I don't have anything really to say about them because we haven't had lessons with them all yet, but we do have them that we are looking after and helping. Here are some questions I answered.

Questions from Morgan: So how's training a greenie being a greenie :) Hard? Fun? Is your companion nice?

   answer: Training a greenie being a greenie. I haven't actually thought of it that way. For the most part I don't feel like I am training. She is awesome! Her language is great and she is a great teacher! Sometimes it is hard because we both don't always understand everything that is said. So that is rough, but we get a long and we have great members in our area who help us alot, but more importantly than that. This is the Lord's work and we see his help in every aspect of it!

 Do you like the language or does it still taste funny in your mouth?

    answer: sometimes I speak this language and I can't even believe I am actually doing it. It is crazy that I can actually learn this hard language. I wonder how it can be possible! But I know it iws a gift of the spirit combined with my own efforts to learn it. When I am not feeling the spirit though it for sure is harder to speak. That I can testify of.  But yes, the language, "still tastes funny in my mouth" sometimes. :)

Questions from Dad: Food? Unique customs?

Answer: there is a lot and I don't have time to write about them all! I wish I did! They love dill here! Also, there food in general is super fresh and healthy. unique custom: Latvians go to the grocery store everyday and buy the food they need for that day because that is the best way for it to be fresh the longest. :) I can't think of any others. Ask more specific quesitons. :)

Other than that, I want to testify that I know that this work is true! We truly have Heavenly Father who loves us! He is looking out for us and wants what is best for our welfare. If we ever feel alone or like we don't have any friends, I can tell you that there is always a place to feel loved and feel like you have a friend. That is through our Savior Jesus Christ. He loves us and through prayer we can feel His love as well as our Heavenly Father's love for us. You can access that love through prayer, scripture study, and also through going to church. Combine these three and if you really seek it. You can feel that love manifested through the Holy Ghost. Please try to find that love! You can feel it because I have felt it for me, as well as I have felt it for you. That love that you feel can help you get through any trial you are facing. It can help you become better. I love the scripture Ether 12:27 because I know we can really become better. Seek his help and his quidance and you will receive it. :) I love you all so much and I hope you know that. Thank you for the support and I hope you have a great week!

Love,

Sister Cloward

Sept. 2, 2013

Hey everyone! 

This last week was great! Thank you grandma sharon and Melissa for the birthday packages that arrived this last week!! I loved them! You both are awesome! 

This last week was really fun! Sister B and I are best friends! We laugh a lot and really enjoy our time together! She is doing really well. I can tell she stills gets overwhelmed sometimes and the language frustrates her at some points, but she is doing so great!! Her Latvian is already so good and she understands quite a bit of what people say to her! I swear she came pretrained from the MTC. There is nothing I need to teach her and she teaches me WAY more than I teach her! I love it and I love working with her!

This last Saturday, there were two baptisms that we got to attend. One was a Russian baptism that we attended with our investigator Harijs. He seemed to really like it, and I hope he felt the spirit. We are still working with him and helping him build his testimony. He enjoys meeting with us and still reads the book of mormon everyday, so hopefully we can help him soon see the need for baptism.

The other baptism was a little 8 year old girl from the Latvian branch here. She was super cute! 8 year old baptisms don't happen a ton here, but it was super cute! The spirit was so strong and really testisfied of the truth of the ordinance she was partaking in! I loved it and it was really fun to see. :)

Also, we got a new investigator this week. Here is what I told President Boswell about him: "As for this week, last night we got a new investigator, from England. His name is Jamie. I met him on the street several weeks ago and we had a nice conversation, but at the time he made it very clear that he was not interested. He said that he had seen and talked to missionaries before and he wasn't really interested in finding anymore about our church. Well, then this last week Sister B and I ran into him again and had a really nice conversation about our church and he said at one point. "I have ran into you twice now Sister Cloward, I think that we need to meet and talk about your church." So, sure enough that is what we did. We had a lesson with him last night, in English!, and taught him a full first lesson and he loved it! He is really excited to start reading the book of Mormon and said several times. "I want to really find out about all of this. I'll write down all me questions as I read and you can answer them for me." He has a huge belief in God. He lives in Latvia and once a week travels back to England, but is hear every weekend mostly and then for a week at a time after that. He is married to a Latvian and speaks a little Latvian. He is awesome and very excited to find out about these things." That experience testifies to me that there are people prepared for me and he is one of those that Sister B and I needed to find and teach.
Questions from Shayla: So I'm wondering what people in Latvia look like generally? Dark hair or light hair? Light or dark skin? Any special traits like squinty eyes or big noses? 

ANSWER: Latvian people are really pretty. They have really high cheek bones in general. They are mostly tanner skinned people. But they are white people in general. It is weird for Latvians to see black people or even more olive skinned people because they are very white. As for hair color, i'm not sure because a lot of latvians, if not all, die their hair. :)

(Morgan and dad, i'll answer your questions next week)

So that is about it for today! I just wanted to end with my testimony. Yesterday we had a lesson with two members in our area who are both about to go on missions. They both leave in a month. One is going to Czech Republic and one is going to Temple Square in Salt Lake. We talked about how we need to receive a confirmation that our call came from a prophet who received revelation from God. So, we talked to them about finding out if their mission calls really came from God and challenged them to receive a confirmation of the divinity of their call. As we were teaching I recieved a confirmation again that my call came from God. I was supposed to come to Latvia and speak Latvian, because that is where God knew I would grow the most and I could help the best with this work. God loves us and he is our Heavenly Father. That much I know! I love you all! Thanks for everything!!

Love, 

Sister Cloward

Just a few more pics

Chinese food in Latvia. Sarah says you pick out what you want to include and they stir fry it all together.

View from the study window in Imanta. Huge raindrops!

Last day as companions with Sister N

Capturing a rainbow!

Happy 20th Birthday, Sarah! They bought a cake to celebrate.

Sarah and her new companion, Sister B

Just a few pics

This is a gift of food from Harijs. Rye cheese, bread and honeycomb.

I had to send Sarah a new debit card. It took six weeks, but finally made it after going to Malaysia first!

This is a sister missionary tan line. Tracting in the sun all day with flats gives you a great tan line. (Funny thing is that 25 years ago in Brazil, I had the same tan line!)

Love the view from Sarah's bedroom window in Imanta. Oh yeah, just over look the ugly spider right in the middle!

August 26, 2013

Čau visiem! (hey to all) :)

Well, I've had a crazy, but wonderful week. Transfers came and were so successful. I am enjoying my time with my new companion Sister B. She is from British Columbia, Canada. She is super sweet and already we are becoming great friends. She is awesome and while I am still overwhelmed with training I know that this is the Lord's work and that he guides it. I am learning to depend on him to do everything because I can't pretty much do anything without his help. I'll attach a picture of me and Sister B :)

Well, the work in my area moves along. There is a lot of finding to do as of right now we only have three investigators and only one of them is progressing. The progressing is Harijs who still wants to meet with us and still wants to work towards baptism. I hope that we can help him understand the importance of the Law of Chastity and maybe he will be able to be baptized this week. Pray for him that he will understand what God wants him to know.

I'll answer some questions now that people sent me a few weeks ago. :)

Questions:

From dad:

Tell us how you spend your days.  Do you knock doors, talk with people on the street, teach, visit members, and/or what else?

We do a good amount of all of it. We do our studies in the mornings and we teach whatever lessons we have. We have less active lessons (members of the church who haven't been coming), one new member retention lesson (for the first year after baptism new members meet with missionaries and are taught more about the gospel), and some member lessons. We don't have a ton of lessons every day so we get at least 3 hours of contacting on most days. That is usually a mix of talking to people on the street and knocking on apartment doors, but Sister B and I are brainstorming to come up with some more creative and useful ideas for finding people.

From Mac:

What do you eat most days? 

We eat mostly whatever we cook for ourselves. Mayonnaise here is really good and I eat a lot of that. It can be used kind of like a dip so I put it on a lot of my food. Latvians really also like dill so I eat that occasionally on food. They also have really yummy apples so I eat them a lot too.

What mission meetings do you attend (district, zone, mission conference)?

We have district meeting every week. We get together for an hour and a half every week and talk about our investigators. We also receive training and practice teaching. Once a month we have what is called zone time and that is where Latvian speaking missionaries from Jelgava and Riga get together and receive training from the zone leaders. Also, every other transfer we have zone conference. That is when every missionary in Latvia, Latvian speaking and Russian speaking, get together and receive training from the mission president and his wife, the assistants to the mission president, and sometimes the zone leaders. 

How much teaching are you personally doing (do you speak enough to teach a lot or are you still learning)?

I am do a fair amount of teaching. Before I was training I equally shared the duties of teaching. Now I teach a little bit more, but I speak well enough to teach almost everything. My biggest challenge with the language is with understanding. I still don't understand everything and I miss a lot of what people tell me. 

What parts of the culture are really hard for you? I personally struggled to understand why some people just didn't care about anything, I also struggled seeing a lot of men drink alcohol so much (members and Non-Members). 

I'm not sure about this question. I'm not sure if there is anything that particularly bothers me. Word of wisdom is a huge problem here as well as Russia has a TV channel that often plays anti american stuff and occasionally they attack the church there as well. 

Is pornography prevalent? I've heard Europe is very liberal sometimes with their ads.

Pornography is a problem just because it is everywhere. Europeans in general don't see it as a problem so yeah. That is definitely a problem. 

From Lauren:

So my question is, is this something culturally unique to Latvia or do all missionaries experience this? I don’t know if you have answer to that but I was just wondering. (she wanted to know if it is culturally unique for Latvians who really just like to talk)

I'm not sure. I have had a lot of investigators that like to talk and input there opinion so maybe it is a latvian thing, but more I think it might just be the character of some people to talk more than others. 

Well, that is all for today! :D Send me more questions and I'll have more to write next week. I love you all a ton and I am grateful that I know you all! 

Much love,

Sister Cloward

August 19, 2013

Hello everyone! 

This week has been a crazy emotional rollercoaster! There were a ton of ups and downs this week. The first down, and really the only down was that Harijs didn't get baptized. :( He didn't pass his baptismal interview because he won't commit to live the law of chastity. He doesn't agree with it, even though he agreed with it at the time that we taught it to him. We are still going to keep working with him of course, but I'm not sure when baptism will be because until he says he will live the law of chastity he can't get baptized. He still agrees with everything else and is doing well other than that. Hopefully he will soon be baptized. 

The other big half up and half down news that I got this week is that I will be training next transfer. That means that as of this Thursday I will be in charge of a brand new sister and help her learn to be a good missionary!! I'm freaking out! The down part of that is this means I will probably never be with a sister older than me ever again and I will either be the oldest (oldest as in transfers) or be with someone the same age. It is scary to realize! The up part is everything else. I am excited to be able to have the opportunity to train when I am only in my third transfer (it doesn't happen very often unless it has to happen). There are three sisters older than me who could have trained, and one of them is, but I am training the other of the two new sisters. I pick her upon Thursday and I am excited and nervous. We will be staying here in Imanta together and I am excited for that. Here is what I wrote to my mission president about how I feel about training, "I'm excited for the opportunity to train and I know that the Lord has put great trust in me and I am so grateful and humbled by that. I am a little nervous, but I'm not surprised about this. I had been getting little promptings and feelings like I should prepare to train this coming transfer. I didn't want them to be true, but I did prepare myself as if that were the case, so here I am. I think it will be a great opportunity for me and this new sister to be together. I am excited to see who it will be, and I hope that she is ready for the challenge of being with me (someone also young in the mission), because we are going to have to depend on each other so much, and we are going to grow and learn together."

Well, other than that, this week hasn't been super eventful. It has been a slower week, except for my emotional roller coaster. :) My birthday was really chill and just fun. We worked hard and did a lot of good missionary work. Harijs, that sweet investigator, gave me this awesome coin that is from 1931 and is an old 5 lat coin (they don't even have those anymore). It was really sweet and the coin is so cool. I'll try to remember to take a picture next week and send it. 

Also, on Tuesday of this last week, we were contacting in the evening on the streets and just talking to as many people as we could when it just started to pour rain!! It was raining so hard that in just minutes the sidewalks and streets were rivers! It was so crazy, but so much fun! I got soaked even with the umbrella and I was laughing so hard. Sister N didn't enjoy it as much, but she has been stuck in a lot of them before. :)

Well, that is it for this week. Enjoy your week and remember God loves us. This church is true. Find out for yourself. Pray and ask God if he is there and he will answer. You will feel his love for you. I know it because I have felt it.

Much love,

Sister Cloward