VIVA Ecuador!!!

Hola!!



A whole pig and two guinea pigs for sale

 


A beautiful rainbow just before a huge rainstorm



 

Wow sounds like you all had a super crazy week!! I know that I sure did as well. I feel like this week just flew by! Mom I absolutely loved all of the pictures!! You sent so many! I loved it! I also loved the videos! Neil you are a rock star on the piano! I showed my companion the video of you playing the piano and she was amazed!! In Ecuador and Peru, where Hermana Espíritu is from piano's are way too expensive and too big for the houses here. The Zhizhpon family that I have been teaching while being here is Cuenca doesn't have a room in their house that could fit a piano. One room has one bunk bed in it and can't fit anything else. You can't even close the door to their room. They just took the door right off the hinges. It is crazy. So be grateful that you have the opportunity to play the piano! In fact we don't even have a piano in our church building. They sing their hymns for sacrament meeting along to a CD of a flute playing the hymn. haha crazy! But this Sunday I lead the music for sacrament, it reminded me of my time leading the music in the 3rd ward.

I am so jealous that you all got to carve pumpkins! It doesn't even feel like October here. I cannot believe how quickly the time has flown by here! I don't believe it is almost November. It is going to be weird not celebrating Thanksgiving. You better feed those missionaries good for me! The other day I was having lunch at the Stake president's home and his wife asked me to describe what "viernes negro" was like and it took me forever to realize what she was talking about haha! But she was talking about Black Friday and all I could do was laugh because to the people here it must seem insane. But I love watching people's expressions when I explain things that happen in the United States. haha!

Danielle, you looked so so so so pretty for homecoming! I wish I could have been there. Your dress was so pretty! Purple is a good color for you! I hope Sam was a good date! Mom also told me about All State! I am so proud that you got called back! That is a huge accomplishment in itself. Wow! I really hated All State auditions. But you learn a ton and I am sure you have improved a ton! Just remember it is just one judges opinion and it means nothing.

This week has been so crazy busy! Holy cow I can't even begin to explain how busy I have been. Pretty much everyone has been not following through on their commitments. It just breaks my heart. I hadn't realized one of the hardest parts of being a missionary was the heart ache for those whom you come to love and teach and they choose not to follow Christ in their lives. It just kills me. I know last week I mentioned Darío and Claudia were getting baptized this week well Darío decided that he wasn't ready. He just can't get past the idea that Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ. He refuses to pray and gain a testimony for himself of it. It just breaks my heart! But Claudia was baptized this Saturday and it was so amazing. Man I just love her so much. It is only her and her sister Luz in the gospel and she is just going to be an amazing member.

 

We have been teaching the Zhizhpon family for the past couple weeks and the two oldest boys in the family moved their baptism up to this past Saturday with Claudia as well.

 

 

 

 

 

Adrés is 14 and Luis Eduado is 11. They are just too great. I love their family. Their Dad is Luis and their mom is Rossío. They have twin boys Juan Pablo and Paul and one little sister Monica. Teaching at their house is crazy. The twins are bouncing off the wall the entire time haha! But they are all so sweet. Rossío refuses to attend church because she has her own religion and it just kills me. I think with time she will warm up to it. Luis and the twins are getting baptized this next Saturday. The twins are both 8. I am so excited for them all to be baptized. Luis is the must kind and humble person I have ever met. They own a little bread shop in their house and it is just so cute. That is how we found them. We bought bread and milk from them late one night.

 

 

The only way you can prepare to serve a mission is to know the word of God! I have a chapter in the Book of Mormon for you to use! In fact I have used this a lot with Claudia this week. 2 Nephi 32. Especially in verse three it says that angels speak by the power of the holy ghost and speak the words of Christ. The only way that the Holy Ghost can guide you to know what to say is if you know the words of Christ first.

I have so much more I want to say but this week I want you all to read page 120 in Preach my Gospel about Humility. This pretty much sums up my week. Christ was the ultimate example of Humility and we are so lucky to have him. Read Matthew 26:39 and use this example in your own life. I love you all more than anything in the world and I sure hope you are all doing well. Oh and Happy Halloween!

Con Mucho Amor,

Hermana Pack

Yikes! This week I ate Cuy. aka guinea pig.

View of Cuenca

Hola,

I cannot even begin to explain how good it feels to email you all. I miss you all so dearly and I cannot wait to see you again.
Spanish is beyond hard. Holy cow this week has been crazy hard and I feel like I should be further along in Spanish than I am but I am not. It is hard not to get caught up in the struggle of myself and remember that I can do anything through the strength of Jesus Christ. Wow are we lucky to have a God and Savior who understands all.

This week I ate Cuy. aka guinea pig hahahaha

wow what a good time. I´ll send pictures. They literally take the animal and shove a huge pole through it and roast it hahaha

Yummy Cuy!

 

Too great! it was good but it still had some hair on it and teeth and everything. Wow yikes. But it was good, actually.

This week we have two baptisms. I love both of them so dearly wow they really are such great people. 

This past week I spoke in church on the talk called "Catch the Wave" and you can find in on www.lds.org . It was actually a pretty good talk. I advise you all to read it! It is really important and powerful. But man was I nervous to speak. My ward is kinda small but we had a lot of investigators there. I was nervous but I did well and I had the spirit on my side.

If there is one thing I have learned on my mission it is that member missionary work is crucial! Nothing counts unless a member is there and it is so hard to get a member there! UGH. All of you, help your missionaries out!!!

Anyway God is so good and I love all your emails. I have hot water in my shower now. Well actually it is luke warm haha but it is a million times better than ice cold and I thank God for it every day! I hope you all are grateful for you warm showers haha.

I don´t have many pictures this time, but I will send some. I love my family so much and your influence in my life has changed me for the better thank you!!

MUCHO AMOR!!
Hermana Pack

 

HOLA FROM ECUADOR!!

HOLA FROM ECUADOR!! 

The view out our front window

This place is amazing and overwhelming all at the same time. I love my companion more than the world. She has more humility than I have ever had in my entire body. She is also soooo persistent with the investigators sometimes I cannot help but laugh. She kills me. 





My companion and I



We eat rice and beans every day for lunch. EVERY DAY. Just in case you were wondering haha. But I can make a pretty mean omelet in the morning too. In the house we live in there are two other sisters and we literally live with the law of consecration. We share absolutely everything. It actually is really nice. Luckily one of the other sisters is from the US and speaks English. She has been able to show me how to get everything to work.

My favorite food is grown here
in Ecuador, bananas!

 

But I would like you all to thank God right now that you have warm water in your homes. I am dying because we have no hot water. I hate showering. It is the coldest experience of my life. The first time I didn't even wash all the soap out because I didn't want to get my back wet. SO COLD. You also may be wondering about how my laundry gets done, well I wash it by hand of course haha. It is a great time. Life here is so good. I just love it. I thank Heavenly Father every day for the companion I received. She is so amazing! Wow just so inspiring.
 



Our laundry room

Dad I almost forgot HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! YAY!!!! I hope it was the best!! Sorry I missed it! Your cake looked delicious!
 

I am in Cuenca the coldest place in the entire mission. Good thing I didn't bring a single coat and only two cardigans. Yay. I have never ever ever been so cold in my life!

 

 

But we have a ton of people to teach. They are all just so amazing. Yesterday we taught 5 adults and 4 children in a room about the size of 2/3 of my bathroom. Yep it was nice and tight and cozy haha. But let me tell  you I have never felt the spirit so strongly. The little girl named Genesis said the closing prayer and I just cried. It was so powerful. I didn't get to contribute much due to my Spanish but I was able to testify of the love of our Father in Heaven and it was amazing. Spanish will come with time. I am doing a great job of understanding. I just can't speak. The first couple days were rough but it has gotten much better. I cannot wait till I am able to communicate better. A lot of the people cannot believe the things I have experienced. Everything is so cheap here too. We rode in a taxi for about 30 minutes and only had to pay 3 dollars. WOW. So cheap.

 

I am finally used to people staring. They constantly stare at me and some of its a little creepy, like I am a foreign object it is kinda comical really. 

Anyway I love you all and I hope all is well! Mom and Dad I am so grateful for both of you! You mean the world to me and I am so grateful for the examples you have set for me in the gospel. God is just so good!

 

Mucho amor!

Hermana Pack

 

Where the spirit presides with the people the Lord God is among them

Goodbye Mexico! Hello Ecuador!

 

Luckily they have given me an opportunity to write you all today. I know this is probably throwing you all off because it is Monday haha :) Holy Cow! I was so homesick this week. I cannot imagine what my life would be without you guys.

Dad sorry to hear about the problems with the Government! That is crazy. So many people received emails about it and were totally freaking out. I feel like I know nothing about the world or the United States any more. Weird. and it has only been one month! Wow time sure has blown by here.

I found out that the Guayaquil temple is not in my district of my mission so I may not be able to attend for the next 17 months. So you better believe that I will want to go when I get back! So many things have been taught to me here. I love the CCM more than I ever thought possible.

I leave the CCM in approximately one hour for Ecuador! Holy CRAP! I am so so so so so scared. I could throw up. I haven't eaten anything today because I feel like I am gonna be sick just thinking about it. Today I said goodbye to the two most inspirational guys I have ever met and I lost it. Elder Fisher and Crotzer are the most inspiring Elders/young men I have ever met. They showed me how to be a righteous servant of the Lord. So amazing.

I am so sorry that I am not able to call, but if you guys get this in time I sure hope you keep me in your prayers. I am so nervous for this flight. Spanish is going to get me good haha. 

Hermana Dillman, Elder Henrie, Crotzer, Fisher, and I

But I want to share my most spiritual experience of the week. After talking with Elder Fisher about my worries for my mission and hearing all of his after conference, he asked if I would like a blessing and I decided I would like one for comfort. Elder Crotzer said the blessing for me and I truly felt as though it was God speaking to me. We all are so close with the spirit and I love it. I don´t ever want these feelings to leave me. I don´t think I had ever felt the love of the Lord as much as I had in that room. Where the spirit presides with the people the Lord God is among them. I know this to be true. God is just so good.

Another really amazing spiritual experience of the week is a testament that God listens to our prayers and answers them through the words of the prophets in the words of scripture. This week I have been really worried about my new change and I got down on my knees and prayed to the Lord for an answer to the concern in my heart and what it is that I need to focus on in my life. I felt inspired that day to turn to the 16th chapter of Matthew and I read about the faith of the apostles of Christ and felt prompted that I needed to strengthen my faith, but then my next question was HOW? so I looked in the Bible dictionary. It states "Miracles do not produce faith, but strong faith is developed by obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ; in other words faith comes by righteousness." Once again God is too good and provides an answer. The words of Christ are so powerful and I have been reading the new testament this week and it has strengthened me in many ways. At the beginning of my time in the CCM I chose to make a goal of starting and finishing the book of Mormon in my stay here and I just finished two days ago and the spirit was so strong the last verses of Moroni. I know with all of my heart and soul that the Book Of Mormon is true. If any of you want to know this for yourselves I challenge you to read it for yourself. I know that it is another testament of Jesus Christ and it is true! I hope that you can come closer to Christ as I am.

 

I love you all so much,

 

Hermana Pack

 

 

 

"Con salsa!!"

Hola Everyone!

Seriously God is so good! This week has been such an eye opening week.

It started off with a good discussion with my district on last Tuesday night.

Whole district plus our teacher Hermana Christensen
at the Mexico city temple.

We talked about how our time here on missions is not for ourselves and that we only had two weeks to prepare for leaving for our missions. We realized that this is not our time but the Lord's. So we decided to make some really worth while goals as a district. Our two main focuses were diligence and obedience. When our day is to start at 6:30 every morning then that means we are out of our beds by 6:30am. This also means that when we are to be in the classroom studying we are to truly be studying and not goofing around or talking. It really was amazing to me how much we all were willing to change. But I would have to say the most difficult goal of the week was that as a district we are to speak only Spanish in the day. The only time we are allowed not to speak Spanish is in our houses and at the gym. This actually was pretty cool at first and we had some fun with it. But as the week went on I was getting super exhausted and frustrated that it was sometimes so hard to understand. I mean all of us are at really different levels of Spanish. Especially in my companionship. I am a lot further along in Spanish than my companion and it has been kind of difficult to communicate. But what has been something really great about it is that I have learned SO MUCH. And in exactly one week from today I will be in Ecuador completely immersed in Spanish! Let me just tell you that I am going to be overwhelmed. 

All Sisters in my district and our teacher Hermana Christensen

 

So this week I read a general conference talk by Ezra Taft Benson. It was given a while ago and it was titled "Beware of Pride" It is one of the most inspiring documents I have ever read. I advise all of you to read it and see where you stand with pride in your own life. Find it on the www.lds.org website. Or

www.lds.org/general-conference/1989/04/beware-of-pride?lang=eng. It is so good!

I have two really great stories to tell everyone about teaching this week. Haha just thinking about them makes me laugh. So the first was during a teaching experience with a 13 year old boy named Aaron from Mexico City. He is a member of the Church and we were to practice teaching about the Book of Mormon with him. Anyway we walked in and started getting to know him, but every time that we asked him a question he would answer extremely quietly. I probably asked him to repeat every answer at least three times. Poor kid. Anyway I am pretty sure he was scared to death of us. Then we asked him to pray and he prayed so quietly that we missed when he said amen. and so we just kept sitting there with our arms folded and eyes closed until he came over and tapped us on the shoulders and said he was done. Yep. Awkward. Then the second story was two days ago. We were just meeting with our new investigator and his name is Ulises and he had just told us that he had already met the missionaries before and then my companion wanted to ask "Oh how did you like the missionaries?" But instead she asked "How do you like your missionaries?" Not only did I laugh but Ulises laughed as well and answered "Con salsa!!" Which means with salsa! Haha I died. The best part was that Hermana Dillman had no idea what was going on haha. Man too great. Anyway life in the Spanish world is getting fun haha.

 

Crazy to think that I am going to be leaving this beautiful place in a week. I would love to come back and see the CCM. But as for Mexico City as a whole it is too busy of a city for me. Driving here would be the worst! I couldn´t handle it! Anyway, I was able to go to the Mexico City temple again today and I realized while sitting inside that I feel all of the prayers that are said for me. I love you all so much and I am so grateful to know that I have a loving Heavenly Father who understands everything that happens to me in this life. I couldn´t imagine it any other way. Thank you all for your prayers and I am thinking of you as well!

Just remember we always have God on our side standing there for us for protection and guidance!

Con Amor,

Hermana Pack