Cheyenne 2.0 and Red Gumballs

 Hola a todos! 

What an incredible last week. I don't even know where to start. This email might be a bit shorter just because this day is my transfer P-Day and I don't have a lot of time.

This week went by super slowly because the work wasn't super fast paced. But we did see a lot of blessings and left the area with 3 more people on date to be baptized. Love teaching them. I hope they can still be baptized next transfer. I actually ended up getting transferred to a new area. Alta Loma is getting completely split up and everyone is basically leaving. There were 7 missionaries in the ward so that's kinda wack. Elder Medina is going to Spring Lakes and I am going to serve in Rainbow Vista as the district leader again. Didn't think I'd get transferred but here we are. I talked with Elder Plaster and he is getting transferred too. He's going to the Stonemountain Ward in Elkhorn Springs, that's the same ward I came out in! Super cool and I'm excited for him.

My District

A little about Rainbow Vista, it's a pretty large area with 8 missionaries in the ward. We all speak Spanish and are teaching a lot of Spanish speaking people. The boundaries also cover the Cheyenne ward so I'll be working in the Cheyenne ward boundaries again. It's like the same ward with a Spanish twist. So excited. The Cheyenne ward was the ward that I was in with Elder Mcgee and Wheeler. Also Wyatt got baptized there. Super awesome experience and I am excited to serve there again. 

A huge line of buggies in Logandale

My new companion is Elder Keele and he's from Utah. I know him well and I'm super excited to work with him. He's in this mission reassigned from Peru. 

I watched general conference this week at a lot of members houses which was cool. It was all in English which was surprising. A lot of people in Alta Loma spoke English for some reason. I received a lot of insight and I particularly love the missionary work emphasis during conference. 

Here's a funny story. We went to Logandale with our zone leaders and that night we went together to go get ice cream. We ended up spending our dinner break at night eating ice cream in this old fashioned ice cream place. So fun. There was this gumball machine with a bunch of different colored gumballs in it and a couple red ones. If you spun it and got a red one then you got a free shaved ice. It cost 25 cents each time. We were eating our shaved ice that we bought and a 13 year old kid came inside the store and started spinning the gumballs to win the free shaved ice. After 3 missed failures he decided to give up, but we started to encourage him to keep going. Eventually he did and the whole store started getting in on it. He kept spending quarters and the whole store was like YEAH YEAH! COME ON!  Literally like 10 people, it was insane. Then eventually after spending 7$ worth of quarters which would've bought 3 shaved ices he quit and ran outside. It was kinda sad but hilarious. Then I decided to spin the quarter that I had in my pocket and got the red one on my first try. Everyone In the store was like YOOOOOO!! We were laughing so hard but Elder Medina and I decided to run outside and find the kid. We eventually found him and gave him the gumball. It was a wholesome and hilarious experience that I will never forget. 

Shaved ice cream store

Cleaning our apartment 

Elder Rehkow and Medina being goobers

I relate this story to listening to peer pressure. We shouldn't heed to what the wicked say and should press on holding fast to the rod, no matter what happens we shouldn't listen but we should keep our eye focused on the Savior, even if 4 dumb missionaries are pressuring you to spend 7$ buying like 40 gumballs. 

Love you all,

Elder Neil Pack 

My Mission President running the 5K

Late to the Fun Run

 Hola, 

Pues, pues, pues, here we are again. Another week down and now this is my official last email of the transfer. Next email I'll write will be the start of a new transfer. Time sure does fly. Starting next week I will have 5 transfers left. That's not long at all and will go by super duper fast. Let's just get right into business. 

Elder Medina and I have finally clicked and we have been getting along really well. We've both been super obedient and working really hard. That's what I like to see. I'd be down for another transfer with him so we'll see if that happens. I wonder if he'd be down with another one with me haha. I definitely have a love for the area and my companion now. This last week of the transfer is going to be a super good one.

Today we were supposed to have a 5K fun run as a mission (which is like 3 miles) and Elder Medina and I accidently missed it. Apparently it was at 6:45 am and not 7:45 am, we realized we would be super late so we just didn't go. It was genuinely an accident haha. I actually really like running so I wanted to go (especially since our race was with Spring Lakes so Elder Plaster would be there). But we missed it soo.... but hey I still got the free shirt.

My Fun Run T Shirt

Let's see... what else happened this week? I was super sick last week which I might've forgot to mention last week. I had a super runny nose and cough and headache but I still did the work anyways because I'm super stubborn. I also had exchanges with Elder Barney. I love that guy alot, we've known each other in the mission for quite a while so going on an exchange with him as my zone leader was awesome. He's such a great guy. We've served around each other a lot so hopefully I get to serve with him again. Nothing really too special happened in the exchange but we did have mega fat miracles in tracting where people kept inviting us inside and stuff. 

We ran into this guy named Jeremy who was super cool and let us inside. He was really digging our first lesson until his wife came home who was actually an inactive member of our church (we didn't know that because this was our first interaction with the family). It was actually hilarious because you could here her walk in and set stuff down, and then walk into the living room right in the middle of the lesson. Her face was PRICELESS. Her eyes were huge and super surprised and like uh oh. She then instinctively said, "Hi Elders." We were like don't mind us just about to set your husband on date to be baptized. Her husband was really enjoying our lesson. Like actually but she quickly shut it down. We tried to finish as fast as we could and we invited them to pray on our knees together to know if it was true and Jeremy's wife was like "I don't think that's something we plan on doing." Then we got booted out. Kinda lame. I was really hoping she'd be willing to pray with us but I guess that wasn't in her schedule or something.

Another funny story this week is when we got visited by Elder Greenstreet, our housing coordinator. Elder Greenstreet is a older gentleman who is a little shorter than most people and a bit more goofy than most people too. He told us that basically our apartment needed to be closed down again and we'd open a new one next transfer. Uggghh... this literally has happened 2 times already on my mission and now I have to do a 3rd. I'm really not feeling like closing down my apartment again but I guess we have to do what we have to do. Also super randomly, after 15 minutes of Elder Greenstreet explaining this to us he looks around the room and checks it to make sure we were alone, he leans in closely and quietly whispers, "Elders, do you know what the printers manuscript is?" We say no. Then he tells us to sit down and he proceeds to explain the entire translation process of the Book of Mormon to us in vivid detail and shares his testimony of the Book of Mormon, which takes around a half hour. Now don't get me wrong, his testimony was very touching but just so random and out of context to explain the entire story of the printing manuscript in the Book of Mormon translation process in our apartment without warning after explaining that we are getting kicked out of our apartment. You'd just have to be there to experience it, it was heartwarming but hilarious at the same time. Then he says, anyways Elders, I'll catch you later and he just dips out immediately. Wow, I love the senior missionary couples.

My desk

A picture of our apartment

We had a pretty cool lesson with a guy named Robert where we put him on date to be baptized. It was pretty awesome. A lot of our other part member families fell off date so it's cool to have another guy in our area that we can look forward to getting baptized. Robert was in Logandale so the lesson was in English. We don't have a lot of progressing people that we are teaching in Spanish.

To be honest, I think the driving force of my happiness as a missionary is love. When I realize my blessings and express how grateful I am for them to others, I developed a real love for the events and people I am around. Then when I love what is happening even if it may not be the prime circumstances, I start to be happier and less stressed. I love the mission, love my companion, love the area, love the work, and most importantly I love the Lord. He's impacted me so much that I can't even describe how grateful I am. You see? When you love all those aspects, then of course you are going to be happy no matter what happens. 

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack

 

Shrek Selfie