Elder Henry H. Thompson: Hanging out in Hollow Trees

June 12, 2018

Hey buzzards!

We have had a week for sure in Humboldt county. This upcoming week could be my last since I'm most likely getting transferred next Tuesday. I'm excited to have a bit of a change but I will be terribly sad to leave some of the families here and some of my investigators like Brodee.

Quick little update on what happened this week:

I went on exchanges with Elder Jones, my former trainee, which was super fun! We had a great time and we get along so well. I wish I could be companions with him again sometime. We taught Duane and Clinton together and we decided that they needed a few more weeks until they can get baptized. So sadly, they didn't get baptized on Saturday but we have them on date for the 23rd now. After all, it's all on the Lord's time, not ours.

We also extended a baptismal invitation to our other investigator, Cary, and she accepted! She has been looking for the truth for a long time and has actually been a member 3 different churches previously, haha, but she says that she has found it now and is ready to make the promise, which is Baptism on the 23rd as well!! We also invited her to put her poor old dog down but she declined that one.... (editor's note: I asked him to explain and he said the dog is 13+ years old and very skinny with tumors all over her body. She lays there, infested with fleas, and just cries. It's almost more than he can bear!)

We went to the best burger joint in Humboldt which is called The Chimney Tree. It was delicious!! It's this super good grill place that's right next to a completely hollowed out Redwood tree, which is still alive! That's pretty legit. It's huge on the inside and you can have a fire in it if they'd let you! The tree is 78 feet tall, has a circumference of 50'4" and the center of the tree burned out in 1914. The room inside is 12'6" in diameter.

As for Brodee, he is still planning on getting baptized this weekend and I think that's a sure thing that'll happen! We have had some great lessons with him. He always ends up teaching us something. We taught him the Plan of Salvation this week and he was absolutely overjoyed because of the things we told him. He told us that it bridged so many gaps that were in his head. After that lesson, he gave us all of the stuff that he shouldn't have: tea, coffee, his vape mod, and told us that he doesn't want them anymore. What a guy. He is a big reason I'll be sad to leave here. But hopefully they'll let me open up the Miranda Branch with it's own set of missionaries sometime in the future since I know this place super well. That way, I would get to see Brodee a lot. He told me that he is going to come visit me when I'm home. He also told me that he would be walking up to my door. Since he is in a wheelchair, I told him I'd love to see that!

Other than that, we found more new investigators as well, which is always great! We found a super solid investigator named Catherine who might be the most tatted up woman I have ever seen. She's super nice. She had been wondering why there are so many churches on the earth and we were like, we can answer that for you right now! So she let us in her house (that doesn't happen often guys) and we taught her and she loved it. Hopefully we will get to see her again this week!

Today our district hiked to Strawberry Rock near Trinidad. The view above the Redwoods to the ocean is amazing.

The song of the week this week is "Satellite" by Guster, in honor of my boy Toph Kearl. Shout out to him for his awesome Farewell talk. We used to jam to that one back in the day all the time! Ritt Moms forever.

Well, I love you all and I'm doing well. Hopefully I can report on some baptisms this upcoming week, I'll let you know!

Stay Woke,

Elder Thompson