Ayy! It's my birthday!

 Hola todos!

This week has honestly been so fantastic! Sunday the 21st was my birthday so this whole week I have been receiving birthday emails and messages. Thank you all so much, unfortunately I couldn't respond to all of them, but they were all so great. My ward has also been wishing me happy birthday through this whole week. Sunday was actually so fun. We had 5 people we are teaching at church that day! It was literally so cool.  After church I had lunch with the Litsters, then for dinner that night, the Kirkman family made me a cake! Honestly, it was a great birthday. 

Me while the Kirkman family sang happy birthday to me

One of my birthday gifts!

Transfers happened at the end of this week too. I thought that Elder Rehkow and I were going to get transferred but we actually didn't! We're staying in the same area. There were a couple changes however. We switched apartments so now we're really close to our area. We also are on bikes now and don't get to keep the car haha. That's kinda lame but fair I guess. We also now cover another ward really far away in Nevada. But we actually don't go down there ever to find people or teach. We only go down there if there is a baptism. The members will find people to teach and then all of our teachings are over Zoom. Its kinda weird but cool. The newest change is that now Elder Rehkow and I are social media leads. Now we run a Facebook page in the mission. I have no idea how to do any of that so are just gonna wing it haha.

Some pictures of my new apartment

We're still teaching the Pernyak family and Harlie. The other people we have been trying to meet with are slowly progressing but its just not working out. Jackie keeps forgetting about our appointments and Adrianna is really hard to schedule with. It can be pretty frustrating at times. On the bright side of things, we had an incredible lesson with Harlie! Some recent converts were there at the lesson too! (Recent converts are people who have been baptized into the church in the past year) there names were Destiny and Michael. Destiny shared her testimony about the gospel with Harlie and the spirit was so strong. She bore witness that the Book of Mormon was really the word of God and it has brought so much peace and happiness into her life. Then we asked Harlie to follow the example of Jesus Christ be baptized and she said yes! Everyone was like LET'S GO! Its so incredible watching these miracles click into place. 

Our whole district is having so much success right now. If we keep striving and everyone keeps making commitments, we'll have multiple baptisms this transfer. I am so excited for this transfer! Its going to be incredible. 

The weather here has been slowly rising in temperature. I noticed a few days ago that it was actually kind of hot outside. That has me worried because pretty soon, summer will hit and the weather will be insane. Like it was 79 degrees and I was sweating a little. Hopefully summer is shorter this year but well see haha. 

On Monday, a member took us out to dinner. Brother Beck wanted to take us somewhere we have never been so he took us to a Ramen place. I've never had real Ramen before so I was intrigued. Plus, Elder Rehkow and I don't like fish so this was an excellent opportunity to try sushi for the first time. I was excited because I love trying new things, but Elder Rehkow was not. He is super plain, so he doesn't eat anything new. His diet is basically pizza rolls and macaroni and cheese. He is one of those guys that doesn't like anything on his burger and he's super stubborn about it. haha! Nothing wrong with that but now you can imagine how going to a Ramen sushi place would go. I can say for certain, I don't like sushi. Elder Rehkow wouldn't even try it haha. Brother Beck thought it was funny though. So yeah, that was something interesting this week. 

I wanted to share a spiritual thought that another Elder shared with me the other day. Elder Flores and I went on exchanges and ran into an individual who was confused about tithing. He tore the idea of tithing apart pretty hard but it didn't shake my testimony or anything. I gave great explanations to his questions but he refused to listen to anything I had to say and only wanted to speak. Afterwards, Elder Flores told me that whenever that happens, whether it shakes my faith or not, I need to turn to divinely appointed sources to seek answers. Meaning, the answer to any question is in the scriptures. 

It's similar to counterfeit money in a way. Circulating throughout the economy is fake counterfeit money. You can tell the difference between real money and fake money if you know what you're looking for. All counterfeit money looks different, however, true money looks the same. You can spend your life studying fake money but that won't get you anywhere, to learn what fake money is, you need to know what real money looks like. It's the same way with truth and information. You need to know what real truth is and study that, so you can tell what's fake. Studying fake information is never going to help you understand truth. So after running into that situation, I found truth and the answers to the man's questions by studying the scriptures. 

Study REAL money, not FAKE money.

I'm so thankful for all of you! This truly is the Lord's work and I can't wait to write to you all again in the future. 

Sincerely,

Elder Pack

Transfer selfie with Elder Rehkow