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Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Hola Mi Familia!

HOLA MI FAMILIA!

Jokes, I don't speak Spanish haha 

So we(my zone) got to go to the Oakland Temple this morning! SO BEAUTIFUL! We took a lot of pictures before and after so I'll send those! I absolutely love going to the temple! I wish we could go more than just once every other transfer! Also the drive from Santa Rosa to Oakland is breathtaking...I have fallen in love with Northern California! 

So this past week just flew by! As a missionary, you are always busy so the time just flies by! So this past week, a lot of things happened, mostly good, some funny, and a couple sad. Let's start with the bad parts first haha so sister lesser and I, after much prayer, decided that we were going to drop(or stop visiting) a few of the less actives we were seeing. And let me tell you, dropping people is one of the hardest things to do as a missionary. The reason you would drop someone is because they are not progressing or keeping their commitments anymore. As a missionary, your purpose is to help others come to Christ and if they aren't choosing to do that, then we should be using our time to find people that will. You grow to love the people you work with so much! So telling them that you won't be coming by anymore is so hard! We had to tell Grandma and Terry that we weren't coming by anymore and we told Bro. Holdway too. It's honestly heartbreaking dropping people. I hope I don't have to do that very much on the rest of my mission!

Ok, now on to the good/funny things! Pretty much everything other than dropping was awesome this week! So I'll just tell you some of the highlights...so I had my first district meeting last Tuesday! So great! I love my district! Elder Frodsham is our DL and he is just a hoot and a half haha but he is such a solid missionary! A great example of what a good missionary should be! I also experienced my first exchange! I got to go up to Healdsburg with my STL Hermana Reidhead! I got to practice my espanol for the day haha lets just say I am so grateful I got called English speaking! Haha I'm glad I was able to come out and hit the ground running and not have to worry about a language barrier! I also hit my one month mark this past week! Woo! One month on the mission! Haha fastest month of my entire life! Our lessons this past week with our investigators, Mike and Wally, we awesome! They are both progressing so much! Mike is the one with a baptismal date, but it's most likely going to have to be pushed back because he struggles with the Word of Wisdom, but he has such a strong desire to come unto Christ! And Wally is SO close to baptism! I love missionary work! It's amazing to see someone make a change in their life! We did lots of service this week too! Including working at the food bank, helping a lady move, and being the special guests at activity days! It was awesome! Service is such a great way to show people that missionaries are just normal kids willing to help out in anyway! 
Ok, now for the funny things haha honestly, there hasn't been a day without something incredibly funny happening! I love it! Lots of times though, it's something to do with the APs haha since we serve in the same Ward as them we see them a lot and all three of them are goofballs! So this past week the APs pulled a prank on sister lesser and me...we had made a bet with them saying who ever could set the next baptismal date would win and that the losers had to make cookies for the winners. So obviously sister lesser and I won the bet haha so the APs owed us cookies! When they gave us the cookies, they were sooo good! But they had filled one of the cookies with a ton of salt! And I ate it! It was disgusting! I was so upset with them! Haha so now we are at war....sister lesser and I are planning on getting them back later this week. Haha the joys of being a missionary! Lots of other funny stuff happened but like me mixing up the words "sentences" and "sandwiches" at a dinner appointment....so I accidentally said that I am really bad at finishing people's sandwiches...when I meant sentences. Haha but I love having those funny moments each day! Laughter makes everything better! 

I am loving being a missionary more and more each day! Ive been studying a lot about prayer this past week. Prayer was something I really struggled with before the mission and so it's still something I'm trying to get better at. Ironically, I've been praying for help with prayers. I decided to spend a few days of personal study, studying prayer. I ended up having answers to my prayers through other people more than finding things in my personal study. A couple weeks back, at zone conference, Elder Wright(one of the APs) spoke on receiving revelation through prayer. It was exactly what I needed to hear. He said something that I had never thought of before. So imagine this, have you had someone ask you a question and then they walk away before you can answer the question? That's often how our prayers are. We ask Heavenly Father all these things, but we don't take time to listen. We usually just end our prayers and hop into bed, at least that's how I am. We need to take the time to listen. I received another answer to my prayers by receiving an email for an elder from my MTC district. He just said, i think this is something you need to hear. He then went on to tell me about prayer and some things I could study to help me with my prayers! He didn't even know that was something I was struggling with. He told me to study the last two paragraphs of Prayer in the bible dictionary. I highly recommend reading that. Really briefly, if you don't study prayer, at least think of this: When you pray, you must remember that you shouldn't pray to change the will of God. That won't change. He knows what you want and need. But when you do ask for blessings, if you are given those blessings, it's not because you thought you would benefit from it, it's because Father was already trying to give it to you, but you just had to ask. I don't know...just learning what it means to say "in the name of Jesus Christ amen" will change the way you pray and your relationship with Father for the better. Prayer is such an amazing gift we have been given and I know without a doubt that God is on the other side listening to our prayers. And he is waiting to give us those blessings and answers if we are willing to ask and listen! I love the gospel! 
Hope you all have a great week!


Love always, Sister Thompson















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