Super Saturday

This little Branch hadn't had a Relief Society Super Saturday since they made blankets for Hurricane Katrina-which was a long time ago.  So we lined up less actives to teach a class on making jewelry and also one on decorating cupcakes. When we planned this out months ago we had only half as many sisters attending Relief Society.  So we had to go out and purchase more of everything!  And the sisters loved it.
We had new members and less actives and investigators come so I was happy. And the next day at church many of the sisters wore their new necklaces and ear-rings and rings. But mostly it was a relaxing activity (for them:-)) and they got to visit and become more united as friends. Elder Pack did all my leg work which really was a life saver for me. He helped everywhere, from setting up to dishing up. He was a huge help.

Besides making jewelry we learned to decorate cupcakes. Unfortunately I ate mine before I could get a picture:-)

Like ·  · Share · Yesterday at 9:09pm · 

• Lori Barbakos, Jenny Zabel and 2 others like this.
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  Rossy Martinez He heee...

  16 hours ago · Like
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  Tammy Pack It's nice to see your new member sisters there!

  15 hours ago · Like
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Glen Renee Pack

The last Super Saturday this Branch had was making blankets for Hurricane Katrina victms years ago.

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• Jenny Zabel, Tammy Pack and Alicia Marina Roca like this.
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  Tammy Pack I love how different all of the jewelry is.

  15 hours ago · Like
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Glen Renee Pack

Some of our Branch sisters wore the jewelry they learned to make at our Super Saturday!

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Who will serve?

Recently at a zone conference for the missionaries our Mission President told about a conversation he had with Elder Porter when he visited this mission a month ago.  He said Elder Porter talked about being with Pres. Henry B Eyring when he looked and saw 450 Senior Couple Missionaries were needed right then.  But he only saw 87 Couples signed up and prepared to serve.  Elder Porter said, “President Eyring wept.”

We can honestly say this mission isn’t what we expected. It is much more “member support”  than proselyting .  It is taking the less actives list and contacting and loving each one on the list as Christ would.  For instance, last week we heard that a less active woman in our ward had just come home from having surgery.  That sets all kinds of bells off in Sister Pack’s head so she made dinner for the family and we took it over.  The woman was lying in her bed and when Sister Pack went over to the bed and touched her an amazing thing happened.   Sis. Pack felt love flow through her to the woman and had words of love and encouragement put into her mouth and heart for this woman.  It was a wonderful experience but the most amazing part was still to come.  A few days later we went back to visit with this woman and she said “you remember when you came into my room and came over and touched me?  I don’t usually like people to be close to me or touch me.  But when you touched me I actually felt something in the touch.  I felt loved and I thought that this lady is a very loving person and I immediately liked you.”  I told this woman that I had felt something too and it was the Lord sending her His love through me and the Spirit had been in the room with us.

This mission is teaching the people simple concepts that they simply haven’t heard about before and didn’t know they could do.  For instance this week an older sister in the branch had heard that we are working on family names to take to the Temple.  She said she had many names, including her parents that she wanted to have sealed together.  But she said she didn’t know how to do anything on a computer and she needed help.  I explained that all she has to do is fill out the family group sheet as best she can, come with me to the Family History Center and hand it to a worker there.  They will put it in the computer and give her the cards needed to do the work for her family. Tears came to her eyes when she said, ”what will we do when you have to leave us?”  Who will help them then?

And that is my question to you.  Will someone else be coming  here to continue to train, support  and help these good people?  Can you plan on serving? Can your friends? Can your parents serve? There is a big variety of ways you can serve    The only thing you need to bring with you is love.  The Lord will supply the rest. 

Picture perfect

There are some fun pictures (at least for me) that I want to add to the blog. Some are from when Mom and Kevin came and visited over New Year's day.  And some are of new baptisms and prospective baptisms.  Tomorrow Maria Mariscal and her best friend Silvia Ortiz are getting baptized!  This is just so fun!

10 hours ago · 

Growing pains

We are seeing great growth in our little branch! We generally have 14-16 sisters in Relief Society and around 48-50 attending Sacrament meeting!  If we get any bigger-and we will- we will need a bigger room to hold Relief Society in. And we need to bunch the baptisms up so we don't tie up every Saturday. That is weird I know but we need Temple Day once a week and doing a dinner for 50 after each baptism is difficult. And then we are having a Valentine's dance and Super Saturday in Relief Society, and a monthly movie at the church to bring investigators to, etc..We are having so much fun we don't know how to fit it all in.

The baptisms are beautiful! We are baptizing adults which will bring their families along eventually. Now we are busy assigning them Visiting and Home Teachers and assigning them to BE Visiting and Home Teachers. We are also holding a Family Night tomorrow for them to come to and see how it is done.


There is much to be done before a baptism.  There is much to be done during a baptism.  And there is much to be done after a baptism. It is great.

the BEST new year's resolution

We had a wonderful Christmas here on the mission.We had a Branch Christmas party with dinner, dancing, the children singing, and of course a pinata. We had 115 people come! It was like the old Manila Wards' parties. So many investigators and less active members came too!  On Christmas day we had a home full of missionaries since they were allowed to use our computers to skype their families this year and then share a Christmas dinner with us.

Also, Christmas week we had three baptisms!  Maria and Sergio, her 21 year old son, were baptized plus another older sister with a beautiful spirit. We are starting to see great growth in our little Branch.


At this time of year when we all start thinking about improving ourselves and making new goals and becoming better people, we have learned on this mission an amazing way to be much, much better in forty days!  We can guarantee that it works and have a strong testimony of its value in our lives.  It is called the Purification Challenge that we are encouraged to do as missionaries, and we recommend it to you.

1) You pick a day to start.  Then you fast for that day in the attitude of fasting and prayer (a fast Sunday or any Sunday works well).
2) Make a list of every behavior that 'pokes' at your spirit.(at least ten things)
3) Once you have made your list, then go to the Lord.
4) Covenant with the Lord that you will fast from the things on your list for 40 days. In other words, for 40 days you will do nothing that appears on that list.

You cannot just stop the old behavior and start the new ones.  You need the help of the Lord.
1) Each morning go to the Lord and specifically promise Him that you will avoid each item on your list.
2) Ask for His help so you can have extra strength.
3) At night go over the list with the Lord, if you have failed on some items, figure out why.
4) Tell the Lord.
5) Ask for more strength the next day.

Go through the process for 40 days.  If you do, you will find that your most basic desires have changed.  Your spirit will flourish and the Holy Ghost will become your constant companion.

There is no limit to what you can do if you and the Lord believe that you can.  If you look to Him for your strength and are willing to make the sacrifice, all things are possible.

Thankful for Thanksgiving

I realize that I didn't blog about our Thanksgiving and it was so wonderful I need to share it.

I already told about the great Thanksgiving Branch dinner on Saturday. Then the night before Thanksgiving a sister in the branch came by our apartment to bring her son because he needed computer help from Glen to apply for college. It was 7:30p.m. by then so I asked the sister if she was ready for Thanksgiving.  She said that she hadn't bought anything.  So I told her that we had bought way too much stuff for our Thanksgiving dinner and we would like her to take it because it was extra.  We gave her a turkey, rolls, potatoes, and pumpkin pie. Then as soon as she left we ran down to Costco to get the items we needed to feed the missionaries the next day. It happened so smoothly and quickly that I know Heavenly Father sent her to us.

Then on Thanksgiving day we had thirteen missionaries show up for dinner or dessert.  That was so fun because two investigators came too!  We have some boys that live in the apartment that connects to ours.  They are here on football scholarships from Florida.  Well, I felt for two weeks that we were supposed to invite them to Thanksgiving dinner. But everyone is much more private here in California so it wasn't easy to run into them.  Two days before Thanksgiving there they were standing in the parking area!  I had told Glen earlier about inviting them so he went right over to them and did it. And we even warned them ahead of time that although the missionaries were their age, they were nevertheless missionaries.  But they said that was OK because they were religious, they were Baptists! It turned out great.  They talked to missionaries that will be using their own football scholarships as soon as the missions are over.  And they talked some religion.  And two of the missionaries went by the next day and made an appointment to teach them.

We were really blessed at this Thanksgiving holiday time!

A Day in the Life of....

Pick any day. Tuesday this week. We had to be down to Fresno (1 hour and 20 minutes) by 10:00a.m. to help with the Santa project.  We have 300 missionaries in this mission and they were all going to get gift bags of treats.  So Glen stuffed bags and Renee sewed buttons onto ear muff things for the sister missionaries.  It was fun working with the other Senior missionaries and felt like Christmas.

  Then we went and visited a Senior missionary that works in the mission office. He slipped on ice and fell and broke his hip. Yep right here in California! I thought I was going to get away from ice here.  Anyway he is recovering but not going into the office this week is killing him! 

Since we hadn't seen the Mitchells at church for three weeks we stopped at their house on the way home. It turns out that Martha's father had been ill and actually died on Sunday.  They had just gotten back into town right before we came and so we talked a little about his death and more about life after death.We were also able to tell their Bishop and the ward, and the Bishop went by that night.

We got back in time to attend our second ward missionary committee meeting! The Branch President, missionaries, and branch leaders are attending and it is so exciting to see the potential growth from doing things the Lord's way!

However, at the meeting we learned of an investigating sister who lives in a studio apartment and her heater broke-five days ago!  It gets down in the 20 degrees here at night (oh yeah, record cold wouldn't you know) and so Glen and I got a space heater and took it to her immediately!

Afterwards, we had to gas up the car since we went to Fresno Monday for the Senior Missionary Christmas dinner and Family Night (there are 15 couples in this mission) and we went Tues. and were going to go again Wed. for the Christmas zone conference with 220 of the missionaries in this area. While at the gas station Glen met a young man who he started talking to, showed him a Bible video (they are put out by the church and are absolutely fantastic and found at lds.org) and got his name and address to go by and teach more.

We got home at 11:00pm. That is a day in the life of these missionaries.  And we love it.