Filled with the spirit.....and hamburgers.

 Hola a todos,

With winter over and spring coming closer to an end, Las Vegas is starting to get really hot... like really hot, again. I remember as I was doing companion study in a park with Elder Keele, and it was 100 degrees. It finally kicked in how flippin hot it was going to be. I'm glad at least now I have a car though, last year on a bike was rough. Honestly those were the best two transfers though but that was rough. Not excited for that. Luckily though the 80 degrees and the 90s actually feel nice but when it starts getting any higher than that I start dying mentally and physically. 

Elder Keele and I get along super well. Honestly, pretty sure I'm homies with all my companions but there are always some where it just clicks. Love this guy. Every day is a grind and a party. We established at the beginning of the transfer that we are going to have 3 rules:

1. Have fun

2. Be obedient

3. Baptize

I usually set my expectations for the transfer with all my companions. Throughout this transfer we have showed the Lord we wanted to be obedient but also have fun. Then we were blessed with a baptism. Next week Maria is getting baptized which is awesome. She showed up to church randomly a couple weeks ago and expressed she wanted to be baptized. So, we were like hey no problem we got you. So yeah, super cool miracle. We are teaching a lot of other people too. We've been finding a lot. Our new tactic is to just blitz literally every single apartment complex in our area during when people are having dinner, we're always like, "we understand you're busy eating now but can we come back tomorrow at 7:00 to share a message with you?" That seems to be working well. It's crazy how at the beginning of my mission we couldn't track or go outside but now I love knocking doors. We've been working tightly with the members and knocking mountains of doors. Life is good.

Fun story, Elder Keele and I were tracting when we decided to say another prayer to guide us where to go. He pointed out an apartment so we started to walk towards it when an ice cream truck drove by, so of course we had to follow the ice cream truck. We didn't quite catch up to it which was super lame but we ended really far away in a different area. There was a door right next to where we were so we decided to knock it. A Spanish speaking lady who just moved from Mexico was there and she had member friends. And her whole family wanted to learn more about the church! We then set up a return date and taught the whole restoration to them in Spanish. Powerful lesson and a super cool miracle! Taught me a lesson about how sometimes the spirit works in weird ways. Like I'm sure that ice cream truck guy had a prompting to go into the area not realizing that was the spirit. Didn't have any luck finding anyone so he left thinking following that thought was a waste. Really his purpose was only to help us find that Hispanic family. I've come to really understand that following the spirit can really only happen if we show our faith first.

There is this other family from El Salvador that we're teaching, they are awesome. They made us dinner one time which was super nice of them. I had no idea they were even going to make us dinner but whatever. We had a dinner with some members that day and we pulled up to our investigators house. We walk in and they're making a whole bunch of food and Elder Keele and I look at each other and are like bruh no way. Please no. So I completely destroyed my stomach that day and I'm still recovering. But sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get the family baptized. During the lesson, we mentioned how we have dads and they both were surprised we had dads while growing up. I was kinda surprised by that. This family we were teaching didn't get that opportunity I guess. I realized, I'm very blessed to have the family that I did while growing up. 

I went to the Las Vegas temple again on Saturday. Elder Keele found and taught a guy last transfer and referred them to the Cheyenne Ward elders. He got baptized and then this week we went to go do baptisms for the dead with him. All four of us went. My president said we could which I was surprised about but hey I'm not complaining. The baptistry there is beautiful. So cool to see and honestly probably the most beautiful one I've ever seen in my life. Anthony got to baptize someone acting as proxy for his grandma which was so awesome. He was so glad afterwards. Just a super cool temple trip and I could feel the spirit so strong. 

Had a power outage this week. That was fun. It was late at night when we were returning back to our apartment. All the stoplights went out and the Vegas drivers were zooming through. People are low key and super insane. Intersections were wildin'. But then we're chilling in the apartment with our super fun roommates, Elder Checkitts and Fraizure. Elder Checkitts speaks Spanish too which is fun to speak only Spanish in the apartment. I actually really like serving in Spanish now. In the beginning I was kinda overwhelmed but now I feel pretty comfortable with it. That's been cool. I'm nowhere close to fluent but I've learned a lot. Spanish wards are so much fun and honestly better than the English words here. So cool. I hope I can be fluent by the end of my mission. 

Finally, to end this email, yesterday I had dinner at my Stake President's house. He literally made 50 hamburgers and I ended up eating 3 massive monstrous burgers. Definitely should not have done that but I did. My companion somehow pounded 4 which was incredible. They were so good. 

We had a huge discussion afterwards about dating and whatnot. One of the members roasted us for getting married right after the mission which was hilarious. My mission is pretty known for sister missionaries and elders getting married afterwards which is a little funny, kinda cute I guess, but mostly wack when you really think about it. I can't even count on my fingers of how many elders I knew who go home and marry a sister from the mission. Anyways so basically they accused me of going to be one of the first ones to get married after the mission which was kinda funny but honestly the more I think about it the more weird that would be. So yeah that's not the plan, but, here's me writing it down so I can laugh when I read this email years from now.

Anyways, love you all. Love my mission. Love this city. Can't believe it's going by so fast.

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack