The Three Amigos - Week 28

Buenos días!! Tuvimos una sorpresa esta semana..hay tres de nosotros ahora! Recibimos otro misionero el miércoles porque regresó a la misión después de algún tiempo en casa.

Good Morning! We had a surprise this week... there are three of us now! We got another missionary on Wednesday because he came back to the mission after some time home.

His name is E. Webb, and his story is that he was on the mission for about 3 months in 2016 then he has to go home to get his gallbladder out. Then after some time he came back to the mission for about 11 months in 2017. He got sick again and went home for about a year and a half and now he decided to come back again. Pretty crazy stuff. We got the call about it probably less than 3 hours before we were supposed to be in the Tri Cities to pick him up so it was a pretty crazy surprise haha. He's pretty cool and he has really good Spanish since he lived in Mexico for a few months while he was home. He is from Highland, UT and his parents own Rocky mountain chocolate factory and a few coldstones. 

OK, as for the rest of our week it went by really fast. We had a few lessons this week which was good. Met some really nice people and got a little bit of food :) 

We did some service this week too, mowing lawns and weeding for old people mostly. One of the lawns we mowed was for this old lady that was in the hospital for a little bit. While she was in the hospital, her granddaughter-in-law came to her house and sold all of her furniture and took a bunch of money from her house. Crazy stuff, she was such a nice lady too so we were mad when we heard that haha. 

Just yesterday we found this guy named Angel. He was super funny on the doorstep so we started messing with him and joking around. We ended up talking with him for more than an hour which was funny because he said he didn't have time haha. He taught us a bunch of Spanish sayings and new words that we could use. While we were talking, E. Cogswell dropped his plastic cup that used to have some water in it and this guys said, "Ohhh este muchacho está borracho de agua?" (Is this guy drunk from water? and we were dead laughing. There were quite a few times where we were rolling because of this dude. If he ever said something that we didn't understand he would say, "me entiendes Mendez o te explico Frederico" which is kinda like "You understand or do I have to explain" but it rhymes in Spanish. Good times :) 

Colorín, colorado, esta cuenta se ha terminado. 

We just got word that converts can go to the temple as soon as they are ready and worthy to get a temple reccomend! The work is progressing! 

We found out as well that we just got a $20 increase on our food budget so that's super nice too. 

Love y'all! Hope everyone is having a good spring. 

- E. Thompson 

Getting into it - Mission Week 27

Hola hola ¿como están?

I actually have some extra time to write today, funny story how that happened... Our apartment got a call at like 6:00am from the Hermanas that live in the same complex as us. Someone was banging on their door and shouting super loud. That woke us all up pretty fast when we heard that on the phone call haha. We rushed over there in our PJs and no one was there. We just missed them. This happens every so often apparently... there are a couple three creepy people round here.

Jump back to a week ago, on Pday we tried to find a boot shop so E. Cogswell could buy some boots and we also tried to find a tailor so I could fix my pants. We didn't find either of them sadly but it was good to see what stores are around.

This week was more finding, which in our case was just more tracting. 2.5 weeks later we are juuust getting started with some good work. I don't know if getting doubled-in to an area is normally like this, but the sisters before us left 0 people being taught and pretty much no info about anythibg else.

We had a bunch of return appointments this week, most of which fell through but we did get in a time or two. The best one was this young family, Eddy and Berta. We had set up to come by at 8 because that's when Eddy gets back from work. We had never even met him before but he invited us right in and asked if we wanted food. The answer to that question of course is always 'Yes' and we got some bomb frijole con arroz y pollo asado. They are super nice, we are excited to teach them.

We did some cleaning service for a lady the English elders are teaching. They have like 15 ducks so we got to mess around with them for a little bit. The boy in that family is like 13 but knows pretty much everything you could know about birds. He was super sweet and thankful for all the stuff we were doing for his mom. 

Yesterday we had a cool meeting about the new Spanish sacrament meeting that is starting soon. Currently we translate every meeting live and it's a pain. We found out that pretty much the entire month of May is going to be contacting members and inviting them to the Spanish meeting. We are pretty excited about it, especially because the Stake has identified some things that need to change for this congregation to last longer than a year. 

I'm still loving Hermiston, our apartment is super fun, we are all pretty good friends at this point. I'll try and take some better pictures this week! Also I just hit 6 months which is craaaazy.....and I turn 19 in less than a month. El tiempo vuela.... 

Love y'all! 

-Elder Thompson 

Fotos:

1. Apartment C6 Squad p-day car selfie 

Service Galore - Mission Week 26

¡Buenos días hermanos y hermanas!

This week was a bit crazy. We got a lot of our area stuff figured out so we finally have a small grip of what's going on here!

Most of our actual finding time this week was just Tracting. The Hermanas on the other half did a ton of Tracting, with a lot of success. ours was less fruitful haha. we found one new dude but haven't been able to contact him again.

Pretty much the rest of our week was doing service. We helped like 3 different people move, helped a guy build a computer, and moved 4 pallets of dog food. We keep track of how many hours we are out proselyting and this week it looked like we were slacking because of how much service we did. it was like 20 hours haha.

I've been teaching 2 elders how to solve a rubix cube. they are racing to see who can do it first and after a week they are stilled tied haha. it's pretty funny seeing them compete. Also they officially adopted me as a Texan...y'all

Lemme tell ya about our upstairs neighbor Freddy. He and his buds love to play Mexican music all day every day and occasionally there is this one song that has a veggie-tails esque tuba and it's super funny. We all get down whenever it comes on :)

We had zone conference and it was pretty good. Long as always but it was cool to actually know some people at zone conference.

Elder Cogswell sang in sacrament and did a really good job! I didn't end up playing the piano cuz we didn't have enough time during the week for me to learn the piece.

That's pretty much it, sorry the email is so scattered, it's hard from my phone haha. Here's a weird farmer phrase for this week instead of pictures. 

"Hi how are ya" 

"Well I'm finer than a frog split three ways" 

- Elder Thompson 

Herm-Town - Mission Week 25

Hey so I'm in Hermiston, Oregon now! "Land of the Strange, Home of the Watermelon" according to a missionary here. A lot of things about day to day life are different and so far it has been super great. We don't really have as much access to computers as we did in Basin City so for the most part, I'll be doing this from my phone. If it looks a little different or there are typos, that's why :)

The week was kinda crazy. 

I packed all day Tuesday and we went around and said goodbye to a lot of the members and people we were teaching in Basin City. It was pretty sad to say bye to them, but it was good to go around and see them all one more time. I got some chocolate covered cherries from one of the farmers we were pretty close with :) They are suuuuper good.

Wednesday was transfer day so bright and squirrly Elder Harmon and I headed into Pasco. The Hermanas that we worked with in Basin City were also affected by transfers and they put our area 'catch phrase' on their car and drove the whole way to town. apparently people were looking and waving and stuff as they drove. (pic included). We piled in a 12 man van and made the rounds around the mission. 2.5hr later we made it to Hermiston! 

Elder Cogswell is my new companion and he is freaking great. I can tell we are gonna get along and have a blast in Herm Town. he's a really good singer and I'm already learning some accompaniment for a song he's gonna sing in sacrament! E. Cogswell was in Umatilla doing English and Spanish work last transfer, and because the Stake got reorganized here the mission's areas changed too. E. Cogswell left English work in Umatilla but still covered Spanish and then we gained half of Hermiston for Spanish only. We're the first missionaries in this new area so we are doubled-in and we have a completely fresh start. 

We live in an apartment with 2 other elders, E. Nordin and E. Skinner. They are the English elders of one of the wards in Hermiston. I've only lived with my companions up to this point and with 4 of us here it's a party. We also have a nice kitchen! I haven't had a kitchen or even a sink in 5 months and it's super great. In our apartment, everyone is from Texas, except for me... I've already heard about why Texas is the best state multiple times haha :) 

The first two days were mostly moving/setting up stuff. Since we were new to this area and apartment we had to move beds and other furniture into the new apartment. Problem was, we were also getting new flooring in our bedroom so we had to do some crazy stuff to get 4 peoples stuff and beds into one room so the floor was clear. It was kinda annoying not being able to unpack for 2.5 days but it turned out alright. Thursday afternoon we were able to start setting up the apartment and now we're all settled in. 

We had 0 information about our area for the first 4 days so we mostly just visited people tjay E. Cogswell already knew about and also all the apartment setup stuff. I won't go into it but basically because of some weird stuff with the app we use for keeping track of our area, 4 areas in the mission ended up not having any info, but it's fixed now :) 

It's really exciting to be in this area at this time because they just announced that there will be a Spanish congregation soon in Hermiston. Currently, the missionaries have to translate in the English sacrament meeting, and it's pretty rough to live-translate a meeting. 

We are pretty busy today, getting haircuts, cleaning, sports, stuff like that. 

Thats pretty much it for this week, we're going to go hard this week and find some people to teach! I'm really excited about this transfer, everything is different, but it's going well. 

Love y'all! 

- Elder Thompson 

Lentisimo (Also transfers upcoming) - Mission Week 24

"Time is running out." 

- Gods Current Prophet on the Earth President Nelson 

Holy frijole It's a good thing conference was good. We had a really slow week. 

If you would have told me 2 years ago that I would be wanted to talk to more people in a week I would call you crazy. This week, Basin City was dead. It was spring break so all the English people were gone and it's warm here now so all the farmers are playing catch-up from the bad weather we had earlier. This means that all the Spanish people are working longer hours in the fields. Suuuper frustrating. 

As a cherry-on-top we had a Branch Activity that we planned that literally n o   o n e   c a m e    t o. Ok rant is over haha. Without the downs, the up's wouldn't seem nearly as good I guess :) 

General Conference was super awesome. I hope everyone's minds are sufficiently blown from the Prophet telling us that "Time is running out." All the talks were super good, my companion has a pretty good idea of taking all the invitations from General Conference and making a list of them so we remember what our leaders have counseled us to do. 

Of course there were all sorts of rumors as usual haha. There been a little thing going on called "Mish Twit' Or "Mission Twitter" were a bunch of missionaries are just posting comments on this app like it's twitter and everyone was predicting a time change for missionaries. I think no changes or adjustments came during conference because they are trying to set an example for Bishops and other leaders around the world. 

Elder Holland's talk was super awesome (as usual). I think it would be appropriate to assume that anything that could be announced during general conference that would distract from the spirit we feel, should be announced outside of conference, just like we should do in our wards. 

Well we just got our transfer call and looks like I'm headed to...... *drum roll* 

Hermiston, Oregon! I'll be serving with Elder Cogswell who is actually my 'brother' in missionary relationships. (We were trained by the same person)

I'm pretty pumped! Hermiston is SUPER big compared to Basin City. It will be completely different, but change is good. 

I realized the other day that I forgot to send a pic a couple weeks ago so I'll include it now. 

Love ya'll! 

- Elder Thompson

Washington Kennewick Mission

8202 W. Quinault Ave, Ste D

Kennewick, WA 99336

Fotos: 

1. Super fuzzy pic of our district at that pizza place. From left to right: Me, E. Escandon, E. Harmon, Hna. McDermott, Hna. Davidson, E. Norman, E. Farmer (behind the head of..), E. Wood. 

So much fooood... also memes - Mission Week 23

"Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you but what happens inside of you"

- Harold B. Lee 

Buenos Dias and all that, this week was... a week that existed. 

Something I've quickly learned about farm life is that when spring hits, everyone is super busy. It was a struggle to find anyone to talk to this week because Basin City was just a ghost town. 

Earlier last week I had exchanges to Connell again! It's been a while since I've been there but it was pretty sweet as always. They have a man who's on date for baptism and he super cool. He used to be a chef in Mexico, then he moved here and just works in the fields. Kinda a sad story because he's got a lot of talent. He fed us enchiladas and they were bien rico. 

We had a branch party planned for last Saturday (Apparently). No one told us about it until the day before it happened so we didn't have any time to invite the people we were teaching. It was kinda frustrating but some random guy ended up coming and we talked to him, we'll probably start teaching him this week if we can. That was my first experience having real carne asada tho so that was good. 

We had a linger-longer after church and Edgar showed up! He explicitly told us he wasn't going to come to church anymore so that was a super nice surprise to see him there. 

Also, we got to teach a guy behind the counter of a convenience store haha. It was kinda funny because we were in the middle of this lesson and a member walks in and just buys some chicken tenders and walks out without saying a word... I think he was kinda confused but I guess he was hungry enough to interrupt our lesson.

Other than that, it was kinda a slow week. Spring here is super pretty, though. We saw the best rainbow I've ever seen in my life here (got a pic too). General Conference HYPE is real! I hope everyone is excited to get blasted by revelation! Come to General Conference with a question, pray about that question, and you will receive personal revelation as you sincerely watch/listen to General Conference. 

Love y'all thanks for your support! 

- Elder Thompson 

Fotos: 

1. #GenConfHype meme
2. Awesome rainbow
3. Terrible picture of a hawk (we see like 30 a day, there are so many birds here) 

Ups and Downs - Mission Week 22

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things  are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might  be miserable like unto himself.  

2 Nephi 2: 27

What a week :) 

Well some sad news to get it out of the way, the person that we had on date for baptism this week ended up deciding to not get baptized. It was super sad, we had a really good lesson with him where he said he was ready to commit. The next day It was like he was a different person. Complete 180, and now feels like he has to see God to be baptized and that the Scriptures are just middle-men between him and God. We're not sure exactly what happened, but we warned him that things would happen that would try to prevent his baptism. We're super bummed because he'd made such good progress and we truly felt like he was ready. Once he's a little more humble I'm sure he will get baptized. 

But, asi es la vida de un misionero. Agency is rough sometimes. 

Alright back to the good stuff! We had a ton of meetings this week. (Good stuff.. I know :) ) We drove to Pasco 3 times in 3 days for various things. One of those things was Spanish Conference! All the Spanish Missionaries got to get together for a few hours to receive some training on working with the Hispanic People. It was really good and I got to see my Trainer, Elder Barlow,  again! Everyone that had been in Basin City was excited to hear about the people we are teaching. 

We also had interviews this week. I know I haven't been here super long but it's weird to think that Pres. and Sister White will be leaving in 2 transfers! Super crazy, I'll be at like 9 months when that happens..... Tooo fast. 

We talked to this crazy dude named Edwin this week! We'd met him in passing a few times but we talked to him for a minute and he's a character. He loves to talk about how smart he is and how he used to be studying to be a Pastor. My favorite quote from him thus far is, "I'm a good person. I have the mental capacity to understand anything. I have faith in God. I've never ever been to prison, never EVER have I smoked even ONE cigar.........I do drink beer though...I do.... BUT I recognize that it's bad and that's what matters." Maybe it was just funnier in Spanish but... you get the idea. 

We went exploring this week to see if we could find a place that I hadn't already been and it was interesting! Basin City is so small, we run out of things to do sometimes since there are so few people here. We saw a road on the map that skirts the edge of our area and follows the Columbia river so we decided to check it out since I'd never been there. We didn't see a single house! Now we know, haha. (40 miles later) 

Ok one more story, sorry I know this Email is long. We went to a persons house to try and teach their family and the Dad pulls up in this dinky little green pickup full of hay. He gets out, says hi to us and tells us to come with him. We follow him around the corner and he puts on 2 full length arm gloves, walks into a pen with a bunch of rams, and starts chasing one. We're super confused at this point. Finally he gets a hold of one and suddenly 2 other mexicans pop out of a shack and tackle the same ram. One of them shouts something about "the baby" and... well to be brief, they were apparently helping one give birth. I won't go into too much detail...but ya know it was messy. #farmlife 

The funniest part was afterwards (the baby didn't actually come out, idk why) he said, "Oh we do this at the dairy all the time with cows. I've never done it with a ram but it's probably the same thing." 

Ok welp that's pretty much it. We're going to this new pizza place today as a District and I'm super pumped because I haven't had pizza in a hot minute and it's apparently reaaallly good. 

Les amo a todos ustedes! 

- Elder Thompson

Washington Kennewick Mission

8202 W. Quinault Ave, Ste D

Kennewick, WA 99336

Fotos: 

1. Our new car just hit 1k miles
2. 2 Mexicans about to get wet and wild with a momma ram
3. & 4. Spanish Conference