Bryce’s parents maintain this website for him while he is on his mission in Mexico City.

When Bryce sends digital photos home, we add a page to his online photo albums. His photos are in albums—one for each of the areas where he has served. There is also an album of the movies he has made. We have just added more photo albums. The current albums are:

• Mission Prep
• MTC (Mission Training Center)
• Pachuca (first area)
• Chimalhuacán (Ciudad Alegre)
• Mission Office (as financial secretary)
• Movies (last 3 areas)

Bryce will soon be transferred to his final area in Feb. 2010. When that happens, we will add an album for it.

Click here to see Bryce’s latest mission photos albums. You can always get to his photos by clicking on “Mission Photo Albums” on the right sidebar.

When Bryce writes letters or emails, we add a blog post. [Our editorial comments are enclosed in square brackets.]

- Shayne Packer (Bryce’s father)

A sigh of relief that this week is over!  We had a great baptismal service yesterday for a family of five, they are amazing and already have a very strong conversion. I think the father will end up being a bishop! … By the way dad I am trying to type with my hands on the home keys, its kind of funny.

Okay, so last night I found out that I have transfers tomorrow, I don’t know to where, however, we have to be in Mexico [City] at 1 pm and I am going to be a District leader. Pretty crazy huh? I am excited to have a change and I am less than a week short of completing a half year in this area.

A new companion will be nice too, however, I will miss Elder Nuñez! So today is all busy, busy packing and visiting all of our converts here. By the way, no I haven’t received the package from Kristi or you yet, however tomorrow is when all the mail comes.

Yesterday one of our converts gave me one of his homemade hand-painted didgeridoos (the instrument from Australia). It is sweet! He made it from a plant called “maguey” which is like a large aloe vera plant that they use here to make funky moonshine and they also fry and eat the grubs/maggots that live inside. They call them called “chinicuilis” yum… So I’ve been practicing with my new instrument. It will interesting to see how I will end up transporting it seeing as it is around 1.5 meters [about 5 ft] long. That’s okay remember the time I brought an arm chair on the airplane? I’m sure this will be easier!

Ahhh, I am going to miss the people here so much!!! Oh by the way because of transfers I won’t be able to mail the DVDs of photos till next week. I am glad to here everyone is doing well …and that everything is getting resolved Heather! Oh yea I got to spend some time with  Parley (Horacio) Valdez, the childhood friend of Spencer, who claims he taught him how to ride a bike, ¿Is that true Spencer? any ways he is a really neat person and he wants to get in touch with you Spencer, don’t worry he speaks prefect english, actually he is an english teacher… The first time I met him I thought he was a gringo.

I can write more in less time which is good, so I guess this is the way to go.

I love you all so much and thank you all for your love and support.

Elder Packer

Okay, so things have been great here, however very crazy with all the work we are doing. We baptized last week and yesterday. And next week we have an amazing family of 5 which are going to be baptized… that makes 5 weeks in a row, which feels great and is very tiring. “El tanque lleno” [a full tank or font] has been our goal, which is to have at least one baptism a week. I love the people here so much, however I am ready for exchanges, which are next week. The father of the family being baptized next week is an ex-pro football (soccer) player, and is amazing. They used to live a crazy celebrity party life, however they had some very humbling experiences which helped them open up and begin to change. Then we contacted them and they changed their lives completely in a matter of weeks. An amazing family!

Oh yeah, we have another investigator from PERU. She came to church for the first time yesterday with her two sisters, one is a member, and the other, we are teaching too. However, the other sister is returning to Lima en jueves [on Thursday]. Posible ustedes (Kerry y Ceci) pueden encontrarla en Lima …se llama Milagros y es un joven de 23 años, creo. ¿Cundo van a Peru? [Possibly you guys (Kerry and Ceci) can meet up with her in Lima. Her name is Milagros (Miracles) and she is a 23 year old woman, I believe. When are you going to Peru?]

[Editorial note by Shayne so you will understand the next paragraph: Our family curse is that we can hardly ever get through dinner without someone talking about poop or dirty diapers.] :-(

Okay, well lots of stuff happened…OH… I have a poop story!!! The other day we were walking to a house in a remote area and I was walking straight towards the house passing by the tree, when my companion asked “where is it?”, and turned to the left away from the house (and the tree) in front of our path. I thought this was weird because he knew where we were going and we were close… When I passed by the tree I understood, because I saw a man hurry to pull up his pants from a squatting position and walk a way quickly…without wiping too. ¡bienvenidos a Mexico! [Welcome to Mexico]

Okay, have a great week everyone. Thank you all and I love you.

-Bryce

Hello my family!

Primeramente, ¡feiz cumpliaños a Isaac Spencer y Kristi! [First, happy birthday] I hope you all have/had great birthdays! Si es posible voy a escribir ustedes individualmente [If possible, I will write you individually.]

We had a great week; we baptized again! Alejandro Martinez, the father of the family we baptized. It is a family of 7 three girls and two boys father and mother (just like our family) They are amazing and fun, I love them so much! We also have two baptisms for the next Sunday. And we also had 12 investgators in Sacrament Meeting We spent $135 [Pesos, about 10 dollars] in taxi transport on Sunday in less than two hours… which is a lot. To say the least, the Lord is being good to us and the people here!

Lots of spiritual, neat and funny things have been happening, however I’m afraid I won’t have time to tell them untill after another year and a half.

I love you all so much and am truly grateful you are my family.

Love, Bryce

¡Feiz aÑo nuevo! [Happy new year] I capitalized the Ñ for you mom hahaha, thanks for the good intention.

Things are going great here! We had a baptism for yesterday however his uncle died the day before so we are postponing it till later this week. His name is Carlos Copca and he is awesome and ridiculously funny and 19 years old. We really enjoy teaching and talking with him.

So I accidently broke my fast early yesterday because the bishop gave me  a “chapuline” to eat, thats a dried grasshopper. yumm actually it wasn’t very sabroso [tasty].

Two neat experiences we had with the convert family Martines Sanches was their first family home evening which we prepared for them.  We sang “Familias pueden ser eternas” [Families can be together forever] taught them that families can be eternal and  then played Uno (pretty sweet huh) and we also brought some microwave popcorn, however they don’t have a microwave so I cooked it in a pot on the stove top they were all very impressed and I gave all the credit to my mom

…Oh this reminds me of a bad joke I learned in the MTC… Why don’t you play Uno with mexicans?……because they take all the green cards   …hehehe  I love the people here so much!

The other neat experience was that Mireya (the mother) signed up to feed us lunch last week, pretty neat. And she fed us lots of vegetables, which for me is a treat.

I’ve been reading  many of the mornings in the Liahona from Nov 2008 its all the discourses from General Conference.   Mom and Dad I real liked “come what may, and love it” by Elder Joseph B. Worthlin , he put a good and humorous perspective on life, you two should read it together, I believe you will enjoy it.

Another thought that struck me, is in the discourse by Elder James J. Hamula “…being sober means being earnest and serious in assessing your circumstances and careful and circumspect in weighing the consequences of your actions. Soberness therefore yields good judgement, as well as measured conduct.” Clearly the application of the word is more broad than the reference to substance abuse, although it gives an interesting insight to what is lost with the use of mind-altering and addictive substances and how important it is to abstain from them. Applied in a broader aspect not to be drunk with emotions, such as anger, lust, jealousy, greed or materialism, all of which have the power to skew our judgment to be less than well measured.

Well… I love you all! and I hope the best for all of us in this new year.

Elder Packer

Hello Hello my family,

I really enjoyed talking on the phone to you all and look forward to the next time. I was so nice to hear the voices of my family…admittedly I wanted to impress Ceci with my “sweet Spanish skills”, however I ran out of time. It’s all good. 

Ceci, Tenemos años y años que podemos placticar acera de cual quier cosa que queremos.

So I was about as positive as I could be that I was going to be transfered this cycle and… I wasn’t. However, that’s ok because I really like my area, know it probably too well and I love the people here…and all of their problems. It’s a good thing that missionaries don’t gossip… because I know about almost every problem that every person here has, “I’ve got dirt on everyone” hehehe, nah. Christmas was good. However, the town was DEAD; we saw about six people in the street. They all have a big dinner on the night of the 24th at midnight is when dinner begins, and then they sleep on the 25th

Well thats about it for now. ¡Vamos a la obra! ¡Les amo! [Let's go to work. We love it.]

Elder Packer