November 28, 2011

Dear Family,

Wow it sounds like you had a great week! I'm glad that you were able to have Thanksgiving with the family. Everything is changing a lot and things seem like they're pretty much the same at the same time. I do miss being able to spend Holidays with family, it really is the best part of Holidays. We had a really fun Thanksgiving as well, last week we had half of our preparation day on Monday and half of it on Thursday so that we could celebrate Thanksgiving. An American embassy family invited all the Riga missionaries over for a big feast. Happy Birthday MOM!!!! I hope that you had a great birthday! That's really cool that you were able to do so many family things during the weekend, I'm pretty jealous.

This week was a pretty crazy one over in the Baltics. We had so many different things that we had to go do that we barely got any work done. President Boswell sent us to Daugavpils to make a decision on an apartment, so that took a while. We also had to pick up a visa missionary from Russia, and get him where he needed to be. We also had zone leaders' council, and zone conference this week. So there was always some sort of business to be doing, but we also got some good missionary work done as well :). I've really learned a lot about the principle of planning as a missionary. It doesn't matter how much stuff you have going on you can have a really good day if you have meaningful planning. Zone leaders' council and zone conference was especially cool, because Elder Lawrence of the seventy was here. He gave a lot of really cool advice to us as zone leaders and a mission. General authorities are really enjoyable to listen to. Elder Lawrences wife gave the coolest talk I've every heard about the tribes of Israel. You'll have to remind me when I get home to share things that she told us about, because it would be very difficult to explain it over an email. I'm really grateful for this opportunity to be a missionary at this time in my life. I've really learned so many things, and I can really tell that its changed me so much. Thank you so much for all the support that you given me I really appreciate it :). I hope that you all have a great week. I remembered my camera today so I'll make sure to send you some pictures.

-Elder Pack