January 25, 2022

Hey everyone!

It was a great week. I'm in Windsor now. It's a great place and we've been teaching a ton. Prayers for a guy named Tom, who's on date for baptism on March 5th, are always welcome.

Breanna got baptized! She was someone I taught in Loveland and I got to go to her baptism. She has a really strong testimony of Jesus Christ and it was a great experience.

My new companion, Elder Howard, is a great guy. He's a beast. 

It's been a really spiritual, miracle-filled week. We have a lot of cool people we get to teach.

Thanks for all your support! Things are going good here. Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Pack

Ethan is on the right with his suitcoat on backward. ;)

Ethan's district:

PS:  Here are some things we talked about with Ethan.

He is in the Peak View Area/Ward. His area is a suburb of Greeley, which is one of his old areas. He actually meets in a building that is within the Greeley Stake because they all have Stake buildings that aren't located in their stake boundaries and have people from the other stakes using.  It's weird.  But when they have Stake Conference, all the other wards have to leave the building, for some reason.

The Peak View Area is more wealthy than the other areas around it.  Ethan said they have been fed really well and the ward members take care of them.  They have had a lot of good experiences this week and some funny ones.

Ethan is really enjoying serving with Elder Howard.  He said he is awesome.  He is from Anchorage, Alaska, and has been out one less transfer than Ethan.  Elder Howard was originally assigned to a mission in New Zealand but it doesn't look like he will be going there.

We asked what Ethan does differently as a Zone Leader than he did as a District Leader.  He said there really isn't too much they do because the responsibilities are all partitioned out really well. They meet with the Stake President each week to talk about how missionary work is going in the Stake.  They also go on exchanges with other elders in the Zone.  There are 2 districts in their zone and each has about 8 missionaries in them.  So it's not too big.  He said that on p-day, they wait to hear what the districts are doing and then they decide which district to hang out with or if they want to do something else entirely.  Since they are able to move around, they aren't limited to staying in their area or zone for p-day.  He said that's a huge perk.

Ethan and his companion are getting ready to start teaching the Mission Prep classes for the Stake.  In their weekly meeting with the Stake President, he asked them if they would be willing to teach it and they were happy to help out.  

He had a funny experience on Sunday.  They had an investigator, Donna, who went to church with them.  They asked her if she would be okay going to Relief Society without them and she asked if they could go with her.  That's how two elders ended up in Relief Society.  Ethan said "all the stereotypes about Relief Society at so true!"  We had a good laugh about that.  The lesson was about compassion and, somewhere along the way, the sisters got sidetracked into talking about divorce and then went down the rabbit hole of how sealings work with people who are divorced.  Ethan said Donna became very confused because she just had one lesson.  After a while, the women realized that there was a non-member in their midst and tried to backtrack but it was too late.  Ethan said it was really uncomfortable.  The ward mission leader texted them after church to say he heard about the "tearing down of the Church during Relief Society." Donna, fortunately, wasn't too affected by it and wants to go again next week so Ethan was happy with the outcome.  He laughed about it with us and said it was actually pretty funny.  

The apartment he is living in is very nice.  He has had some good apartments in his last three areas.  I told him it was to make up for the awful apartment he had in Riverton, WY.  He said he heard they had to move from there because it was so bad.  I'm glad because it wasn't good.  The gym in his new apartment is nice so he is a happy guy.

He said they have been keeping really busy which has been nice.  And they have quite a few people they are teaching so he is really excited about his new area.