So, a few days ago I got a package from the young women in the ward with some very nice letters and some candies… including gummy burgers mmmm.  Please be sure to tell them all thank you. They all wrote about how great you are, mom… and how proud you are [of Bryce]. Amanda Arnold wrote her testimony in Spanish which was impressive! Here are a few of the questions they asked, if you would be so kind to reply to them:

1. How is Mexico? — Mexico is great, there are a lot of people and they are very open and social. Most of them live very humbly. The food is delicious… well not all of it
2. What is it like this time of year? — Hot during the afternoon (like I’m sweating) and cold at night (like I use a coat); very strange. It’s a little drier because it hasn’t rained in a few weeks but it’s still quite green. The leaves don’t change color here.
3. What was your favorite talk from General Conference? — see my letter from that week.

This week we have a conference with Elder Johnson, who is the Area President. And as you can imagine, I am very excited for that! Things are going well with Elder Lauterio and we are continuing to learn together.

In our area, we are trying to focus more on working with the members. We have been praying to know how we can help the members get excited and participate in missionary work and how we can help our converts and the youth of the ward to have the desire and preparation to serve a full time mission. The idea we’ve come up with is to divide our area into sections and to assign ward missionaries to each section. They will have a list of part member families and less actives that live in their section and we will accompany them on visits. We’re also planning to have a meeting once a week to teach and practice principles from Preach My Gospel, and review the needs of the families being visited. It’s going to be work to prepare everything, but I know it’s going to pay off. We’ve also shared these plans with the Bishop and he is working on calling ward missionaries to help us.

I am excited to have more member participation, and know that it will help the members participating and being visited to be nourished by the good word, to have a friend, and to have a responsibility. (The three needs for retention and a lasting conversion.)

I love the Lord, I love the church and the brethren, I love the people where I serve, and I love my family!

Have a great week!
-Elder Packer

Do you have any more ideas on how we can work more with the members?

Hello my wonderful family,

Happy Halloween! All is great here! We have a baptismal service in a few hours. Our investigator’s name is name is Ricardo and he is amazing!  He’s about my age. We also had a baptism last week and get this, his name is Shazam Jovany. He’s great as well. We’ve not had much time in our area, but the Lord is blessing us greatly!!!

My companion and I have made the goal to baptize every week this cycle and to baptize a complete family. I know with the Lord’s help and lots of self-sacrifice it will happen.

This week was the Zone Leaders Council and it went well. In it, we read a letter from the new area Presidency, and wow, they’ve got the vision! They made big goals for the members here in México. One is three special consecutive fasts (starting today Nov, Dec, Jan) for the leaders of the Mexicans, so that they can have the wisdom to do the things that they should. Another is to read the whole Book of Mormon before the General Conference in April of 2010 (you know what I’ll be reading). Another is for every member to attend the temple every month before the General Conference in April of 2010. To reactivate a member, and help some to enter into the waters of baptism before the General Conference in April of 2010. And there are more! Exciting times to be in México!

Well, we’ve got to finish preparing our service. Be safe and have a great week!

¡¡Love you all!!

-Bryce

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

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

Okay, so the first thing is… to call next week. Wahoo! We’re not sure where or when, hehehe. We are going to ask he bishop if we can call in the church, and we were thinking around 3:30 which is 4:30 pm (EST) your time? Anyway, we’ll work it out and I will try to do the same as last time to call and confirm right before.

So the swine flu… called la Influenza here I guess it hasn’t been too much trouble. However, with everyone home and we don’t have permission to knock on doors or contact in the street, it’s pure referrals… So we have been visiting lots of members and inactives and harassing them until they give us someone to visit, which has worked out well because we found new people to teach and we also are helping the members get over their fear of doing missionary work!

We have had a hard time as far as our investigators and baptisms, because there hasn’t been services for two weeks, which messed up stuff for us for almost a whole month of programmed [scheduled] baptisms. However, we are going to baptize a really great woman this week. Her family has been coming to church with us for a while and she could have been baptized earlier, but we let her choose her own date and she wanted Mother’s Day. So that was okay with us. Her husband still wants to wait a few weeks and their teenage daughters want to be baptized too. However, the parents want them to understand a little more, and since they haven’t come to church as many times.

They didn’t have any changes this cycle [transfer] because of the virus, so two of the Elders here will have 6 cycles in the same area… that’s 9 months! I think I would go crazy! One of them is a Zone leader and the other elder is in his first area in the mission…hehehe. Better them than me!

Well, I am super excited to talk with you on Sunday. Oh yeah, I read that Kerry had a sinus infection. Guess what I also woke up last Saturday 25 de Abril with a sinus infection. It was the day after all this broke out. Knowing the flu symptoms, I figured nothing was wrong. However, by Tuesday I was pretty sick and all of my District called me out and told me I had to call the Mission President. So it ended up all was well and it cleared up after a few days. However, I now have boogers thick enough to glue my hands together permanently.

Okay, well the time has come. I hope you are all safe and doing well. I love you and I am extremely excited to talk next week.

Love, Bryce

Sorry I wrote you earlier but the power went out in the middle so…

So I am sure that you have heard all about the viral breakout stuff going on here. Don’t worry it’s not that serious and besides it’s not too close to where I am…and don’t worry Mom, I am being cautious and following all of the safety precautions we have received.

So church was canceled yesterday which created lots of problems with our baptismal services and the groups of investigators we were not able to inform of the cancelations.

The good thing is there is not too much fear where I am, which in situations like this can be the most dangerous thing. The funny part is that everyone is wearing face masks like the dentist uses or like you see Michel Jackson wearing on TV. Its pretty funny one of the members gave us some too. I don’t think they realize it’s not air born! Anyway, besides viral out breaks there was a 5.7 earth quake today in Gerrero not too far from here (I know that’s not very serious) Nothing that has happened has been really serious, however I think there is a message that Someone is trying to get across!

Anyway, this week will be interesting… I had splits last week with my zone leader and that was fun. We found some really good new investigators!  Unfortunately none of them were able to come to church, because we couldn’t hold services…thats okay. Well, I remember writing more that this when the power went out, however I don’t remember what it was.

Really I just want you all to know that I am very safe and that I love you all very sincerely!

Bryce