January 31, 2012

Dear Family, That's crazy that Frank is leaving this upcoming Wednesday! Good luck Frank! I don't really have a lot of advice about the mtc, all I can say is just enjoy it. It can either be our favorite place (if we have the right mindset) or our least favorite place (if we don't look at it in the right way). Sometimes the things that they talk about seem kind of pointless, but let me tell you they really will come in handy. Take lots of notes. That's cool that you were all able to go down to California together for one last family vacation. I hope that you all had a really good time, those times with family become so precious once you've been away for a while. Well it has finally happened... I have left Riga. I'm pretty sad. I really miss the people there and I don't like saying goodbye, especially since I'm getting so close to the end of my mission I don't think that I'll be going back to Riga before the end. But I'm also very very very happy about transfers because of where I ended up, I'm in Tallinn!!! woohoo. I am so happy to be back it is just incredible here. It was so much fun to see all the branch members and church members and see that they still remember me :). The members here in Tallinn are so awesome. President Pogorelov had me give a talk yesterday in church, it was really cool to get up there and tell them how much they mean to me and how excited I am to be back. I'm really grateful that the lord gave me a second chance to come back here and do better than I did when I was here before. Another cool thing that happened was when I accidently left my hat in Riga, and it is way cool up here. So I called the branch President (because he works in a store, and I wanted to know if they sell warm hats in his store, but he was just like oh don't worry about it I'll give you my hat that I wore on my mission. That was so nice of him, and I'm just so happy that he likes me enough to do something like that for me. The other super cool part about transfers is that I'm serving with Elder Mickelson... Yay! This is way awesome. Back in high school cross-country I would have never thought that I would one day be serving here in Tallinn with Braeden Mickelson. Things up here are a little slower than in Riga, but its ok we'll get our bearings straight and we'll be teaching plenty coming up shortly. Elder Mickelson is a very hard worker, I don't have any problems with anyone in our mission because they all work so hard. It's hard to work with someone if they don't really want to work. We've already had a lot of ideas about how we can be better and really lift the work here in Tallinn. I'm not living were I did last time, I'm in a different area now, and I don't really know the address so if you remind me in the future to tell you I'll be happy to tell you once I know. Well that's where things are sitting right now. I'll make sure to keep you updated. Have a great week. One more time, Good luck Frank! -Elder Pack