Someone broke into my car!

 Hola otra vez,

You know, this is one of those weeks where nothing really happened. I feel like I worked really hard but at the end of the week nothing really changed. I'm currently sitting in a foldable chair at my church building trying to think of some things that actually happened this week. These weeks go by so fast sometimes I forget if anything actually happened haha. I'll probably think of a title for the email halfway through writing it.

First, my friends that I'm teaching are progressing a bit more. We have found a lot of new people to teach but the only ones that will be baptized pretty soon are Buddy and Rose. Right now, they want to be baptized but they haven't set a for sure date yet. They're noncommittal about it which is fine for right now, but pretty soon I'd like them to be ready for a date. Sometimes its frustrating when things don't go our way or as planned but its good to remember that we are on the Lord's time.

Every night we've decided to read the Book of Mormon with Eric, he's a 9 year old who is super awesome. His older sister and mom were interested at one point but now it's just Eric. They still go to sacrament meeting and Eric loves primary soooo... I don't know why this family won't let us teach them. Its kinda frustrating. I think next time we're with them we will just ask them what the deal is and why they won't read or study with us but they'll go to church. Right now I think its just to support Eric because he loves church and the Book of Mormon. Eric just comes outside at around 6:00 and we'll read the book of Mormon with him on the curbside. This 9 year old doesn't really know anything about Jesus Christ and his mom is okay with him meeting with us just not her. She is apparently okay with him being baptized too. So yeah it's just wacky. No one else we're teaching seems to be as promising as them though. 

Here are a couple of fun things that happened last week. We found a crock-pot in the apartment and a bunch of slow cooker recipes so now we're going to go hard with the crock-pot. I'm honestly so excited to be using it. No more crepes, Ramen, Mac and cheese for dinner. We're feasting every night from now on. We went to primary class with Eric and that was a wild experience. I haven't been in primary since I WAS in primary. It was a lot of fun! Singing time with 9 year olds is always lit. Right now in Las Vegas its slowly getting into the 100s and its no longer fun. Now we have to plan our street contacting times accordingly. Clouds are also the best thing ever in the world. Like for real clouds come in clutch. It changes like 15 whole degrees when there is a cloud above you. Also, talking with all these people that speak Spanish has really helped my Spanish. I can understand people a lot better! Unless they're from El Salvador or something. Like I can't understand those guys at all. 

Zone Conference training

Goofing off during a video we were trying to record

Oh here is something that might be kinda interesting. My car got broken into! Yay... yeah so basically Elder Caldwell forgot to lock the car and in the middle of the night some dude opened our car and just took a bunch of stuff. He didn't touch our bibles or copies of the Book of Mormon but he did finesse Elder Caldwell's wallet. That sucks so bad. He lost like 40 bucks and his drivers license. He's not going to be able to drive at all on the mission ever so that really blows chunks. I fortunately never leave my wallet in the car so that's good. I guess Elder Caldwell learned his lesson. Some homeless dude probably is so hyped to have a 19 year old's ID and 40 bucks. We called our vehicle coordinator and he roasted us. We absolutely got flamed. So yeah, lock your car. 

Our Zone

Another thing that was pretty awesome was giving a talk (basically a sermon in our church) in sacrament meeting. I gave about a 15 minute talk and it was about how we can all be missionaries. It was honestly the best talk I've ever given. I dropped some absolute massive bombs at the pulpit. Not to flex or anything, but I can speak. I may suck at basketball and I'm not that musical, but I can talk for 15-20 minutes about random stuff. I'm pretty bad at everything but I can successfully write and speak. My companion had an interesting experience with his talk too. He didn't write anything down and winged a 15 minute talk. Like he probably did 7 minutes but I extended mine a little bit so it all worked out. He had this bass fishing analogy to missionary work and it was pretty funny. He tried this humorous approach and no one laughed so it was mega awkward. Plus he roasted our bishop at the pulpit and I was just like, "bruuuuuhh."

I like to think that missionary work really benefits from strong members. We as missionaries try to build member trust so that way they trust us with people to teach. I've found its the same way with God. Why would he trust us with the elect people to teach if we aren't worthy of those elect people? Sometimes in life we need to build Lord trust, kinda like member trust. We want to show the Lord that we are worthy of his blessings and help when we do things like pay our tithing or read the scriptures. Stuff like that. I'm pretty proud of myself for thinking of that analogy all by myself, unless someone's thought of it before. In my mind I figured it out all on my own.

I'm so thankful for the blessings I receive as a missionary, I don't know where I would be without them. I know that Jesus Christ lives and that this is God's church in the Latter-Days. I hope you all have a great week and I will see you all soon!

Sincerely,

Elder Pack