Elder Henry H. Thompson: Teslas At The Temple... A road trip to Sacramento

St. Helena Vineyards

July 16, 2018

Hello everyone!!

I'll keep this short since I know most of you only care for about 2 paragraphs worth then I lose you, but it's alright.

Had a great week this week!! The highlight was going to the Sacramento Temple again with our recent converts! It was 102 degrees which I didn't like, but the Spirit was strong and our converts loved the feeling of being there. We got to do some baptisms. Our converts couldn't stop saying "Wow" when they first got to the grounds. The Sacramento Temple is so beautiful. It's small, but that's all you need really. The grounds are full of trees and nice grass and it's just a great time to be there, inside or out. I hope to go to the Oakland temple when they re-open it.

The other cool thing that happened yesterday was we taught Josue who is progressing greatly!! He has already read the entire Gospel Principles book and is for some reason reading a little bit of Preach My Gospel, maybe he could go on a mission?? We will see. He just wants to know what needs to happen before he gets baptized. We taught him the gospel of Jesus Christ along with a few commandments and he soaked it all in. He is going to start reading the Book of Mormon and continue coming to church. He told us that in the 6 months that he has been coming to church, he didn't want to have the lessons because he needed to make sure it was for him, but once he figured out that it was true, he told us that he wanted to be baptized. He is going to be thinking about a baptismal date so we can start working toward that.

Things are good in the great state of California. The adjustment from being up north to down here is almost like switching countries but I'm doing fine. It's just weird being in civilization again. Up in Fortuna, I was about 4-5 hours away from any big city. Now I'm maybe 45 minutes from San Francisco... crazy.

I'm enjoying every minute. The work is hard, but I have some divine help. Many of my friends are going to be hitting their year mark within about 2 weeks and I'll still have a few weeks after that before I hit mine, its helping to put things into perspective for me that I only have two years here and I have to make the biggest impact I can before I have to leave. Preach My Gospel tells us that we can determine our success as a missionary by our commitment to find, teach, and baptize people. I'm continually striving to be a better missionary and learn all that I can before I'm heaped back into the world. Once you're about halfway through your mission, things kind of get scary haha, but it's great.

One scripture that I've loved recently is Alma 48:17, which says "Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men." I think that is such a cool scripture and I think it's equally as great that I can replace the name Moroni with the names of many people in my life. I could replace the name Moroni with people like my dad or neighbors, or Young Mens leaders, or Matt Gessel... you get the point. It's just really special to me that I have such amazing people in my life.

The Song of the Week this week is "We Don't Eat" by James Vincent McMorrow. This is one of my favorite songs and it really holds a special place in my heart so please appreciate it the way I do.

Much love!!

Elder Thompson