[Editorial notes by Bryce's Dad, Shayne: Bryce has 13 days left in his mission, then he flies home! I ask what he was doing for the Cinco de Mayo (Mexico Independence holiday) this Wednesday? Here is his answer.] — WORK!

Well, I’m excited to talk with everyone on Sunday! [Bryce gets to talk with the family for Mother's Day!] I can’t believe how the time keeps flying. Today we went to El Centro, which is downtown Mexico City. It has been a hot 97 degrees! Yesterday we had some major miracles in the church, and next week (my last Sunday in the mission) we are going to have 3 baptisms. I still don’t feel it! And I am sure it won’t hit me till after next Sunday! MAN IT’S HOT! Well, I think my brain is melting, because I can’t think of what to write you. However, I do love you all very much! Talk to you sooooon!

-Elder Packer

Hello Family!

Well, just to update on the video last week… [See last week's email Fun Stuff about having their computer editing program crash while creating a training video. ] …It was lost and we tried until the night to recover it, however no luck. Oh well, we did all we could!

Yesterday was nice because of Margarita’s baptism she is a sweet, dear hearted lady who reminds me of mom! It was Elder Fernandez’s first baptism and he preformed the ordinance perfect. I also had him confirm Luis who we baptized a few weeks ago… so now he is getting more confidence and experience. I have been trying hard to teach him how to be a leader, accepting responsibility and participating in every aspect of the work.

I spoke in Sacrament meeting about Missionary work, of course, with an emphasis on the importance of members. It went alright; I was about 12 min. into my talk and about 2/3 of the way finished when the bishop said I’d gone over time. So… I guess I’ll be able to use the 20 min. Bishop Abbot is giving me to talk on ‘Obedience to God’s commandments’ just fine. I really can’t believe its coming to an end. I’ve just been working hard to keep finding investigators and trying to help them to overcome their fears, etc. to come to church and prepare them for baptism and teaching my kid how to do the same. We got some good investigators, and with lots of help from the Lord, they’ll soon be converted. Please keep praying for me, my companion and our investigators these next few weeks!

Dad, I’m super excited that they changed the date for the father and sons campout! About a party, you can invite whomever you want, and either Saturday or Sunday would be fine for me. If you want to put some photos on a slide show, that great, but I don’t want to stand and narrate anything.

Emily, you are just looking huge… and just to let you know I’ve gotten real fat the past few months! I’ve been suckin’ my gut in to the pictures J.

Have a great week! I love you!

Elder Packer

…by the way, just kidding, I’m not fat!

Mom, about the money, that should be great. Thank you so much!

Hello my lovely family!

It has been another glorious week in the work of the Lord, in the which he has blessed us greatly. My companion and I worked diligently and hard the past two weeks, however at the end of last week our overall impression was that we needed to be more humble and rely more on the Lord, so that is what we’ve been striving to do this week. The Lord blessed us greatly this past week in being part of the baptisms of two amazing people, Laura and her daughter Susi. They are wonderful people who have received a true conversion to the Gospel. He also blessed us in being a means by which 14 investigators attended church services yesterday. I feel very grateful! Actual its funny our ride fell through and we had to rent a public transportation van, so everyone could come. I’m sill working to recognize that success in this work comes from the Lord and rely on Him for guidance and strength.

Coming to this area, I’ve just felt blessed and full of energy and excitement to work hard and make the Gospel flourish here like it never has before. My initial excitement is what got me going, however the Lord has been showing me along the way what it is I need to do (change) to keep going. Being humble and relying on Him is part of it, now I have felt what I need to do is work hard to just really truly love the people and desire their salvation. I love the two people who were baptized yesterday and am so happy to see how the Gospel has made them happy! And that is my motive, that was (and is) the motive of Christ and His mission, the great cause of the Gospel.

When we allow pure motives (the well being of others) to motivate us to act (service) and we repeat these actions to the point that they become habits, our deepest desires become converted to that which is pure, righteous and godly. The strength, energy come as needed and God teaches us along the way what more we must do (change). What we love we will seek, and what we seek we will obtain.

I know that Christ lives and that He loves us. May we seek Him and His pure love and may it motivate us to loose ourselves in the service of God’s children even as He has done.

I love you all and pray that God will bless and keep every one of you!

-Elder Packer

¡Hola mi bella familia! [Hello my beautiful family!]

Our area is going well, despite opposition. I feel like our companionship is strong and well. We have been working hard to keep our teaching pool full of investigators, elect investigators.

This week, Marcela is going to be baptized and she is a miracle! Her husband, Fernando, was baptized a year ago and because of it they have been separated for the past year, however we had been teaching her daughter, Fernanda, and she was baptized last week (by her father). During her baptismal preparations her mother was present, even though she wanted nothing to do with the church previously. The spirit has worked with her and a week and a half ago she asked if she too could be baptized. Her husband who has been a faithful and active member since his baptism last year will be preforming the ordinance. This is a hard work, but it makes it all worth it!

I am sad that I will be leaving this area and the people here behind! However I am very excited to have the opportunity to work all day long teaching the Gospel!

I hope you are all doing great and staying warm in all the snow you’ve been getting! I’m sure you haven’t left the house much, but make sure to be safe driving!

All my love!
-Elder Packer

Well, this week is going to be exciting, because… we get to talk [on the phone] on the 25th.

On Sunday, my companion and I discoursed in sacrament meeting (like every second Sunday of the month). While starting to prepare my talk, I thought about diligence, then Temples, then the Holy Ghost, and finally Service. So, in the end I choose a different topic, Establishing and completing goals. Within this topic, I talked a little about the others. However, I focused on: Why we need to set goals? How do they help us to complete our purpose in life and become happy? What is a worthy goal? And how can we accomplish our goals?

Why we need to set goals? And How do they help us to complete our purpose in life and become happy?

To make it simple I sighted this wonderful passage.

“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.” ~ Elder M. Russell Ballard, Preach My Gospel, p. 146

We are here to become like Jesus Christ. How can we bring that about if we are not actively engaged in directing our thoughts and energies towards that overwhelmingly large task? And what better way to do that through goals? Goals give direction to our life!

Accountability: “When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported, the rate of improvement accelerates.” ~ President Thomas S. Monson, Preach My Gospel, p. 150

The supreme example is the Lord, who gave an accounting to The Father in all things He did from the six days of the earth’s creation to His atoning sacrifice.
As Elder Ballard and President Monson have stated, to reach our full potential we must establish goals and give and an accounting. Truly we cannot achieve success unless we have previously established goals, because success is the completion of a goal.

So… What is a worthy goal?

I stated three of my biggest.
• Serving a Mission
• Temple Marriage
• Higher education

I won’t go into these in this letter due to my time restrictions. However I did state that earnest prayer and fervent scripture study are key to receiving the inspiration of the Holy Spirit necessary for establishing worthy goals.

How can we accomplish our goals?

The first step is truly committing yourself. I shared my experience of hiking the Application trail and how many mornings I awoke cold, wet, exhausted, lonely and very hungry. So why did I keep on going? Because I committed myself. I bought the gear, I bought the food, I reserved the time, and I told everyone “I am going to do it!” We must commit ourselves through our words and our actions, and commitment also means sacrifice.

Next ,we must break our large goal into small simple acts.

“Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.
And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls.” ~ Alma 37:6-7

I hiked 1,400 miles literally one step after another, day after day. We all have our spiritual journeys to make, and they are made slowly and constantly. That’s where the attribute of diligence comes in.

I know that the Lord Jesus Christ lives! He has shown us the way by his perfect example. Our goal in this life is to become like him; we established it before we came to this earth. May we assess His life and the selfless acts that filled it, then assess our own life, and make the goals necessary to bring that which is missing to realization. It is my goal and my prayer and I leave it with you in His sacred name.

- Elder Bryce Packer

Hello my wonderful family,

Things here in the mission are well! The stress of a new cycle… receiving and training new missionaries, buses for the changes meeting, and all that is over. So that’s nice. Really, it wasn’t so bad this time because I made a system the cycle before, so it went rather smooth.

I’m doing really well, really well! I’ve been learning so much and working hard and have been able to serve others. Really, I just feel blessed, happy and Blessed. It’s amazing how well things work out, I guess really it’s amazing just how well the Lord knows us and gives up the experiences we need to progress. And he loves us enough to give us things that are hard for us, but necessary. Man, the mission is hard, but NECESSARY… and not just for the people who don’t have the gospel!

So, two neat things happened the other day. Well, lets just say it’s a challenge to just a document notarized in Mexico. You have to go to see a special person and [very expensive]. So I was thinking to visit the Church Lawyer, whose office is right next door… he doesn’t have a notary’s seal in Mexico, and told me that the only way would be to go to the US embassy. So guess what I did? When we got to the embassy they told me that notarizations were only by appointment for 2-4 pm (it was 10:30 am). By four we are in our area, and let’s just say the Embassy isn’t close, and we had to go in public transportation because of parking. So they said we could go in and ask for more info, and after passing through security they repeated that we needed an appointment and gave us the website where we could go to do so. We still asked if we could go in and ask. When we got to the notary’s desk he showed us a long list of the appointments he had scheduled for the day and asked if we could come back another day. I, of course explained it would be difficult because of the distance and the hours of operation and asked if he could make an exception. Well, he was member! And let’s just say that was a big blessing! So I got the papers notarized.

Now while we were there we took advantage and took some photos of El Angel de Independencia [The Angel of Independence] and while doing so we started a conversation with the security guard. It ends up that she lives in my old area, about 3 hours away, and was interested in our message so I was able to give her directions to the closest church and the hours of service. She knew exactly where it was. Pretty neat, huh?

Well I love you all so much and hope it’s a great week for you all,

-Bryce