What a week! Mission Week 10

I hope everyone had a stellar Christmas and New Years! I'll tell ya what, Christmas is a great time to be a Missionary.

Alright now, last week after P-Day stuff, we went caroling with some Elders in Connell and it was way fun! We went to Los trailers so a lot of the stuff was in Spanish and we had 2 English elders with us. We just told them, when in doubt just say "Si, pues." After an hour or two we got pulled into this one trailer that had like 9 people in it and they made us sit down and eat all their food! We had Pasole(..?), Tamales, Hot wings, Jello, Fruit, and "water"(super sugary fruit drink but they called it water). It was super good and I got a pic from it :) 

Christmas was super great, after we opened packages we spent the whole morning cleaning which was pretty fun. We had lunch with the Marshall's and they fed us a whole traditional American Christmas dinner. Turkey, stuffing, cranberries, the whole 9. Best part was we got a giant box of leftovers :) Later that night we went Caroling in Basin City with the same group and had another great evening. 

As for regular missionary stuff, it's going well. We are working with 4 new people we have found and hopefully we can keep teaching them consistently. Everything has been pretty hit-and-miss with the holidays. We're taking Edgar on a tour of the temple grounds today so that should be pretty good! 

Other stuff this week, I gave a talk in the Spanish branch which was pretty interesting. No one said I did bad so I'll take that as a win! We had an all day training in Kennewick called Doctrine of Christ and I'll share something that I loved from it. Elder Richard G. Scott has a quote in a talk about Character + Faith that goes something like, 

"You become who you want to be by consistently being who you want to become."

 It seems like a "duh" kinda statement but this is something I'm really trying to take to heart. If you know what kind of a person you want to be, whether that is physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, nothing is going to magically happen or change unless you do it.

We set goals every week in the mission so I've seen a change already. When we set goals that help us develop habits of good things, we become better people in whatever area you focus on. 

Thank you everyone that sent me cards and packages! Extra blessings for you ;) 

- Elder Thompson

Elder Chayse Thompson

Washington Kennewick Mission

8202 W. Quinault Ave, Ste D

Kennewick, WA 99336

Fotos:

1. We finally went outside when there was Sun!
2. Saw this tiny little horse at a farm
3. The Mexican dinner we had! Pictured left to right: Elder Farmer (mid bite), Elder Escandon, Elder Barlow, Elder Wood, Me, Elder Stopa