El Principio de mi misión otra vez

 Hola! 

Wow this has been one of the craziest and probably most stressful weeks of my mission. Most of the stress has been just me putting it on myself but has been absolutely crazy. This was seriously the beginning of my mission again. Honestly, I had a lot of fun but high intense moments. So, let's just jump right into it.

So, as you know from the tearjerker that was last week as I left Elder Plaster, I am now in a Spanish ward called Alta Loma. It is in the northeast part of my mission which is pretty nice. It's relatively close to Elkhorn Springs which is where I first came out in the mission. The Stonemountain ward if you remember that. Those days were so fun. Yeah, but my new zone Shadow Hills is super close to that. My zone leaders are Elder Barney, who I honestly love and admire so much, and Elder Rehkow again. Haha I just keep following this guy around. He's awesome and so glad he is in my zone again. Yeah, but on top of serving in a Spanish ward I am also covering 3 out of valley English wards in Moapa Valley or called Logandale. We go out there in person every now and then. My apartment is super nice, Sister missionaries lived there before us, so they did a good job cleaning it, but it is a two-man apartment. No extra friends at night which is a huge adjustment. It's really not fun but it does give me more time to journal and study which is good. 

Logandale on Google Maps

Me leaving my mission on accident.
The red is my mission, and the blue dot is me.

Okay so Alta Loma is like starting my mission over again except it's more difficult. Obviously, it's not serving out of the country in a language you don't understand but for me this is pretty hard. I feel like I am a super hardworking missionary and can easily do what is asked of me but now I can't communicate with the people I'm teaching because my Spanish is terrible. It's so fun (not). I love teaching and now I just have to sit there and jump in when I understand what they are talking about. Uggh. Luckily my companion is completely fluent, so he carries a lot of lessons. I love my personal prayers though when I get to talk one on one with Heavenly Father every night. That's super helpful. I still like going into the closet to say my prayers out loud so no one can hear me and it's super impactful. I try to do it every night but sometimes things happen, and I can't. Elder Medina (my companion) thinks it's stupid, but I think really helps me so I'm going to keep doing it haha. We taught a lot of Spanish lessons this week and I could understand probably 25% of what people said and would chime in whenever I felt like it. The gift of tongues is real because words will be brought to my remembrance all the time which is so great. I attribute that to the powerful personal prayers I have every day where I earnestly plead for the gift of tongues. I really need it to teach, it's honestly crucial. 

My companion is a really interesting guy. Obviously, I really admire him and love him a lot but he is just super different. He's from Mexico but he grew up in Arizona. His Spanish is so cool to listen to, his English is also perfect as well. So, whenever we do language study (even though I insist he talks with me in Spanish) he just takes a nap. *sigh*. There are a lot of things that are super different between us, but I hope it doesn't stop us from working. This transfer is definitely going to be a memorable grind haha.

So, one of the most fun things we did this week was Sunday we went to Logandale which is about a one-hour drive from Vegas. Super cool to finally leave Vegas after a full year of living here. Coming back into it when it was night, and you could see all the lights was kinda cool. In Logandale there was so little light pollution you could just see the whole galaxy at night. That was fun. We drove there from 7:30 am til 8:45 am and made it on time to welcome people into sacrament meeting. We had 3 sacraments that day, so I got my spiritual fill of talks for a while. It was good and needed as we got to sit next to the people we were teaching who came. They were all so full of people since there are a lot of members there and that was cool to see. Everyone and their mom offered to feed us but unfortunately, we had to tell them that we only come to Logandale every two weeks and on Saturday and Sunday. This week we only came Sunday. Some members offered to let us stay the night there which is so kind of them. Logandale was really cool. It's a small tight community and most people know each other. It's awesome. Elder Medina really wants to see if we can go out there every week. I'm super down for that that would be fun. 

It's not honestly all bad haha, I hope I didn't sound like I was complaining. The bright side is that I get to learn Spanish! And we have a lot of people to teach! That's always super good. We also cover Logandale wards which is also super cool. There are a lot of members willing to help and feed us. When you look at the glass half full it's actually super awesome. Honestly it was a pretty long week and that's all I have to say. I love my comp, love my president, love the mission, love working, love the people. It's great. 

I mentioned it earlier but really prayer is something that I really look forward to now. That and personal study, those two things are super awesome. I get a lot of answers when I pray out loud. I've come to realize this week that this really isn't my work but it's actually the Lord's work. Always has been. After applying that this week, my stress has just melted away. It's been nice. Looking forward to next week.

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack

Me in Logandale