Week 7!

Hello family!!

So normally transfers would be happening tomorrow, but this transfer

is a 7 week transfer! So we will be finding out this weekend who is

staying and who is going! I'm really grateful it's been a 7 week

transfer because I love where I am right now! I love my companions and

I love this area! So here are some highlights from this week!

On Tuesday, during district meeting I taught about prayer and the

importance of prayer and teaching our investigators to pray. I did a

cute little activity as my commitment(I have way to much fun teaching

haha) but I had everyone in the district put a penny in their shoes. I

called it a prayer penny. So every time they felt the penny, they had

to offer a silent prayer. I also put a penny in my shoe, and let me

tell you, my day went so much better! I felt the penny a lot

throughout the day, but I found that there was so much more I was

grateful for and it just made me realize that everything I have or do

is because of Heavenly Father. It was great being able to stay in good

contact with Him throughout my day! Everyone in the district loved it

also. I think I might put a penny in every pair of shoes I own! After

district meeting, I went on exchanges with Sister Aiton! She is

seriously the cutest and I just love her! She definitely came

pre-trained! She is the most ungreen greenie I've ever met! We sent

the majority of the day in Suisun City!

On Wednesday we had an awesome skype lesson with our YSA investigator

Lyndon! We taught him about the gospel of Jesus Christ and the spirit

was so strong during the lesson! He is literally the definition of a

golden investigator! We ask him questions and he will give us the

preach my gospel answer. He is so great! We set a baptismal date with

him! For April 30th! We think it might be pushed up earlier, because

Lyndon is just so ready, but we will see!

Thursday we went to Rio Vista for the day! Missionaries haven't lived

in Rio Vista for about six months now, so they are closing down the

apartment, so our zone went out there and helped clear out and clean

the apartment! Rio Vista is about a 45 minute drive away from where we

live and the drive out there is GORGEOUS! Northern California is

seriously SO pretty! I love it here!

On Friday I went to Santa Rosa for the day for MLC! It was such an

awesome meeting! I rode up with Sister Bear, she's from Sugar City,

ID! I love sister bear! So we left my apartment around 6:15am because

it takes about an hour with no traffic to get to Santa Rosa, and last

MLC we left at 6:30am and showed up at the Bagder Building at 8:58am

and MLC starts at 9. So we left a little bit earlier this time just in

case, but we ended up getting to Santa Rosa at 7:30am haha so we were

an hour and a half early this time! Haha we went out to breakfast and

then went and stayed with the Santa Rosa sisters for the rest of the

time! Haha we got a good laugh out of that! But MLC was SOOO good! I

love hearing from President and Sister Wright and the assistants!

The generals women's conference was so good! I was definitely in tears

from the choir! I loved that! Unfortunately, we didn't have any

investigators there, they were all with family this Easter weekend.

But the Fairfield 1st elders had an investigator there so we sat with

her! Her name is Daphne and she just moved to the USA from Haiti! She

speaks French and she is currently learning English so it's fun

talking with her! I was able to say hi and introduce myself in French

when I met her a couple weeks ago for the first time and she got so

excited and started speaking French to me, but I couldn't keep up.

Haha she is so cute and we all love her!

Easter was so good! Once again, we didn't have any investigators

there. Which was sad, but they were all with their families so I guess

that's ok haha. I loved all the talks and musicals numbers in both

wards! I love the spirit of Easter! We have two dinner appointments

which is always a great thing! And we spent the rest of the day

visiting less actives who didn't have any family with them! Overall,

it was a great Easter!

I hope you all have an awesome week! Spring is here! Take time to not

only smell the roses, but also the spiritual roses in your life! I

love you all!

Love always, Sister Thompson 🌻

Sister Aiton and I in Suisun City!

Suisun City!

Dinner at Seymore's and their little girls wanted to wear our name tags.

Drive out to Rio Vista!

Service at rio Vista!

Rio Vista!

Sister Bear and I showing up early!

Service at a less actives house!

This cute girls name is Scarlet. She is the granddaughter of a less

active! She is adorable!

Members took these pictures of us! Love this Ward!

Pictures from our hike today at Rockville Park!

Hallelujah!

Hey family!

Oh man, what a great week! I love being a missionary! I could do

missionary work for the rest of my life. Which I plan on doing!

#EveryMemberAMissionary

To start off, district meeting this week was awesome! I taught about

teaching repentance and baptizing converts! I love how simple our

purpose is as missionaries! We are to teach repentance and baptize

converts! We also did a companionship trust activity during district

meeting haha Sister Aiton was blind folded and I had to guide her

through a "laser field"(a hallway with yarn taped across it)! I am so

bad at those kinds of activities! Haha if it was real lasers, sister

Aiton definitely would be missing a few limbs haha! We also had

interviews with President Wright after district meeting! I absolutely

adore President Wright! I could literally sit there and talk to him

for hours! My interview with him was great and I ended up talking to

sister wright afterwards for a while! I love President and Sister

Wright SO much! After interviews, I went on exchanges with Hermana

Reidhead in her area! It's crazy, so Hermana Reidhead was my first STL

on the mission and now I will probably be her last STL! I look up to

Hermana Reidhead so much so it was crazy for me to be the one offering

training to her! We had a great time on exchanges and we were both

edifices and uplifted by the end! I have loved being a Sister Training

Leader! It's such a humbling experience being able to help and serve

the sisters here. It's hard knowing everything that someone is

struggling with, but I have learned how to truly rely on the spirit

when it comes to helping someone through their trials. Often times, I

can't sympathize with people because my struggles are a lot different

than theirs, but Heavenly Father knows exactly what they need and He

sends His spirit to work through me to help them. It's amazing being

that instrument for Him. I want to live my life in such a way that I

am always a worthy instrument for Heavenly Father. I want to always

live worthy of the spirit.

We had another two amazing lessons with Ally this week! We have come

up with so many cute little games and activities to help her learn!

And they are working! She is progressing so much and we have set a

baptismal date for her for April 16th! Ally and her mom came to church

yesterday and loved it! Pray that she will continue to progress and

make it to her baptismal date in April!

We handed Heather off this week to the Fremont sisters :( it was a sad

day, but we have such a good feeling about Heather! She is definitely

going to be baptized soon! Hopefully we can keep in contact with her

and skype into her baptism!

On Friday night the stake put on an adult dinner dance and we got to

go because our investigators Shirley and Jessica came! It was a 50s

themed dance and it was so cute! We helped serve the food to everyone

too so we had aprons on and diner hats and we served everyone their

food! Never thought I'd be doing that on my mission! Haha after

everyone ate, they turned on 50s music and everyone started dancing!

We weren't allowed to dance, but we had a fun time watching! Shirley

and Jessica had a good time! Then on Saturday night, they put on a

youth stake dance with the same theme, and guess what? We got to go!

Haha this time it was because the person who had signed up to feed us

that night forgot that she said she would help serve food at the

dance, so we went and helped her and also ate there! Now speaking of

things I never thought I would do on my mission, at the youth dance,

they had it set up like a diner so we took their orders and then when

it was ready, we would run the food from the kitchen to the gym and

yell out the name on the order. Haha so picture three sister

missionaries running to and from the kitchen and the gym, yelling out

names like 5 or 6 times until the kid finally heard us. We were

laughing so hard and the kids were laughing too! It was hilarious! We

only stayed at that dance until we had finished dinner and then we

left, but it was a great time!

So at church yesterday, in the Cordelia 1st Ward, we performed a

special musical number! Sister Aiton played piano, I sang, and sister

Ward turned pages haha it turned out really well! Then in the YSA Ward

our investigator Lyndon came! Yesterday was my first time actually

meeting Lyndon because he works a lot and he had been pretty sick the

last couple of weeks, but he is awesome! He's 22 and currently going

to school at Sac State and in ROTC. He had a really good friend in

high school that was Mormon and that's what sparked his interest in

the church! After sacrament meeting we pulled him and a member aside

and taught him a lesson! We taught the plan of salvation and it was an

incredible lesson! Lyndon has such a strong desire to learn and he has

such an amazing spirit about him! He wants to be baptized so he is

currently praying about a date to be baptized on! He is so golden!

Easter is coming up this week! What a perfect time to study, reflect

upon, and remember our Savior! I am so so SOOO grateful for the

Atonement of Jesus Christ. Wow. What an incredible thing He did for

us! I want to share with you the lyrics from the song I sang in

sacrament meeting yesterday. The song is called "Still Believe".

I haven't seen His face, But I have seen His miracles

I haven't heard His voice, But His spirit speaks to my heart

I haven't felt His hands, But I have felt His peace

And blessed are those who haven't seen

And still believe that He lives

And still believe that He walked upon the earth

And though my faith is just a seed, I still believe

I didn't walk with Him, But each day He's here by my side

I didn't watched as He healed, But His love has changed my life

I didn't see the cross, But I know it was for me

And blessed are those who haven't seen

And still believe that He lives

And still believe that He walked upon the earth

And though my faith is just a seed, I still believe

I haven't seen His eyes, But someday He'll look into mine

And if He bids me come, I will worship at His feet

For blessed are those, who haven't seen

And still believe

I know the Jesus Christ lives and loves each of us! May His love and

spirit touch us all this week as we reflect upon His life and His

ministry! I invite you to check out the church's Easter video

Hallelujah on Mormon.org! Then share it with someone! #Hallelujah I

love you all and hope you have an amazing week!

Love always, Sister Thompson 🌻

District Meeting Activities

Marsh lands in Suisun City

St. Patrick's day dinner at the Thomas's! Corn beef and cabbage of

course! We are in the backyard and took pictures before! Aaron is

their 14 year old son with downs and he's hilarious. I'm also holding

their dog Kevin. Haha

Pictures from the 50s dance! Shirley and Jessica

Lyndon and us after church yesterday!

Thanks to a loving mother, we got Carl's Jr. for lunch this week!

We got to go on the Travis Air Force Base this week!

cute photo shoot we had!

Bear Testimony of Him

Hello everyone!

What an incredible week we've had here in Fairfield, CA! A really wet

week, but it's been so good! It's been raining everyday since Friday

the 4th! Which is great because we need the rain! Plus it makes

everything SO green here which I LOVE!

We have had amazing lessons this week! We had a couple skype lessons

this week with Heather! She is still doing amazing! She is truly so

prepared by the Lord! We decided to wait just a little bit longer

until we had her off to the missionaries in Fremont because we want to

teach keeping the sabbath day holy to her with her brother first! So a

little more background info about them. They both grew up as seventh

day Adventist and in that religion they see Saturday as the sabbath

day. Jordan, her brother, took the missionaries lessons about six

years ago and became a member. He said it was hard for him to

understand why the sabbath day was on Sunday but eventually he came to

know it was true. So we want Jordan to be there for the lesson when we

teach keeping the sabbath day holy so he can help explain it to

Heather! I think Heather will be able to gain a testimony of it pretty

easily because she is so prepared!

We also had a great lesson with Zayna again this week! She is still

the coolest person I've ever met! And get this, her dad is the body of

the Hulk and Megatron. Like what? Haha He works at Lucas Film in San

Francisco and he does the body movements for the CGI for the Hulk in

the avengers and for Megatron in transformers! He's HUGE. Haha

anyways, we had a super spiritual lesson with her about scripture

study and prayer! She said something super profound to us about prayer

that I have never thought of before! She said that if you think about

it, Heavenly Father is always watching us, so if you had someone

always watching you and you didn't talk to them, that'd be super

awkward. Haha think about it, Heavenly Father is always watching us

and He watches us struggle with things and He knows exactly what

advice we need to overcome our struggles, but the only way we can get

advice from Him is through prayer. She said that and we all looked and

each other and made the hand motions of our minds being blown. I had

never thought of it that way before! So cool!

We also had a lesson with the Passini kids! So there's Tajzar Passini

who is 9 and Zee Passini who is 4 and their mom is a less active

member but she wants her kids to learn the gospel. Taj isn't baptized

so we are preparing him for that! Taj is a huge Warriors fan so we hit

it off great! Haha we taught him the importance of prayer and he is so

smart! Love that kid! We will continue to teach him and hopefully get

him and his mom back to church! Speaking of church, Shirley and her

niece Jessica came to church yesterday! They only came to sacrament

meeting but they both loved it and said they are coming next week too!

Woo! Hopefully we can find a time to meet with them this week!

We had an incredible lesson with Ally this week! So Ally is our 16

year old investigator right now, her mom is less active but wants Ally

to be apart of the church! So Ally learns a lot better with visual

hands on things so I have a diagram of the plan of salvation that we

taught her with! It has different pieces that you put together to

learn the plan of salvation in order and what happens at each part!

Ally has been taught the plan of salvation two other times before this

and she still didn't get it, but this time, after we explained it to

her using the diagram, she was able to put the diagram together by

herself and teach us about it! It was so cool! I was smiling so big

the entire time she was teaching us because it was such a huge

difference from her other lessons! So amazing!

So we had two other amazing lessons this week which lead to two new

investigators! So the Cristobals are a part member family in our Ward

and we have been trying to teach them for a while but we haven't been

able to get in the door. On Wednesday night we went over and the mom,

who isn't a member let us in! Like what?! Turns out they had just lost

their oldest daughter back in January and the mom is really grieving

right now. We were able to have a super spiritual lesson with her

about the plan of salvation and the Book of Mormon. She agreed to read

the Book of Mormon and to have us come over again this week. It was

such a spiritual lesson! It was so cool! Hopefully we can get the rest

of the family active and all members of the church! The family needs

it! Our other amazing lesson we had was with a referral we received

named Sharlene. Sharlene went on to Mormon.org and requested

missionaries to come and teach her. She is incredible. Literally, it

was one of the most incredible lessons I've ever been apart of. She's

in her late 30s and she lives in a little 12x6 foot trailer in

someone's backyard. She lives there with her husband and her step

daughter. I don't know how she does it, we could barely fit in there

for the lesson. But it was one of the most humbling experiences I've

been apart of. We sat on little cartons on the floor and taught her

the restoration and the spirit was so strong. She has such a strongest

desire to allow Christ to change her life. She's had a rough life but

she knows that Christ can help her. Which is crazy because she doesn't

know anything about Christ. She's not very familiar about the bible,

but she has such a strong faith is God and Christ. At one point in the

lesson we asked her what she thinks she can do to come closer to

Christ. She said, "I want to be baptized. That's how I want to come

closer to Christ." We all smiled and told her that we can help her get

to baptism! It was seriously the coolest lesson and we are going over

again this week to continue to teach her! I love being a missionary!

Go to Moroni chapter 7 in the Book of Mormon and if you look at verses

26 and 31 side by side and middle line of 26 over to the bottom line

of 31 it reads "And as surely as Christ liveth bear testimony of him."

I want everyone to know that I know that this gospel is true. I have

such a strong testimony of it! I know that true peace and happiness

comes from living this gospel! I have seen lives changed because of

Christ and His gospel. I know that He lives and loves us! I love you

all and hope you all have an amazing week!

Love always, Sister Thompson 🌻

Pday last week at the institute building!

A selfie cuz why not? Haha

So sister Ward is a photographer so I have a lot of photos of me

that's she's taken. Normally I don't have a ton of pictures of just

me, but she's an awesome photographer and always wants to take

pictures!

Service for the Reeds and in return she's a hairdresser she gave us

free deep condition treatments today on pday!

The ITS-IT factory is here in Fairfield! They are ice cream sandwiches

that are famous in the Bay Area!

Someone He Can Count On

Hello family and friends!

I love being a missionary.

There is truly nothing better than being close to the spirit everyday.

There's a phrase from a song called Someone He Can Count On that I've

been thinking about a lot lately. "I can't think of anything more

sweet than to follow where the spirit leads and be the answer to

someone else's prayer." I love that. I love knowing that we can follow

the spirit and be the answer to someone's prayer. It is such a sweet

experience following the spirit.

This week was awesome! Our investigator Heather in the YSA is

progressing so well! I'm not sure if I told you this already, but

Heather doesn't live in our mission boundaries. She lives down in

Fremont, CA which is south of Oakland. That's why we've been teaching

her over Skype. Her brother, Jordan, lives up here and attends the YSA

here and he wanted missionaries to start teaching his sister with him

there. So we usually skype with Heather and Jordan also skypes in. But

Heather is doing so good! She always keeps her commitments and she is

praying right now about baptism! But I think this week we are going to

hand her off to the missionaries in Fremont. It's going to be an

awesome day for them! Haha getting handed an investigator that's

almost ready for baptism! We are so excited for Heather and we hope

the hand off will go well!

We also met with Zayna this week! She is a 21 year old girl that was

just baptized back in November! She is incredible! Probably the

coolest person I've ever met haha but the church actually filmed her

conversion process! They are making new missionary training videos(for

those who are serving missions, The District videos) in the Tempe,

Arizona mission and Zayna was living there for school when she got

baptized! So they filmed all her lessons, her baptism, and her

experiences in the church! She moved back to Fairfield after she was

baptized and now we are finishing her lessons! Luckily, we aren't

being filmed haha I don't think I could focus if there was a camera

filming the lesson! Anyways, we met with her this week and she is

doing so good! She's having a hard time at home, but she is relying so

much on her savior to carry her through this hard time! It's

incredible seeing her faith and her love of this gospel! She's

awesome!

We picked up two new investigators this week! It was a miracle! We got

a text randomly from a lady who use to meet with missionaries asking

if we could teach her again! Her name is Shirley she is a cute little

Philippine lady in her 50's and her 29 year old niece lives with her

so we are teaching both of them right now! They came and did service

at the food bank with us on Thursday and then they had is over for

dinner Friday night where we were able to teach them the restoration

and invite them to be baptized! They both accepted and committed to

read the Book of Mormon! Shirley is the cutest little lady ever! Most

of her extended family are members of the church so she has a big

support group for taking the lessons and joining the church! The only

hard thing is that Shirley works A TON. So it's going to be hard to

find time for us to be able to teach her, but God will provide a way!

Some other highlights of the week were going to the Jelly Belly

factory for pday last week, doing service for an older lady in our

ward(we helped her paint parts of her house), going on my first

exchange as an STL with Hermana Mendez, having amazing dinners at

members homes(I have a new found love for Indian food, Thai food, and

Greek food since being on my mission), attending Break the Fast for

the YSA Ward yesterday(man, I've missed being in a YSA Ward!), and

just having an awesome time with my companions Sister Ward and Sister

Aiton! We are all such good friends and we are always laughing and

making mission memories! I love it!

I have learned so much on my mission thus far and I am so grateful for

it. I'm changing everyday as I seek to do my Fathers will. I have come

to love studying and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love the

fact that I get to wake up every morning and put on my name tag and

put Christs name over my heart. I love that I get to share a message

of joy and peace with others and then watch as the joy floods into

their life as they partake of this gospel. There is nothing as sweet

as the fruits of this gospel! I love you all and hope you have an

amazing week! Don't forget to always follow the spirit!

Love always, Sister Thompson 🌻

Service

Fancy Greek dinner at the Biggs home

Us just having fun before bed haha

View from our apartment on a rainy day

Just cuz we wanted to take pictures haha and I did sister aitons

makeup this morning. #beautyschooldropout haha