August 15, 2011

View from the Tallin Teaching Center
Elder Pack with the Branch President in Tallin
Elder Pack with Aleksander
Elder Pack in front of Estonian & Russian castles
Dear family,
Wow it's a lot better getting 6 emails instead of zero haha. Wow it sounds like you're all having a great time. I wish I could have gone with you to Red Fish lake with you that would have been a lot of fun, but that's ok because we'll just have to go next year *hint hint*. Dad I totally forgive you for losing my ski because you've put so much effort into finding it again. I'll just have to save up so money and get some new ones. It's ok though, for some reason on my mission I'm just getting way excited to be a lot better of a worker than I was when I was at home. Missions teach you a lot about working hard even if you don't want to. So I'll be able to save up some money. It's great that there are so many awesome things happening at home, it's crazy that school is starting up so soon, is seems like yesterday when last school year was starting.
The Baltics are just wonderful this time of year. It's not too hot and not too cold. People seem like they want to listen more, and I'm in Riga, one of the coolest places on earth. I hope that you can all see the Baltics one day, after Robbie and Frank serve their missions we can save up some money and just go on a mission tour of all of our missions. This week was a really good one. There was actually a really crazy miracle that I want to tell you about right now that has been happening for the last little while. Two transfers ago I was down in Riga for a zone leaders' council and I ended up forgetting my passport so I got stuck here in Riga for a few days. During that time I was with a couple really cool Elders: Elder Moffat and Elder Williams. We had a way miracle day and found a lot of really cool people. One of the people we found was a lady in a park (who we wouldn't have been able to teach if there wouldn't have been three of us) Which makes it a really huge miracle that I forgot my passport because Elder Thomas and I are teaching her right now and she's getting baptized next week! It's very incredible the ways that the Lord can work through you, even if it's something that seems annoying like forgetting your passport while you're in another country. I'll for sure keep you updated, and send you pictures when it happens.
Which reminds me. I brought my camera today! I can finally send you some pictures of my adventures in Tallinn haha. Thank you so much for all the great emails from all of the kids, it's actually a way awesome coincidence because I sent some little letters to all the kids this morning, and I actually talked about a lot of the stuff that they talked about in their emails haha. Have a great week, I love all of you!
-Elder Pack
P.S. Robbie I don't really have a lot of way good ideas for your talk, but I can definitely make a few comments. Gratitude is a way cool subject and I'm sure that you can find some really cool stuff on it, especially from President Monson's talk that was a year ago. One of the coolest things that I've noticed about gratitude is that if you make sure to always show your gratitude you won't have regrets after you're away from those people. Gratitude has an amazing changing effect on the person giving and the person receiving. When we express our gratitude we focus more on the people's good attributes and strengths than their weaknesses and flaws, our love towards them in turn grows and we can find things in that person that will help us grow. And when others show gratitude towards us we feel that love from them. As we get compliments for what we did well we want to do even better, we improve a lot faster than if that gratitude is always withheld. Those are just a couple ideas I hope that they help