Last Few Weeks!

Lane Grey Thompson	1:56 PM (0 minutes ago)
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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!