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.