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.
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! 
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,
️ Elder Thompson
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 MartÃn 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.”
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12/4/17
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Family and friends,
️ Elder Thompson
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.
Hello Everyone,
️ Elder Thompson
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.
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
