March 7, 2011

Family,

Yeah things are always good over here in Daugavpils. Elder McNerney and I are having a lot of fun working our butts off. But when you get out there and work as hard as you can, that's when you enjoy it the most, and the most miracles happen. It makes me way happy to hear that everyone is doing so well, and enjoying their individual activities. I'm jealous that everyone gets all this awesome familyness together time and I'll have to deal without it for another year, but it's all ok cause I know why I'm out here, and maybe it can bless other families to have all the same blessings that our family has. The Gospel truly does bless families. Everything with my head is still basically the same. I still get headaches, but they said that everything is fine so I'm able just to get over them and keep working. It's actually a blessing in disguise because I'm able to show my faith and just deal with it and continue to work. The lord can only perform miracles according to our faith. Ok so I'm going to get to the super miracle that has slowly been happening over my transfers here in Daugavpils. Once upon a time when I had barely arrived to Daugavpils I was looking through the area book and calling people trying to set up some lessons and find people that the missionaries had maybe forgotten about. So I ended up calling this family that was in there that hadn't been met with for about 5 years and right when I called they were like come over right now! But when we went over there was only girls there for the daughter’s birthday so we had to leave, because if we want to teach a girl there has to be 3 men so we have to take a member. So we set up a lesson to go back. This was a long time ago and we've taught this family probably 5 or 6 times because they love our message and are always inviting us older. But the big miracle of it all was a friend that they had over for one of the lessons. It was a girl that was over there the first time we went by when they were having a big party and she saw us and was really interested in what we were doing. So we started teaching her separately also. She told us that she believes in everything that we tell her, she really wants to be baptized, and her mom and her grandma really want her to be baptized also. And just to add to all of the amazingness that is going on she invited a friend onto one of the lessons who has now been to church twice also and loves the message and they want to be baptized together! Their names are Renata and Natalia. They're just progressing way well and we're so excited. The best way to find people to teach is through people you already know and members! So you should try to find someone you know who is struggling without the basic knowledge of the gospel in their life, and share the gospel with them. It's so much better than the missionaries going out and trying to find people. People already don't like missionaries, but friends and neighbors can really see the blessings in your life. But yeah that was a really long miracle so I ran out of time. Thank you for always emailing me. I hope you have a great week and don't forget that the lord loves us and is always watching out for those who love him.

-Elder Pack