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 

Short email, and an awesome week!

 Hola! 

Okay I have to speed run this email because P-Day ends in 15 minutes. GREAT WEEK! Seriously. Just awesome. The miracles have been so cool. We found a family through tracting and they came to church this week. Last week as a random lady came to the church and asked to be baptized so we set her on date. She literally came to church twice already so we could baptize her tomorrow if we wanted to but we need to teach all the points. It's funny, when you have 8 missionaries in the same ward they are all like vultures on sacrament meeting hunting down anyone who looks new. All our friends who come to church everyone thinks they're new and we have to remind them that we're teaching them. The Sister missionaries were sooooo salty that we took the lady who wants to get baptized. Technically we talked to her first so she's ours. The Sisters were soo salty and mad haha free tizzy. 

Yeah so anyways just an awesome week. We tracked into Cindy and her family. She has met with missionaries in the past and I would be surprised if she got baptized next transfer. Her husband might be tough to get down. Her son has autism so it was a flipping miracle she came to church with her son. But she came! So cool. She met a lot of people and loved it. 

I also had zone conference. That was awesome. Saw some old friends. The theme was fishing because of course it was haha #bigbassfishersofmen. Yeah also our mission president is leaving next transfer which is super sad because President Reese is my homie. I'm sure President Nielson is cool too, he's from Texas. 

Love the work, love my mission, love my companion, love the ward, love my savior. What a great time to be serving the Lord.

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack 

The Next Blue Man Group

 Hola,

Wow this week went by fast. Can't believe it. This whole mission thing has been flying. I have to speed run the email so let's see how fast I can do this.

Okay great week. We had an awesome member referral, and we hope she can get baptized soon but we'll see. She didn't come to church so that was mega lame. That same member who gave us the referral also told us how a week ago she accidently got trapped in a Cuban Satan cult so that was cool. I won't go in to too much detail but it's probably a good idea not to mess with that stuff. 

We've been teaching a lot of English classes to people, that's been one of our main ways to find people so that's awesome. During one of our English classes, we see a woman go through the front doors and then puff a fat vape cloud. Then she darts into the chapel. You can just hear her turn the organ on and start playing random keys. Nice. So, we get someone in the bishopric, and he goes to the chapel to politely ask her to not do that. Then she starts going off how she is a member of literally every religion possible and how she also escaped from a mental institution. She also said she was an AI. Haha.... then our bishopric friend invited her to be baptized for some reason. She politely declined. I've just kinda gotten used to seeing crazy people in Vegas. Like people running out into the middle of the street and chilling in the middle of intersections. 

Elder Keele and I have been working really hard and seeing some really cool stuff. We've been working alot with the members and finding through our own efforts. It's been good. Our roommates are really funny too. Elder Checketts and Fraizure are super fun. We inherited an old sister missionary apartment so there is a lot of weird sister stuff.

So naturally we did clay masks and used a heck ton of foot lotion. 

Anyways that's about it this week. It was a good week. My Spanish is getting better but still not the way I like it because I'm a perfectionist. Love you and I'll talk to you next week. 

A cool quote

Flinging slime on the ceiling

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack  

Hola!

The Sandstorm

 Hola, 

Another week down. This week was a good week but nothing real super crazy happened, just another fun week. I love my companion. Elder Keele is a beast and it's going to be so cool when he's playing professionally for BYU football. I've been blessed with some super awesome and fun companions. Living in a 4 man again after the sad experience that was last transfer is nice. Two person apartments are lonely, which is weird because you always have someone to talk to but they're just lonely. When you got the boys at night though it's just better. Elder Checkitts and Fraiser are so funny. We live super close to our area too which is nice. 

Playing frisbee golf with my district

Last P-Day we had a wack sandstorm pull up. Dust was flying in our eyes and getting everywhere. We went tracting that night and my eyes hurt alot haha. What was weird was how all the sand and dust came through our windows and filled our apartment with dust. That was cool. I got to vacuum and wipe that stuff up. I shouldn't complain though, other people have it way worse. I'm super blessed to be in this mission with the area I'm in. Just absolutely blessed out of my mind. 

I went on exchanges with two elders this week. One from my district and another from the zone. That was fun. Elder Schmutz was actually in my district four transfers ago when I first picked up Elder Plaster. He is hilarious and we had a great exchange. We went to Crumbl cookies that night. Apparently, they used to have a missionary deal where they gave us free cookies but not anymore. That was super lame that we couldn't get free cookies. Elder Parkinson is my zone leader and we got to go on exchanges together. It was super fun. It was close to Easter so there were a lot of people out. I've gotten to a point in my mission where exchanges are still fun, but I've also gotten very used to most things that happen. I had a woman pull up in her car to bash with us, she said, "are ya'll preaching Jesus!?" And were like yeah. And she says, "then why do you believe there's more of the Bible?" She literally just pulled over in her car to ask us that. I was like, "well ma'am, with all due respect I don't think this is the place to answer that question, if you'd like we can meet sometime and talk in depth about that, but I really like your Subaru." Haha that defused the situation and we just talked for a while about cars, she then became super nice. She didn't want to meet with us unfortunately, but the situation was defused, and she drove off very happy. 

I had interviews with my mission president which was awesome. Before that though I ate Taco Bell and that was a terrible idea. I was so gassy during that interview. My bowels were on fire. During the interview though he told me a lot of interesting things. He said that he was better at pickleball than me which was just wrong. He also told me it's more than likely I will spend the rest of my mission in Spanish and the new mission president will probably do that too. He told me a lot of good information about Rainbow Vista and that it used to be the highest baptizing Spanish ward so it's possible to bring it back up. He also told me some cool stuff about why I got transferred to Rainbow Vista from Alta Loma and it's because I really needed to be here. I was kinda confused on why I only stayed in Alta Loma for 6 weeks, but I guess that's how it goes. In the meantime, while I was waiting for Elder Keele to get done with his interviews, I shined my shoes with the mission president's wife. Not going to lie they really look good now and definitely needed a good shine. Sister Reese was showing everyone how to shine shoes really well while we waited during interviews. 

Lately I've been working really hard with the members here. I feel like a lot of my finding efforts haven't led to the most productive things unfortunately. So, I've been spending way more time trying to build up the ward with the members and our English classes. It's been good and I hope it pays off later. I'm just trying to do the right thing that the Lord wants me to do. 

This scripture accurately represents my interview with president after eating muchas taco bell burritos.

19 ¶ My bowels, my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; my heart maketh a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.

-Jeremiah 4:19 

Love you all,

Elder Neil Pack 

Elder Pack is Back

 Hola,

I need to speed run this email because I don't have a lot of time left. Just an awesome week with a lot of really awesome experiences. So excited to be back in the Lone Meadows zone in the Rainbow Vista ward. Never thought I'd be here. I remember being in the Cheyenne ward living with the Rainbow Vista elders and now I'm in Rainbow Vista living with the Cheyenne elders. This week has been so fun. Such a great week.

First of all, my companion is a stud. He is a D1 athlete going to BYU after the mission. Elder Keele is going to play football for BYU, he's an offensive lineman. He is so nice and friendly but super obedient as well. He is literally such a wholesome guy. This week has been so great, he's becoming a great friend. He is from Morgan, Utah. We are learning Spanish together too so this week we've been able to improve in our Spanish a lot because we both suck. It makes it where both of us need to be 100% on our guard. 

Rainbow Vista is basically the Cheyenne boundaries but in Spanish. I work only with the Spanish speaking people and try to find them. It's been really fun but super hard. Finding Spanish speakers has been tough. Especially ones that are interested. I'm going to need a miracle and some crazy revelation to baptize this transfer. There are a couple of people that we are teaching that could be baptized. For example, Marco is someone we are teaching, and he could definitely be baptized. We taught a great restoration lesson and we knelt in prayer afterwards to know if it was true. I invited him to be baptized afterwards but he didn't accept it. Atleast we invited and showed him what our expectations were. It was a good lesson and I know that as he keeps praying and reading then he will find his answer. 

I got to go to a baptism for a part member family that I taught in the Cheyenne ward. Remember Wyatt? It was his little sister. So cool. Her dad got to baptized her and give her the Holy Ghost. So amazing to see them progress. An incredible miracle. I know that I needed to be in that ward for how long I was and that the Lord sends us where we need to go. Wyatt's dad told me I was their favorite missionary which made me feel really special. I worked with them a lot and I love them so much. I got to hug the dad after the baptism, and I let him know he was doing the right thing for his family. 

I ate dinner with the Barkers again this week. They used to feed us every week in the Cheyenne ward. It was like seeing old friends and we reminisced on old times. Brother Barker is one of my favorite people ever.

The district is great, our unity is super strong, and we've been having a lot of fun. I keep sending everyone on scavenger hunts to find stuff while tracting. One of them was to take a selfie with a toilet outside. One of the Elders had a sick miracle where they found a toilet outside and took a selfie with it. Then they knocked the door and found a Spanish lady who wants to get baptized. Dang, guess I receive mad toilet revelation. Love the Lord and I honestly think he has a sense of humor.

We've been talking with lots of people and my Spanish has improved a lot. I gave a talk in sacrament meeting in only Spanish and it was actually pretty good. I talked about how to be powerful member missionaries. The ward seemed hyped afterwards. I wrote the whole talk without translating it in Google translate before or afterwards. So, I hope people actually understood it. I thought it was halfway decent. 

Well, that was my whole week. Love this ward, love my companion, love the Lord. This will be a powerful life changing transfer. Just know that life is good for me right now. I'm grateful for the blessings that I've been given. 

Sincerely,

Elder Neil Pack

My selfie because I didn't take any pictures this week

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