State of Love and Trust 3/1/2022

 This week we had our mission-wide day of love and service. On Saturday, we helped a family move out of their home as well as helping an older lady weed her garden out front. During the gardening, one of the neighbors backed into our car and while exchanging information we taught him a bit and will hopefully teach him soon. 

 

Sis. Cagle, who is from Germany and we visit every Sunday, surprised Elder Worland and I with stuffed animals which we thought was pretty funny. She's a convert that was baptized in the late 90's and keeps in good contact with all "her" missionaries and has a lot of photos and memories with Elders over the years.

 

Faith had her baptismal interview and is preparing for that this Saturday. The Garners had us and her family over for a lesson as well as food and that was super helpful for her as well as her mom who is an investigator who needs as much help as she can get to love the gospel. 

 

Hope everything and everyone is doing well back home and I'll continue to keep y'all updated with everything going on here.

 

-Elder Thompson

Floyd the Barber 2/22/2022

 This week was pretty interesting at times, there was definitely a lot to keep us busy though. 

 

First off, we learned we would be in a trio, and now we have another comp, Elder Worland. We kinda thought we'd be getting a trainee but instead have a missionary who's been out over a year. It's gonna make missionary work around her a lot more interesting. 

On Friday, I went to the Pecan Grove area on exchanges with our DL Elder Lindsey and got a unique opportunity. Of all the online referrals they've gotten in the past few months one of them finally responded and it was for service. We drove to a lady's house and just got straight to work helping her take down Christmas lights and moving a woodpile. I never realized until then that people could even ask for service from missionaries like that.

 

Our P-Day was quite successful as well, no Elder is gonna complain about a free haircut from a sister missionary or 5 on 5 basketball with ward members. 

 

It's been great getting to know the members of the ward and help teach the investigators in our teaching pool. We hope to continue the great work that's here. 

 

-Elder Thompson

One Little Slip 2/15/2022

 This whole week I've felt like the scene in Chicken Little where he's trying to maneuver around town and school and eventually get to class. It's been a little hectic and crazy in the mission due to all the weird transfers.

 

One notable event we started the week with was helping a family move into our ward boundaries. I don't remember the father's name, but we talked a lot about video games and he showed us his weapon collection, and I even got a picture with his sword. That was pretty fun and we had the other Elders there to help as well. 

 

To go along with the pattern of wild events after district councils, on Wednesday we got news that I was leaving the area and headed to Oyster Creek in the Richmond zone. It was part of the last mini transfer of the 6-week transfer and honestly surprised my comp and I, it was the only move in the district. Even more is he's still staying in the area, still being there since the beginning of his mission. I said goodbye to everyone on Thursday and Friday morning we transferred and now I'm with my new comp Elder DeCarlo. The area isn't very large geographically, but we're in a big city area so it's really dense and highly populated. We're also down the street from a triple a baseball stadium which is a fun sight to drive by frequently. Our church building is also the mission office which is pretty whack. It means though that we get to see another district there on pday and at district council which is a good change of pace from just 6 missionaries.

 

This weekend we taught a girl who is on date to be baptized and is in a part member family so we're hoping the whole family eventually joins the church. I also got to meet the ward members and learned what amazing missionaries they all are. They like to feed us quite a bit and load us up with money and groceries, but more importantly, they ask us all the time how they can help us reach out or assist the work with investigators. They also like to send us out to part-member or inactive families so they like to keep us busy.

 

I'm excited to see what happens in the next few weeks and to get in the flow of the work in this area. 

 

-Elder Thompson

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