Última Navidad - Mission Week 62

Ayyy Feliz Navidad (ya que no lo pude decir a tiempo) 

This week was pretty weird honestly. Pday was on Monday, Christmas Eve was Tuesday, and Christmas was Wednesday so it almost felt like a 3 day weekend. A lot of our plans for christmas didn't end up happening so we were pretty much just winging it. 

Christmas Eve was good, we started it off with a Zone Breakfast! Pancakes, and Ham it was super good actually. We made a massive table too so all 26 of us were sitting around the same table. Then, we went caroling in Benton City. The Hermanas there have a lot of cool people they teach that we got to meet and sing to! We had a pretty good group too so the singing didn't sound terrible. Later, the Peña's invited us to dinner at their house and so we had some suuuuper good pazole and ham. They had a new stereo too so they showed it off with some.... Not missionary songs haha. We had to be in after 6 so we just chilled in the Apt with the Elders and had some good deep conversations. 

Christmas we got up and did 'Boonie Sports' for like 3 hours. (all the missionaries in the boonies get together idk if I already have explained this). We didn't really have anything set the rest of the day but we last minute got invited to this dinner where like 10 missionaries and 20 members ended up being there. The food was pretty solid but the highlight was the homemade eggnog and playing Chess with this old dude that completely and utterly destroyed me haha. Later all the boonie missionaries got together for the rest of the evening and some members bought us some treats and stuff. Overall, super chill. 

After that, we got back to work! We had some sweet lessons with Efren, the peña family and a few others. We ended up walking a lot since the other elders needed the car to get to a person they are teaching. My brain is having trouble remembering everything since it went by so quick but we had this super rough lesson Sunday night. It wasn't a bad lesson, it was just all over the place. We talked about everything from polygamy to sabbath day worship to prophets. It was a really good test of my Spanish since I had to explain some complicated stuff. They were super nice tho and invited us back next week for another lesson. 

Elder McBride is doing way good his Spanish has improved soooo much. We are still working on it but he's getting there. 

Sadly no one came to church, we are gonna do a better job of reminding people (Like go knock their door at 10am to wake them up haha) but we taught the fifth Sunday lesson and it went pretty well. We did our best to excite the branch about missionary work! They are still figuring everything out with the new branch and pretty much no one knows anything so that's fun. We'll get there though! 

Los quiero, hasta la próxima semana 

- Elder Thompson  

Prosser - Mission Week 61

Que tal?! Ya estoy aquí in Prosser y santa vaca dios esta dándonos un montón de milagros! 

Well it seems like a month has passed since my last weekly email haha. Sooo much has happened this will probably be a super fat email. It'll be worth a read, I promise :) There's some funny stuff and lots of miracles! 

So Last Monday and Tuesday was packing. E. Escandon was headed home so we took him around a little bit to say goodbye to some missionaries and then we dropped him off at the Mission home, said our final goodbyes and left. I included pics of this is the last email I think. Anyways, we headed home and continued packing. The next day it was Me, E. Jones, and E. Carr in the tripan until transfers so we did some cleaning and headed to the office to do some last minute work. When we got to the office E. Thaler our vehicle coordinator said, "Hey Elders did you hear about E. Escandon?" We said, "Uhh like how he's going home? Like, he's done with his mission." Then E. Thaler said, "No, how he is in the hospital. He jumped off a railing and has a compound fracture in his ankle" 

We started freaking out because he was supposed to fly home at 11 that day and we were worried to see what happened and how bad it was so we made some calls to find out where he was. We found out he was 'resting' at the AP's apartment so we drove there to see what was happening. When we get there, E. Escandon is playing mini golf in the living room and when he sees us we all just start laughing so hard. Apparently what happened is that morning, he got ready for the day, and kinda swung himself around the railing of the stairs and landed on his foot wrong and it dislocated his toe super bad and like broke the skin. He was fine though, he could walk on it with a little boot thing. He got caught at the insta care for just a little too long and so he missed his flight home and ended up having to stay in the mission an extra day. The whole situation was super funny. (And don't worry we went  back and corrected E. Thaler's lack of information) We got to say goodbye to E. Escandon one more time before he actually went home :) 

We visited some members, Hno. Ramos and Hno Aballay to say goodbye and that was good. They're the best! 

Wednesday was Transfer day so we got up early, pack all my stuff to the transfer site and got picked up in an RV to go to the new missionary meeting to meet my trainee! I kinda had a sneaking suspicion that this would happen, but I ended up getting Elder McBride who is from my home ward in South Jordan! It's super crazy that we are in the same mission, let alone companions, let alone Trainer & Trainee. Suuuuper weird but super awesome haha. We've been having a blast in Prosser so far. We finished up that meeting then shopped and drove to our new area! 

Prosser is an awesome area it's gonna be sweet! We share a car with the English Elders here so 1/2 of the time we are a walking area. I've enjoyed it more that I thought I would, it's kinda fun to just walk around and talk. We are talking only in Spanish while we walk which is good practice for E. McBride. In our area we have some super prepared people. La familia Peña is a family we are teaching. The daughter got baptized about 4 months ago and now pretty much the rest of the family wants to get baptized too! We just have to get them married and teach them the rest but they are super excited about joining the church! 

Gerardo is a man that I actually used to teach in my first area in Basin City and He now is staying in Prosser so we are teaching him here now! He knows the church is true, he just feels like he can't get baptized because he has made too many mistakes in his life....we're working on that haha. 

God also blessed us with 4 new people to teach this week and 3 of the people we are teaching came to church! Our branch alone had 14 investigators at church! It's been super fun to be District Leader too, I really enjoy getting to know everyone in the district and helping them achieve their goals as missionaries. 

We did the special Christmas meeting yesterday and it was really successful. We had a lot of sweet, spiritual musical numbers and we also had a linger longer to help people build friendships in the Branch. 

Anyways, there was a lot of stuff in this email but it's been a jam packed week haha. I'm exceedingly (I know I say 'super' too much haha) excited for this Transfer, for my district, and for my companion! I've had the opportunity to testify to many people this week that God has restored his church on the earth and I feel that testimony deepening and strengthening every day! Los quiero, me encanta ser Misionero aquí en el WKM y me encanta predicar en español! Oren que sigamos viendo milagros! 

- Elder Thompson

Estoy Embarazado - Mission Week 60

Hey ya'll que tal

Sooooo to start with the good stuff... It's Transfer week! I am getting transferred to Prosser as a District Leader, Trainer, and still a tech missionary haha. I was expecting to get released as a tech but since we had a few people go home early this Transfer they weren't able to keep the area open and had to combine it with another. Basically elder Jones and I will just be "on-call" to fix people's phone problems in our own areas. It's suuuuper weird. Elder Jones is going to a walking area in Pasco (it's my old area which is cool) as a trio. Anyways I'm suuuuper excited for this next transfer its gonna be sweet. I'm gonna have a son!! 

This week we had zone conference which went pretty well! The only sad thing that happened was due to some miscommunication one of the zones from our conference had to go to a different one so our talent show was smaller. Everyone loved our video, though, and we still had some solid talents. I'm just glad it's over I'm not a huge performer haha but it was fun 

This was Elder Escandon's last week as a missionary and it's super weird since I've served around him for like more than half my mission now.  Because of that we've been pretty busy packing, cleaning, and visiting members and people we are teaching since we are leaving the area as well. *Live update* we just dropped E. Escandon off at the mission home. Super sad haha I'm not looking forward to doing that lol. I got to see Elder Ward tho and say bye so that was lit. 

We had our branch Christmas party and it turned out well! They decorated a lot and it almost looked like a wedding or sometjing haha. There was a little program of the nativity and we had Mexican and Peruvian food. Suuuuper tasty. They called up all the missionaries at the end to give us a Christmas gift which was super nice of them. I honestly love Kennewick a ton I'm pretty sad to be leaving. 

We had one final lesson with Tom & Grace which was good but a little frustrating... I won't go into it but basically Tom is just a very intelectual person haha. Apparently he stopped reading the BoM because he found some 'critical flaws but it's still overall a good book'. Anyway it was super sad to say bye to them and Valentina and I hope that some day he will open his heart and read the Book. 

We had one last dinner at Hna Valdivia house and it was super sad. She loves E. Jones and I so much she was bawling. Honestly, she does so much service for so many people not including the missionaries and is a real example of Christlike service. I'm going to miss her a ton but I'm also kinda glad to leave her because now it will be possible for me to lose weight haha she feeds us so much delicious food :) 

There were so many awesome spiritual experiences in Kennewick, honestly some of these days have just been filled with miracles and spiritual experiences I'm super bummed to leave but super excited for the future. I was able to see a lot of the missionaries in my future district today and everyone is pumped to work super hard! 

Anyways that's all I can think of haha we are kinda rushing so hopefully I didn't miss anything important. 

Los quiero 

- Elder Thompson 

Fotos: 

- RIP Elder Ward

- RIP Elder Escandon

- RIP Kennewick SP District & Hna Valdivia 

- RIP Tom & Grace & Valentina

Videos - Mission Week 59

Buenas noches, I promise I'm not being apostate, we helped our mission president out with something for like an hour and a half today and he said I have to communicate with home so here I am :) 

This week was a blur. We have been preparing for zone conference. I'm not sure if I mentioned this already but we got asked to MC for our Christmas Zone Conference. Sooooo basically we are in charge of organizing the whole thing. It's been a little stressful too cuz this is like the ONE 'fun' thing we do as a whole mission all year so people have some high expectations. We decided to do an entrance video and it turned out super good. It took us sooooo many nights in the study room just thinking of ideas till we landed on one we liked. We also spent a lot of the week collecting the different talents and things that will be happening in the zone conference. It looks like a decent lineup, we have a lot of singing, a few skits, and then a few other random acts. I'll letcha know how it turns out. 

We FINALLY had another lesson with Tom and Grace and Valentina. It was pretty good overall, we talked about commandments. We found out that the Velez (the family they live with) got called to serve a mission in McAllen Texas and they leave in February. We also found out that they are going to go their old English ward until then soooo we have to pass them off to the English Elders. It's kinda sad but I think it will be better in the long run since Tom & Valentina don't really speak Spanish so they can get some better fellowship in that ward. 

We tried by our golden fam this week but they didn't answer the door. Holidays are busy times :/ 

I don't think I've talked about "The Christ Child" yet..... And I'm not sure why cuz it's pretty much just the best thing ever!! If you haven't seen it yet go to www.lighttheworld.org right the heck now and watch it. It's a 18 minute video of the nativity but it's accurate to the Scriptures and to history! I've seen it literally 50 times at this point and every time I have new thoughts and feelings about it (I even cried once :) ). We've had an awesome opportunity to visit a bunch of members and show them this video and It has been AWESOME. They all love it. Honestly I'll probably watch this video every year for Christmas till I die. 

We went to the temple this week and that was awesome as well. They did a cool remodel on the inside in some parts so that was cool to see. Afterwards we went to the distribution center and I got this cool Book of Mormon that is organized and edited like a play so it says Who is speaking, where they are saying it, and what time. It doesn't add or subtract anything from the Original words so it's just a different way to study it. Pretty excited to use it with Come follow me 2020. 

Today for P-Day we did a white elephant gift exchange and it turned out super good. Highlight gifts: Haunted clown doll, a potato and Dijon mustard, coffee maker, and a dove decoy. Then we played some mafia and I got picked to be mafia which never happens so I got wrecked. My partner in crime and I 

Anyways that's how things are going!

Los quiero

- Elder Thompson 

No hay mal que por bien no venga - Mission Week 58

 Buenas tardes familia, amigos, hermanos, hermanas, etc

This week was awesome! 

The last couple weeks (as I have mentioned) have been kinda slow and hard but this week was like a straight 180. We were super busy and had some awesome miracles happen! It was an awesome testimony that sometimes the Lord allows us to go through hard times to test our faith and see if we are really committed to following him. 

Miracle 1: 

We met these two dudes that live super close to each other. One dude is Jorge, the other one is Alejandro. We felt like we should stop by them. We got into Jorge's house and he had 2 other friends there. As we started to talk to them and teach them it got super frustrating super quick. I don't really know how to describe it but they were just kinda unresponsive.... We would ask a question and they would just sit there and stare at us and say "pues no se... Pues es que pues........." And then the ONE guy of the three was not understandable... Like I've been speaking Spanish for a year now I have a pretty solid handle on understanding but this dude was impossible to understand. Anyway it was just lame. Sooo after we went to Alejandro and had the best lesson of my mission so far!

He let us right in and we started the Restoration with him and his wife Silvia. We seemed to say all the right things, and they answered in all the right ways. The spirit was super strong and as we were leaving Alejandro said something along the lines of "Yeah we can tell you bring a good feeling into our house, and we also know that what you are telling us doesn't go against anything we already believe in." It was super awesome and we came back 2 days later and they were there again! We read 3 Nephi 11 and same thing, a picturesque lesson. We are super excited for them!! 

Miracle 2: 

Thanksgiving :) 

Thanksgiving was super awesome, we got invited over for dinner with Hna. Valdivia as usual and she was super stoked to cook us a real American Thanksgiving. There were 6 missionaries, 5 members, and 2 investigators there so it was a party. It was honestly really good probably better than most Thanksgivings I've had in my life (sorry fam jaja this lady just knows how to cook!) We spent the rest of the evening singing our musical number that we perform in 2 weeks. 

Miracle 3: 

Media referral! I honestly never thought I'd get a media referral in my life as a missionary. Media referrals are the kind where someone goes on comeuntochrist.org and fills out a form to get a BoM, Bible, or just a visit with the missionaries. They are pretty rare, and when they come they usually go to the English Missionaries. Elder Jones and I were super surprised when we got one in our area since 1. Our area is super small and 2. She actually spoke Spanish haha. We messaged her to set up a time and Maria was there waiting for us and her new BoM! Apparently she has gone to lots of churches over the years, but hasn't liked any of them except for ours. We had a brief visit and then she gave us some Tamales to go :) 

Miracle 4: 

OUR BRANCH IS BECOMING A WARD!!!! It's super crazy Y'all this branch has been teetering on the edge of becoming a ward for sooooooooo long. It is gonna be really good for the work because there will be a change of leadership up top. Our current branch presidency is kinda burnt out and have some beef with a lot of the members so there is a bit of a toxic environment right now. Anyways, they announced that on the 29th they will form the Kennewick Spanish Ward. This will be the second ward in our mission so it was super big news. 

Anyways, I feel like this email is super long haha. If you made it this far congrats. 

Los amo, estén bien! 

Fotos: 

1. Elder Jones happy as a clam on his birthday when it snowed

2. We wrapped BoM's for a thing we are doing soon. Some people wanted to do mugshot faces apparently but only 1/2 the people knew haha 

Creepy People - Mission Week 57

Well this week was definitely one for the books haha where do I start.....well I guess I'll start with the less funny stuff.

Yesterday E. Jones got super sick again. He still has a massive headache 24hrs later. We stayed in and I studied a lot and watched every video I have downloaded haha. It's looking like today might be similar so Pray that I can keep away cabin fever. 

Earlier in the week we had a few audits and stuff to do so we drove to Connell (again) and they were actually there this time. We stopped at the burger place there and they had this burger where it was 1/2 a burger & 1/2 a ham sandwich. Honestly not too bad! 

On Wednesday we helped a family in our branch move and it was pretty sad to see them go. They got baptized & married in this branch and the reason they are going back to Mexico is cuz the husband has a terminal illness and so he wants to die in his home country :( Sad stuff but they were pretty excited to see family and things like that. 

Thursday was a craaazy day! Now we're getting into the interesting stuff. We had MLC which was really good and we talked about a lot of issues in the mission that I have noticed for a while. We ended on a pretty good note that we need to step it up. Our mission has been promised by multiple apostles that we can double our baptisms and I know it's totally possible! 

After MLC a sister named Sister Wills came up to us and told us about some weird stuff that had been happening with a person they were teaching. She was chatting with another companionship about her area and about some guy named "Robert" that was super golden. The other sisters were like "Wow that's crazy the sisters we live with are also teaching a super golden guy named Robert". So, after MLC we called them with Sister Wills to see what was going on since she thought he might be a troller or something. (Sidenote: that's kinda our job is dealing with people that try to mess with missionaries online. For example one time someone made a fake account of Sister Rasmussen and started to add all the missionaries) 

Anyways, we call them up and they compared Robert and it was totally the same dude! Same phone number, looked the same, had the same "story". Then, while we were doing that E. Perry our mission Recorder overheard the convo and was like, "wait I just forwarded a referral to Pasco of someone named Robert." Soooo long story short this guy was being taught by 3 different Companionships of Sister Missionaries and had told them all different stories. He told one companionship he didn't know what the BoM was and then another he said he had a testimony of the Church. 2 of the areas he had previously had a baptismal date. Super crazy stuff. We later found out that some Elders had contact with him for like a day then he stopped talking to them once he found out they were Elders. President Rasmussen had us text him and tell him to knock it off. Anyways, all that surprise stuff made our afternoon super busy and I totally forgot I had planned to call my Mom for her birthday!! Happy late Birthday Mom! Love you! 

On Saturday we had an exchange so I was with E. Carr for the day. It was a rough day of knocking doors and no one answering haha. Seriously it was a Saturday too and normally people are a little more lively but it was like a ghost town. We did talk to this crazy lady though which was... Fun...? I don't even know. She definitely had some mental stuff going on cuz she told us all this weird stuff about how God was supposed to come in the flesh but instead he put 1000 Jesus Christ's on the earth to trick us. She said that she was one of them and her mom was the virgin Mary. And she said she found all of that out when she was in the Mental institution. Honestly, she was super nice though. Cada loco con su tema I guess Anyways, sorry this email is kinda all over the place. 

I don't think I have any pictures sorry, I hope ya'll are doing well and that you have a solid Thanksgiving. I was just texting the member that is feeding us and she is super excited to cook us a real American spread of food :) 

Los quiero, que les vayan bien 

- Elder Thompson 

Mission Week 56

Buenos Días familia y amigos, me alegro de que pueda escribir este correo hoy y decirles un poco de mi semana.

This week was kinda slow, there were some frustrating things that happened but it wasn't a terrible week. Earlier in the week we had some plans to travel around the mission to look at some missionary phones but after driving an hour we found out that they canceled the meeting and didn't tell us... Pretty much wasted our entire afternoon. 

On Tuesday we had a cool training from the mission president about Light the World!! It's gonna be super awesome, the Church has made a lot of amazing plans to get people excited about Christ this December. I can't remember if I mentioned "The Christ Child" earlier but it is a 18 minute long video that comes out on the 24th. It is definitely the best video I have ever seen!! Super good stuff. Right now you can go to lighttheworld.org and sign up for the texts! It will send you a text every day in December of things you can do to light the world. 

We also had a super awesome lesson with Alfonso, we found him last week and we visited him one more time this last Tuesday. He opened up to us and told us about his family and how much he loves them. He said he had a special connection with his Dad and how he misses him a lot so we asked him "How would you feel if you could see your Dad again?" He said that would be amazing and so we invited him to read the BoM to find out some answers. We haven't been able to catch him since then but we have high hopes. 

Friday we got invited to a members house and also a recently returned Elder was there too! We ate a ton of good stuff and it ended up being really good. The member told us later that it really helped this RM because he had come home early for health reasons and was having a really rough time about it but she said it cheered him up a bit. 

Saturday morning was really good we actually were able to contact a lot of people. We met like 3 new people that hopefully we can start teaching soon. We have recently been dropped by nearly everyone in our teaching pool... Tom and Grace kinda "soft dropped" us for a few weeks too. They said their schedule is just getting crazy so we aren't going to have lessons for like 2 weeks or something...Super sad, but we are trying to keep going with high faith. 

That was pretty much it for this week, nothing too exciting but overall not too bad. I'm still loving being a missionary and I'm glad I can have this time to serve the Lord. I hope ya'll are well! 

Los quiero! 

Elder Thompson 

Fotos

1. Comida Pic: Entomatada

2. A picture I never sent with us and Valentina (Back when it was warm haha) 

3. All the Kennewick Spanish Elders, Hna Valdivia, and Elder Eastham 

Mission Week 55 - A trainee in the house

Buenas tardes a todos! 

Esta semana fue genial!

We had transfers this week so we did the classic train the new missionaries thing. This group is a super awesome one! Definitely a good future for the mission. On Tuesday we took out elder Williams from Snowflake Arizona and sadly everything we had planned fell through. Buuut we visited our branch mission leader so he would at least be able to talk to a native speaker jaja. 

On Wednesday we were supposed to meet up with the new senior missionaries that were going to replace us but they didn't show up so we were kinda frustrated at first. We found out the next day that they aren't actually going to do be able to serve so the whole thing got called off. Soooo our transfer is normal now haha we were expecting it to be way weird but now it's not. We met E. Carr and he is being trained by E. Escandon which is super cool because I haven't been around a new missionary since I was trained. He is pretty sweet, from Provo UT and he has acted for Hale Center Theater for a few years. I'm pretty sure I saw him in newsies right before I left. 

Thursday night we contacted some people about getting some new computers for the mission office and so we went and got 5 computers. It was super funny cuz we were just tangled in cords and stuff like that and everyone in the office was commenting on how 'techy' we looked. It was good though, we spend a good amount of time wiping them and getting them set up for the office missionaries.

Friday and Saturday we got to work a lot which was cool. We met two new people to teach named Alfonso and Silvia and they asked a lot of the textbook ''questions of the soul''. We have another lesson with them tonght and we are super exited for that. 

We also had a lesson with Tom and Grace and they, as usual, fed us some super good food. During the week Tom sent us some articles that he had read and they were just straight anti (it was like super low quality anti tho it was all easy stuff) so we spent a long chunch of our lesson talking about that. Buuut it was overall pretty good and we committed them to read and pray every day since they only had been doing it occasionally. 

Today we had a cool miracle, a super awesome member, Sister Garcia from the Park Hills English ward here, paid for our groceries! I was about to drop like 60 bucks too and so it was a super bendición. 

Anyways thats pretty much it!! Los quiero, gracias por sus oraciones y  apoyo. Se que la iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos días es el reino de dios en la tierra. Mi testimonio ha sido fortalecido bastante en la misión. Yo sé que dios nos ama y nos conoce perfectamente. Agradezco la oportunidad ser Misionero y representar Jesucristo. 

- Elder Thompson

Fotos:

1. Some stickers I designed for the mission. (Mission logo & Wow missionaries is a training we have revived that president wanted turned into a little emblem)

2. Goofy Walmart picture

3. Mission T-shirts

4. "The Pattern" poster. It's another training we got on how to be a successful missionary and president wanted a poster to go in every missionary apartment.

5. Our mini computer lab at the office 

Grace is a member? - Mission Week 54

Hey so this was a craaazy week. Elder Jones got sick again last Saturday, we think it was something new though.

The rest of the week we were working on various projects and we taught a few lessons which was nice. Since it gets dark so early people aren't super into the idea of strangers knocking on the doors at 'night' especially in Finley where it is super rural. Our mission t-shirts finally came in and they looks so good! I'm happy with how they turned out. We spent some time seperating all of them into zones so people can get them and that was fun haha. I'm really good at folding shorts now. Next week I'll send a picture of the shirts and some other stuff I designed for the mission.

It was the last week of the transfer and we have 3 hermanas going home from our district and 6 missionaries total from our zone. Super sad, but exciting. We had fun at our last branch coorelation meeting with the and some members fed us as well for a 'goodbye' party. Leading up to the transfer we had heard some rumors that our assignment might be getting move to a Senior couple but we were doubtful. (considering that a lot of what we do is help the senior couples we currently have to do everything on their computers). We had a meeting with President and he told that that we actually are getting replaced at the end of this next transfer so E. Jones and I will be training them to do our job. We are going to be optimistic about this haha. We haven't met them yet so soon we will know how the next little while will be.

We had a lesson with Grace and Tom as usual and there were some interesting developments. We talked a lot about authority and how to get to the Celestial Kingdom. In that process we felt strongly that we should be very bold and straightforward with them so we were. Tom and Grace really opened up, Tom told us that if he believed strongly that this was the right path for him that he would be baptized. Grace told us that in her life she has been active and been baptized into 7 different churches! One of them is ours haha. That was 30 years ago so she doesn't really remember a ton but she says that a lot of the things we say sound familiar. Anyway, we were pretty surprised with that and we are just gonna keep working with them :)

OH Halloween happened too. Nothing crazy happened, we just had the Perry's from the office visit us with their grandkids. We made a video for the mission as well (its a tradition for the tech missionaries to do one at Halloween) it was a good day. Oh also we found out we can listen to most Christmas music even if the songs aren't in the hymn book, which is our normal mission music policy. 

I kinda mentioned it before but transfer results are:  Elder Jones and I are staying for our 3rd transfer together in Kennewick and we are Training 2 senior missionaries haha. I'm just now realizing that I will be one of few elders that gets the chance to do that. It'll be fun I'm sure. 

Anyway, one cool thing I've been thinking about is who God is and why it's so cool that we get to pray to him and talk to him directly! He has worlds without number, but he still knows us personally and listens to our prayers. 

Love you all! 

E. Thompson 

Fotos:

1. Zone picture 

2. District Pic w/ pizza

3.District Pic 

Enfermo - Mission Week 53

Hey ya'll i don't have a ton to talk about this week. We had lots of meetings at the beginning of the week then E. Jones got super sick for all of Friday and Saturday so we stayed in. I got a loooot of study in haha.

On Sunday we had two lessons, one with Sebastián in Colombia (members son). It was kinda awkward cuz we had to do it through voice messages. Later though we had a lesson with Tom and Gina which was super Whack. Topics and questions brought up by them were, teleportation, where does God live, do angels have wings, what about dinosaurs, when was the creation, what is kolob, why do I want to live eternally. It was hard to keep them on track haha. We will continue to teach them through the videos we make, they seem to work well.

We played glow in the dark soccer and mafia today for pday so that was cool. Then 4 of us elders practiced a Christmas quartet that we might sing for the Christmas talent show.

Honesty that's pretty much it for this week. Sorry! I'll try and have a more eventful week this time haha.

Los quiero mucho!

- E. Thompson 

Mission Week 52 - Un año 😭

Hola muchach@s ¿que han hecho?

Welcome to this (hopefully) fantastic weekly email! It was a pretty solid week even though a lot of stuff fell through.

On Tuesday we found two more people to teach! Isauro and Teresa briefly met with missionaries a long time ago but we taught them the restoration and they seemed to like it. We planned to go back on Saturday but they were asleep so it didn't happen.

We drove to pendleton again for some more phone stuff and it was way better this time. I think a lot of missionaries here are really making an effort to be obedient and it's super cool to see! Because of some scheduling stuff and giving people rides, I think we ended up being in the car for like 5 hours which was pretty rough haha. Mini road trip though

Friday we had a lesson with Tom, Grace, and Valentina! We had sent them a short video teaching a principle during the week and they loved it! They even sent a video back with the 7 y/o thanking us jaja. We ate with them and had some cheesecake (it had been soooo long since I'd had it) and then followed up on their reading of the book of Mormon. Turns out Tom has read half of the book since last Friday and Valentina has been reading every day! Grace hasn't, so we are going to remind her. We had a good discussion about some stuff in first Nephi and then Hno. Velez came in clutch and invited them to church since he and his wife were going to speak! Only Grace ended up coming because Valentina got sick, but it was still super good. 

Saturday was kinda a rough day. When we were planning it looked like we would have a stacked day of lessons but all of them fell through. The last one was kinda funny though because we went to the house for the first time and there were just a bunch of people sitting around inside a garage listening to music, drinking beers, and watching a dude butcher a whole cow. They all looked super dead inside and were giving us crazy weird looks. I dunno I guess some people find that "fun", but I wouldn't call that a party jaja

Yesterday we had a lesson with the 2 sons of a member here. They live in Barranquilla Colombia and it went super well. We are kinda on a time crunch since the members leave for Colombia in like 2 weeks but we will do what we can. After we had a good visit with the Aballays and had an interesting talk about our branch. It's pretty sad, but there is a lot of hypocrisy and negative talking in our branch. Obviously it's not everyone, but it's been a problem here for a while and it is frustrating as a missionary since we WANT to bring people into a loving, unified, environment. Anyways, we talked about that then we talked about Spanish and English since Karen is learning Spanish. They gave me a super nice compliment and said they thought my Spanish is the best they have seen in the branch from missionaries, and they gave me and E. Jones a few specific things to work on. It was good to hear that cuz most of the time people don't give you any kind of good feedback they just say, "oh yeah you have pretty good Spanish. It was just super uplifting to here a genuine compliment like that especially because I've never really stopped studying the language since my MTC teacher threatened us if we ever did that jaja shout out to Hno. Durrant. Seems like it is paying off!

I've been loving studying more and memorizing scriptures recently. I think I've learned more from the scriptures recently than I ever have. I was also reflecting on E. Johnsons talk from general conference that we simply need to study every day, every day, every day. No questions asked that's just what we do. Like E. Klebingot said to us, "It really doesn't matter how you FEEL about keeping the commandments. You do them because you love God and trust that he will provide." I really want to make that a lifelong habit! 

¡Les quiero mucho! 

- Elder Thompson 

Foto:

La familia Aballay

Mission Week 51 - Elder Klebingot

Bueeeeeenos días, que onda 

Well this week will be one to remember for Sure! The highlight was we had E. Klebingot from the 70 come to tour our mission. He's from Germany originally and a convert. We had zone conferences with him and then MLC and it was probably one of my favorite experiences of my life! He is kinda notorious for being direct and not messing around, which is exactly what our mission needs. Some awesome stuff he talked about was the gathering of Israel, premortal life, covenants, and exaltation, scripture study, temptation, Memorization, commandments, and so much more. Talking about it with E. Jones, we both felt just completely rebuked by the spirit for a lot of stuff, and it was the best haha. In all seriousness though, he taught a lot of things that I'll never forget. One of them is the importance of meaningfil scripture study. I've read the scriptures all throughout my mission, but after seeing how he could USE the scriptures and how much authority it gave him, I definitely felt the need to step it up and make my study more meaningful.

 He also left us a promise that he said applies to Everyone.

"If you give God your best time of the day every day (not 5 minutes in the bathroom or something lame like that) for meaningful scripture study, the adversary will not be able to touch you. On the other hand, if you don't have meaningful study every day, you will eventually fall into spiritual spiritual ignorance and be susceptible to inactivity in the church." It was a bold message that I think most of us needed to hear. 

He taught us a super cool method for memorizing scripture references super effectively using "mind palaces" I've already memorized like nine in 2 days and used them while proselyting!

Other stuff that happened we FINALLY had a lesson with Tom and Grace. It was really good and they committed to start reading the BoM. The member they live with has come in clutch with a ton of stuff like setting up that lesson and showing them church videos all the time.

We met with Lel and talked for a bit and we eventually got on the topic of family history and it turns out he was pretty interested in that! He's my age too so it was cool to see that. I was able to show him my tree on the family search so thanks to all my family members who have done work on that. He told is at the end that he promises to read the entire book of mormon!

The other Elders and us went to Hna Valdivia house (as always haha) and she had bought 4 Tlayuda for us. Tlayuda is this like ancient Oaxacan food. It has a crispy crust think (like a giant rount tortilla chip), cabbage, a special kind of cheese, avocado, tomato, pickled carrots, beans, and meat (ours had tripe). La mera verdad es it was like my favorite food I've had on my mission. Sooo good, but super weird too.

Love you all! If you aren't already, start having daily study in the scriptures. Go into the scriptures with a question, get rid of your "doctrinal blind spots" as E. Klebingot called them.

- E. Thompson

Fotos:

1. Tlayuda party

2. Yo

3. Hump day package! Thanks family :)

4. Giant sunflower 

Good ol Kenny - Mission Weeks 49-50

Good ol Kenny

¡Buenos días a todos!

Again I forgot to send my email last week so it's another double. Lucky you :) 

Week 49

We started this week by taking a new missionary out to work on his first day! We went to the mission home and picked up Elder Plumb, he's pretty cool! I'm sure he will be an awesome Elder. We took him to two lessons, one with Mario and one with Grace, Tom, and Valentina. Mario is a man we found this last week. He was super impressed with our Spanish and thought our parents were Mexican jaja. We ended up having like 4 Lessons with him this week so that was cool. 

Wednesday was transfer day so as usual we presented something for the group of new missionaries and then spend a bunch of time at the office fixing and updating various things. We found out that we are getting a new car, it's a 2019 hybrid Rav4 straight from the lot. Since we drive so much they want us to have a hybrid car to save gas money. Wednesday we also had our weekly coorelation meeting and Hna. Valdivia came in clutch with some bean dip and hummus for the entire group. All but one missionary in our branch stayed so it should be a super fun transfer! 

Thursday and Friday was mostly more office stuff, not too interesting. Saturday was a super cool day! We started out by going to a baptism in Hermiston for 2 people that E. Jones taught. The crazy thing was, they wanted to get baptized in the river and it got approved by Pres. Rasmussen. It was the first river baptism that the mission has had in at least 3 years! It went super well and I got to witness for both of them. It was kinda weird to be back in my old area. We went to the Church for food after and the entire family of the people that got baptized was there. They had a grill with an open flame and set it up inside the Church and all the missionaries started freaking out since it's church policy to not have open flames inside the building. They just picked up the grill while it was still on and moved it outside haha it was just super funny to see 16 missionaries slowly realize what was going on. 

Later Saturday we were out working, pretty discouraged cuz it was super dark and our lesson canceled on us. We felt pretty bad too because Gina and her kids have been super flakey recently so we hadn't had good contact. We felt like we should stop by a members house so we went and sat down to talk with her about some stuff and literally like 30 seconds later, Gina and Lel walked in! It was super crazy haha nothing was planned and we ended up having a super good mini lesson with them. Every time we talk with Gina you can tell she's fighting with the spirit since she knows it's true, so I hope some day she will listen to the spirit and get baptized.

Oh this week we designed the new mission t-shirt as well. Hopefully this week we will start taking orders from the Elders and Sisters. I'll send a pic :) 

Week 50

Lots of this week was spent working on the TShirts since the Rasmussens want us to get them ordered asap. I think we are past 300 orders already jaja its crazy. Honestly this week flew by I'm having trouble remebding what happened :) On the 4th I hit my 'year until I'm home' mark which is súper loco. I think that's also called my hump day, but I'm not sure. Kinda a cool thing is that a bunch of the Elders Im serving around hit their year marks around the time I got to the mission, and now there are here when I am hitting mine! 

General Conference was sweet, we were going to watch it with 2 of our family's but only one of them happened. Tom and Grace probably watched it at home considering he has been watching Pres. Nelson BYU devotionals in his spare time. We watched the second session on Sunday with Hna. Valdivia and Lel and Gina. It was super good and we are going to try really hard to work with Lel more. Hna valdivia made us tortas de bistec (Steak Tortas) and they were heavenly. 

We convinced Elder and Sister Perry, our mission office recorder and secretary, to take us out to dinner at Red Lobster for their unlimited shrimp meal and it was super fun. E. Jones told his conversion story to them. Oh we also got our new car and its probably my favorite car that I've ever driven. It's super zippy and we get like 500 miles per tank. 

On Sunday we found out about a super cool opportunity we will have to teach the son of a member that lives in Colombia! They have tried to have the missionaries go over so many times but they never have more than once. So, we are going to teach him via Skype and then Hno. Abally will baptize him when they visit Colombia in a month. 

From General Conference I really loved Elder Gongs talk and Elder Christoffersons talk, but all of them were honestly super good. I'm going to try and re read them all within the next few months, but I'm just super greatful we have this opportunity to hear from living prophets and apostles! We always try and get the people we are teaching excited about someone just like Moses that is here to help us follow God! 

¡Les agradezco sus oraciones! Se que la iglesia es verdadera y que dios nos ama. Nos da tanto milagros cada día! 

E. Thompson 

Fotos:

1. The biggest Apple ever (and also Elder Harmon in the background.) 

2. River Baptism: E. Jones, Jovita, y Hector 

3. Don't ask 

4. E. Jones and E. Perry 

5. Unlimited Shrimp 1

6. Unlimited Shrimp 2

FaceBook Post by Mom

Here’s a little story about our missionary and a fun conglomeration of talents.

Back in July, when Chayse’s mission got an new mission president and Chayse started working in the mission office as a Tech Elder, he designed an awesome new logo for their mission. About a month later one of our former neighbor friends offered to deliver a package to Elder Thompson since he drives past his mission all the time.

So, I put together a package that included a surprise ukulele.  Alyssa did a wonderful job of painting the mission logo on the back of the ukulele as an extra surprise.  And it did turn out to be a great treat for him and he said he and his companion, Elder Jones, were loving it.

Then about a month after they got it Chayse sent us several recordings of some songs they made about their mission.  We have enjoyed listening to them so much! Brady really likes the first one that is in Spanish (and talks about the Elder that fell in the sewer - based on a true mission experience). Ruby likes the second song, the fun little ditty about ‘story time with Elder Jones.’ And Alyssa likes the spicy third song because you can’t help but dance to it. And Bryce and I love them all!

I love seeing and hearing my children use their talents. It brings me great happiness. And seeing all these talents (the computer graphic designing, the painting, the singing, the song writing, the instrument playing) collide in this fun experience, has just tickled me.

And even though they are corny missionary songs, we’ve listened to them many times together, just jammin’ out in the kitchen or at the dinner table, singing along and laughing. It’s been such a fun, simple way to get a different peek into his mission experience.

Comida Gratis - Mission Week 48

Buenos días a todos, espero que todo esté bien para ustedes. Mi semana fue bien! Ocupado, pero bien.

We started this week out with another special devotional thing. President Nelson gave a talk broadcasted from BYU and it was super good. He went through 5 important truths. I'd highly recommend it.

On Tuesday we felt like we should text Tom & Grace to see if we could have a lesson with them. I can't remember if I told yall about them already, but basically they are friends with some members and will be house sitting for them while the members leave on a mission. We met them at a birthday parting and they are super cool. Grace is originally from Argentina and Tom is American. They have one daughter named valentina and she is a super smart 7 y/o. We had a short lesson with them and they really enjoyed it and invited us back! Valentina loves to ask super deep questions, most of which don't have answers but they are great talking points. She calls us the "smart elders"  haha it's super funny. We went back a few days later for pizza with them and I think they like us quite a bit. Grace came to church as well!

Wednesday and Thursday were mostly spent filming a video for the mission. In missions where smart phones are a thing, there is a thing called a device audit where you basically go through your companions phone and make sure they aren't doing and dumb stuff. Recently, missionaries have been pretty bad at doing them so we made a little video to remind them. It was honestly super fun to make. We got E. Oxenden to be our main 'disobedient' elder and it was super funny since he is actually like the most obedient person ever. We were super happy with how it turned out!

We had a pizza party as a Zone to watch the new Book of Mormon video.... it was super awesome. I hope everyone has seen it!

Someone paid for our Costa vida.... blessings... 

Saturday we got a call to do some service for a lady. she was moving from the third floor to the first floor of an apartment complex. With 4 Elders and 5 sisters it still took us 5 hours to move everything and clean everything. We were super wiped afterwards haha I'm still sore. Also we got fed :) 

We had two branch activities, one was burgers and night games, the other one was a carnita asada with the boiz in the elders quorum. Super good free food :) (do you see the theme yet haha I think I only Cooked one meal for myself the entire week.)

Transfers are this week! Elder Jones and I are staying in our area (thank goodness) but our whole district is changing zones to be in a completely Spanish zone! it will be pretty sweet, Elder Harmon and Elder Escandon are staying too so our apartment is still together.

We didn't have a ton of time to go and work in our area so I don't really have any updates on that stuff, but our goal this week is to finish all of our other tasks so we can work more! 

les quiero mucho! Que les vaya muy bien 

- Elder Thompson

Fotos:

1. Elder Harmon and Elder Perry playing chess

2. Visiting a district council in Pasco! 

Lluvia - Mission Week 47

Buenos días!

This week started out with a service opportunity as a Spanish District. There is a member in the branch that has cancer and so her yard has needed some work done. We played volleyball in the morning then headed over to her house just as it started to Rain. It picked up quite a bit and soon enough we were soaked. We ended up being in the rain for like 3 hours or something so I'll send a super nice picture of us soaking. It ended up being pretty fun!

Another thing we did this week, we made a church tour video! It's up on my Facebook and we were pretty happy with how it turned out. Go take a look :)

We visited a less active family that lives about a 45 min drive away from our apartment. They were super cool! They live right in a vineyard and had some super cool views. I forgot to get pictures but, if we ever go back I'll snap a few. 

We had a brach activity where everyone brought a bunch of stuff they didn't want and then you could take other people's junk home. Kinda like a thrift store junk swap activity. It turned out well though, most of us just played soccer though.

We had a super awesome Lesson with 3 people we are teaching, Lel, Cristian, and Gina. We also had Ginas sister (who is a member) with us, her nephew (Less active member), and her niece (on a mission in Utah, she skyped in). It was a super powerful lesson and Gina told us she knows the Book of Mormon is true, she just wants an answer from God telling her to join the church. We invited them all to chuch and they said they would come! Sadly they didn't end up showing... not sure why but we will keep working with them.

We got to watch the Face to Face with Elder Soares and it was cool to see him speak Spanish and Portuguese! I could understand like 70% of the Portuguese which was super awesome. Overall it was a pretty good broadcast.

We also had a breakfast with the Loveridges a family that helps in the branch. Hno. Loveridge is a dentist so their house is maaaasive. He either said 18k or 80k sq/ft. I think it was probably 18...cuz it was big but not that big haha. We had some super good French toast then played bocce(?) ball, ladder golf, Frisbee golf, and pool in their backyard!

It was a pretty solid week! We also had interview with President and it sounds like elder Jones and I will probably stay here for next transfer so I'm pumped for that!

¡¡Los quiero!!

-Elder Thompson

Fotos:

1. Chicken Nugget Friday round 2 : 230 nugs

2. Service pics 

Mission Week 46

This week was nuts haha we were super busy (as usual)

Not a ton of interesting stuff happened, except for our District leader fell in a septic tank haha. We were doing Service for a member and one of the tasks we were doing was clearing out some rocks and weeds that were around these giant stepping stone things. The Hermanas had been doing that job and they found out that the giant stepping stone things were actually covers to the houses septic tank. E. Escandon didn't know since he was on the opposite end of the house when they found out. They were going to prank him by having him lift up the rock and getting a whiff of septic tank smell, but when he did it he stepped forward to get some leverage so his leg completely went into the nasty water. We weren't actually there when it happened but the pictures were pretty nasty. 

Last Monday in the evening we got invited to come to a members house and when we went there were a ton of members I knew from Pasco! They sang a bunch of banda music and we got cake :) 

We had an awesome Lesson with Lel, Christian, and Gina who are related to Hermana Valdivia in the branch. They have had a lot of great experiences with the church and with Book of Mormon, but for some reason have never made it to baptism. We invited their cousin who is on a mission to join in via video Chat and it was really good! Everyone felt the spirit super strong and we are going to continue working with them. 

Lel and Christian came and played soccer with us too, so that was fun. 

The rest of the week was traveling around the mission looking at people's phones and making presentations. We did another training on Facebook and one on using our area book app more effectively. We got a lot of compliments on it so I think it went well. 

Honestly that's pretty much it, it was kinda a blur and we are hoping to have more time this week to do actual missionary work haha. 

Los amo! 

-Elder Thompson 

Fotos: