Shelby, Montana and the first week

Late afternoon yesterday I got my email from Elder Packham!!!  I was excited to say the least. I knew he had arrived but did not know where he had ended up serving for his first area and other details. It was good to get a sense of where he is at. 

Here is some of what he said (I have taken some of it out):

Dear Mom,

Wow! What a wild first week! The first week was incredible! I don't even know where to start. Montana is beautiful. If the sky is clear at night we can see the Northern Lights from our apartment. We live in a small town called Shelby and it's in Montana. Population is about 900 I'd assume. My companion is Elder Ptacek (Pa-ta-sick), like fantastic ptacek! (: We're the #1 online mission in the world.

 

So to continue. The mission president said that we are only covering two branches now. Shelby branch and Chester branch. Chester is another small town. On average the branch there gets 20 people. Shelby gets around 80. The people here are great! A lot of the members here either are conductors for the train, work at the oil pumps, or they are border patrol agents. Shelby and Chester are about 1.5 hours from the canadian border and for them to go to the temple they need a passport! They are in the cardston-alberta canada temple district. Me and Elder Ptacek really wanna go. We got 18 referrals from the members in the past 2 days. Kind of hard to do all 18 without a car but we're making it work. I guess when missionaries do exchanges they do them for a week, just because it's so spread out. Life is great! I'm drinking a lot of apple juice! Prices are high because the stores monopolize. The nearest walmart is 80 miles away. The members here feed us good! Real good! There was one missionary who just left and he was 6'9 and weighed 260, he got up to 320 on his mission because people feed you so good. He dropped back down to 260. Our mission president allows us to do insanity, p90x and other things like that. The members here feed us taco soup and pizza ALL THE TIME!!! I've already had taco soup 4 times and pizza 2 times. 

My mission president is a really classy, humble guy and Sister Mecham is amazing!  She's so funny! Everyone loves her!

We live by Glacier National Park, you should google it! We can't go there because it doesn't open til July or so. 

 

I haven't gotten your package yet. We're going to the post office after this.  we went to church in shelby! Haven't taught yet because we're still getting on our feet since we're both blind to the area. we've been tracting though. the 1st house i tracted was 342 quincy st chester montana (:

I have always wanted to see the Northern Lights. I bet they are breathtaking.  Here is a picture:

And one day, I will see Glacier National Park as well:

Scripture of the Day:
Alma 26:12...Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever.