I laughed. I cried. I ate chile.

Buenas tardes a todos!

This last week was super fun and super cool, lots of random miracles. We had a really good district meeting thanks to our DL, Elder Cannell, and then we went out and put in work. We worked super hard this week, and saw a lot of positive results. For example. one kid we had one lesson with decided he wanted to come to church, and he brought his friend, so that was a fun miracle. He's an interesting guy, but I'm sure he'll progress.

Some of the fun things we did this week are rib night and the Mullowneys, as well we helped a new family, the Tipton family, move in and they took us to Cracker Barrel. I've never been to Cracker Barrel so that was a pretty fun experience. 

The subject of this email comes from the story of the week. We visited a member named sister Serrato, and she had some chiles growing on her front porch that I'd never seen. I asked her if they were spicy and she told me and Elder Prieto to give them a shot, find out for ourselves. Elder Prieto goes for it, and eventually breaks into sweat and tears because it was so hot. Hahaha fun stuff. But I decide I don't wanna put myself through that, so I open it up to see whats inside, and it's just pure seeds, the hottest part of any chile. So I scrape the seeds out and put some of the pepper in my mouth, but spit it out because it was still super hot. I totally wimped out. But I paid for it in the end, because when I opened up the pepper and scraped out the seeds, I got it all over my fingers, so when I went to wipe sweat from my eye after climbing a papaya tree, it started to slowly burn. After we left the Serratos we started driving to the next place, but I had to pull over because it got worse, so I got out and poured a whole bottle of water on my eye on the side of the road, and then ended up touching the other eye on accident while trying to get the first one better. In the end, I was laying in the back of the van with a wet towel on my face for about twenty minutes while my comp was just cracking up. Hahaha such is life. 

Anywho, as for a spiritual thought for the week, my focus for this week was mainly on faith and getting things done. While studying, I stumbled upon Alma 56, which is a great chapter for hitting goals. We set a lot of goals as missionaries, and sometimes we get discouraged when it doesn't look like we're going to hit them. But this chapter is perfect for that, especially if you read verses 10, 12, 16, 19, 27, 29, and 45-48. There's a lot of good stuff in there, but mainly it's about staying focused on your goal and being determined to hit it. And at the very end, it gives credit to their mothers, because their mothers taught them to rely on the Lord. Real strong humility right there. 

That's about it for this week, I hope you all have a wonderful week, and don't forget to pray! Love you all!

Elder Packer