Matrimonio y los pasteles

Buenos dias Hermanos y Hermanas!

I hope you all have had a wonderful week! It's been a pretty good one for me:) I got a package from the Augers, so a big thank you to them, that was an awesome surprise, and this week we also threw a wedding! It was definitely the highlight of the week. Lori (a less active member who we have been helping a lot with schizophrenia and is finally active again) and Jorge (an investigator who was actually baptized yesterday!) are now a happily married couple!:) super fun. I made a couple of pies for the wedding, and another member made a cake that was amazing. I don't really know how to describe it, so just try to figure it out with the pictures haha.

Other than that it wasn't too much of an exciting week. We ate a random lunch with some random family having a bbq in their driveway, that was pretty fun, but outside of those two things, there wasn't much that wasn't along with the regular work. But we're working with some really awesome people right now, including Neydin and Lee, who I have been working with since my first transfer, so I've been praying that I stay another so I can see them baptized! But we'll find out next week what's gonna happen with all of that.

So for a spiritual thought/challenge, I was thinking about prayers this week, and how I could make them mean more because a lot of the times it's hard not to fall into a routine when you pray at night and you're exhausted and can't concentrate on one thought at a time. So I thought about it and studied a bit about prayer in True to the Faith, and that was really good. I wrote down a list of things I could do to better my prayers, and said them out loud rather than silently in order to help me focus. It made a world of a difference for me haha. So if anyone has trouble with their prayers at night, I suggest you try something similar:)

Anways, thats all for me this week, I hope you all have a wonderful week! Until next Monday!

Elder Packer

PorFavorDisculpeMe

Hey everyone!:)

This week was really great, a lot of spirit and a lot of fun! On Wednesday we had an exchange, and that was the most fun and craziest exchange I've ever been on. We woke up at six to play basketball like normal, but Elder Jardine (my temporary comp) ended up getting hit in the face and fracturing his nose. So we went to the doctor and got that checked out, then stopped and got some breakfast at Taco Bell on the way back (which is actually decent, I recommend you try it:) Sriracha Quesurito baby! Nothing like real Mexican tho:)) Then we had a meal appointment with the Bishop (we had Church's Chicken) and Elder Jardine ended up getting soda sprayed all over his pants when the hermana opened the bottle. So it hadn't been his best day so far. 

A few more things happened that didn't exactly go on Elder Jardine's "top ten favorite memories" list, but then we had a major boost in animo! So Elder Jardine, Elder Field and I were in a trio until about 6 that day, and then the very last lesson we had was with the really old guy that has just been wanting to meet with us to ask us questions about the church and really doesn't listen. But Elder Field and I were guided by the spirit like nothing else, and every single doubt or question or negative comment he had we had a scripture conquer it. At one point he was completely silent for a whole minute, then at the end Elder Jardine bore one of the most powerful testimonies I've ever heard. 

It was an awesome appointment. At first I thought it was kind of a waste of time because he still wouldn't accept that he wasn't correct about some things, but the members whose house we were at were both in tears and smiling about what we'd said and the hermana (who had been less-active without a super strong testimony) said that she felt the spirit so strongly, and was super glad that we were there and that it was such a testimony builder for her, and she ended up giving us a whole bunch of food and a flower and stuff, and came to church this Sunday!!:) so it was a pretty awesome exchange:)

Along with that, Neydin (an investigator I have been working with since December) finally came to church, and we had an awesome lesson with her this week! That made me so excited, I can't even describe it. Her and her boyfriend have been two people in the back of my mind ever since my third week on the mission when I found them. They so amazing, I just hope I'm here to see them get baptized:)

Outside of those two things, there were a lot of other great little things (easter package from mom and dad, I made a pie, learned some guitar songs, etc) but those were definitely the best two parts of my week:)

Y por favor disculpeme, I don't know where my camera is at the moment, so I don't have any pictures this week. Hopefully I find it so I can get some for next week! I love you all!

Elder Packer

Happy St. Pats day

Hello everyone!!:)

First of all Happy St. Pats day, and Friday the 13th because I missed that one last week:) It has been raining here a ton this week, but it's fun so it's alright:)

This has been a really good week for a few reasons:) one, we finally got the area organized and how we like it and everything, and it's been sooo helpful! The work is continuing smoothly:) secondly we had a little miracle in finding this week. 

So the APs came down and gave us a training on obedience this week. It was awesome and something that my comp and I decided we needed to do better on, so the next day (Saturday) we were doing as much as we could to be obedient, but things still weren't going too great. Plans fell through, but then we had a couple great lessons with a less active guy named Raul who hasn't come to church in more than 10 years, and with another less active guy whose wife actually is super active and awesome and has a calling in the stake, but we made some great plans with him and it was super spiritual. 

After that our plans were all shot, so we decided to go and find a less active lady that was on the ward directory that we had never met. We drove to the address and it was a bunch of little apartments, and we didn't have an apt number for her. We got out of the car and decided we'd try and ask someone, so we asked this lady who had been watching us ever since we pulled up if she knew the family, and she said no, so we just gave her a card and asked her how her day was, and she just told us to follow her, so we did. 

She led us to her apartment, sat us down at the table where her daughter and son were and basically just told us "my daughter(Larissa) is having problems, talk to her in English." It was super crazy, but we ended up talking to her, and she was super prepared. She had all the right questions, and she took everything we said and accepted it because of the way she felt when we talked. But please keep her in your prayers, her dad used to be a minister and another church, so there will be a few challenges we will need to help her with.

The other thing is that we had ward conference this week, and the stake president went super hard on getting temple recommends. He said that a lot of the members want to see a temple down here, but the way that will happen is if they have more temple recommend holders. It was cool, I would love if they built a temple down here, the people need it super bad because the closest one is all the way up in San Antonio.

Anyways, that's basically the best parts of my week:) I wish you all love, and a wonderful week!:)

Elder Packer

Pics:

1-jello for the jello eating contest we had last week

2-my comp and Cesar de Leon (a guy with a million posters around the city)

3-Outside of Rainy Days Laundry on a rainy day

4-Dylan (his family feeds us every Friday) past out on the couch

5-dinner yesterday at the Dominguez (tostadas, gotta love em! The Dominguez are awesome btw)

Buenas Tardes

Buenas!

Espero que ustedes estan felices y animados para la conferencia en Abril!:)

I'm super excited:) this week hasn't been super eventful, but I have enjoyed it a lot. We're getting my area organized like crazy, so that's taking a lot of effort, but it's going to be worth it.

We had Zone Conference this past week, that was pretty exciting. We all learned a lot about faith, revelation, and finding people to teach. It was really great, a lot of good trainings and teachers, and a lot of spirit there. Apparently there's a video of us singing to the sisters that fed us, and then Elders Latu Weeks Brady and Carter doing the Haka. Elder Latu is a beast, it was pretty cool.

Outside of that, it was a pretty good week, we started teaching Nadine and Lee again, and I'm super excited about that. We won't be able to see them again until next week because they're in Dallas for spring break with her family, but I'm super excited to get to teaching them again, they have some awesome potential, great desires and are just amazing people overall.

I apologize for this being so short, I'll write more next week:) but for now just enjoy this picture of my comp and Elder Field just being his crazy weirdo self:) and also me and the Video Game bus (shoutout to my brother, I found your dream car) I love you all, thank you for all the support!

Elder Packer

New Compañero!

Buenos Dias a todos! Gracias por sus cartas y todo, espero que puedo expresar mis sentimientos claramente....

Hahaha well I don't think I'm going to type my whole letter to everyone in Spanish, I don't think I even know enough to do that yet...but maybe one day;)

This has been a super crazy week. We didn't end up knowing transfers until about 10:00 at night, and then it was just crazy after that. Our new ZL is a guy that's only been out for about 14 months and he was born in Los Ebanos like me, so he knows a lot of new people I haven't met yet, and I'm super excited to go on an exchange with him:) also, I have a new companion!! He's pretty cool, his name is Elder Lindsay, he's a boss at basketball just like my last comp was, but he's only 6 months out so he's pretty young in the mission, and he's helping get the area organized a lot.

This week we baptized Bryan Martinez, and he's one of these three kids we've been working with for a while. There's Pablo who's 16, Bryan who's 13, and Dana who's 10, and the other two said they wanted to wait for different reasons, but Bryan was super excited and said he wanted to get baptized this Friday, so he was baptized on Friday, even though he has a broken arm! Super cool kid.

Other than that, it's pretty much been a week full of getting to know members and going hard on organization. I did want to extend a challenge to anyone who can and is willing to do it, it's a hefty one. So personal revelation is what our church is based upon. For anyone to know the church is true, they need to find out for themselves through revelation from God, and missionaries are out here to help people receive that revelation and confirmation that they need. There's a lot of things we can do to receive revelation, and you can read books about revelation for days if you want to, but that's not the challenge. 

The challenge is simply this: start with a prayer to repent and invite the spirit, read a chapter from the Book of Mormon,(some I recommend are Alma 5, Alma 7, 2 Nephi 31 or 32, Mosiah 2, 3 Nephi 11, 18, 27, Ether 12, or Moroni 6 or 7) or a few if you'd like, then read Moroni's promise about the Spirit in Moroni 10:3-5. After that, ponder for a little bit, and then get on your knees and say another prayer, asking a question you may have about life, or the church or anything. If you can't think of anything specific, reconfirmation of the Book of Mormon is always something that we are all in need of. After you end, you can either ponder some more or read another chapter or verse. You may not get your answer right away, or maybe you will, but I promise that if you do all these things having faith in the Lord to receive an answer, you will get what you need:)

That's basically it for this week, I hope you all have a wonderful week!:)

Elder Packer