Tuesday 3 September 2019

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 












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