Spa & So much food - Mission Week 43

Buenos días amigos,

I made it to Kennewick safe and sound with my new companion Elder Jones! A little about him, he's a convert of about 2.5 years and the only member in his family! His conversion story is pretty crazy and is a testimony to how a good friend who lives the Gospel can change the lives of others for the better. We live in an apartment with 2 other Elders, E. Jacobsen and E. O'Donnal. 

Our apartment is not nearly as nice as my last one but it's not too bad. The weirdest thing about this apartment is our downstairs neighbor, Moe. Now, that's not actually his name, just what the missionaries call him. He and missionaries have been neighbors for years and every time that a missionary stomps a little too hard on the floor, he responds with a hit to his ceiling to let us know he's mad. There has been an ongoing battle for a while now; him complaining to the office, missionaries complaining to the office.. etc. Management got so sick of complaints that they said if they get one more complaint from either of us, both of us are getting evicted haha. So now Moe is way more aggressive and sometimes he will just bang on his ceiling for minutes at a time. Honestly it's super funny, especially since I've never actually met him. 

Our area is pretty cool, it reminds me of Basin City a lot. Super rural, slight cow smell all the time. Good stuff. This area has like 0 faith from the rest of the mission tho. It's always been pretty dead and low faith. I was pretty mad on transfer day when I looked at our area book because it was EMPTY. There was one eternigator family being taught and 2 other people, absolutely no notes about lessons they had with these people, they hadn't daily planned in Months....it was ridiculous. Like, I get it if an area is rough and not a lot happens, but when you don't plan or report what DID happen, that's just not cool. Anyway, our first day of proselytizing after 2 days of office work to fix the mission after transfers, we found 2 new people to teach (double what they found last transfer). The English Elders, Elder Jones, and I can see a lot of potential here, so we are excited for this transfer. 

Like I mentioned earlier, we worked in the office a lot right after transfers, our mission created a new zone so that completely destroyed a lot of stuff haha. We also presented to the group of new missionaries which is always fun. A lot of Elders that I'm really tight with are training this transfer and it was awesome to see them. Elder Jones is doing pretty good with all our extra responsibilities, slowly but surely he will pick it up. 

We had English Classes and correlation so we have met a few members already. We also visited our Branch mission leader and his wife and had dinner with a family in our area. The dinner was suuuuper good. She loves to cook for the missionaries and I swear it was like and 11 course meal or something crazy like that. Corn on the cob, salad, potatoes, a different salad, fresh tomatoes, apples, roast beef, roasted veggies, soda, and creme puffs. Soo much food but it was so good. Definitely not the Hispanic meal I was expecting but I can't complain. She also has a home spa with all sorts of massage machines, so my favorite moment of the night was I was sitting in this machine that massaged my legs and feet while eating cream puffs.... in a trailer home.. in the middle of nowhere 20 mins from the nearest town. haha I dunno I just thought it was funny. 

Oh yeah I forgot, before I got transferred we went around and said bye to a few people we were working with. Got some good pics with them. Also I got flat tire #2 on the mission.... Somewhere in the week we went to the temple as well. 

On Sunday church was really good, the speakers were a family that just moved from Pasco which was pretty funny since I just moved from Pasco too! They did a really good job on their talks. In Sunday school we talked about how trials can turn into blessings which is something I've really come to know while being on my mission. I know that every hard thing we have to do, will teach us some lesson that we can use later in our life. Sometimes they are for us, but sometimes we gain the ability to empathize with others! 

Los amo, la iglesia es verdadera :) 

-Elder Thompson 

Oh yeah how could I forget! Edgar got baptized this weekend!!! I was teaching him in Basin City and he got soooo close when I was working with him. He is going to the YSA now! I was so happy when I heard that :) 

Fotos:

1. La familia Casteñeda 

2. José Acosta from Uruguay 

3. Temple day 

4. Elder Harmon in the Foot massager 

5. Flat tire :(

Traslados y Bendiciones - Mission Week 42

Ayyy it's transfer time again. This transfer was one week longer than normal so everyone was kinda out of whack. Some crazy stuff is happening this transfer! Our mission just created a new zone of only Spanish Missionaries which is super cool. Sadly, I'm getting transfered out of that zone haha. I'm going to the Kennewick Spanish Branch serving with Elder Jones. Elder Ward is going to West Richland as a Zone Leader. We were pretty surprised to see that we were getting transfered since the Tech Missionary area has changed so much lately. I've been 'one-and-doned' three times in a row now. Lots of packing haha.

This week was weird cuz all of our super consistent lessons got cancelled. Don't know what happened, but we were pretty bummed by that. It was Stake conference and the Spanish session was at 8:30 AM so hardly any non-members came. (Not sure whose idea that was to schedule it at that time, pues ni modo haha) It was alright, we had Elder Reuben Acosta, who is a seventy somewhere, come and speak. 

We had like 4 or 5 opportunities to give Priesthood blessings this week. It was really cool to see and it was great practice since most of them were in Spanish. We got called by our Elders Quorum president to ask us if we could give a blessing to a member who was in the Hospital in our area. We said yes and went to find her room. We found it, chatted for a bit and gave her the blessing and then afterwards the nurse told us there was someone else who wanted to see us. We were super confused but followed her to another room. Turns out the two people (John and Jill) were from Basin City, although I didn't know them when I served there, and they wanted a blessing too!

Jill is a returning inactive member who has a calling now and goes to the temple! She's married to John who has been excommunicated for nearly 20 years now. His family has always been active in the church and he remembered his dad giving blessings to his family as a kid. For various reasons they didn't want to tell their ward that they were in the hospital but they wanted a blessing so it was quite the miracle they they saw us in the Hospital! It was pretty special to give John a blessing and he was pretty moved by it. Hopefully it was an experience he can remember and have a desire to return to church!

The rest of this week was kinda slow. Lots of cancelled lessons like I said but it wasn't too bad. We met some cool people that I could see progressing. 

There are these 3 kids in a trailer park in West Richland that we are super tight with. Idk if I already wrote about them but if not, here we go. Their names are Miguel(ito), Remington, and Bryson. We race them all the time and they say a ton of funny stuff. Some of my favorite quotes:

"Hey have you met nice lady? We call her that cuz her is nice" 

"Hey that's my fruzins house. Ya know he's my friend and also my cousin so he's my fruzin" 

"My dad is in the military and he's also a cop so yeah we get double money" 

Anyway that's pretty much it. I got a pic for you today, it's our zone after a soccer game. We have practice every morning and games on Pday :) Gonna miss that for sure. 

Los amo 

Elder Thompson 

Elote - Mission Week 41

Buenos días!

(I did it again, I forgot to send it last week. Here is the email for the week of Aug. 5th)

Not gonna lie I freaked out a bit when I saw what week # I realized there are only 52 weeks in a year....

Anyways this week was pretty good. We had a lot of stuff happening this week so it flew by pretty quick. On Wednesday we went to Walla Walla, Milton-Freewater & Pendleton to do some phone audits. I honestly don't remember if I've already talked about audits already... but if not, we go through people's cell phones to make sure they are following all the rules with technology use. In Milton everyone was super obedient which was awesome to see. I got to see E. Cogswell again which was super fun! My trainer E. Barlow is a Zone Leader in Walla Walla as well so we gave him and his comp a ride to Pendleton which is like an extra hour away from Pasco so we had quite the little road trip. It was fun though. Pendleton is famous for its Rodeo the Pendleton Roundup. They have a massive stadium for it. The town is kinda nestled in the hills so it's very steep in some parts and it has very stylized houses. We didn't really have time to stop and take pics or anything so sorry about that but Google probably has some pics :) Almost all of the missionaries in Pendleton right now are going home in a week, so their phones weren't super great on the obedience side of things. We left at like 9 that morning and didn't get back until 5pm! 200 miles later... 

Thursday we had MLC with all the Zone Leaders and STLs in the mission. It was super good, we had trainings on Correcting with Love, High love, high expectations, and inviting by the spirit. President and Sister Rasmussen are doing great and the mission loves them so much! 

Friday we spent most of our day contacting people to try and get them to an activity that our Barrio was putting on. Every year they have an activity where they buy hundreds of fresh picked Elotes (Sweet Corn on the Cob) and we cook em up and eat them Hispano style. We invited probably 35 people and on Saturday only one family came, but it was good and they had a good time. 

The Elote was super good too. I though it might not taste good but I would totally eat it again. So ya got a boiled Corn on the Cob, you put Mayonnaise all over it, sprinkle some parmesan cheese, tajin, and hot sauce. Top it off with a squeezed lime. Suuuuper good. There were probably more than a hundred people that came and we still didn't eat all the Elotes haha. 

Church was awesome yesterday, our Sunday school teacher threw down and taught the ward how to actually bear testimony. No stories, no thanking your family, etc. The testimony meeting after was probably the best Spanish Testimony Meeting I've been to. 

That's pretty much it! Que les vaya bien 

- Elder Thompson