[Editor's note: The family got to have a phone call with Bryce on Mother's Day. Each person got to take a turn asking Bryce questions while the others listened.]

Hola. Era maravillosa para hablar con ustedes ayer! En verdad estoy un poco triste que va a ser hasta Diciembre cuando podemos hablar otra vez. ¡Ni modo!

Cuidense mucho. ¡Les Amo muchísimo!

Elder Packer

Hello. It was wonderful to talk with you yesterday! In truth, I am a little sad that it will be December when we can talk again. Oh well!

Take care. I love you very much!

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

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

[Editorial by Shayne. We got to talk to Bryce for an hour today. I called the number Bryce had sent at the planned time, and I conferenced the call to my iPhone. Then I added each of the family using the iPhone's easy-to-use conference feature.

Here are some notes from the phone call.

Bryce and his companion baptized a couple more family members of Axel Martinez Sanchez's family. His father's baptism is scheduled for 11th of January.

They baptized a man from Lima, Peru on Dec 23rd.

On Dec. 17th, the missionaries went with the Mission President to the Mexico City Temple. They had steak dinner afterwards — although it was thin and overcooked — still, it was steak.

The weather is 85 degrees in the daytime, and a cold 25 night.

The Wal-Mart store is expensive and nice; not the cheapest place in town.

Bryce expects to be transfered on 30th.]