A Text From the Mission

A random text message I received from the mission with this picture and note:

"Sharing a picture of having a good time with your son, hope you like it."

Híjole, muchísimos milagros! - Mission Week 30

Buenos diaaaas! ¿¡Como estais!?

This is gonna be a fat email....

Apparently no one sends emails home anymore...I'll still do it though, this is basically a journal since I'm so bad at writing in my real journal. 

This was a pretty awesome and eventful week! We started the week out with finding a new person. Sandra is from Guatemala and she speaks Spanish and Mam! Don't know if I have mentioned the language Mam yet but it's a dialect from Guatemala that we run into a lot. There's a ton of different dialects that we find because the language changes by the village they were born in. The dialects that I've run into so far are Mam, Quiché, Gangoval, and Mixteco! What's cool about these languages is that the Book of Mormon is actually translated into Mam and Quiche. What's not so cool about it is, most of these people don't know how to read or write Mam haha. But the point of all this was to tell you that Sandra does read and write in Spanish and in Mam so we had an awesome lesson with her and gave her two copies of the Book of Mormon in each of her languages! She is coming to our English classes super regularly as well.

Next in the week we did some service at a local thrift store, helping to sort through donations which was interesting haha. People around here have a hard time de-cluttering.

Another person we found this week was a mom named Ruby! She's going through some rough stuff right now but she has had a ton of miracles. The sister missionaries promised her that she would find her stolen purse within a week, and she did! We met her a few days after on 'accident' and found out she had recently lost her car keys. We promised her she would find them and she did! A few other miracles later that I can't share, she asked us for a blessing and as soon as we gave the blessing she said her headache left and so did her anger towards the world. We've met with her a few times and now she is preparing for baptism in a few weeks!

On Saturday of this last week I felt like our tri-panionship had kinda been slacking the last few days so I took it upon myself to make sure we had a solid, full day of work. Through street contacting and tracting we ended up finding 5 new people on that day and a few really solid potential people. We met our weekly goals and ended the week on a super great note!

I honestly can't believe that it's transfer time already, it feels like just a week ago I was leaving Basin City haha. President came and visited out apartment to give Elder Webb his Missionary debit card and to see how he had been re-adjusting to missionary life. While he was here he gave us a little sneak peak of transfers. He told us that E. Webb is staying here and either me or E. Cogswell is leaving. That could change of course but that is most likely what happens. As of right now we haven't got the call quite yet.

Quick funny story, a person in Basin City that I knew just got baptized and it blew my mind. The whole time I was there everyone though she was a member! She even told me that she was a member. The Hermanas there did some good investigating apparently and so she got baptized this last week. I'm still shook though because like 80 people though she was a member.

Our ward mission leader has a tradition of 'Pancakes and Puzzles' every transfer so that was pretty great. All you can eat pancakes and a stupid puzzle. We figured it out after a while but it was annoying haha. 

OK we usually find out about transfers by 9 or 10 but we just baaarely found out at lunchtime. Looks like E. Webb and I are staying and E. Cogswell is going to Walla Walla. Crazy stuff but I'm excited to be here for longer, things are starting to pick up and be exciting in Herm-Town! I'll miss E. Cogswell, he has probably been my favorite companion up to this point, it will be nice to have only 4 people in our apartment instead of five tho haha.  

I think that's it for this week and I actually have pictures this time :) E. Webb has a nice camera and so I'm stealing some of his pics

Los amo! 

-Elder Thompson

Washington Kennewick Mission

8202 W. Quinault Ave, Ste D

Kennewick, WA 99336

Fotos (Since I have So many It's making me do it as a Google Drive link thing...Hopefully it works)

1.   Most of our zone doing laundry in Umatilla
2. Pic of me
3. Silly Pic after a District Council
4. E. Webb wanted to take pictures
5. We spent forever making this map
6. Us after a day of work at the Church
7. x2
8. A baptism we went to for E. Cogswell in Umatilla
9. E. Cogswell Driving
10. E. Skinner teaching us about the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse 
11. E. Webb Asleep
12. Picture post-pancake puzzle palooza 
13. More District Pics
14. x2

Mission Instagram Pictures

The mission Instagram page had a couple pictures with Elder Thompson in them this week!

Borrachos y Tacos - Mission Week 29

Oye como le va?

I was so drained at the end of this week. I'll tell ya why in a sec haha. 

At the beginning of this week we had game night (not sure if I've mentioned this already) so we play board games with some recent converts cuz we have permission. We played this horror game thing that supposedly is different every time you play it.

Wednesday I had an exchange with E. Nordin our DL and it was pretty good. We tried to find some people and met a nice family or two. The rest of our time was finding and painting signs for English Classes. 

Thursday we were working on Umatilla and we felt like we should go visit a dude named Mario that comes to English Classes. We found his house and invited him to have a lesson with us after classes and he said he would! We had a super awesome Restoration lesson and put him on date to be Baptized! He's super cool and played soccer and basketball after with us. He destroyed us at soccer haha.

Saturday was a crazy day that made me tired. We got invited into this apartment for a taco and to chat and there were like 7 dudes in there. At first if was fun, we were kinda joking around with eachother and then eventually they got pretty drunk. We tried to talk about Gospel stuff but we had a hard time understanding them and apparently said some things that made them upset so we had to get out of there haha but it was just super draining. we all got out of there just beat tired from trying to understand borracho Spanish.

After that we stopped by one last person for the night and she talked at us for like an hour. Just vented all her personal struggles and relationship drama at us. Idk what it was but that just drained me too haha.

Mothers day was good! It was fun to have some set time to call home and we had a good chat! I was telling my mom how grateful I was that she taught me how to do basic life stuff. Happy (late) Mothers Day to all the Moms out there :)

Love y'all!

- Elder Thompson

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