It’s Been a Good Week

Letter from March 15, 2016

We started the week off with lots of meetings.  Tuesday was a follow up training for all the greenies and their trainers. So we all met together with the Passey’s and the AP’s for three hours😐. It was alright and interesting to hear about everyone else’s first month on the mission. Then Wednesday we had a zone meeting and that was pretty long too. But they introduced us to the new Easter message, if you haven’t watched it yet- what are you waiting for?  We talked about ways to introduce it to people and also ways it can lead into the message of the restoration. I don’t know if I mentioned this before but as a mission we have a goal that each companionship will teach the restoration at least once everyday. So we have been trying to connect everything back to it. 

The week went by pretty fast. M- and P- had their baptism interviews. They are 8 and 9 year old kids we have been teaching. Their family are refugees from Africa. Anyway apparently in M-‘s  interview he told Elder Dillworth he was going to smoke, he was trying to give the Elder a hard time and thought it was pretty funny. He was.

The best day this week was definitely Thursday. We taught the restoration, or at least principles of the restoration, FIVE times. Two were in our lessons for De- and Ro- because both of those were trying to help them understand how the Book of Mormon is different from the bible and answer their questions about Joseph Smith. Another was a referral we got, I’ll tell ya about him, another was a dude in the park, and the last was our dinner message. We were on fire, it was a great day. 

So this referral was from some Elder’s who had contacted a guy on the street but didn’t live in their area. His name is J- and this dude is pretty dope. Super chill guy. It sounds like he has seen some pretty rough stuff- had a cousin killed by a gang last year. He raps too! He rapped with freaking Ludicrous before Benson!!!😱  He ready and wants to change his life though. He’s been trying to get over some addictions and he wants to provide a good life for his daughters. We have tried to meet with him again after he cancelled our next meeting so hopefully we can get him sometime this next week. 

We extended the baptism invite for Ro-. And the thing that she is hung up on is that she won’t be going to the church she’s at now. She has friends there and doesn’t want to leave them. Me and Sister Smith aren’t sure she has really gained a testimony of what we are teaching yet. She really likes the social aspect of us coming over and loves Yv- who we bring along. But she said she is going to think about. 

Friday and Saturday we’re supposed to be full days but all of our appointments cancelled both days. One fun thing we did Saturday with all the time was a picnic at the park with the Anzak family. The ones we went to the temple with. Anyway we met them in the park and then with chalk we drew out the plan of salvation. We ended up having like five other kids come help us draw. It covered a huge area.  We didn’t draw any new investigators like we were hoping for but it was still fun! And who knows maybe someone will see it, be curious and go to Mormon.org! We wrote that at the bottom of it. 

OH YEAH. I almost forgot. Guess who’s a bike mechanic. ME. Yep, me and Sister Smith knew we weren’t going to have enough miles for the month so we went to check out some bikes in storage. And Elder Wagoner showed us four bikes but there was something wrong with each. So after two hours we had made two working bikes! And so now we bike when we don’t have to go too far. So basically we can bike in the southern part of our area but if we head up north we have to take the car. 

The fireside is coming along great, haha or so we hope. It will be this next Sunday and we are excited and we’ve been inviting everyone. I have not come across Elder Judy but Sister Inman from the MTC said she knew him. And she said he was a super awesome kid. The weather hasn’t gotten super hot yet and probably won’t for another month. Well sounds like you guys had a really fun week! Love you!

Sister Packer😜

Today (Monday) Maggie Taylor and Sister Huntington, the two loveliest most awesome people in the ward took us to the San Havier Mission.  It’s a big Catholic Mission about thirty minutes south of  Tucson and it’s SO cool! It’s one of those Catholic cathedrals built in the 1700s. The mission was started when the Spaniard’s came to Mexico way back in the day and came to or preach to the Indians in here. So it’s still on the Tohono O’odam Indian reservation. It was really cool to see the mix of the two cultures.

 

Rejection Seems to Be the Theme This Week

Letter from March 8, 2016

Well this week we have been rejected. A LOT. We just keep getting turned down by everyone. For what or why, I don’t know. We have been trying to visit all the less actives and part member families on our list. Anyway, we have been told so many times this week that they aren’t interested and not to come around anymore. sweet. One guy even peeked out his blinds to see who was at the door, saw me and wouldn’t answer. It was kinda funny actually. And on the same day we had one of the dry mormons in the ward tell us they don’t believe any of it (the gospel) and another less active tell us she doesn’t even believe in God or an afterlife. What the?! She got baptized for her son?? And then one of investigators, John broke up with us. And he did it through his wife. Yeah that was a heartbreaker right there. He still came to church with her and he even brought us extra bread (he works at panera bread and brings us bread to church) probably because he felt bad about not meeting with us anymore. You should feel bad John, you should!

The mission wide goal for the month of March is to teach the restoration at least once every. single. day. So far we have been able to do it! Sometimes it ends up being our dinner message, but that is our last resort. And its not bad either because everyone can benefit from hearing the restoration. 

 Sister Smith got sick Monday and we were doing exchanges that night for Tuesday. So Sister Jones is the STL, Sister Training Leader who I was supposed to go with and her comp was sick so our comps just stayed sick for Tuesday and tried to get feeling better and stop throwing up and I went with Sister Jones. It was interesting. It was fun to see how she did things differently than Sister Smith and what they did similarly.The fun part was they have bikes. Bikes and a car. I guess when they got into the area the car was already over miles so they found bikes. We biked for most of the day and I was a little red by the end of the day.  It was a hard but really good day. 

Another fun part of the week was Wednesday when I hit my One Month Mark! YAY!. I can now tell people I have been out a month instead of saying like two weeks or something. We celebrated with Costa Vida.

We taught Denise again this week. She has a lot of questions about the Book of Mormon. What she is mostly concerned about is wearing the “armor of God”. That was something Sister Smith felt she should talk to her about previously because her neighbor kept “casting” spells on her and demonic crap (Woohoo!!!) and so she was worried about that. She has had a priesthood blessing before about a month ago and she wanted another one so Friday we got some elders over there and they gave her a blessing and also blessed the house. Hopefully that helps her. #Gospel > Magical Mystic Crap

I finally met another one of our investigators- Meredith. It was actually supposed to be a drop lesson because she wasn’t keeping commitments and was always cancelling lessons but then she was all like this is the religion I want in my life so we didn’t drop her. 

We met with Rose again this week and taught the Plan of Salvation to her. I didn’t have the package you sent by then Mom, gosh dang it. But we will probably do a review lesson so I can use those then. Anyway she is still reading her BOM and was going to come to church but didn’t feel well on Sunday. She has  a lot of medical issues- most come from the addictions she has had in the past and still has currently. She still doesn’t understand the concept of priesthood power though. She still thinks her baptism in her other church was legit. Its a little frustrating because we know its not but she can only know by figuring it out herself.  We are praying to have some inspiration to effectively teach these principles to her.  Those were are only lessons this week with investigators this week!

Things have been good – I’m getting to run afterall. We live right next to a middle school and I got Sister Smith to come over to the track with me like four times this week in the mornings to run. She did really good. So I have been getting up at 6 every morning to go do that 🙂  Thank you for the package!! The visual aids are all super cute and are going to be very helpful and the clothes are awesome thank you mom!!!! It sounds like you all had a very entertaining weekend, what with the anniversary dinner at jaker’s and the wonderful redneck Hot tub night in the truck. Sounds like fun fam and I miss you guys! I am gonna send some pics of my cacti that I like. They are HUGE. I wish you could see the sunsets here because they are so awesome. The Fireside we have been planning is still on track. Crossing my fingers everything will workout okay. haha its gonna be DOPE. The missionaries in my district are all going to sing Come Unto Christ at it.  The elder’s aren’t too thrilled but we used our “great persuasive leadership skills” (AKA we got bossy)  and they agreed lol 😉 Love you,

Sister Packer

Act in Faith And You Will Receive Power

Letter from March 1, 2016

It’s good to hear everything back home is going well and everyone is staying so busy! DAD i’m so proud of you’re work out week!  Eating healthy is so hard here because the members feed us well. Just yesterday alone we got cookies at dinner and milkshakes at the part member family we visited later! AHHHHH! help. hahaha. 

So I had my first P-day last week, and it was so much fun! On Pdays our whole zone gets together and we play sports for like three or four hours. It was so fun. Last week we played basketball and this week I think is volleyball! Then Tuesday we had zone conference! It was an awesome day and I learned a lot. We talked about faith and read the definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1 and substituted the word “substance” with “assurance”. So now we have this formula: assurance+evidence=Faith. The evidence is of things not seen. Then we talked about the Army of Helaman and how they had assurance that if they followed the lord they would be blessed and the evidence was that of their mothers testimony. And so they used that to act. and when they acted in faith they received power. And we can too but we have to act in faith. It was a great first conference!

We have had an interesting week. Wednesday we spent a lot of time getting the fireside planned. It is going to be AWESOME!!! A testimony of Christ from one of the prophets/apostles will be read and then a musical number that goes along with it will be performed. We have asked people in the ward to do the musical numbers and the missionaries (our district) are going to do a number as well. We have been inviting people all week and trying to get less active members interested and and urging members to invite friends! We had a very weird lesson on Wednesday as well.

Ok so we have this recent convert, Yvette, who is such a good little missionary. And she had us come over to teach her mom Carmen and her sister Denise, I think I mentioned them before.  So we showed up at the exact same time as Yvette’s daughter, Courtney!  Yvette told her that since she had made plans with us, and she didn’t tell her she was coming she will just have to sit there and listen until we are finished. Hahah YES!!!  Anyway Courtney is gay and quite the character. We came away from the visit really liking her.  She has been through So many hard trials. She actually used to be a member.  Somewhere in our lesson (following the Spirit was scary, but I felt my answers should be direct and honest) she must have felt the spirit because she started asking questions. At first they were about women and the priesthood and as we answered those she started asking about how she doesn’t feel like God answers her prayers or is there. And we talked about trials, experience and ultimately agency for a while with her. After she left, Yvette was in tears saying she had never seen her daughter open up like that. WE think she wants to come back but she still has a lot of anger in her. 

Thursday was not a good day for Sister Smith. That one thing that you don’t ever want to happen on your mission happened to her. President called to talk to her. Her uncle had just passed away.  She was pretty upset that morning.  It would be hard not to be home to give comfort to your family… and to get comfort from your family!  It’s definitely a time to be with eachother.  And I feel helpless at comforting people so I didn’t help. But she is tough and she’s in the right place.  We still went to work in the afternoon.  She was doing much better by Friday. Thank goodness cause that was a weird day. So Thursday afternoon we didn’t know what to do, everything had been interupted by President’s call and I wanted to give her time.  We started going through some lists of former investigators and calling them. Of the few who answered only ONE was willing to meet with us. And we thought, yes, this wasn’t a total sad day today!

Friday night after dinner, we went to meet with this ONE. His name is Andrew. We got to his trailer and had Brother Huntington with us. We just started talking and trying to get to know him better and were about to jump into the lesson when he asked if we knew Elder Rogers. We said no. And he says “oh he’s the one who baptized me.” Our jaws dropped. It was SO AWKWARD. Hahaha he was already a member!!! He is less active and for some reason his records were over in another ward! wow so funny.  We got everything fixed up.

Our next stop that night was the lady in the trailer two units down from Andrew named Mary. We didn’t know her, all we knew was that she was a less active and single sister. She was very sweet at first and invited us in to chat. And boy did she chat. She is one of those who had an opinion about EVERYTHING! She told us how there are ten people who control the President…but she didn’t even know what the electoral college was… anyway then she started telling us how some people think she is crazy because she can see dead people.  Oddly enough, she actually isn’t the first person who has told me this out here but she is the first to make it sound freakin creepy. Remember the movie The Sixth Sense. Yep the little boy is her, not kidding. She wanted to tell us stories about dead people in her old home and in the one she is in now. She had her home blessed so she wouldn’t get anymore visiters of that nature?!  I won’t go into anymore detail cause it became some scary stuff so we had to get a little rude and pushy insisting that it was time for us to leave. But she also believes we have a third eye on our foreheads that helps us to see into the spirit world. (Silence with Crickets chirping in my head)  Me and Sister Smith are not eager to go there again soon. 

BY far the best thing that happened this week was our lesson with Rose. We stopped by her place Thursday real quick because we had a wrong number for her and come to find out she had already read the first chapter of the Book Of Mormon.  Cool!  We set up and appointment for Saturday night. So Saturday night we took Yvette with us. Which was a great idea because those two were able to build a real great connection and Yvette went through similar trials Rose faces now such as addictions. The lesson went great although I don’t think Rose really grasped that her current church doesn’t have the authority that ours does to baptize.  Right now she feels fine that she has already been baptized there.  Anyway, I asked her what some differences she could see with our church from others?  She answered that first of all the Book of Mormon. And after we read the scripture in Moroni I invited her to read the BOM and pray to know if everything we taught her was true. She just looked at me and said, “well I already know its true. You guys wouldn’t lie to me!” OH wow!  She is just making our job so easy! It was amazing. She said “I can just see the truth in your eyes. And when you teach something it just makes me want to learn more.” And so she said she would continue to read the BOM this week and we are going to continue teaching her. I seriously love her, she is such a sweet heart. But she has a lot of struggles ahead so keep her in your prayers please. 

Okay so your questioning why I sent pictures of us at the Mesa and Gilbert temple last week! So last Saturday was an Awesome day for me and sister Smith because we got the opportunity to go to these temples we would normally not be able to because they’re out of the mission. The Anzak family is a part member family. Lanie was going to do baptisms for the dead and we took her husband and two sons around the Mesa visitor center. It was awesome and we really felt the spirit. I don’t know that her husband is any closer to becoming a member but that’s okay, baby steps. And on the way back we stopped by the Gilbert Temple. We did have to get special permission from President for this trip because it was outside of our mission boundaries but he is pretty chill and because we had a chance to teach investigators he said GO!

This week was also Rodeo week. In Tucson everyone gets two days out of school for Rodeo weekend. Its a big deal sort of. Kind of like how Shelley gets time out for spuds, these people get Rodeo weekend!

So yes I do feel like things are clicking a little bit more as far as teaching goes but I do get pretty nervous before lessons. Especially since I haven’t had a lot of lessons yet. We don’t have a lot of investigators right now and so I don’t teach a lesson every day. I try not to get nervous but I do. Most of the time the nerves go away after we have started the lesson and the spirit comes in. SO proud of all of you at home and your accomplishments. Glad to hear Mia is protecting my special chair;)  You will have to send pictures of what you did on Leap day! and thank you for the story about Sister Watkin’s talk on Sunday.  Grandpa really was such a good example to a lot of people. I have been thinking about him a lot this week actually. 

So many people here are going through hard trials. I feel so blessed. I have a family who loves me and we are sealed together. And you love me so much you were able to let go of me to go on a mission. Some people in these low income areas struggle to pay their bills. All these single less-active sisters have huge medical bills and they can’t afford to go to a doctor sometimes and they live in some awful places. It’s sad to see. And I wish I could help them more. That’s one reason I was thinking of Grandpa a lot. I was thinking what would he do? He is the greatest example of having Christlike love. He always found a way.  So I really want to make it a goal to serve others the way he did.  And then try to have the faith that by doing so we will have more success in finding wonderful people ready for the blessings of the gospel in our area. 

Have a good week fam, I love you. 

I love you all!  Sister Packer

P.S.  Mom, That is so cool that you asked Coach Scott is coming to help you with rotations and drills with the team.  Also that really touches my heart what he said – seriously such a sweet man, I LOVE HIM! please tell him hi for me and tell the girls to listen to him because he knows so much about the game of volleyball!