Mission update 8/24/2025

Hello Family and Friends!

It was a funny week with things just not normal. It started out with a great devotional where Matt Grow who is over the Church History Department spoke. He shared information about the church acquiring the Kirtland Temple and it made us again really want to go visit! The men from the choir sang Brightly Beams our Father's Mercy and it was beautiful!

Men of the Elijah Choir

Tuesday and Wednesday were mostly normal with interviews, computer work and devotionals. Then, on Thursday we showed up in casual clothes and worked on packing up everything in the North Office Building to be ready for movers to come on Friday. Gary worked with several other missionaries and a few young service missionaries to dismantle and pack all the computers. The young missionaries were a great help especially at crawling under the desks and disconnecting cords. 

Thursday evening we went to the Syracuse Temple with what's left of our MTC group and two other couples from our mission. It was a beautiful session and we went out for dinner afterwards.

Great Mission Friends!

Friday we had the day off while the movers did their work so we went with the Smiths to the Manti Temple. A beautiful drive which we especially appreciate once we are able to get off the freeway! After the session we were able to get a bit of a tour from the Temple Recorder who is a friend of the Smiths. It was so cool! 

Packs and Smiths at the Manti Temple

Way Up in the Manti Temple Spire

Afterwards we went to see the progress on the Ephraim Temple and it looks so close!  They are finishing up the landscaping and seem to have almost all of the exterior work done.  This is only a few miles from Manti, but it will allow better handicapped access.

At the Ephraim Temple

It was such a fun couple of days! 

Sunday we had Stake Conference and got to walk since it was held in the church which is the bottom few floors of an office building on Social Hall Avenue--about a block from our apartment. The meeting was translated into both French and English and the French branch provided the choir. Our Stake President said that we have 40 countries represented in our stake. So cool!

Saturday and Sunday we spent some time with grandkids and loved it.

Our Youngest Grandchild!

From Gary:  It is interesting to come closer to the end of this mission.  We are still very engaged every day with all of the things we are doing, and we are now starting to train a new couple who will be taking over the main assignment that we have doing BYU Pathway interviews.  We know that we have worked hard and made a difference, but just like we have always experienced in our lives, coming to the end of a calling is never easy.  I think this is a really important thing to learn regarding enduring to the end with enthusiasm and continued growth!  As we have studied the Doctrine of Christ, the whole idea of enduring to the end has evolved in my mind to be more about repenting every day and doing more every day to become better disciples of Christ than just living through another day.  

With that in mind, have a wonderful week and endure it well!

We love you all!

Elder and Sister Pack

Mission update 8/17/2025

Hello Family and Friends!

Sunday (August 17) kind of got away from us so we didn't even attempt to get this started yesterday. So, the date above is not correct, but that's life. Of course we're working on the Christlike attribute of integrity this week so we'll need to work on repenting...

We had our oldest son, Jeremy, with us for a few days at the beginning of the week and it was wonderful. We also got to go to South Jordan a couple of times to see the rest of the family who were staying at his in law's home while Jeremy was at the Small SAT conference. We got to celebrate our daughter in law's birthday and it was great to see the whole family for a bit (except their oldest son who is on a mission). 

The bald head to the right is Jeremy, we didn't plan that picture well

We are working on organizing the training for the missionaries who will be replacing us. We don't officially know who they are yet but want to be ready. They'll be combining what the three groups of Chaplains do all under one umbrella which will be wonderful. That should actually work as the student numbers continue to grow. 

We had almost half our students this week end up being members who joined the church after they started Pathway. One woman who is 42 and has several children was just so excited about all the peace she feels in her life since joining the church. She was also thrilled that her children, who never wanted to go to church in her previous church, are now ready before she is on Sunday and anxious to get to church. What a blessing!

Thursday evening we had dinner with Elder and Sister Dye from our mission and Brian and Susan Alldredge. Gary and Brian are cousins and Elder Dye and his first wife were neighbors of the Alldredges as they were raising their children. It was a great dinner with lots of fun memories and stories. 

Cheesecake Factory

We went to the Friday night concert in the park again and is was a really good Acapella group this time. The weather was perfect and the sky was beautiful. Fun evening all around with a big crowd.

We spent time with two of our Murray grandchildren on Saturday and got ice cream so it was a great evening!

Ice cream from a cute little store near their home

Sunday was the first practice for the multi cultural conference choir for October Conference and we got to help direct everyone up to the choir loft. This got just a bit tricky since the stairs going straight up to the loft were not there. We thought maybe some rope climbing would be great but sadly, we just led them up the back stairs :)

Sunday evening we had dinner with a family from our ward here in Salt Lake. Their middle son is in our primary class and the Dad is in the bishopric. They are from Mongolia and have been in Utah for about 4 years while Dad works on getting his degree, hopefully in engineering. 

The Batmagnai family

From Gary:  We are going to miss the Ward we have been attending for the past nearly two years when we return home.  It is a unique situation where we have people from many different countries and continents that attend here.  So many are converts to the Church who have come here to seek education and better employment in the US.  Their testimonies and the love they share with each other is inspiring!  We have really loved working in the Primary and helping the children learn more about the gospel!  

This coming week I get to do a Zone Devotional on Integrity, which is one of the Attributes of Christ that we are studying in Preach My Gospel (Chapter 6).  We are studying one of these Attributes each week until General Conference.  Anyone reading this should think about joining us in this effort for the next few weeks!  Integrity is one of those difficult subjects that make us feel like we are inadequate because of the perfection it takes to have complete integrity.  Then we have to remember to just work hard every day to be a little bit better and move forward toward so many of these things.  

As I was thinking about the Devotional, I was reminded of the hymn True to the Faith that was sung by the youth choir in April 2025 Conference.  I love that song!  It reminds me that I want to remain true to the faith that my parents have cherished, and that my biggest dream for my children, grandchildren, and friends that they will find this faith too and stay true to it forever!  See this song here:   https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/music/music-from-april-2025-general-conference/2025-04-true-to-the-faith?lang=eng

Have a glorious week!

We love you!

Elder and Sister Pack

Mission update 8/10/2025

Hello Friends and Family!

We started off the week with our standard Monday devotional, this time with President and Sister Webster. They are President and Matron of the Bountiful Temple and Sister Webster is one of President Nelson's daughters. There is always one thing that sticks out to me more than others in these devotionals and this week it was laying the things we have to sacrifice to serve God on the altar. To me that means leaving them there and not being concerned about them any more. One thing we know is that God will way over compensate us for any sacrifice we give. We just need that trust in Him.

On Tuesday Gary got to fill in for a leader of a Leadership Pattern Journey class and it was so good. The theme this week was Building Capability. It is such a great lesson--focusing on building people to become all they can be. The example in a ward is to call people to callings who may not be the most prepared, but choosing those who can learn and grow, becoming the people God wants them to be. It is a beautiful concept!

Friday we got to play for about half an hour at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in the lobby. It is such a beautiful space and we loved being able to play there. It also gave us a chance to practice for our Monday morning musical number along with a few others just for fun!

In the Partially-Open Joseph Smith Memorial Building - The Old Hotel Utah

After that, we did sealings in the Bountiful Temple with the Smiths. The sealer was wonderful and took the last few minutes of our session to discuss parts of the sealing ordinance with us. Nothing earth shattering or new, but it is so good to discuss those things in the temple.

After that we went to the concert in the park which was a group called The Relics who perform music from the 70s. They had a good crowd for that era! Afterwards, Gary found that he and one of the men went to high school together so that was fun. 

Relics at Brigham Young Park

Gary With Scott Olsen From Skyview High School!

More flower pictures because there can never be enough

Saturday we went to the John Pack reunion in Kamas and got to learn about the Pack heritage up there. The Packs had a timber operation and ran cattle. John Pack also had families in Bountiful and Salt Lake so he was traveling back and forth a lot. Someone told us that he had a horse who could make the trip from Kamas to Salt Lake in a day. 

Gary Telling More John Pack Stories!

Saturday afternoon we got a call from a counselor in the bishopric asking us to give talks so of course we said yes, and then started working on those in between other things the rest of the day. Last night we went to our daughter in law, Emily's show in Logan and loved that. It was great to see her again and makes us even more excited for our visit with the whole family in a few months!

Emily Is AMAZING and Way Too Much FUN!

We've got Jeremy and family in town this week for a work conference, so we will be able to spend time with them when we have free time. We sure love our kids!

From Gary:  We were assigned to talk about President Eyring's talk and from President Nelson's talk from the April General Conference today.  Sylvia gave a great discourse about drawing near unto God and finding our holy places where we can commune with God.  I then spoke about getting confidence in the presence of God through Charity and Virtuous thought.  It was great to review and speak about these wonderful sermons from our leaders!

It was great to see so many cousins from the John Pack family in Kamas this weekend!  John Pack had three of his wives in the Kamas area and three of his wives down in the Woods Cross area.  I learned a lot of things I had not known before about the Kamas families!  And we also had several show up from the Roe family, who come down through my grandfather William Crestfield Pack's sister Lola Eliza Pack who married William Ray Roe and lived in Stone Idaho by Snowville Utah where my dad grew up!  It was really fun to get acquainted with these extended cousins!

Have a wonderful week!

We love you all!

Elder and Sister Pack

Mission update 8/3/2025

 Our huge accomplishment this week is that we have about 20 empty choir music bins. This is very exciting! Unfortunately no one else seems quite as excited as we are about it. Oh well, pearls before swine and all that....

We keep getting a steady number of student requests in, enough to keep everyone at least doing a few interviews every day. This assignment has never been predicable during our mission so training someone to take over from us will be interesting. If dealing with constant change helps keep dementia at bay, we're set!

Gary's sister Genie and her husband Kent came to town on Friday and stayed overnight in our luxury accommodations (we let them have our bed and took the air mattress). We took them to Deseret Book (for ice cream and books) and the Tabernacle along with the statues there. Then they decided that was enough since they'd been up since 3:00 am or so. It was fun to catch up with them (they live in Oklahoma). 

The weekly changing out of the temple top porta potties

We also had to go visit the new granddaughter in Logan again because newborns have a terribly bad habit of growing up overnight. She is still adorably perfect.

Our Primary class was great this week and paid more attention than usual which was weird but nice. One boy in the class has a step dad who just got ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood which is so cool. It's great to see the family make progress! We love our ward here and are really going to miss it when we go home!

The Attribute of Christ we are studying this coming week is Charity and Love. We definitely have lots of work to do on this one! We'll see if we can make a little bit of progress like we've done with faith and hope. This morning I was feeling quite frustrated with charity and my understanding of it. So, I asked for help in my morning prayers and then, the conference talk I was listening to today (Elder Gimenez) started with reminding us of the invitations the prophet has made to study the most recent conference talks followed by this paragraph:

Pondering over this and all the invitations we had received, I recalled something that I learned and decided long ago. I am trying to do these things which are essential to me because I love Him; I love our Savior. This is the real and most powerful reason why I do what I do, and then connected with this is my love for you, my fellow brothers and sisters.

When we can get to the point that we are obedient to Christ's commandments because we love Him, not just because of the blessings or lack of trials we'll be rewarded with, then we are starting to understand charity. That made so much sense to me, progress!

We're loving this emphasis on the Christlike attributes!

We had our monthly Break the Fast this afternoon and got to meet some of the new missionaries coming in this week. One sister fell on her way back to the apartment, breaking that only mission rule right off the bat. She's not the only one! We have one more Fast Sunday in our mission--so weird!