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:

Two-fer - Mission Weeks 44 & 45

Hey so I totally forgot to send the email I wrote last week so this will probably be really long haha. 

Week 44:

¡Hola! ¿Que tranzita?

This week was super weird. We were so busy doing a million things at once. On Sunday the Assistants told us that we would be going to all the Zone conferences in the Mission and that we would be presenting about how to use Facebook for missionary work. A few fun details: 1. someone did a training like this a year ago but it was pretty much a flop and missionaries (including us) haven't known how to use it the right way 2. Our mission has a pretty negative culture toward social media and most people choose to not use it 3. We had like 4 hours total to prepare & practice the presentation cuz we had so much other stuff going on. Anyway it turned out pretty well. We've done 2/3 Zone conferences so far and people in general have responded well. Towards the end of the second conference Elder Jones stated to get pretty sick. He had a migraine and a bad cold. By the next day our entire apartment was super sick haha. So the last half of the week I've spent with a cold :/ 

Before everyone was sick, I went on an exchange with Elder Jacobson who we live with and it was super cool. We ended up finding 1 new person for each of our areas. The person we found in Spanish was a dude named Francisco who recently stated a small Bible study group to try and find the truth. He seemed pretty cool and he's never talked with missionaries before.

My parents set up something with a family friend/neighbor from Layton to bring me a package. Dave Buck drives trucks and apparently he comes up to my mission all the time and offerred to drop off a package. Anyways, he showed up at our apartment at like 11:15pm and dropped it off! Thanks for doing that Dave, and thanks mom and Dad for sending it! It was super fun and our fridge was pretty empty so the food was a blessing for sure haha.

Anyway the rest of our week was pretty much just fixing various tech things throughout the mission. I'd write about it but it's mostly pretty boring random stuff. 

Love you all, thanks for your prayers and support!

Elder Thompson

Week 45:

Buenos días! I'm really liking this new Area so far! There's a lot of sweet people that we met this week, even though we had another crazy busy week with meetings and stuff.

Going back to last Monday, we played a bit of spikeball and basketball for Pday then the other Spanish Elders and us went to a store to try and find some pants for me. We found new shirt and one pair of pants that I'll be able to fit into soon, just need to keep losing weight.

Tuesday we had the last Zone Conference we were presenting at, and that went well. Later that day, we went by a house we had been to before to try and contact this dude and his 2 sons were outside watering the grass. We talked to them for a bit then after a while found out they play some video games that Elder Jones and I both played a bunch before our missions. It was super cool to relate to them and they want us to come back sometime, since they met with missionaries a lot on California when they were younger. 

 Wednesday we had a District Council and we made some plans to use Facebook to help our areas! We have an English class here but it's kinda garbage so we talked to the Stake about making it better and they are all on board. We made a bunch of posters & posted on some community pages. One day, our phone hardly stopped dinging with notifications of people who are interested in the class! We hope to have a consistant attendance of 10 or more soon. Wednesday, we found a new person to teach se llama Ruben. He was pretty accepting of us and seems to be in a pretty humble spot in his life. We taught him twice and the second time we found out he has met with missionaries before and read some of the BoM! When we left, he asked us to pray that he would "tener más ganas de leer el libro" or "have a more of a desire to read the book." Super awesome! 

We had MLC (Mission leadership council) and it was reeeeally awesome. Normally it goes like 9-5 but the Rasmussens were like, "naw that's way to long" and somehow made the most effective MLC I've ever been to in a short 3 hr council. It was cool, we talked about the mission culture and what motivates missionaries. 

Friday was moving day. To try and minimize noise with the downstairs neighbor, we found out we were moving to the other end of the zone to live with the other Spanish Elders! I was kinda salty to have to move for the 4th time in 3 transfers but this apartment is waaay better. We are living with Elder Harmon and Elder Escadon so it's gonna be a blast. (I've basically served around/with Elder Harmon for more than half my mission so we're super tight and I served around Elder Escandon for my first 3 transfers.) Moving over all went pretty smooth. We had to move a bunkbed and the first time it got stuck in the stairway so that was fun. 

Saturday we had a pretty empty day, not much planned but luckily God is Good and gave us some stuff to do! A bit ago, Hermana Valdivia (that member that fed us a ton a while ago) referred her sisters family to us. Her name is Gina and she has seen miracles from praying and reading the book of mormon as a family. I dont remember the full story but basically a relative of them was wrongly jailed and was about to be deported but Hna. Valdivia had a bunch of her non-member family read the book of mormon, fast, and pray with a purpose to help him get out of jail, and it happened! 

Crazy miracle that happened this week, that goes with this same family is they had a niece in Mexico that got diagnosed with cancer in her throat. They did one surgery, said she was probably going to die soon. The family did the same thing, read, fast, pray. This week they tested again and the cancer was gone, the tumor was benign. She's read the book of mormon 3 times now, knows it's true, and has wanted to get baptized. The big hangup is she has to get married, so we will work on that :) 

Hermana Valdivia invited us over for dinner again and this time we had carne asada tacos and cheese flautas. Suuuuper good, once again. She seems to like us quite a bit more than the other Elders that were here haha, apparently she wasn't super happy with them.

Today for preperatuon day we played a ton of sports, I'm suuuuper tired. The Zone Leaders and the Elders we lived with invited us to sushi, and it was pretty good. They have a 'happy hour' so a little conveyor belt goes around and you just grab the specific plates you want and pay per plate. It was awesome, I haven't had sushi in soooo long.

Anyway thats pretty much it! Congrats to everyone that made it this far :) Your reward is a few pictures.

- Elder Thompson

Fotos:

1. sushi 

2. moving party 

3. stuck bed 

4. Squished E. Harmon

5. Chicken nugget Friday

6. Me, Elder Jones, and a praying mantis 

7. Elder Jones and I