Last Few Weeks!

Lane Grey Thompson	1:56 PM (0 minutes ago)
to keonibrown55, ian.dibble, caitlin.h.c18, auzzie809, richins.tyler, Tete, Tayler, Tanner, scooter1, Scott, Ryan, rlthompson, Riley, Mikele, Micheal, Maurice, Maddy, M, Kyle, Kevin, Kayleah, Kayla, kaden096, Justin, Josh

Dear Family,

Last few weeks! That means I’m recapping these past few weeks and I’m just stating that these are my last few weeks haha it’s been a little crazy! Elder Ferguson in our district ended up heading home early by personal choice. We miss him so much! He was such a good missionary! 

With that said, we knew we would be put in this trio and so we prepared as much as we could. We held a double weekly planning session! We and the other Elders planned together at the chapel for both areas to be able to work in sync with both area’s schedules. It was fun! Then we hit up Chick-Fil-A after haha

We also had an international video call lesson!!! It was my first time doing it on my mission. We met our investigator’s sister-in-law at his apartment (she’s inactive) not too long ago and she’s from Bolivia 🇧🇴. Her name is Vanessa. She was there just visiting temporarily so we ended up establishing a lesson over Messenger! It was so cool. We were able to help her start up her scripture again! What a blessing technology is.

I know that this truly is the work of the Lord. I know that we are called by revelation to serve. I have seen so many people’s lives be changed for the better and improved by living the restored gospel. I know that the missionary purpose is the one of the most important things we can live and do: invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end.

I’m so grateful for this time I have had to serve here in Virginia and I thank all those who have helped me get to where I am now. Thank you all for your support and for your prayers because there were many moments where I could tell that it was the power of prayer that kept me going in my mission. Thank you all! 🏼 here goes my last week!

️ Elder Thompson

Double weekly planning sesh!

Video lesson

Trio #5 and the Temple

Dear All,

We changed p day to today because we went to the temple! It was a great experience and it was my comp’s first and last time because it closes for 2 years in March! We had Elder and Sister Miner drive us up there to Maryland. We just did an endowment session and checked out the visitors center. We then went to ‘This is the Place’ (the equivalent of Deseret Book here) right down the road and looked at some stuff. I bought one of those transitioning books for returning missionaries hahaha. I love the d.c. temple and am looking forward to see what it will be like after the remodeling.

We got a phone call after the temple and sadly we found out that Elder Ferguson will be going home early on Monday.  His comp right now is Elder Cardona so I will be in another trio and I’ll be back with Elder Cardona! I was with him in my 2nd trio this past summer! I’ll be in a trio from Monday until the end of this transfer. How many more trios could I possibly be in??

This week has been kinda slow. The words of Daughtry ring so true to me, “the miles are getting longer, it seems, the closer I get to you”. It seems to be slowing down the closer I get to coming home. I’ll make it eventually though.

This past week we met the most mature 10 year old I’ve ever met! His name is Francisco Bonilla and he is so solid! He let us in and told us how he had met with missionaries before and how Christ had established a church and then it fell but it was brought back again. He told how he realized some of his friends do bad things and that he’s been avoiding those friends because he wants to be a better person. This kid is 10!! Yet he acts as if he were 25! He reads everything we ask him to and remembers it all. Plus, he asks good questions too!! He’s so awesome! We’re like his friends so allowed us to come by every day last week ha! We will be seeing him again soon.

Well that’s about all this week. Next Monday I’ll be in a trio and let y’all know how that goes. Have a great week and don’t forget to count your blessings!

️ Elder Thompson

Smartphones and the Return of Facebook

Dear Everybody...

Sorry for not writing last week. I just didn’t feel like getting to it. Last week we finally upgraded our phones and missionary department has made it so that every new missionary going to a mobile device mission will now be using smartphones instead of tablets! That’s pretty cool and I never thought I would see that because I was the very last one in the DC South mission with an iPad before they switched to Samsung tablets so I thought those would stick around for a long time...So every companionship in the mission got 1 Samsung Galaxy this last week which will stay in the proselyting area.

With this, President Huntsman also brought back Facebook and he said he’s not planning on doing away with it ever again. We got the phones at zone conference and there was a bunch of training given on how to best use social media + tech.

Last week we visited Cecilio Lara and something weird happened. We talked to him and we soon found out that most everything we teach him doesn’t stick. It’s as if everything we teach goes in, gets scrambled up and doesn’t come out the way it came in. He told us that he read for 30 min in the Restoration pamphlet and then claimed that it said that the Bible was written by one person and that if we don’t consciously think and plan out every single word to say in our prayers that it’s not pleasing to God....he said other things that just left us standing there confused.

This week my greenie found himself in his first bible bash lesson lol. We got a referral from Wolf Trap YSA Sisters saying to go see this guy Edas that they had met. We went by and basically disputed why the the sabbath day is observed on Sunday and not Saturday anymore. It wasn’t too bad. We got a return appointment only because I wanted to show them that we’re not going to give up on teaching them like they assumed we would.

We saw the Montano family again! I love them so much. We’ve decided to start teaching out of the New Testament more and we even got the N.T. Stories for the kids. Jose, their dad who’s not a member, seemed to like the fact that we’re doing this because he doesn’t yet understand why we have the Book of Mormon. Jacqueline ended up making empenadas for us and they were so good! Elder Coleman loves to cook so he actually helped her out haha  we ate with their whole family and it was great quality time spent with them all.

So for the longest time we’ve had this basketball collecting dust in our Narnia closet so I finally said we’re going to call the number on it and return it. We dropped it off at this inactive’s house out in Ashburn and we got to know him a bit. I was taken back by his situation! He and his wife are inactive and both grew up in Utah (Mormon land as he described) and he went on to tell us that he did everything a typical Mormon does and when he went on his mission he had a faith crisis at 6 months out. He finished his mission only because he didn’t want to go back to Mormon land early from the mission and become a “second class citizen”. He ended up meeting his wife who was in the same boat he was and they got sealed in the temple ONLY to please their parents on both sides...and then a week after their marriage they moved out here and left the church for good....crazy right!?!?? I was so appalled when I heard this. Now I know we all have agency, it was just that the importance of keeping covenants was running through my mind while I heard this brother’s story (he preferred us not to call him brother anything). Covenants are sacred, and they just gotta he kept. We’re not perfect but we should always be TRYING to keep them. Oremos por él.

Bueno...quiero terminar así en Español. Algo nuevo que decir es que voy a llevar lentes (según se necesita) desde mañana y adelante! Ciego boy soy! Jaja  el tener el iPad en mi misión me hizo que casi no veo sino lo que esté cerquita. Pero está bien. Me falta 4 semanas más en la misión y de verdad quiero aprovechar este tiempecito. Me voy el primer día de Marzo. Quiero agradecer a todos aquellos que me han ayudado llegar aquí a este punto en mi vida. Aveces me pongo pensar en cómo llegué aquí y no lo pudiera haber hecho si no fuera por mi familia, mis amigos, líderes, etc. Les agradezco mucho, y les quiero!

️ Elder Léin Thompson

With the Montano kids 

First Time Speaking in Church

Family,

This week was very busy and quite successful! My companion and I found 8 new investigators this week! For this area that’s really good! We normally find 0-2 a week. We also got 2 of them on date for baptism for 3/10/18! Their names are Mauricio and Everson Bautista. They’re brothers, 13 and 11, and they are friends with Noelia Montano! We’re excited for them because they said that baptism was something that they wanted. We’ll see if they can follow through because they’re young kids.

We had a good lesson with the Montano kids again this week. It was a well-needed lesson on humility. We had our mini whiteboard and markers and sticky notes and we basically explained the difference between pride and humility. Their stupid dog Molly was off the wall in that lesson — more than normal! There was one time it was sprinting around the house and threw itself on the table and slid off the other side. Dumb animal. We were still able to teach them well enough to where they understood what pride is and how we can be humble.

So Thursday night we had something weird happen. We were trying a less active on our Areabook map and right as we lift a hand to knock the door, it opens and there’s this young American guy that immediately asked if we were from the church and so we said and yes and then he like ordered us to come in...so we were pretty unsure what was about to happen but it turns out missionaries had been coming by for 7 years looking for this same member that no longer lives there! So this guy (whose a nonmember) went all out and asked for the phone number of our ward clerk and for ours and a bunch of information about the function of the church and who’s in charge and whatnot. It was strange. I’ve never had it be that thorough before!

I’m going to be honest and say that this Sunday was my very first time speaking in Sacrament meeting on my mission! I don’t know how I made it this far without doing it earlier. I was asked to speak about spiritual and temporal goals. I related Luke 2:52 to this and noted how it shows that as Christ grew older, he grew and developed physically, mentally, spiritually and socially. 

52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.

Our goals shouldn’t be all spiritual nor temporal but rather all of these aspects.

We had a miracle this week. We were told by Sterling Park Elders to go visit this one guy and we called him and established to come by Sunday morning. We went and visited with him, his name is Francisco, and we found out he is a member! He has been inactive for over 30 years but decided it’s time to come back to church! It was so cool, we visited him Sunday morning and then got a ride for him to church with a member. And then in gospel principles class, the teacher found out he was a member and she asked him when did you come back to the church? And he just quickly responded: “today”. It was great. We also got the Montanos to bring Mauricio and Everson to church because they’re neighbors. Sunday was crazy. Before that lesson with Francisco, we were running to get hypothetical mission calls printed out for a youth activity we’re doing next week and I also gave a blessing to a random member.

2 people with a baptismal date, those same 2 people made it to church and we found 8 new Investigators. It was a really good week. Today we just did our normal P-day stuff and played basketball since all the libraries are closed today. We usually hang out there but not today. Que sigan fijando sus metas, así que ganen el galardón. Que tengan una buenísima semana!

️ Elder Thompson

New district!

I made my comp a cake

Thursday was really warm...it was in the 70s and then the next day was 30s again!

Hard Week

My heart has been broken and my entire being has been weighed down this week after hearing of the unexpected passing of my dear neighbor, leader and friend Brennan Walpole this past week. This shook me up pretty badly and I still can’t believe it has happened. He was the COOLEST and greatest leader I ever had in the entire young mens program. He was that one young advisor I had so I could easily relate to him and he was such an example to me and many many others through his actions, his smile and seemingly endless positive attitude. I have many memories with him and I don’t recall a single time where he spoke bad about anyone. I loved hearing his many stories of all sorts of topics. I’ll always remember when he took us in teachers quorum to the sand dunes to watch the motocross race and how much he would talk about the Baja 1000. When he taught the lessons in 3rd hour in church, he shared stories of his enjoyed outdoor activities and he was always able to relate something in his life stories to the gospel. I loved that. My heart goes out to the Walpole family.

This has been on my mind a ton this week. I want all to know that I have a testimony of this restored gospel. I know by personal experience that the Plan of Salvation is something that is real. If I did not know this 100%....do you think I would have still gone on this mission? I lost my dad right before I left but I knew that my dad, who was my bishop at the time of his passing, was called as bishop by God through a living prophet and I have felt the truth and comfort of God’s Plan seep into my broken soul and heal the pain that was and is felt. If I only knew that it was 99% percent true, I still wouldn’t have gone. That’s how I know that the Plan of Salvation is true. Because Christ rose, ALL will rise both the just and the unjust. We will see our loved ones again. I can’t wait for that to happen.

I also had the most spiritual lesson on my entire mission this week. A couple weeks ago we were in this apartment complex trying a potential. When they didn’t answer their door, we saw their neighbor and her kids were carrying a bunch of stuff so we helped them out and she said we could come by and share the message in a couple weeks. So this week was when we went back and she let us right in! Her name is Sister Friday, she’s African American. She told us how she had spoken with other LDS missionaries a couple days ago after we had helped her and she said she LOVED their visit and she had been looking for a church to help herself and her 2 kids. She told us she saw it as a sign from God that both the Ashburn Elders and us bumped into her without us knowing that there was another set of Elders that had seen her. She ABSORBED the whole Restoration and it was just so dang spiritual. Both my companion and I were able to relate in different things, I in one aspect and he in another. My comp shared his experience with the missionaries because he’s a convert and Sister Friday loved it. She had mentioned that she’s mourning the loss of her mom and grandmother and thus I was able to share my story about my dad and she started crying and it was so heartwarming. It was just like Aaron’s experience with Lamoni’s father: once Aaron saw that the Lamoni’s father wanted to know everything and that whatever was said, he was going to believe it...Aaron just started going off teaching everything. It was the same with Sister Friday and she was SOO open to the idea of Joseph Smith and even said that “I would like to be baptized again” after we had invited her to be baptized. So awesome. It was the first time in a while that I have shared the story about my dad that much to where I myself got teary. 

Anyway a couple days later we called the Ashburn Elders called us to tell us that Sister Friday is now on date for baptism! I’m so excited for her. Transfer info came out. I’m staying with my trainee here for my last transfer. Consider this my testimony and tribute for the week. Love you all and tell your family you love them every chance you get.

️ Elder Lane Thompson







Dear All,

This week was COOOOOOOLD!!!! These past few days have been highs of 20s or high teens! Add the wind to it and it makes it feel even colder. We did find 2 new investigators only because they let us in because it was too cold haha

We had an amazing lesson where we visited a member and she had a friend over named Flor and once she saw us she started talking her friend’s ears off about then gospel! It was cool to see and as my comp was talking, the lesson started to go a different way than what I wanted it to but I realized I just needed to stop talking and let my trainee do his thing. He was able to connect with Flor and some of her struggles she is going through and by the end, Flor and my comp were both crying and it was pretty cool. She said she would read in the introduction of the BOM.

So I’m gonna say something that may make other returned and serving missionaries a little mad or upset but...Tuesday was the first time in over 2 years that I rode a bike!!!  All Spanish units in every area of my mission except 1 have cars  and I somehow avoided it all this time even on day-exchanges to other areas but...my district leader’s area right now is a bike area and it finally was my turn to go to their area. It was fun! Of course my first day on a bike in the mission is the day that Elder Jelderks decided to bike all the way to the bottom of their area to work which was a 40 min ride...but I enjoyed it. I missed riding a bike lol. We rode way down to where that house fire we saw was and I got a pic of the result because it was still light out.

I couldn’t think of what to put as the subject line so I put what this one guy said to us while we were doing some finding. We told this older Hispanic man in Ashburn that we share a special message about Christ and how His teachings have been restored and whatnot and then he says “it’s just I’m watching King David! It’s in Spanish!” Haha I don’t know why I thought this was funny but I did. He had the remote in his hand and everything he chose his Hispanic Drama show over the restored gospel but at least he’s watching something that comes from the Bible! My comp and I from then on referred to him as ‘king David’ guy haha

Friday morning, President Huntsman did his first ever mission-wide dumpster day! From 10-12 that morning every companionship in the mission was cleaning out their apartments and getting rid of everything not needed! He made it a contest in that we all sent a pic of our pile of junk to Sister Huntsman and the biggest pile of junk would get something haha were pretty good at keeping it clean around here so ours wasn’t too big thankfully.

Saturday was a scramble. Sterling Park had a baptism that night and they called us asking if we could do a mini exchange and if I could drive Elder Jelderks back to their apartment because he forgot a change of garments to change in to for after. So we drove to the church to pick him up and he went with me all the way back their apartment which is basically right next to ours and it wasn’t until we got to the apartment that he realized he forgot the keys and he had their phone too and I had ours so we both knew what we had to do so we raced back to the church, got the keys from our companions and then went back again. It took up a lot of our night and it turned out fine. Once they asked for help I wanted to help them out because I know how stressful planning baptisms are and well....it ended up being more stressful. But it was good.

Sunday we had great church services. 3rd hour for me was interesting because we decided to sit in with the young men of the Ward and for that lesson they had brought 4 young adults from the Ward to give advice for preparing for college and missions and stuff like that. I felt like I needed it more than the youth!! It was kind of a slap in the face to realize that I will be going to college this year.

Happy New Year! 

️ Elder Lane Thompson

Biking

Remains of that house fire

Dumpster day!

While doing dumpster day I found these dvds of all the missionary pamphlets in ASL! I hope my 2 years of study in school don’t go to waste

Merry Christmas to all! Thought I would let the pictures do the talking for the day. Hope you have a great Christmas and New Years!

Dear All,

My greenie and I had a super successful week! We FINALLY had an investigator come to church and it was someone we hadn’t even called or tried to visit in the week! Sergio Vargas came finally because his wife is a less active. It was great to see him at church! We also got 5 new investigators!! It may not sound like a lot but for my area right now...IT IS! It was so awesome. We taught these 3 cool dudes named Olber, Johnathan and Noé. We stopped by their house trying to see a different person but we met them instead and taught them. They’re in their 20s so it was easy to click with them and they asked good questions too! 

We also met these folks named Martín and Diana Romero and it was such a cool thing because we just followed a thought that came from on high to go stop by them at 8:30 at night and they surprisingly let us in! We started teaching them and they’re super cool people too! They have a solid family and they expressed that they want to know which church is the true one. We actually invited them to a Ward activity and they themselves wanted to go without having gone to any of our church buildings! We taught them that night after having randomly visited a member who needed a blessing....all within the 8 o’clock hour. It was just a testimony to me that we can always be in the right place at the right time and for missionaries that includes the time from 8 up to 9pm.

We had zone conference this week and I’m really glad my greenie made it through the whole thing haha I remember my first one seemed like FOOOOREVER! They are 5 hour long conferences. He made it though. President Huntsman talked to us about overcoming discouragement. He shared the story of how the Niagara Falls bridge was constructed and how it started with a contest for kids to fly their kites across to the other side of the chasm so they could to the end of their string to a tree and the kid that did it probably didn’t think of it as a big deal at the time but over the years, they strengthened the string little by little with wire coils and built upon it and eventually a steel bridge was made. He related that to our proselyting efforts and helped us not get so down ourselves for what we may think to be unsuccessful efforts. We are doing a lot little by little.

We saw the Montano kids for the first time in a while because they just got back from Florida. We read in the BOM Stories book about Abinadi and King Noah. It was so great to watch them follow the story and hear it for the first time. They loved that story! Probably because there’s a lot of action! It was good to see them again.

The only other thing we did different this week was help clean the chapel Saturday morning. It was good. Sunday there was a ward fireside that I REALLY REALLY wanted to go to but we couldn’t find a less active or investigator to take. It was called “Estrella de Belen”, that is, Star of Bethlehem. Our Bishop right now works for NASA and he is in charge of ALL telescopes that nasa has! Cool right? So he’s an astronomer and he spoke about the scientific explanation behind the star ⭐️ at Christ’s birth. It sounded so dang interesting but too bad we didn’t make it. Hope you all have a merry Christmas! I’m so excited for this holiday! I hope you all can feel the Christmas spirit and that you remember the love that your Savior has for you. “Nos es nacido un niño.”

️ Elder Thompson

Lane Grey Thompson <lane.thompson@myldsmail.net>	12/4/17
to keonibrown55, ian.dibble, caitlin.h.c18, auzzie809, richins.tyler, Tete, Tayler, Tanner, scooter1, Scott, Ryan, rlthompson, Riley, Mikele, Micheal, Maddy, M, Kyle, Kevin, Kayleah, Kayla, kaden096, Justin, Josh, jordan.cluff

Family and friends,

Well I made it through almost my first full week of training. Boy is it stressful! But it’s great at the same time because the trainee learns so much and the trainer learns a ton as well. This week was pretty busy and that made it go by kinda faster. It felt like forever because of the change but I think it will start to pick up.

I met my greenie Elder Coleman who is from Salem, Oregon. He is a convert to the church and this is his 3rd year in the church. He studied Spanish SUPER hard in Mexico for 6 weeks and I can tell. He’s already participating a lot and he claims to understand almost everything already. He has an awesome testimony. I said goodbye to Sister Winward at transfer meeting. It’s crazy to think that she left on her mission a few months after me and is now finished (shout-out to you, Ellyse! Happy homecoming!) ...just a few more months for me to go haha

We had Spanish Forum this Thursday for the first time in a while and some big changes were brought into effect by the mission president. So the way our proselyting units have worked for my whole mission is that usually 1 set of Elders cover a certain half of the Stake while the other set of Elders cover the other half and the Hermanas would cover the entire Stake. Well, President Huntsman expressed how the white handbook states how we are assigned A proselyting area and we are entitled to receive revelation for the people in OUR area. So, he said no more of Hermana missionaries covering the same ground as us and to divide up our areas into 3 now. So that called for us to meet with our WML the next day and figure that out. That was interesting.

I felt a little bad because our night with 3 lessons ended up lesson-less. All 3 appointments cancelled and I really wanted to have my comp teaching the Restoration the first week. Well, that’s what practice can be for, right?  

Sunday was good. I was proud of my comp because he went up and shared his testimony in Spanish and did really good given the fact that this is his 7th week speaking Spanish. It has been fun to watch my companion shine with his big ol’ “greenie fire” as it’s called haha when we talk to anyone he gets so giddy and talks about how they’re going to read the pamphlet and call us and end up baptized, etc. Ah...where did my greenie fire go!?!? Haha it’s good to hear it after so long.

Today was a pretty busy P-day. We played ball and then ended up stuck at Kohl’s waiting for Sterling Park Elders to do stuff there. We ended up shopping later and my comp spent $75 his first p day haha he loves to cook (he’s making dinner right now) so he bought a ton of raw ingredients. Sometimes I wonder how I’m still alive after looking at my shopping cart for the past 90 or so weeks...

Well I hope you all have a good week. Another shoutout to Elder Richins who goes home this Friday! The work of the Lord is worth it.

️ Elder Thompson

Hello Everyone,

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving this week and that you were able to eat lots of pavo! I thankfully only had 2 dinners that day instead of 4 like my first year! We ate with the Chirinos family and they had tamales and lomo saltado and then we ate with the Chiñas and Sanchez family. This was my first thanksgiving ever where I did not any any turkey! Can you believe that? No turkey.

This week we found a new investigator named Santos! He’s young and pretty cool and willing to listen. He was a referral from the hermana missionaries at the temple visitors center here in DC. We taught him the Restoration even though his apartment was being repaired and he didn’t have any light so we kinda just sat there in the dark in his living room haha but it was still a good lesson. We also met with Manuel Pinto again and he’s still chugging right along. 

Something different we did this week was on Friday we met with the young men for an activity they had. We met at the adviser’s house and we played a little bit of foosball with the youth and then shared a spiritual message because they were putting together lunches for the homeless. It was a great activity! We shared Mosiah 4:16-18 and talked about how it doesn’t matter what the needy may do with what we give them all that matters is that we give to the needy. It was a good night and to top it off Elder Lawson and I ended up having an epic nerf gun war in our apt that night hahaha it was fun.

The mood of that night changed though when I got a call from the APs. They asked me if I would be willing to train a new missionary for my last 2 transfers!! It’s about time I trained a missionary haha I always wanted to ever since I was trained but we will see if it fulfills my expectations. It’s weird to think that he will be my last companion...

We had a Charla last night and Elder Cottle and Hermanas Wright + Fifita were recognized during the Charla that they’re going home tomorrow. They gave their testimonies. I will miss seeing Elder Cottle here a lot, he helped me so much and he still is my favorite companion! We got a picture. After he leaves tomorrow, I will be the oldest Spanish missionary in my mission...

Well I’m pretty nervous to train for the first time but also excited. I hope to make the best out of these last 2 transfers I have. Have a good week everyone. I have a ton of pictures to send.

️ Elder Thompson

Mission pic with Elder Niel L. Andersen

Zahira’s baptism last week!

We ended up with a slice of President Huntsman’s b-day cake!

Thanksgiving 

Esquivel fam