Oysters and Cup Pong

 Hola,

Another week down, and I've officially hit 10 months as a missionary. Pretty sweet. I'm now in the double digits so I can sound like an experienced missionary! Just kidding, I still sometimes has no idea what I'm doing. But that's part of the fun. I think that will get me ready for life, just not knowing what I'm doing at all and just winging everything. Anyways, let's get into the week. 

The Tacoma is still sweet. We love the Tacoma. Also I think my skin is healing well from all the sunburns I've gotten while on bike. I've noticed a huge difference in my redness of skin. Heck Yeah, life's good. But I still look like a tomato but that's whatever I guess. The Tacoma protects with that. Elder Wheeler is a pretty fun guy too. Loves to learn and ask for help when he needs it. That is a good skill to have and I struggle with that sometimes. I don't really ask for help when I need it. He's a good guy though and I like working with him. He's learning a lot and so that's pretty neat. I think the best learning tool is failure so I let him fail a lot so he can learn what to do next time. I could tell him things but really experience has taught him more than I could ever teach him. For example, I like to go up to random people and tell them my friend has a question to ask them. Its soo fun.

I've really learned a lot about myself since I've been here. Living with a dude 24/7 really teaches you a thing or two. One thing I've learned about myself is I am a huge perfectionist. Things literally HAVE to be perfect and that never occurred to me til now. That attribute of mine is something I've been trying to drop. I think I've been doing a better job of it. I've really stopped caring about a lot of things. I have been trying to work on two Christlike attributes these next couple weeks. Patience and Love. I want to show unconditionally Christlike love and patience to Elder Wheeler and to my fellow peers. I think I've been doing a lot better. It's really been good for my mental health too. I'm less stressed and all that stuff so yeah that's neat. 

Anyways, here is a fun thing though I've noticed this week. Girls shampoo is so awesome. I ran out of shampoo a couple days ago and I went to the store with Elder Wheeler on P-Day to go get more. I found some shampoo that was definitely not for guys but wow this thing is sweet. Why haven't I been using this stuff my whole life. My hair is just like so silky now. Life is good. Just thought I'd share that with you and all the wisdom I'm receiving on my mission. 

Also, I had exchanges with Elder Hatch again. I love that Elder so much. He's so funny and smart. Just a great guy to be around. Plus, I set up some pretty fun things for that day. First of all, a member fed us oysters. I do not like seafood. But, I wanted to try eating an oyster. Wow that stuff is gross. I'm sorry if you like it, that's totally fine. But in my taste buds, it's nasty. Apparently they're alive too and that just weirds me out. So yeah oysters aren't my thing. It was a lot of fun though. Elder Hatch was just downing all of them and I only ate like two. Nasty. I just tried to slurp it down my throat without chewing or anything. It was so weird. 

Yeah that exchange was so weird. We also went to Elder Hatch's baptism during the exchange and were going to be late and they needed to fill the font, it was so stressful. I don't know why we did the exchange with a baptism on the same day but whatever I guess. I ended up getting like 50 "check your speeds" on the Tacoma as I was driving over. Another funny experience during the exchange was when it was later in the evening at night when we left the baptism and showed up at my apartment. A massive group of people was just raging outside our apartment in a party. We pushed through some of them to get to our apartment and someone yells, "YOU GUYS WANNA PLAY BEER PONG?" Everyone is yelling and stuff and the four of us are just like uhhhh.... then we're like nah we're good. We then go inside and my district leader leans to me and says "Elder I really wanna play cup pong and not drink." And I'm like Elder we probably shouldn't play cup pong with those guys. Then the two other new missionaries are like "Sure! Let's do it!" And I'm like bruh. So we go the door and said a prayer to leave the apartment and after the prayer all four of us are like yeah... we shouldn't do it. But then we still left the apartment to drop off Elder Hatch and they asked us AGAIN to play. My district leader insisted we should just play but not drink obviously, and should just contact them and I'm like bruh what? NO! Turns out it was a really good idea not too because someone we were teaching was there and was watching us the whole time. So... that was good. 

Well, at the end of the week and after all our hard work we realized that no one that we were teaching came to church again. We had so many people that said they'd come and I was so hyped, none of them showed. It was kinda frustrating. Elder Wheeler and I were just grinding and these people straight up didn't show. It's whatever I guess. Part of missionary work I guess. Keeping commitments is so important. I really have learned the value of a dependable person. Anyways, I know that I'm doing what the lord wants me to do and all that so it's no biggie... but don't get me wrong I love seeing miracles. 

This has been a great week and I love working with Elder Wheeler. I like helping him learn how to succeed on his own and it's a lot of fun. I wouldn't mind training my whole mission but I know that probably won't happen. Thank you all for reading my emails! I hope you all have an incredible week and I'll talk to you later!

Sincerely, 

Elder Pack