The Spiciest Wings

 Hola,

This was a very fun week. Our teaching pool is still mega dry but hey we have faith and were working hard. It's kind of hard to find people here. The members are awesome though and the area itself is mega fun. It's still kind of hot outside but it's not a big deal. We're driving a bright red 2022 Nissan Frontier, so we are big chillin'. 

We taught this Baptist preacher this week or just completely bashed the heck out of me and destroyed me. But then I bore down in pure testimony, and it was epic. He was a member referral, and we had a lesson in the church. He kind of fell away from the Baptist church a little so I thought he'd be down to listen but he's not really into the whole listening and humility thing. Hopefully he reads the Book of Mormon though. 

A member took us and our roommates out to Buffalo Wild Wings which was awesome. My companion Elder Muraski got the blazing hot wings, which is the hottest wings in the menu. I tried one and they were so spicy. It was insane. Afterwards my companion and I got Pepto Bismil to help his stomach. The wings were mega delicious though. That pretty much sums up every day for us. Members hook us up and then we do something ridiculously stupid. And then doing missionary work while doing so.

Elder Muraski is a very special Elder. Let's just say he's probably my most interesting companion ever. He has some habits that are interesting. But he's also probably one of my favorites. He's super awesome and hilarious. Definitely an interesting guy though.

Went to MLC (Mission Leader Conference) the other day. We spent four hours discussing important items in the mission, like the music rule in the mission. We discussed it for around an hour and didn't even come to a conclusion or change anything. It was sad. Our music rule in the mission is very strict so I was hoping they'd loosen it, but I guess not. We talked about lots of other stuff too that doesn't really matter but it was fun. Our mission leaders in this mission can be kind of disobedient which is kinda sad. But hey it's life. 

We went on exchanges with the APs this week. Elder Spafford is pretty cool guy and showed me some baller ways to use scriptures in our lessons. Also, Elder Spafford and I found a super elect person by following the spirit which was pretty cool. We were directed to this door to knock on and the guy who answered was super interested. It was awesome. It's moments like those that are moments to look back on after the mission.

The mission is super awesome. I love it. Can't wait for this next week.

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack

Midwest in the Wild West

 Hola! 

Wow, what a week. This week flew by but honestly was probably the most fun I've ever had in the mission. So, I got transferred to the most southern part of the entire mission, the South Diamond Zone. It's all new houses, rich people, desert, off-roading, and dinners every day. Reminds me of the beginning of my mission up north. The wards I'm in are called the Coronado Ward, Huntington Cove Ward, and the Sandy Valley Branch a bit south of here. My new companion is Elder Muraski. He's from Washington but grew up in Illinois. He's hilarious and will probably be one of my favorite companions. I have less than two transfers left and so it's possible he'll be my last companion, but you never know what the Lord has in store for you. 

A lot happened this week. Our teaching pool is very small and it's super hard to find people, so we just work heavily with members and knock doors in apartment complexes. It works well and we are always inviting people to church. We made our zone theme this transfer mining because the name of the zone is south diamond. We then gave a Minecraft training to the entire zone. It was awesome. A lot of old trunky missionaries get sent here to either die or waste time so we're trying this thing to make people absolutely hyped and get an absurd amount of church invites and commitments. It's super fun. Seems like everyone likes it and is engaged. Plus who doesn't like Minecraft? We write Minecraft on the mini white handheld board and then completely broke the board in half. It super cut me but was totally worth it. Elder Plaster, my old companion, is in my zone if you remember him, I'm excited for that. He is so awesome. Helping encourage the zone and work with it is so fun. It's nice to help other missionaries out and get to know them.

Elder Muraski is such a goofy guy but also apparently knows how to do pretty much everything. Like he sewed my shoe back together and gave me a haircut. He learned to cut hair on the mission by telling everyone he did even though he didn't, so he had a lot of experience giving haircuts. Now he's really good. The first couple days he noticed that my previous haircut was terrible, so he offered to fix it for me. He did a really good job.

I'm kind of sad to be back speaking English again. I'm still practicing my Spanish every day and trying to still use it here. Hopefully I don't lose it. I like speaking it, I'm definitely not fluent but I can talk pretty well with everyone. My companion doesn't speak Spanish unfortunately. There is this member that let us use his gym, so we go there every morning and now I'm going to get big. 

So, we accidently picked up a branch in the south part of Nevada called Sandy Valley. We asked our president if we could go out there and he said yes! We'll be the first missionaries out there in a year. It was an hour drive, but my companion and I spent the whole Saturday in Sandy Valley. It's basically anyone who hates people and Las Vegas so they just live super far away. They all commute into work in Las Vegas however. It's basically like the modern wild west. Legit wild west. Seems like there is no law enforcement and there wasn't cell service. It was awesome. The Church building was this little, small shack. The people were honestly either mega nice or terrible jerks. There was no in between. Just the west. We had some guy get mad at us for getting on his property so he flashed his assault rifle. So cool. There's not a whole lot of work out there so we probably will only come back one more time. We found two interested people though which was cool. The population in Sandy Valley is 1600 people so it's just super small and super spread out. 

Anyways, that was pretty much the entire week. Super fun. Can't wait for this transfer.

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself

-John 7:17

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack

I'm Going to Get Really FAT!

 Hola otra vez, 

I ate 4 dinners in one day this week. That is honestly my new high score. Pretty insane. We accidently set up 3 dinners that we forgot about all in the span of 4 hours. Also, later that night a member surprised us with chicken shack, but I didn't throw up. I took it all down like a champ. One of those dinners was with an investigator so I had to eat everything. It was ceviche which was like a fish dip thing and it's really good actually even though I don't like fish. That was such a good day. It was actually my last day in that area. Because we got our calls for transfers that night. 

Eating our 4th dinner of the day

Zone pictures

    

Yeah so, I got transferred to a new area. I'm sad to leave Rainbow Vista but all good things come to an end, I guess. My new companion will be Elder Muraski. We also came out together and he's super awesome. We were actually in the same district when we came out. I'm super excited. My new ward is English speaking though which will be interesting. It's a super nice area which will also be interesting. 

I got a haircut from an elder who has never cut hair before. I was super desperate for a cut, and he said he found clippers underneath the kitchen sink, so he decided to fade me up. It was terrible haha but it's not like I'm out here to hit on girls so I'm chilling. It was super fun though. 

My free haircut from the Elder with no experience.

Rainbow Vista saw a lot of miracles. First of all, literally everyone and their mom brought a friend to church this week which was incredible. Hopefully the missionaries next transfer get lots of baptisms. We also saw a great miracle of being led to a Cuban's door and finding them. It was a new family and their interested in the gospel. I'm super excited for them. 

Our District before we all got transferred

Anyways yeah so, I'm going to get really fat in this ward. It's going to be crazy. I love you all, I know this week didn't have a whole lot but it's just one of those weeks, I guess. 

The Truman House officially signed tie

Sincerely, 

Elder Neil Pack

My favorite member in the Rainbow Vista Ward

From the Gospel to Solar Panels

 Hola, 

Here we are again, another week down. A couple weeks ago I was trunky a little bit, but I actually had a pretty cool spiritual awakening haha. I realized with only two transfers left I need to make every moment count. Now I'm actually super at peace with everything. Anyways let's jump into the week. 

Teaching wise, yeah, we dropped everyone again. So awesome. We are still teaching Juan though, and Juan might get baptized. He's been following with commitments however church is really hard for him. What's cool about Juan is he literally buys us lunch every time we have a lesson with him. We've had three lessons and three of the most delicious lunches ever. What a stud.

 

We are also teaching another lady who claims to be psychic. We passed her off recently because she speaks English.

We had an awesome P-Day activity today. We planned it where everyone came to the church building and ate Chick- Fil A and played some games. They were all water bottle themed because everyone was collecting water bottles throughout the transfer as like a goal, we tried to exceed every week. It was super fun and each game we played today was water bottle themed. We have bottle bowling, target practice, water bottle chugging, sculpture building, and a lot more. It was super fun. After the water bottle chugging contest two elders puked and it was so cool. The Chick-fil-A was catered to us and free as well. They donated it to the church because the owner was Elder Dawson cousin. Free lunch. Also, president came and was chugging water bottles with us and going hard with building the water bottle tower.

Okay funny story. So, we ended up meeting a bunch of guys selling solar panels and decided to team up with them. It was their idea and they wanted to learn from us. We've been doing this for 20 months so we're pretty experienced and so they wanted to learn since they've only been doing this for a couple weeks. It was pretty disobedient, but we paired off and did exchanges with them for a couple hours. We could always see our companion, but I definitely don't recommend doing that for other missionaries. It was really hilarious; we'd offer the gospel and then solar. The solar guys weren't very good, so I gave them lots of tips. They also gave me tips as well. I also tried to share the gospel with the solar guys, but they weren't having it. It was fun though. 

Another funny tid bit about Las Vegas. Every Wendy's fast food place suck and it crusty. It's literally like the walking dead in there. People act like zombies. Wish we got a picture haha. 

Anyways that was pretty much my week. I love you all and hope these next few months of my life don't go by fast. 

"And behold, he preached the word unto your fathers, and a mighty change was also wrought in their hearts, and they humbled themselves and put their trust in the true and living God. And behold, they were faithful until the end; therefore they were saved." -Alma 5:13

Sincerely, 

Elder Neil Pack

I got evicted!

 Hola, 

Yeah... so this has literally been the most depressing week ever. Like actually so sad. First of all, with missionary work wise, we had so many exchanges, meetings, and other stuff, Elder Dawson and I barely got to work in our area. Unfortunately, in our own area nothing is progressing. We have some hope for some interested people that we are teaching which will be good. We're so desperate for people to teach, we literally set up a lesson on our P-Day. It's like going into work on your day off, only psychopaths do that, and missionaries, I guess. Anyways, to give an update on who we are teaching, we are teaching a Mexican lady who lived in South Carolina for a long time. Elder Dawson is from there, so he is pretty excited about that. We had to drop a lot of part member families that we were teaching because they weren't progressing. That was sad. But you gotta drop them when they never ever go to church.

Yeah so, I also got evicted. Like actually. I'm still kind of upset about it but it's fine. Getting cut down like this will actually be good for me. Do you remember that super nice house I was living in with 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, wifi, a massage chair, unlimited soda, and queen-sized beds? We got kicked out. Apparently, Brother and Sister Truman said they walked in one day and it was super dirty. They set up a house inspection after seeing the dirty home and so we cleaned the house hard. We even vacuumed and mopped everything; it was so nice. So, then they come in the next day for the inspection, takes a 5-minute walk around and gives us 3 days' notice. No second chances. So, we used more proselyting time to take out everything out of the house and move it into our new apartment, it's a two-person apartment so the APs aren't living with us anymore. Yeah, but I'm not salty haha... 

I could go on and on about how weird they were acting about it but it's safe to say no matter how clean we made that house; they were going to evict us. I'm kinda upset but I'll get over it and eventually I'll be at peace with it. Already now as I write this email, I see how all that eviction stuff really doesn't matter. This will be good, now that I'm in a two man in our area I'm definitely going to be more obedient. So, I'm actually excited about that. Gives me more time to journal and have really good studies. 

What else happened? Well, I went on exchanges with some struggling elders and had a great time. The non-hard working elders are for some reason the funniest, so it was actually kinda fun. Oh yeah, I remembered something that happened, a couple days before we got evicted, the Truman's dog came and peed all over my clothes. That was not fun.    

I had to take Elder Richard to urgent care. He was on bike for the day and almost broke his arm by biking into a wall. He almost broke his head too, good thing he was wearing his helmet because he literally hit the top of his helmet on the corner between two walls. He literally cracked the helmet. So, wear your helmet, it'll save your life. We drove up and took him to urgent care. I was really worried about him because is arm looked really bad and honestly looked fractured or broken. He got an x-ray and he's fine. Just really bruised. While in the waiting lobby, my companion and I then watched all of toy story because it was playing in the lobby. That was awesome. haha.

Elder Richard waiting at the hospital

And then finally during sacrament of an English ward I attended that day the speaker said a swear word over the pulpit. We invited lots of English people we found and then pulled up to sacrament meeting and it was wild. The talk that dude was giving was so wack and literally said his grandpa was seeing visions of Moroni and a lot of other stuff that probably shouldn't be said over the pulpit. Then he told this story about fishing and at the very end just yells S**T for the punchline of the story. Then he turns around to the bishop and says, "can I say that? Is that alright?" My companion was so close to go up to him afterwards to say something about how there's kids and nonmembers here so please plan your talk better, but he didn't which was probably a good idea. Well leave that discussion for the bishop.

So that was my week, pretty fun huh. These days are such a blur and I find it so weird how I keep waking up in a two man. But hey, life's life and we move on. Love you all. 

"Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his word among his people, that they might have everlasting life." -3 Nephi 5:13 

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack 

 

I Sang in Zone Conference

 Hola,

Another week down. Time is flying by, I just hit my 20-month mark. So now things are getting really weird haha.... can't believe how fast it's gone. It's been so fun and powerful; I just hope these last few transfers don't go by too quickly. People look at me funny when I tell them I'm that far out. I usually just say I've been out over a year. Since I've basically emailed every single week of my mission, a lot of this stuff is pretty old so hopefully I can get creative with pictures and find some interesting things to talk about.

I went on exchanges with Elder Hughes. That guy is pretty cool. He's super funny. Anyways we went to the library to do our companion study when a loud noise exploded as we were walking into the front doors of the library. Behind us on the main street a pretty bad car accident just happened. It was super loud, and I turned around just in time to see a car spin around after getting hit, and another driving right up onto the sidewalk and knocking a whole palm tree over. I think everyone was okay, I'm sure the guy who hit the palm tree was in shock for sure. We ran over there to see if everyone was alright and called 911. It was super wild and kinda of a rush. I took some pictures and after the authorities came, then my companion and I walked inside to do companion study.

Picture of the car accident

I sang at zone conference this week. I've always wanted to and now I finally did it. It was super worth it because I thought I did a pretty decent job. The song was 'Savior, Pilot Me' in Spanish. I also gave a zone conference training for the first time with Elder Dawson. We cut out doors and taped them on the wall and trained on how to follow the spirit. The whole conference was on acting on promptings and receiving revelation. I thought the training was really good and probably one of the best ones I've ever given. It was a pretty fun zone conference.

Zone Conference training

Elder Dawson is really cool guy. We've been having a lot of fun together and we get along pretty well. He's good at leading other missionaries and he's on the gas with the work. My roommates, Elder Moa and Spafford are pretty cool too. Even though they're the assistants to the president, we've done some pretty crazy stuff together while living in this house.

I literally had the weirdest sacrament meeting of my mission this week. The counselor in the bishopric comes up and says we will not have any speakers or talks today. Elder Dawson and I both look at each other and are like what. Then he says people can come up and bare their testimony on one of the hymns in the hymnbook, then we will sing together the first verse of that Hymn. So, we ended up singing 8 or 9 different times. A lot of the songs were repeats too it was hilarious. Then one of the sisters comes up and brings the sister missionaries up too, and they all start talking about deep doctrine up there. They went off about the idea of a heavenly mother and a bunch of other stuff and I was like you have to be kidding me. We had investigators there too. Pretty cool sacrament meeting. Then in second hour the teacher didn't prepare a lesson, so we did open mic night on which scripture was our favorite.

Anyways, that was my week. Love you all and I'll see you next week!

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack 

I Broke into a Hospital

 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.

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.

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) 

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. 

Hospital Visit

        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