Goodbye President Reese

 Hola,

Wow and just like that... President Reese left. This week has been absolutely insane. Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal. Our mission president came after district council on Tuesday however and hugged us and said goodbye. It was actually mega sad. I wish I had him sign my Preach My Gospel but that was the one time I didn't bring it. I feel so stupid. But whatever, I guess. Glad I got to give him a hug one last time. His hugs were always so weird. We called it the Reese wrap. He literally grabbed the back of your head and smashed it into his shoulder. Awesome. But I love the guy and I'll miss him. It's time for a change, however.

I remember Wednesday morning our roommates the assistants left pretty early to pick up our new mission president, President Nielson. They picked him up and drove him to the mission office and showed him around. That day, Elder Dawson and I told our zone we had to meet at the chapel. We had around 22 missionaries in the chapel waiting to meet President Nielson for the first time. It was cool because we were the second zone he was going to meet. I remember watching him pull up in his car with the APs and I was holding the door for him. I just thought, "wow... this guy is short". He is a really short guy, but he makes up with it in the spirit. We walked over together where all the missionaries were and they all stood up and sang, "I'll go where you want me to go." It was cool. Then we had a meet & greet with President Nielson and got to know him pretty well. He is WAY more interesting than President Reese was. President Reese was all business and kind of boring. Nielson is pretty funny. He has that straight out of MTC fire. He also speaks Spanish fluently which is awesome. Reese didn't speak any Spanish.

I remember sitting down and listening to President Nielson talking with some other missionaries in the distance. It was so weird because he's wearing the mission president tag, but I barely know this dude. It was really wack. Like this guy is supposed to lead us? But as he was talking, the comments he made helped me realize that this guy was going to do a great job. The spirit confirmed to me that he was called of God and that I should be excited to work with him. 

So, it's Wednesday night and Elder Dawson and I get the opportunity to go teach with president on his first night in the mission. The APs told us last week that we'd get the opportunity to teach with him, so we better set up lessons at 7:00 pm on Wednesday. We set up 3 different lessons all at 7:00 pm and they all fell through! So, we took president tracting. It was so fun and cool. We found a guy and president bore down in pure testimony and made this homie cry. It was lit. We told president about the zone activity that every house we knocked we would ask for and collect water bottles, then we would build a huge tower with all the bottles we collected at the end of transfer. Then we knocked another door and got invited inside, it was unfortunately a member door that we didn't realize. President leans over to us and whispers, "watch this" Then he asks the member if she had any water bottles even though all three of us had our own bottles in our hand that were full. It was hilarious. She comes back with Gatorade, and he asks, "will this work?" And were like these will work great haha. It was pretty fun tracting with him and a memorable experience for sure.

I went on exchanges with Elder Streckfuss and took him tracting like 5 hours straight. That was fun. We had to cut the exchange short though because Elder Posadas and I scheduled a temple trip with a recent convert named Zoila. She is Cuban and super cool. She has been having dreams of her father in the next life, so we decided to take her to the temple to do baptisms by proxy for her family. It was an awesome experience and I loved seeing my friend Elder Posadas again. The temple is always the best place and I love the peace there. The font in the Las Vegas temple is insane. Hopefully Zoila doesn't have any more weird dreams of her father anymore haha. 

That was pretty much the entire week. I had a great time and we also found like 2 different families which is good. We're finding a lot because all the people have been dropped or have gotten baptized. I love the mission and I can't believe I've already been out 19 months. Soon I hit 20 months. Very wild. I'm in no rush to end it though. I get the rest of my life to do adult things so I'm going to enjoy these next four months I have to talk to people about Jesus. 

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack