Workin For a Livin 2/9/2022

 It's safe to say that most of our missionary work the past few weeks has been service-oriented. We've been helping the other Elders quite a bit with the service they do for members of the ward. After our district council on Wednesday, they got a call saying they had to be out of their apartment and in a new one by the end of the day. So we spent quite a few hours helping them clear their apartment out entirely and move a good distance away into a new one. They're pretty far from us now and so we won't see them as often which is pretty sad. Aside from service, we did find a couple new people for our teaching pool and we'll hopefully see them progress. We do have a pretty full meal calendar with members which are definitely appreciated by us. Not much else has been happening around here, hopefully, we can start to see some crazy miracles happen around here.

 

-Elder Thompson

Blue Monday 2/1/2022

 I wasn't on top of a weekly email the past week so I'm gonna have to summarize everything that happened in this one. 

 

This Monday was a "blue" Monday since it was dark, pouring rain, and sadly we lost some of our district. Two missionaries left for the original assignment and as a result, we lost an entire companionship so now there are only 6 of us. It's a little frustrating for a good portion of us since we've been here with the same comps for a long while now. We are however putting faith in the Lord and are hoping to see some good fruits of our labors.

 

A couple weeks ago we had a zone conference, and I got to see both my past companions as well as an Elder in my last area who is now in Uraguay. We talked a lot about picking ourselves back up and finding ways to be happy and rebalance. It's been a nice focus our mission has had about being happy and finding satisfaction in the work.

 

There were a few new things that I tried or did. I got my first roadkill hitting a possum coming back to our apartment one night so that's one for Texas resident bingo. I spent what seemed like an hour trying to figure out how to siphon water from a barrel for a Spanish member which was interesting. Bro. Sorenson in our ward is from Australia, and he had us over for dinner with his family and we got the chance to try Vegemite which I thought was pretty good. One member family we had dinner with is hosting a foreign exchange student from France, so with a little bit of grammar correction and some English, we had a good conversation in French. She even taught me the word for missionary, so now I can properly say "je suis un missionaire pour l'eglise de Jesus Christ des saints des derniers jours".

 

There may be a few notable moments I'm missing but for now that's all I can think of. I love hearing from everyone and I'm glad I can be out here serving the Lord and helping others come unto Christ.

 

-Elder Thompson

Heavy Metal 1/19/2022

 This week has been a bit rough for us trying to succeed in missionary work but there have been some highlights for sure.

 

First off I wanna share how Wednesday went for us. We started the day with a long mission zoom call with the lady from Utah who taught us about nutrition. The whole time all I could think of is how since being down here I've gained so much weight from the amazing food and I'm sure I look like the Pillsbury doughboy after he decided to eat the Stay-puff marshmallow man. It didn't help later that day when our friend Jean fed us more and decided to give me the nickname "heavy" since I quote "know how to put down good food and that's what everybody calls [her]". On the bright side, this is all fantastic motivation for me to follow through on my New Years' goals.

 

We got to visit our friend Sam for the first time in a long while. She's this sweet girl who lives in an assisted living home down the street from us. She's pretty much stuck in her bed all day every day so we try and make an effort to talk to her. It's been a long while since we've gotten to see her but we thankfully had some time in our schedule and she was super appreciative we had the chance to stop by and say hi.

 

Even without finding many people to teach and our efforts to reach out to people seeming useless, throughout the week I was able to notice the blessings of putting forward hard effort for the Lord. I know that as we dedicate and consecrate our time to serving Him, we can see the fruits of our labors and receive many great and wonderful blessings whether now or in the future.

 

-Elder Thompson

Better Man 1/4/2022

 It's so exciting to start a new year and celebrate your birthday at the same time. It really makes you feel ready to attack the year with another year under your belt and a new number on your age counter.

 

Having a birthday in the mission was a lot better than I'd thought it would be. We ended up going to an In-N-Out here in Texas then went bowling as a district before playing football with some members in our ward. It was a lot better than I expected it to be.

 

With the start of the new year came the start of a new teaching pool. We found a couple people that we'll be teaching the next few weeks and hopefully we'll also be setting up some lessons with formers. Our goal is to get consistent meeting times with these people and their schedules since we always seem to struggle with scheduling recurring lessons.

 

I look forward to the new year and starting new goals,, as well the progress everyone will make as they strive to reach those goals and come closer to Christ.

 

-Elder Thompson