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 

Spa & So much food - Mission Week 43

Buenos días amigos,

I made it to Kennewick safe and sound with my new companion Elder Jones! A little about him, he's a convert of about 2.5 years and the only member in his family! His conversion story is pretty crazy and is a testimony to how a good friend who lives the Gospel can change the lives of others for the better. We live in an apartment with 2 other Elders, E. Jacobsen and E. O'Donnal. 

Our apartment is not nearly as nice as my last one but it's not too bad. The weirdest thing about this apartment is our downstairs neighbor, Moe. Now, that's not actually his name, just what the missionaries call him. He and missionaries have been neighbors for years and every time that a missionary stomps a little too hard on the floor, he responds with a hit to his ceiling to let us know he's mad. There has been an ongoing battle for a while now; him complaining to the office, missionaries complaining to the office.. etc. Management got so sick of complaints that they said if they get one more complaint from either of us, both of us are getting evicted haha. So now Moe is way more aggressive and sometimes he will just bang on his ceiling for minutes at a time. Honestly it's super funny, especially since I've never actually met him. 

Our area is pretty cool, it reminds me of Basin City a lot. Super rural, slight cow smell all the time. Good stuff. This area has like 0 faith from the rest of the mission tho. It's always been pretty dead and low faith. I was pretty mad on transfer day when I looked at our area book because it was EMPTY. There was one eternigator family being taught and 2 other people, absolutely no notes about lessons they had with these people, they hadn't daily planned in Months....it was ridiculous. Like, I get it if an area is rough and not a lot happens, but when you don't plan or report what DID happen, that's just not cool. Anyway, our first day of proselytizing after 2 days of office work to fix the mission after transfers, we found 2 new people to teach (double what they found last transfer). The English Elders, Elder Jones, and I can see a lot of potential here, so we are excited for this transfer. 

Like I mentioned earlier, we worked in the office a lot right after transfers, our mission created a new zone so that completely destroyed a lot of stuff haha. We also presented to the group of new missionaries which is always fun. A lot of Elders that I'm really tight with are training this transfer and it was awesome to see them. Elder Jones is doing pretty good with all our extra responsibilities, slowly but surely he will pick it up. 

We had English Classes and correlation so we have met a few members already. We also visited our Branch mission leader and his wife and had dinner with a family in our area. The dinner was suuuuper good. She loves to cook for the missionaries and I swear it was like and 11 course meal or something crazy like that. Corn on the cob, salad, potatoes, a different salad, fresh tomatoes, apples, roast beef, roasted veggies, soda, and creme puffs. Soo much food but it was so good. Definitely not the Hispanic meal I was expecting but I can't complain. She also has a home spa with all sorts of massage machines, so my favorite moment of the night was I was sitting in this machine that massaged my legs and feet while eating cream puffs.... in a trailer home.. in the middle of nowhere 20 mins from the nearest town. haha I dunno I just thought it was funny. 

Oh yeah I forgot, before I got transferred we went around and said bye to a few people we were working with. Got some good pics with them. Also I got flat tire #2 on the mission.... Somewhere in the week we went to the temple as well. 

On Sunday church was really good, the speakers were a family that just moved from Pasco which was pretty funny since I just moved from Pasco too! They did a really good job on their talks. In Sunday school we talked about how trials can turn into blessings which is something I've really come to know while being on my mission. I know that every hard thing we have to do, will teach us some lesson that we can use later in our life. Sometimes they are for us, but sometimes we gain the ability to empathize with others! 

Los amo, la iglesia es verdadera :) 

-Elder Thompson 

Oh yeah how could I forget! Edgar got baptized this weekend!!! I was teaching him in Basin City and he got soooo close when I was working with him. He is going to the YSA now! I was so happy when I heard that :) 

Fotos:

1. La familia Casteñeda 

2. José Acosta from Uruguay 

3. Temple day 

4. Elder Harmon in the Foot massager 

5. Flat tire :(

Traslados y Bendiciones - Mission Week 42

Ayyy it's transfer time again. This transfer was one week longer than normal so everyone was kinda out of whack. Some crazy stuff is happening this transfer! Our mission just created a new zone of only Spanish Missionaries which is super cool. Sadly, I'm getting transfered out of that zone haha. I'm going to the Kennewick Spanish Branch serving with Elder Jones. Elder Ward is going to West Richland as a Zone Leader. We were pretty surprised to see that we were getting transfered since the Tech Missionary area has changed so much lately. I've been 'one-and-doned' three times in a row now. Lots of packing haha.

This week was weird cuz all of our super consistent lessons got cancelled. Don't know what happened, but we were pretty bummed by that. It was Stake conference and the Spanish session was at 8:30 AM so hardly any non-members came. (Not sure whose idea that was to schedule it at that time, pues ni modo haha) It was alright, we had Elder Reuben Acosta, who is a seventy somewhere, come and speak. 

We had like 4 or 5 opportunities to give Priesthood blessings this week. It was really cool to see and it was great practice since most of them were in Spanish. We got called by our Elders Quorum president to ask us if we could give a blessing to a member who was in the Hospital in our area. We said yes and went to find her room. We found it, chatted for a bit and gave her the blessing and then afterwards the nurse told us there was someone else who wanted to see us. We were super confused but followed her to another room. Turns out the two people (John and Jill) were from Basin City, although I didn't know them when I served there, and they wanted a blessing too!

Jill is a returning inactive member who has a calling now and goes to the temple! She's married to John who has been excommunicated for nearly 20 years now. His family has always been active in the church and he remembered his dad giving blessings to his family as a kid. For various reasons they didn't want to tell their ward that they were in the hospital but they wanted a blessing so it was quite the miracle they they saw us in the Hospital! It was pretty special to give John a blessing and he was pretty moved by it. Hopefully it was an experience he can remember and have a desire to return to church!

The rest of this week was kinda slow. Lots of cancelled lessons like I said but it wasn't too bad. We met some cool people that I could see progressing. 

There are these 3 kids in a trailer park in West Richland that we are super tight with. Idk if I already wrote about them but if not, here we go. Their names are Miguel(ito), Remington, and Bryson. We race them all the time and they say a ton of funny stuff. Some of my favorite quotes:

"Hey have you met nice lady? We call her that cuz her is nice" 

"Hey that's my fruzins house. Ya know he's my friend and also my cousin so he's my fruzin" 

"My dad is in the military and he's also a cop so yeah we get double money" 

Anyway that's pretty much it. I got a pic for you today, it's our zone after a soccer game. We have practice every morning and games on Pday :) Gonna miss that for sure. 

Los amo 

Elder Thompson 

Elote - Mission Week 41

Buenos días!

(I did it again, I forgot to send it last week. Here is the email for the week of Aug. 5th)

Not gonna lie I freaked out a bit when I saw what week # I realized there are only 52 weeks in a year....

Anyways this week was pretty good. We had a lot of stuff happening this week so it flew by pretty quick. On Wednesday we went to Walla Walla, Milton-Freewater & Pendleton to do some phone audits. I honestly don't remember if I've already talked about audits already... but if not, we go through people's cell phones to make sure they are following all the rules with technology use. In Milton everyone was super obedient which was awesome to see. I got to see E. Cogswell again which was super fun! My trainer E. Barlow is a Zone Leader in Walla Walla as well so we gave him and his comp a ride to Pendleton which is like an extra hour away from Pasco so we had quite the little road trip. It was fun though. Pendleton is famous for its Rodeo the Pendleton Roundup. They have a massive stadium for it. The town is kinda nestled in the hills so it's very steep in some parts and it has very stylized houses. We didn't really have time to stop and take pics or anything so sorry about that but Google probably has some pics :) Almost all of the missionaries in Pendleton right now are going home in a week, so their phones weren't super great on the obedience side of things. We left at like 9 that morning and didn't get back until 5pm! 200 miles later... 

Thursday we had MLC with all the Zone Leaders and STLs in the mission. It was super good, we had trainings on Correcting with Love, High love, high expectations, and inviting by the spirit. President and Sister Rasmussen are doing great and the mission loves them so much! 

Friday we spent most of our day contacting people to try and get them to an activity that our Barrio was putting on. Every year they have an activity where they buy hundreds of fresh picked Elotes (Sweet Corn on the Cob) and we cook em up and eat them Hispano style. We invited probably 35 people and on Saturday only one family came, but it was good and they had a good time. 

The Elote was super good too. I though it might not taste good but I would totally eat it again. So ya got a boiled Corn on the Cob, you put Mayonnaise all over it, sprinkle some parmesan cheese, tajin, and hot sauce. Top it off with a squeezed lime. Suuuuper good. There were probably more than a hundred people that came and we still didn't eat all the Elotes haha. 

Church was awesome yesterday, our Sunday school teacher threw down and taught the ward how to actually bear testimony. No stories, no thanking your family, etc. The testimony meeting after was probably the best Spanish Testimony Meeting I've been to. 

That's pretty much it! Que les vaya bien 

- Elder Thompson 

Mission Weeks 39 & 40- Servicio

Ok so I totally wrote an email last week, just forgot to send it. Guess I'll just do the mega email. 

Week 39

Que tal buenos días, ya mero que voy a recordar lo que pasó esta semana...pues ni modo

Ok ok so this week we did a ton of service. We had a whole day of service and it was pretty fun. We woke up and played soccer first, then at 9 we went and helped this lady clear her yard. She had a bunch of junk and a shed that the city tore down. And loooots of weeds. Me and Elder Schmitt ate some suuuuper spicy Chile's from this lady's garden haha. She had a bunch of tires so we moved them and we found a praying mantis that we put in an arena with a bunch of other bugs. Nothing happened tho. After that we went to this lady's sisters house and she fed us some carne asada tacos that were soooo good. Maria is her name and she is honestly crazy haha. It was super funny because she kept trying to teach us self defence with these weird moves she learned online. Also she gave us a bunch of 'tips' for cooking. It was like classic Hispanic superstition combined with a ton of questionable knowledge from the internet. She showed us how her dog talks and it was freaky, it sounded like a baby.

After that we went and sorted food for 'second harvest' and I think we ended up doing 6000 lbs of apples or something like that.

We had lessons with a few people this week which was awesome. We taught Miguel and his wife about the God head since they had a ton of questions. I dont think they really got what's we were saying so we might have to come back to that topic.

We had a lesson with Rosie while I was on exchanges with Elder Reyes. While we were waiting for her to get out of the shower we played soccer with Julio and Aliyah which was pretty fun. Jesse is recovering from getting shot and she showed is his scars. It was pretty gnarly, it went from his neck all the way down the middle of his body to the stomach. We had a quick lesson and checked that they were still going to come to church. They didn't end up coming for some reason... idk why we haven't been able to contact em.

We had interviews with President and Sister Rasmussen this week. It was really good! They are super awesome. I think they are really going to have a positive impact on the mission. We have been helping them set up lots of stuff for their house and their phones. I've been to the mission home a ton now, not many missionaries go more than two times their mission (arriving and leaving). 

Time is still flying! I'm about at 9 months now. It's been great to hear about all the people I know who are leaving on missions! It's cool to see how the Gospel really is being taken to all nations in todos lados del Mundo! 

Week 40

This week we had a lot of office stuff to do so I don't have a ton of interesting stuff haha. 

We did service for the same lady we did like 2 weeks ago. We weeded for a while and unloaded a trailer. Then she invited all 12 of us to eat some weird beans and stuff. We went back out to start working and she told us to go do something with her chickens. I think she has almost like 50 chickens, 10 geese, and a bunch of ducks. Elder Reyes apparently knows how to hypnotize chickens so we ran around and caught a bunch of them. It was so weird, you put them on the ground and with a stick draw lines starting from their beak. After that you let go and they just lay on the ground for a few seconds then hop up like normal!

This weekend we taught a lot of lessons which was super nice since people haven't really been letting us in lately. We found like 5 new people and have a few new potentials. Rosie's family has kinda disappeared and we don't know why.... :/ They won't answer their phone and haven't been answering the door. Pray that we can find them again!

¡Los amo a todos ustedes! 

-Elder Thompson