This week was pretty insane, we had lots going on. This
email will probably be long but It should be worth it :)
One thing that my district has been saying a lot is
"_____ es mi ciudad" when we thing something is awesome. It means
"_____ is my city" and I'm not entirely sure why everyone does it but
it's caught on fast (Hence this email's title). We've been playing a lot of
volleyball this week and a lot of the people in our district weren't very good
at volleyball (Including me) but now we are a pretty great team!
We had our last TRC with Jerald this week, which was pretty
sad. We're pretty good friends with him and he eats lunch with us sometimes.
With next week being our last week here, there's a bunch of other stuff we have
to do so we don't have time for more lessons. Also we had a Skype TRC where we
talked to a member over Skype. Our didn't go too well because our Hermana was
driving while skyping with us! We could hardly hear her and I'm pretty sure she
could hardly hear us. Other people said it was fun, though.
Alright, now Thanksgiving.... Happy Thanksgiving by the way!
(And happy birthday Mom :) )
Thanksgiving at the MTC was probably one of my favorite days
of all time. We got up early at like 6am so we could go get good seats for our
devotional. We were in the Choir so we had to be there anyways, but we had some
insider information this week and so we knew who our speaker was going to me.
Elder Freeman, my companion, told us that his Mom saw Elder Uchtdorf at a
training meeting and he said he was going to be "spending Thanksgiving
with the Missionaries." So, we knew like 4 days in advance who it was
going to be!
Elder Uchtdorf was amazing, as to be expected. His wife also
came and she told us the story of how the missionaries found her. I'll include
somethings about his talk at the end. After they spoke, the spent probably 20
minutes walking up and down the aisles shaking people's hands. Riight at the
end they came to the front of the Bass section in the Choir so me and Elder
Fifita got to shake their hands! Way cool. Come to find out, all the elders in
our district got to, but none of the sisters did.
After our first devotional, we went to our class for a bit
while we waited for our assigned lunch time (Lunch was our Thanksgiving meal).
Lunch was honestly better than expected. The food is getting kinda old at this
point but I could tell the kitchen staff put some extra work into this
thanksgiving meal. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, candied yams,
dinner rolls, pumpkin desserts, and eggnog. The eggnog was from BYU creamery
and was like 850 calories for this little tiny bottle! Of course what ended up happening
was my lactose intolerant companion chugged 2 of them in a minute, against my
counsel :) I was still hearing about that mistake for 2 days after.
After lunch we had a short devotional, then we went to watch
"The Other Side of Heaven". It was pretty good and it was pretty fun
to see hear the reactions of 600 missionaries when there was a kiss on screen.
After that we went to do a service project. The service project as a whole was
to make 350,000 breakfast meals that would be sent to kids in Utah that don't
get breakfast. They had everyone in the MTC in the parking garage and we spent
1hr 45 mins making these meals assembly line style. My job was to get a bag,
open it, put it under the funnel, then 4 people would dump the ingredients in
and I would run it to the next station. Way cool experience and it was a lot of
fun too. Our group supervisor said her goal for Thanksgiving was to send some
pictures to our Moms so my mom should have a picture of me :)
After that we had a sack dinner in our classroom then went
to our 3rd devotional of the day. Hermana Arnold and Hermana Hopkins wrote some
personalized notes for all of us too which was super cool. It was very sweet of
them. At the devotional they had a singer and a guitarist come and play some songs
for us which was way cool. Tanner James was the singers name I'm pretty sure,
Michael Dowell(?) I think was the guitarist's name. I've definitely heard some
of Michael's music before and If you've ever heard a hymn played on a guitar,
it's probably this guy. He has recorded and published like 150 hymns/hymn
medleys on guitar. It was waaay good. After that we got to walk around before
bed and see all the Christmas lights around the MTC. Definitely a fantastic
day.
Now, for the good stuff. Here's what I learned from Elder
Uchtdorf on Thanksgiving. He talked about gratitude for a good chunk of his
talk. Some of the things he highlighted were how the "higher law of
Gratitude" Is being grateful for everything, including our trials. Trials
always bring us closer to God if we remember him and endure them well. He also
talked about how Gratitude can be a tool for us, when we are struggling. He
promised that,
"Gratitude brings clarity, calmness, and happiness. It
gives us wings to fly over the darkest valleys and the deepest pits.
It's great to be grateful all year round, and it's sad that
we usually only focus on it during this time of year, but I know it's something
that can help us always. Elder Uctdorf also said
"Grateful hearts lead to Greatness."
I know that when we are grateful it really does make us
great. It makes us more like Christ and people notice when we are more like
Christ.
Well my stay at the MTC is almost over, only 10 days left!!!
I got my Travel plans this week and I'll be in Washington by 1:00pm on December
4th. My Spanish is getting way better, but I'm excited to get absolutely
destroyed in the field for the first few months while I learn more about
Spanish. Wish me luck!
Los amo a todo!
Elder Thompson
Fotos:
- Our terrible Thanksgiving
picture
- Some cool clouds and the
Provo temple
- MTC lights!
- Nativity Scene at MTC
- A nice message one of our Teachers left for us before she left for Thanksgiving
Family,
Thanks for all your emails this week, I hope your
Thanksgiving was good with Grandma and Grandpa! Also thanks for your
Thanksgiving card, I always love getting mail! I hope the usual crazy stuff
with work, school, and home are going well.
I got my travel plans this week, so I'll be getting up at
like 5:15am so I can be at the travel office by 5:45am. My flight is like 2
hours, but I go back an hour with time zones, so the flight is like an hour
haha. Pretty crazy how close it is! I won't be under the "Y" for much
longer.
That food place really does sound like something I'd love.
The MTC cafeteria is like that sometimes. We'll have like Korean beef, taco
salad, and yogurt parfaits or something. There's just always new stuff.
Sometimes it's good, usually it's just OK. Actually last night they had this
chicken skewers with rice thay had a spicy peanut sauce. It was probably one of
the best things I've had here.
I was pretty sick yesterday and still kind of today. My skin
is all sensitive and my throat hurts. I'll probably be fine by tomorrow. No
worries.
Same deal as always, email me if you can, I can chat most of
today! I attached my travel itinerary if you wanna look at it.
Love you all!
Elder Thompson
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