Spanish Conference - Mission Week 70

Este correo será corto jaja 

This week flew by we had a lot of stuff to do. We had Zone conference earlier on in the week and that was pretty good. In our mission we are very close to fufilling a prophecy! Almost 3 years ago Elder Anderson came and said that it was possible to double our baptisms. I think right now, just 2 more people need to be put on date & baptized for us to achieve that goal. It's super awesome!

We had a good lesson with Yadira this week and we were able to start teaching some of the people that live in the same house as her. She got sick so she wasn't able to come to church this week :/ 

The Peña family is doing ok... we've had a lot of struggles with them recently. I don't want to rant about it too much, but basically lets just say, Never smoke or drink it's not worth iiiiiit.  Please keep them in your prayers they need it. 

We had Spanish conference on saturday and that was really fun! Every single spanish missionary in the mision was there (Except for E. Jones, my past companion, he is in the hospital right now with some bad health problems so please pray for him too). We got some really good trainings on how to connect with the culture. Hna Valdivia from Kennewick cooked 180 tortas for us, they were super gooood. I was kinda salty though, she just dropped off the food and left, I was hoping to say hi. 

I recently re-read James in the new testament and would highly reccomend it to yall. I especially love the last half of James 1. 

Les quiero, 

Elder Thompson

Altibajos - Mission Week 69

Pues esta semana tenia altibajos jaja pero salio bien 

At the beginning of the week we had some weird stuff happen with Marina's family. We had 3 really awesome lessons 2 weeks ago, the last one the dad was there and he seemed to like everything well enough. The spirit was really strong. A few days later we called to try and reschedule a lesson and Marina told us that Rogelio didn't want us coming over anymore :( she really wants us to still though, so she asked him again and we are kinda waiting on an answer to see if he will reconsider. 

We also have kinda lost contact with Yadira, we are pretty sure she just got super busy because she hasn't been getting home at the normal time and sometimes won't respond to messages for a few days. Please pray that we can get in and teach her more frequently... 

Now that we got all the rough stuff out of the way, here are the miracles!!

The Peña's are on date for March 7!!! They talked with the lawyer and got the OK to get married so we are gonna have a wedding soon :) It's going to be sweet. They are pretty pumped that FINALLY they can progress in the Gospel. Please pray that they will be able to keep going strong and overcome the trials that are for sure going to come up as they get closer to baptism. 

We had a talent show as a branch this week and that was too much fun haha. We had a lot of cool talents, a lot of singing and a few other random things. It was weird cuz they had regular worldly music playing during dinner. We also had dinner and surprisingly the best thing was some barbecue meatballs that someone from Veracruz made. I played the Ukulele in the talent show and also, all 8 missionaries sang 'called to serve'. They definitely were not the highlights of the night haha they were mas o menos. Super fun night and really good for our little ramita to become closer :) 

This week, as I mentioned on Facebook, I read Saints Vol. II this week! It was super awesome. I have a new appreciation for Brigham Young, I really think he is a misunderstood prohpet haha. He said some very strong things sometimes, but he did so much good for the church and helped it through a very trying time. Reading also helped me to gain a new perspective on some tough points in church history. The main thing I took from reading it was that God's hand was completely with the early saints and that he gave them miracle after miracle to keep them going. All of those miracles, just to give us the chance we have today to enjoy the truths of the restored gospel and to be able to share this gospel with our friends. If you haven't read Saints Vol. 1 already, do it! it's super good.

Les quiero, hasta la proxima

- Elder Thompson 

Fotos: 

Branch Party 

Enseñando familias - Mission Week 68

RIP I forgot to hit send last week...............

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Buenos Dias mi gente que tal?

We had an awesome week here in good ol Prosser, WA. I'm seriously loving this area, God has blessed us so much and he is continuing to do so!

For Yadira the woman who has a baptismal date, nothing really happened :/ this weekend she got busy and couldnt make it to church or to a lesson. We just had a bunch of texting contact which is good but not ideal. 

We got in contact with a family that the Hermanas used to teach and they are super awesome!! Right now there are 2 boys and their mom, but we are going to start teaching the dad this week. They have loved us coming over and teaching them and we are very hopeful that they will continue to progress!

I can't remember if I've ever written about my man Serafin, but he's the best let me tell you :) Serafin was baptized a few years ago, then he moved and kinda fell away from regular church attendance. Then some missionaries in Prosser knocking some doors and they found him and were surprised to find out that he was a member!Since that day, Serafin has made a lot of progress in the gospel and he is a super awesome member missionary. His schedule allows him to come out with us to lessons any day after 2pm which is sooooo good for anyone who knows how hard it can be to get a member coordinated for lessons. We had a few visits with him this week trying to help him understand how to study the scriptures and how to work towards going to the temple. 

We had a district blitz this week and it was pretty fun! Basically a blitz is where the district/zone changes up the companionships and areas for a few hours of work. Sometimes you put all the missionaries in one area to just find as many people as possible. It was really fun even though we didn't meet our goal of how many people we wanted to find, we had a lot of cool little miracles happen. 

The Peñas are doing good. This week they have an apt with a lawyer to see if they will be able to get married so please pray that we will have a miracle!! 

One final milagro for the week, we got a referral for a "Super nice lady" (They didn't know her name haha) and we went yesterday to meet her. She let us in and we ended up teaching the whole family! They were kinda confused about a couple things we were talking about & about our purpose (at first they thought we were catholic) but we will try to keep working with em. 

Anyways, thanks for reading! As for me, I'm still doing well! I love being a missionary! I'm grateful for all the relationships I've built so far with missionaries, members, and non members. I hope you all have an awesome week! Remember to feed your soul with the scriptures :)))

- Elder Thompson 

Evangelicals & On Date - Mission Week 67

This week was súper chido!! 

Earlier in the week we had transfers. As i mentioned in the last email, we shuffled the areas around a little bit. Our area is huuuuuge now haha. We got two more Elders in our branch so that makes 8 of us in our little ramita. Elder Springer got released as a ZL so he could train a new missionary. His trainee's name is Elder Romay and he is originally from Venezuela but has lived in South Jordan and riverton for the last 3 or 4 years! They are both super awesome and are already tearing it up in their area. 

Tuesday we went to say goodbye to Gerardo since he won't be in our area anymore. He wasn't home when we went the first time but he called us later and invited us over because he was making Pho! It was super good haha honestly I never expected to get so much good asian food from a random hispanic guy in Mabton WA. The mission is great haha. I'm sure Gerardo will get baptized one day, he's just one of those that will take some time to get there. 

Wednesday was the actual day of the transfer so as usually I had to drive to kennewick to give the Phone presentation to all the new missionaries. That will probably be the last time I do it, which is kinda sad cuz it's pretty cool to meet all the new missionaries every transfer, but at the same time it's been like 9 months at this point haha. I've seen that presentation 8 times now lol. Afterwards we went and picked up the ZLs to give them a ride back. Elder Newton is the new ZL in grandview, he's pretty cool. I served around him in Pasco for 2 transfers. 

Thursday and friday we met some of the new people we are teaching in our new area. Hugo is super cool, he's in Alma in the book of mormon and really enjoys coming to church. He's got some obstacles that will prevent him from getting baptized suuuuper soon but we're working on it. 

On Friday we had an interested run in with some missionaries from another church that are trying to swoop in on some people we are teaching. We show up for the lesson and there were some Evangeligcals there in the middle of a lesson on the Trinity. We let them finish then at the end they asked us what we felt about the Trinity and got ready to bash with us. I knew that wouldn't result in anything very productive so instead we just shared the BoM! We did pull out a bunch of stuff from the Bible that teaches about how God will give us more scripture and the prophecies in Ezekial and Isaiah about the BoM. They weren't able to disprove the case we laid out for the Book of Mormon, everyone in the room (except for one of the two missionaries) were pretty fixed onto our message and the spirit was pretty strong. I know bashing isn't super great and I did my best to stay away from it, but it was really cool to be able to defend the BoM against these 2 people that were trying so hard to attack it. (Bless E. McBride's heart it was a pretty fast paced lesson with lots of obscure bible verses so he didn't catch much of what was happening. Spanish is a doozie sometimes) Anyways, we are going to check back in on the people we are teaching this week to see if they are actually going to progress or if they just like hearing the word of God. 

Now to finish off this super long email with an asombroso milagro!!! Yadira & Cesar came to church again!! It went super well they loved it. Cesar got a little restless during sacrament so I made him an Origami dragon and he loved it alot haha. We set a lesson later that evening to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we invited Yadira to be baptized Feb 22 and she said she would work towards that date!!! The lord is providing some elect people here in the WKM. 

De todos modos se que este correo está muy largo pero quiero testificar de la veracidad del Libro de Mormon y Jesucristo. Sé que Jesucristo vive y que él es la cabeza de esta iglesia. Sé que su expiacion tiene poder para sanar cualquier pesar que llevamos. Sé que El Libro de Mormon y la Biblia testifiquen que Jesus es el Cristo y mi Salvador. Sé que Dios hablará a cualquiera que tenga ganas para encontrar la verda. 

Los quiero mucho, hasta luego!

- Elder Thompson

Foto:

1. This is the Pho gerardo made for us. Sorry I'll try and take better Pictures next week haha.