I'll be honest, this week was one of the harder ones for me but it's all good... Just another opportunity to prove myself to the Lord.
Halloween was fun! We decided that since it would be a garbage day to tract, we were just going to bake some cookies for the people we are teaching and also recent converts. It was such a success!! I think it's good for people to see that we actually care about them as people and friends and not just someone who we are teaching about the gospel. They go hand in hand! One person who we gave cookies to is a recent convert. She has been going through one of the toughest times I've seen out here. She has tons of health problems, she lives alone, can't drive anywhere, and her family did some messed up things to her. She told us that she was having a really tough time with her health and could almost feel herself ready to give up. At that moment, we texted her to see if she was home so we could drop off some cookies to her. She said it was a sign from God that He is watching over her and He would give her strength. We gave her a blessing the next day.
2 families invited us over for Halloween, one was the Bishop and the other was the Ward Mission Leader. Both of them told us we could stay as long as we wanted haha. But we had to be in by 6:30 that night. We had pizza at Bishop's and talked to some people who we have been trying to get in contact with, so that was great! We were walking back to our car probably a block away and everyone we passed by thought we were just in REALLY good costumes and thought we were hilarious. We told them we were the real deal and they all got really silent. Made me laugh, great future costume idea.
After, we went to our Ward Mission Leader's house, we hung out for a little with them and their son, Camden, who I have become close friends with. It was a fun day, really!
Another good thing is that Cary, who Elder Justus and I baptized in Fortuna, was down near both of us this week and stopped in Petaluma so that we could all say hi to her! It was fun to see her and hear that she is going strong in the gospel and loves the ward up there. Tender mercy!
The rest of the week was hard. All of our lessons cancelled and they were with such great people who I was so excited to teach. So we did a TON of tracting over the weekend and usually it works out pretty well but the past couple days, the people really weren't having it. I think I got a very small glimpse of what the Savior had to go through. As we were walking out of an apartment complex that we had spent the last 1.5 hours knocking in, we waved at a man going into one of the apartments. He yelled at us and told us to 'eff off', I tried to smile and have a sense of humor about it but I'm not sure if he appreciated that. That man really didn't like us, but it's okay. Even if people are mean, make you leave or do other things to you, it doesn't make the work any less true and meaningful. To me, it actually makes it more true! If there were no opposition, there would be no way of telling that this is a good thing.
So when we showed up to Novato for Pday today, a big armored SWAT truck pulled in the parking lot along with a big surveillance van. The SWAT team guys got out and asked if we wanted to participate in some of their training inside of the church, of course we said yes!! We ended up having a big airsoft war with the Marin County SWAT team in which we ran through scenarios where they were supposed to clear out the building and we were supposed to be the bad guys shooting at them. So that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so cool! They were awesome guys!!
The Song of the Week is "Noisy Birds" by Fictionist. That's a good one! Brandon Kitterman, guitar/bass guitar, was my first guitar teacher.
Hope everyone is doing well, much love from the 707.
Elder Thompson
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| Rohnert Park Vineyard |
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