[Editor's note by Bryce's dad: My wife and I had a fun Mother's Day phone call with our son, Bryce, who has 5 more days left on his mission in the Mexico City East Mission. We are so excited to have him come home!]

[from Bryce]
Today we got our hair cut. My companion called his family (in México, Mother’s day is always on the 10th).

I also did some last minute shopping. I also started to dejunk some stuff and packed. Tomorrow is District Class, so I still have to prepare that [Bryce teaches the class]. On wednesday, we will be working hard, and on Thursday, we will work and visit all my converts to say good bye and take pictures.

Friday morning, I will go to the temple in the morning with a brother from the ward and my companion will stay here with the Assistants. All of my generation [missionaries going home Saturday] will enter the temple for a session, and [afterwards] we will have some activities and a class on the perpetual education fund. Then in the evening [with the mission president] we will go eat tacos at La Onda! mmm… TACOS!!! I probably won’t sleep at night, and early Saturday — like around 5:45 AM — we will head to the airport.

I know that this week is just going to fly by so I am going to work harder than ever to do all I can while I’m still here, and in my last few days of full-time service!

Have a great week! I love you all and I will see you are talk to you soon!

-Elder Packer

Well, guess what. Elder Olson, the previous Financial Secretary, was sent to a proselyting area yesterday, 11 days before planned. The President figured it was a good plan and knew that I have been doing everything for a while …so now I’ve got the reins. The first of many plans is to CLEAN OUT and reorganize my office. I’m not very nervous, but there are a few things that are coming up at the end of the cycle that I’ve never done before. :/ I’m sure I’ll be giving Elder Olson a call at some point in time!

Another exciting thing that is happening starting this Monday every week, President Bulloch is coming in to the offices to have a staff devotional with us secretaries. That is going to be AMAZING!

One of our investigators, Martin Olvera, is getting baptized tomorrow. He’s made lots of sacrifices for the gospel and has no family support. That’s all right though; I know he will be greatly blessed for these sacrifices.

Today we spent all the morning and afternoon cleaning and organizing the house and the many many materials that are stored there. Lots of fun!

I know it’s been kind of short, but to end my letter I want to invite/remind you all to study the Book of Mormon every day. I spent a lot of time studying Mosiah 2 this week and learned amazing things there.

I love you all.

-Bryce

P.S. Mom can you send me the recipes for German pancakes, funeral potatoes and biscuits (using a premixed pancake mix that only needs water)? …I have an oven now. Happy days.

This week has gone well. I made and cashed my first check for the mission. Missionaries are ALWAYS calling me asking for Money that they “didn’t receive” so I’ve have to be really hard headed with them. I also trained two new Mexican missionaries straight from the CCM (MTC) about all the finances as a missionary.

This week all of the missions Presidents for all of Mexico are here in the D.F. [Mexico City] with Elder Christofferson for the annual mission Presidency seminar. I haven’t seen him, but two of the other secretaries saw him when they were pulling into the parking lot. Several people have told me that I look just like him, even since I’ve entered into the MTC, people that know him have said that even my mannerisms are the same.

This week I also went with the President and Sister Bulloch to Costco to get an extension in my name to their membership, and to Sam’s club to open up a membership. Plus Sam’s club is right next to our house so next week we are going to make a budget and buy all of our food for the whole month! Mmmm America food!

Really the best thing that’s happened all week is Vicky, our investigator, passed her baptismal interview and after they invited us to have dinner on Friday night. So yesterday we ate dinner with them and it was amazing. They went all out and even made the tortillas by hand. I am really excited for our area we have two families that are supposed to come to church tomorrow, too. We haven’t been able to get in touch with them for a few days though. :/

Well, I got to get going. I hope you are all doing great. I am praying for all of you and am very grateful to have such an amazing family!

Love,
Bryce

So far all is going well with the financial work; it’s weird to be crunching numbers and making reports, etc. I like it though and am sure it will be a huge blessing later on, because as you all know, I never was the most prudent or cautious when it came to [personal] money.

Today we are going to the museum of anthropology, which is closed on Mondays and out side of our mission I think, so it’s not something most missionaries get to do. So that will be neat.

I still haven’t been able to get my [driver's] license because the immigrations secretary, Elder Lechuga thought that immigrations still had my passport, later we found it locked up in his office, which really is okay, because hours of driving a 12 passenger van in traffic isn’t always fun. Plus everyone is tired of driving so I’m sure they’ll make the new guy drive a lot.

This week was the quarterly Zone Leaders conference, so we spent some time preparing all of that and most of Wednesday was spent in attendance. It is amazing to be around the Mission President so much, he is a truly incredible person, with such a strong spirit.

Other things out of the normal that have happened this week is one elder left his house in the middle of the night and called the President a few days later (in another state) wanting his passport, so we had to go get him very late at night from the bus station have him spend the night with us and bring him to meet with the president the next day… after we brought him to the airport. :/ Kind of weird.

Oh yea, I forgot to tell you all last week that I ate all the weird types of tacos my last day in Chimalhuacan [Ciudad-Alegre], head meat tacos, tongue tacos, brain tacos, snout tacos and eyeball tacos!!! They were all pretty much gross gross gross!!! …and really expensive, too!

Our area is amazing, however we need to work more with members because we have so little time to work there.

I love you all; take care and give everyone my best!!

-Elder Packer

Happy Easter everyone! It’s been an interesting week… One time I ate lunch and in less than an hour I saw it again… it was still identifiable …Now the real strange thing is about a half hour later I saw the cucumber…. the one I ate about a half hour before lunch!  You guys can try to figure that one out. So yeah, I was sick with the Mexican curse, however I’ve felt better today.

Yesterday [Sunday] we had to help with several baptisms… which involved showering at 4 am and going to the chapel to turn on the boiler and fill up the font…then take a quick nap and then conduct a baptismal interview at 6:45 and participate in the service at 7 am. When that was all over, we left to get our investigators and return to the church.

Later the missionaries from our district came to explain that their scheduled baptisms fell through because they were the children of a Catholic father and a mother who is a member. And the father decided that the children weren’t going to be baptized…So I went with one of the other Elders to the family’s house and we taught the whole family about the restoration and set a baptismal date for the father as well. We had several prayers…and then the whole family came with us to the church for their children’s baptisms. It wasn’t quite as easy as that! To say the least, we had lots of help!!! …Especially considering the father has never even been near our church building. However as mom says, “all is well that ends well”.

Other things that have been going on are… I don’t think that the zone leaders are greatly pleased with my district’s performance, and am feeling like we need to go on divisions [splits] with them soon. Oh well.
My “son”…Elder Nuñez (the missionary I trained) is in the district of Elder Reed (my cousin). Wow that’s a kind of Spanglish way to say that… I’ve really forgotten how to use the possessive “S”.

We had Zone conference with our mission President and he is the MAN. We reviewed what we’ve learned in our 90 day study of the Book of Mormon and he has tapped into another dimension of this book! The Book of Mormon is incredible, especially when you are looking for specific things!

Well until next week…

I love you all!!! And hope you are all very happy!

Bryce

It’s been a long week! Yeah, we got [more] elders to form our district again! …And I have my [mobile] phone again which makes my life easier and it’s a lot easier on my wallet! The new Elders are Elder Moke (who went to high school in Spanish Fork) and Elder Vazquez who was companions with my companion last cycle. They are really good and working hard. I am so excited for General Conference! I’ve been thinking about it every day for weeks. Our stake is going to be packed seeing though as we have 12 wards! We didn’t have any baptisms this week which is kind of a downer however we brought a really great family to church and they own an ice cream, popsicle shop and they are going to teach me how to make mexican ice-cream yumm …Next family reunion, I’ll show you all what’s up.

So I’ve been in the mission for 10.5 months which is almost year and holes are appearing daily in my clothes and shoes and my socks have been “open toed” for quite a while now. I can’t believe how fast time goes when you are always busy. …Mother’s Day will be here soon and I will get to talk with you again! I am very excited for that. This time I would like to have a chance to chat with Ceci for a little bit!

Well, I know its short however I am going to the Post office to mail you those disks of picture that I still haven’t mailed. Sorry!

I hope you are all excited for general conference, it’s going to be amazing! I know that you will hear and learn things that can help make life a little better and more understandable, we all will! I remember the talks in General Conference a year and a half ago (specifically the Priesthood session) that really helped me to make the decision to go on a mission… and this has been a huge blessing for me!

I love you all and pray and hope and know that the Lord will bless every one of you. Take care of one another.

Elder Packer

P.S. One other thing I’ve been thinking about a lot ,Mom and Dad, is how I really know very little about you two. Where, when, and how you meet, what that was like, etc. I would like it if you could write me about your selves, please.