Elder Henry H. Thompson: People Get Ready

November 6, 2018

I would like to start this email off by giving a shout out to Auden by saying: the bees are dying.

Things are going well here in the 707, we had some really great miracles this week! We are working hard and gaining more success during each day that goes by! Its "high noon" (as the lax team would say) out here in the California Santa Rosa Mission.

This week I had the opportunity to attend my very first Zone Conference. It was great to see President and Sister Wright and to be able to learn from the APs and other leaders. Elder Siebach, two other Elders, and I formed a quartet and sang "The Upper California" for the musical number. It was a really cool song to sing. We learned more about making commitments and following up on people. We also learned how to better set goals and how to productively find people to teach. I would like to tell a story that Sister Wright told us during Zone Conference that makes me so grateful to have the best Mission President in the world. In the midst of all of the fires burning in Northern California, President and Sister Wright were told that they needed to evacuate the mission home. They had only a few minutes to gather some irreplacable documents and other things of that sort. In those few minutes, do you know what the first thing they thought to grab was? A big bin full of snacks and water bottles because they were worried that their missionaries would get hungry during interviews that week. They're the most selfless, loving people I think I have ever met and I am so blessed to have them over this mission.

Onto more cool stuff for this week! On Friday we were walking around trying to visit some members and less active families. Usually everyone is home and in bed by about 7 which is when it gets dark so we don't have success after 7 most nights. We thought we should stop by this family's house a few streets away. We knocked on their door and the wife answered the door and said that her husband was out of town and her 6 month old baby was sick. She asked us to give her baby a blessing and so we did. We were at the right place at the right time.

The other cool experience that we had this week: We think God sent us an angel to help us out on Saturday. We were doing a blitz with the whole zone where everyone goes into one area and does a ton of work for a few hours, visiting people and tracting and such. Elder Siebach and I were supposed to visit people on this list of potential investigators. As we approached an apartment complex, we realized that we needed to put in a password to unlock the entrance. We were defeated as we sat down in front of the complex looking on the map for the next people to go visit. Just then, a man rode up on a bicycle out of nowhere and unlocked the door with a key, let us in, and then rode away.... After that we were able to give a Book of Mormon to the woman that we were trying to visit inside the complex!

About the man in my email last week, he and the Bishop have been talking a lot and we are just waiting to hear from him and his family. He did come to church again yesterday so we are really excited about that.

Fun fact: Elder Siebach is basically a wizard with the scriptures. He knows them really well and has a ton of stuff memorized. In order for me to learn as much as I can from him, we have been making a "posterity anti-bash Bible" together. The front page is pretty funny, it has the answer to any question that someone might have about the Bible and how it correlates to the Book of Mormon and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We are working hard here. Its all good. The song of this week is "People Get Ready" by The Impressions. I would suggest checking it out.

Let me know how life is for everyone else! It's great to hear from a lot of you. Also, for the East Lacrosse team, I hope that you guys killed it in Fall Ball... go work hard this off-season so that you can beat the snot out of Corner Canyon this year.

The gospel is true! God loves us and wants to help us.

what the geesht,

Elder Thompson