Clearlake, California is the place!

Greetings from Clearlake, California! We have been asked to serve here in the Highlands Ward. A few things about Clearlake and about what we are doing:

- Clearlake (the town) is about an hour’s drive Northeast of Santa Rosa, which is just north of San Francisco. Population is about 15,000.

- It is about two hours west of Sacramento.

- The countryside around us is beautiful! We have found a State Park just a few miles from our new home that we hike in every morning for our exercise. It is full of wildlife, green grass, a creek, and Oak trees. We are next to Clear Lake (the lake) which is the largest natural lake in California.

- The town has its struggles. It consistently leads the US in violent crime (there are some areas of town that we must be very cautious in), has a very active drug trade, the median family wage is less than half that of Spokane (meaning the town is essentially starving to death) and 44% of its streets are unpaved. We have enjoyed 4-wheeling through the town as the dust can be quite deep at time and the streets rutted out. The town is hilly, so the dirt roads go all over the place up and down. Most of the homes are mobile homes. Most believe the water is contaminated with mercury. We have begun purchasing bottled water to drink, which is a first for us. The unemployment rate here is 25%, which is tough but also means it is easy to catch most people at home. We have found that multiple families and generations often live in the same house.

- Our congregation has 373 church members, but only about 50 come out to church.

- We have been asked to visit the church members, identify their needs, meet those needs if at all possible, and encourage them to attend church. We also have been asked to prepare members to attend the temple.

The church has rented us a fairly nice house to live in. We see the younger Elders here often as they do their laundry in our home and we feed them when we can. We met with a bunch of them on our first day here in a District Meeting where we discussed being a consecrated missionary. And we met with even more of them yesterday in Ukiah (about an hour west of here) where there is a Stake Center and is our zone. It was P-day and today is transfers so they got together to hang out and sign each other’s books.

Most days, we spend our mornings on our daily hike and then studies and preparation, our afternoons taking care of mission business and running errands as well as teaching lessons if we can, and our evenings going out to find members. The work can be very emotionally draining as we see the horrible living conditions of some of the people we visit. Frankly, we had no idea that any place with this level of poverty still existed in this country. But the emotional drain is made up for anytime we feel we have helped someone, even in a tiny way.

Here is one of several experiences we had this past week that really touched us:

The Bishop here and his clerk gave us a long list of about 50 households that they feel could use a visit from us for various reasons. We then carefully went through that list and what we know about specific families and based on that, plus prayer and personal revelation, we decide who to go visit each night. One night we felt strongly prompted to visit this one family, a mother and her four teenage children. Once we found their home, nobody was there. As we were writing them a note, a car pulled up and got out and started to talking to us. They lived there, but were not the family we were looking for. That family had lived there for a bit, but now had a home of their own and they gave us the address. The 16-year-old daughter in the car began telling us about how they really needed a visit and that we should go right now. The new address was in one of those parts of town we really shouldn’t go to after dark and it was approaching 8:30pm, but we felt an urgent need to go anyway, so we did. A bit later, we found the family we were originally looking for and the mom came out onto the porch to talk to us. She was clearly relieved and happy to see us. As we talked, she opened up and told us that four years ago her husband had been murdered by local drug dealers in front of her and her children while they were having their daughter’s birthday party. She cried openly as she told us about how her friends abandoned her and how lonely she felt. She told us her son is now angry at God and will have nothing to do with any church. And that one of her daughters was currently in a girl’s home for delinquent youth. We listened to her and validated her all that we could. We read together from the Book of Mormon and prayed together. She agreed to attend a baptism meeting the Elders were having the next night and we agreed to give her a ride. Both her and one of her daughters came with us. The spirit at the baptism was strong and they enjoyed feeling that spirit. The ward members there greeted her openly and made them feel welcome. The Young Women’s President talked to the daughter and got her lined out to go to Young Women’s Camp. On the way home, the hopelessness she had shared with us the night before had started to dissipate and she talked excitedly about attending church again. She needed us to visit her that night and we feel our prayers directed us to her home at that specific time. It is only by miracle that we caught the other family and got her address from them or we would never have found her. God watches out for his people in need and provides miracles for them to show them the way.

This is a difficult place to serve, but we are loving our mission! Please pray for our safety and also for the people here in Clearlake.

PS – Here is a scripture that we have been sharing with people that applies to all of us:

14 And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions. Mosiah 24:14

Still so happy to be missionaries!!!