The three jarritos - Mission Week 91

Hey buenas tardes 

So I dont think I mentioned last week that we were having transfers but...we had transfers haha. Luckily I'm staying here in Kennewick for another 6 weeks and I got another companion so we are in a Trio! The crazy part is that our new companion is Elder Peirce haha. I lived with him for 3 months when I served in Prosser and he trained E Faleumu sooo it's kinda weird. We all already know each other super well and it's been a lot of fun. Our zone got a bunch of new missionaries too which is always loads of fun 😊

Mission life is still good we are still locked down pretty much but I've realized that my experience during COVID is almost entirely dependant on my attitude so I'm doing my best to stay positive and have lots of faith. We have been doing a lot of stuff for the Facebook pages, mostly administrative stuff so it's not very interesting to talk about but I'm learning a lot. 

We've been trying to get to know our zone and stuff but they rolled us back on some of the things we are allowed to do with other missionaries so it's a little harder now. We played a little bit of ultimate frisbee with out district which was a blast. 

E Peirce likes to cook a lot so we bought a ton of good meat this week and we're gonna eat like kings haha. We also discovered that KFC started selling a half gallon bag of soda so we had to get one for the memes 

Time is flying! I've been trying to catch up on some of my journaling and it's a really long process. I hope it is worth it though, there are definitely experiences I don't want to forget from my mission. I'm sure it will be good when it's done 😂

Anyways thanks for the prayers and support as always! Les quiero y espero que tengan una semana buenísima. Nunca olviden que Dios es consciente de ustedes.

- Elder Thompson 

1. The three jarritos 

2. The KFC Half gallon 

3. The three jarritos at the temple 

Hope Drive Thru - Mission Weeks 89 & 90

Heyo I got lazy last week and didn't wanna write an email so here's a little catch up: 

The beginning of last week (2 weeks ago now) some Elder in a different zone thought he had COVID cuz he couldn't taste anything. They had recently been all together as a zone and so they made the whole zone completely quarantine till he got his test results back. We got dragged into this cuz the APs are in their zone and we live with them so we didn't leave our apartment for 5 days....yeah not fun. At all. Here's the kicker...the Elder tested negative and realized that he had eaten extremely spicy wings from Bdubs and that was why he couldn't taste anything. Sooooo dumb but it's ok we survived. We still had a lesson or two during that time. 

So we spent the 4th of July inside, but some sweet members dropped us off icecream and some barbecue supplies so we made some good burgers and watched a movie. We finished it off doing some zoom pictionary with our zone! It was actually super fun, we'll definitely do it again. 

The next week we had our first in person Mission Leadership council. Everyone was social distanced, we had masks, and we were outside so, a little....different than normal but it was cool to see everyone. We had a good talk about missionary work during the corona time. One thing I'm realizing is the missionaries right now that are struggling, they are that way because they are too focused on themselves. I won't rant about it here but that's they key haha. I hope missionaries will learn to focus on their areas more than themselves.

This week was super good! We saw a ton of awesome miracles! The first one was that Elder Faleumu put a post on a few local Facebook groups about offering free service. We got like over 500 likes and more than a hundred comments which resulted in about 40 referrals being sent around the mission. 

Another miracle was the Hope Drive-Thru. This was an event that Sister Jensen and Sister Lowe have been planning for a few weeks. Basically it was a drive through thing where people would stop at a booth and get a little message about a topic like service or family history and then we offer to come visit them later to talk about it more. Our whole zone was involved in setting it up and manning the stations. It ended up being super fun! We had more than 90 cars come. I'll include lots of pictures from it  

Another miracle we found a new person to teach. Her name is Maria and she used to talk to missionaries like 2 years ago. They helped her to stop smoking and she was super grateful for that. She's a little stubborn but I think she has some potential! 

So yeah things are good. I got my flight plans this past week and that's a major bummer but I'm surviving haha. Thanks for all the prayers! 

Les quiero, que tengan una semana súper buena!

- Elder Thompson 

1. Hope Drive Scripture Station 

2. Post hope drive snow cones 

3. Hope Drive Popsicle Station 

4. Tennis lessons in the morning with Diane! 

5. Morning Hike 

6. Hope Drive sign painting 

7. Hope Drive 

Mission Week 88 - Facebook Skillz

Hola Buenas tardes que tal

This week was super good!! The highlight of the week was that we had 2 meetings with 2 professional social media/marketing people. One of them does mostly ads and she blew our minds with the possibilities of Facebook ads. 

The next one was with a lady that does a ton of different stuff so she helped us refocus and make a plan to see more engagement on our page. I wont go into all the details just cuz it's boring stuff, but it was super interesting to me. 

Other awesome things, we had more lessons with Kathy and Suzanne! We learned a bunch more about them, uncovered some concerns, and I think we have an idea or two about what to teach next. We did some good service for Suzanne, but it was suuuuper hot haha. We ended up taking a lot longer than we planned cuz I had to chop some giant branches with a hand saw haha. 

Anyways short email, but les quiero que espero que les vayan muy bien 

Elder Thompson 

Titulo interesante - Mission Weeks 86 & 87

Well hows it going everyone? I'm doing well, I just totally forgot to write an email for last week haha. I'll do my best to remember everything. 

We've really enjoyed being able to see our members in person! Putting a face to the name is always great. We've visited probably 15 different families in the past two weeks, so we were super busy. Being outside for the visits has only caused problems a few times, like a thunderstorm that prompted the closing prayer and some gnarly wind that blew our dinner all over the place. 

We visited the Bowers family 2 sundays ago and it was super fun because they have a daughter that is in the middle of her online MTC experience so we had a really good conversation about advice for studying Preach My Gospel and also just working under lockdown. They asked us why we served our missions and we had a very spirit filled message about that as the 3 of us shared. The whole family is super awesome!

We had interviews with President and Sister Rasmussen last week and as usual, they were awesome! They said our zone was doing very well, that everyone is happy and high faith in the Lord's vision for our mission. 

Another family we visited were the Rowleys!Now, I already knew the Rowleys before we had ever met them in Kennewick becauase Brent's dad lives in Basin City and he was my ward mission leader when I was in training up there. During christmas time, Brent, his wife, and their newborn baby were  visiting. We met them both and had a lesson & didn't think much of it. Well here we are 20 months later and now they moved into my ward in Kennewick and that baby they just had is now walking and talking and a little kid. It kinda freaked me out, just thinking about all the stuff that happens in 20 months! 

Some other miracles from this week: 

- We found 2 new people to teach! The good Lord is good. 

- We got 2 good lessons in with Kevin, one of the people we have been teaching for a while. We are developing a really good relationship with him. 

- We made some good plans with our ward mission team to train our ward missionaries

- We got 4 new ward missionaries!

Also I have some pictures from this week! 

Les quiero, y no se olviden que dios les quiere tambien 

- Elder Thompson 

Fotos de la semana: 

1. Peacefull driving 

2 & 3 silly pic with the STLs

4. Zone church 

5. Dinner with the Bowers 

Reassigned Missionaries - Mission Week 85

Hey everyone this will be a quick one, I kinda forgot to write am email so I'm rushing it. 

I said goodbye to E Newton and got E Faleumu. We were coordinating one of the church buildings where people go for transfers so we had 2 long days of standing outside making sure everyone got to their areas with their correct sim card and Keys. It was wild cuz we had 45 reassigned missionaires come so there was a lot of moving around within the mission. 

In our zone we got 4 reassigned missionaries. Sis Anderson from Curitiba Brazil, Elder Meek from Chihuahua Mexico, Elder Wahlquist from Buenos Aires Argentina, and Elder Allfrey from Naga Philippines. They are all super cool! 

Luckily this week some things opened up for us, we can now visit people in person but we have to stay outside. Also we can get together as districts and play sports!! It's been so long haha I was so exhausted today when we finished playing ultimate frisbee today. 

Those are the highlights, have a stellar week everyone! God is good, the work moves on! 

- Elder Thompson 

Fotos: 

1. Departing Missionaries

More Birthdays and Transfers - Mission Week 84

I'm going to try and do this whole letter using voice to text so if anything is weird that's why.

all right some of the highlights for this week or you had two more birthdays. Sister Jensen had a birthday on the 27th and we had a "luau"with a little bit of limbo and some coconut cake. Then later in the week it was Sister choate Elder Dawson's birthday. For Sister Choate birthday we went and decorated her car just like she did to ours last week. It was pretty fun! We put a ton of balloons and streamers and sticky notes all over it and we even put some snacks inside the balloons. Elder Newton went crazy and did some reflective lettering so that when you looked in the rearview mirror you could see the word birthday.

For Elder Dawson's birthday, Elder Newton and I got up early to make him breakfast in bed. We made waffles bacon hash browns eggs and toast. Then later in the day the rest of our Zone came over just to sing him happy birthday and give him a few presents. he loves fat and ugly ties so I gave him my fattest and ugliest tie :-) 

It was a really windy week and we ended up doing a lot of yard work. My allergies were kind of off the charts, but everything's okay now. We also ended up doing some service for a member where are we emptied a garage full of boxes and books, and then put them all back in the garage haha. it seemed kind of pointless but I guess it was helpful because she wanted to rearrange it and it would have taken her forever.

so we got our transfer calls yesterday and I found out that other Newton is being transferred to the Spanish Zone as a Zone leader and he will finish his mission there. My new companion is Elder Faleumu and he's super funny! He's another of of the social media missionaries so we already know each other a bit. It is pretty sad because about half of our zone is getting transferred. These last two have been really fun and we were a lot of awesome people here, and I'm sure they will do great in their new areas but it is sad to see them go.

Over the next three days our mission will be receiving about 45 minutes new missionaries, most of them are being reassigned from a former mission. We will have four of those reassign missionaries in our Zone so that's exciting. A few of them have been in Spanish speaking mission so I'll have someone to practice with since my new companion won't speak Spanish.

I really hope that the stay-at-home order will be lifted in Washington soon cuz I am really anxious to get out and start talking to people in person again. It's a little tricky sometimes to get the same feeling in a video lesson, and it's also really hard to find people to teach. But I know the Lord will provide.

It's gonna be a good one! Les quiero!!

- Elder Thompson 

Fotos: 

1. Sis Choate Bday 

2. Breakfast in Bed 

3. Car decoration 

4. Car decoration 

5. Sisters at the Luau 

6. Sneaking up to the car to decorate it 

Cumpleaños - Mission Week 83

Hola Hola

This week was super awesome :) I'll start with the Birthday highlights!

Saturday morning we went to go do some yard work and also to help someone move. As we went out to the car, we saw that someone had put a bunch of streamers and stickynotes alllll over it. The inside had a ton of balloons as well! It was pretty cool, the sisters in my district were the ones that did it but they enlisted the help of the Elders to distract me and to grab the keys. 

During the move they had a couch with a hide-away bed thing that folds out and as 2 members were pushing it out of a room the bed sprung out and absolutely destroyed my toes haha. It's all swollen and it hurts a bunch now but definitely not broken. That was the worst part of the day haha.

Later E Skinner took me out to lunch at Zips a super good burger place then I went to talk to my parents on the phone for a bit and that was great! Normally we can't call home on our birthdays but because of the corona we are allowed to once during the week. Then, we got some sushi and headed back to the apartment. When we got back I started to eat and then the rest of the zone started singing happy birthday! They were all hiding in our backyard waiting :) it was super fun they gave me a few funny little presents.

Overall it was a super awesome birthday, I'm grateful for the missionaries I get to serve around and that they wanted to make my day special. 

We had a mission conference this week with Elder Whiting from the 70 and it was way awesome. He talked about how we need to use this time of isolation to deepen our conversion and develop Christ like attributes. He explained a method of studying the Book of Mormon where you only focus on one Christ like attribute and you study on a copy you have never marked before. The cool thing was about a week ago I started doing that exact thing! 

For the rest of the week

- we did a ton of video calls

- a district council about how to slay dragons

- the Williams bought us groceries!!!

- Sis Langford's birthday was the 22nd so there was another party

- we did service for a lady named Julie and she was super nice. She needs prayers though she is going through a really tough time.

Anyways that's it! God lives! He is good! He loves you so much! 

- Elder Thompson

Pics are from my B day