Hola,
Well, I am now getting into the blazing hot summer which is just terrible. I am definitely glad I have a car this time. It is really so hot. It's not even the full heat though, it's supposed to get around 118 but I'd say it's consistently 110. It's so annoying, every time you mention the heat to a native Las Vegas person, they say the same stuff, "OH iTs nOT eVeN hoT YeT JuSt wAiT!" Literally everyone. I can still mention it's hot because I'm out in the 110 degrees almost all day, if you were me, you'd say it to. Fun times.
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| Lone Mountain Hike |
Our members that we live with bought us an ancestry kit, so I get to spit into a tube and mail that in. I'm excited to see the results in a couple of weeks. I wonder how much percentage I am Chinese.
Okay so Elder Dawson and I are honestly struggling to find Hispanic people to teach. We keep finding English people. It's cool because the people we are finding are coming to church in the English ward, but I wish they spoke Spanish. So yeah, that's been my life. The missionaries in the English ward boundaries that we are finding in are goobers so for some reason these people we are finding for them aren't getting taught. So that's pretty cool. But hey I love the people, I work hard, and I'm obedient so I'm sure things will work themselves out.
We had MLC which was cool. It was a lot of fun with our new president, President Nielson. He is very different than President Reese. We just talked about how we can improve the mission for several hours. I gave a training on the area book, and it honestly wasn't that great, so I was kind of embarrassed by that but whatever.
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| MLC Training with a balloon |
I went on exchanges with Elder Richard, and he mentioned how he served in one of the wards I served in. He then asked me if I taught Brian. I was like yeah of course I taught Brian, I found that guy. We were biking in the street, and we talked with him while he was crossing the crosswalk. We then got invited into his home. Later I got transferred so I didn't see what happened to my man. Apparently Elder Richard and Medina continued to try and teach him. They taught him everything, but he never got baptized because there are definitely a few screws loose in my man. First of all, when I was with Elder Plaster he was playing with a knife, and I thought he was going to stab me. But later on, the other missionaries ended up making chicken wings with him and doing a dance battle. He also went to church a lot apparently. He fell off the map later so that was the end of Brian but it's kind of cool to think that my efforts of saying hi to someone on a bike led to all of those experiences for other missionaries. I also wonder, what else my efforts are doing?
My exchange with Elder Richard ended with us driving to the hospital to give a lady a blessing. It was really interesting, they didn't even check us as we just walked right in (which could be a universal thing, but I've never seen that before, usually they at least check me)
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| Exchanges |
So the next day I went on exchanges with Elder Moa (he is the new assistant). We then have lunch right next to the hospital with Elder Schmutz and Elder Richard. Eventually we get on the topic of the hospital that didn't check us when walking in, so we decided to go visit the lady yesterday to see how she was doing. We wanted to see if we could just walk right in again. Well, we got in easily and took a lot of selfies and went to go see how the lady was doing. It was pretty cool. Elder Moa is also the funniest person I've ever met. It was genuinely a hilarious day. I don't think we talked about anything serious that whole day.
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| Hospital Visit |
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| Kissing the Chicken |
I had a pretty cool experience with Elder Richard during the exchange. I had a question that morning with him and why certain missionaries don't baptize as much and why sometimes we're obedient, but our efforts seem to lead to nothing. Anyways we tracked into this lady from Colombia. She invited us inside and we had a great discussion but all she really wanted to do was bash us. She mentioned how she was baptized a member of the church in Columbia because the elders were super good looking and tall, she honestly didn't know a whole lot about the church still. Since she kept being antagonistic towards us, I just told her that if she wanted to know if we were actually messengers sent from God, she needed to ask God. So, we knelt down together and prayed. She prayed and asked God if we were messengers and if our message was for her. We paused for at least 5 minutes afterwards which felt like forever. The spirit was really strong, and I could hear the spirit whisper the answer to my question. He said, and I'm going to paraphrase this, 'you remember all those times you felt peace when you pray and read the scriptures, that's always been me, what else do you want? I didn't send you to baptize those people that those other missionaries are baptizing, I sent you to do a work here and it's not their work, it's yours. So, stop complaining and go back to work. Finish strong before your time is up.' So, I felt pretty chastised after that, but it was something I needed to hear. It wasn't quite those exact words, but it was pretty close. I don't need to worry about that stuff and do what God wanted me to do here.
Well, that was pretty much my week. It was pretty awesome. Can't wait for next week. It's going to be pretty awesome.
Sincerely,
Elder Neil Pack
