Rainy Season Slam Dunks

It's the start of a new transfer here in Rohnert Park. Things have been going well! Elder Taylor is awesome and we get along so I feel like this transfer is about to be a great one! Elder Taylor is about 6'6" so it's a pretty interesting combination, the two of us. The cool part was when we went to MLC last Friday, he walked into the gym where the meeting was being held, picked up a basketball, and while wearing a suit, threw down a two-handed slam dunk on the spot. I enjoyed watching it. 

Me with Sister Olmo and Elder Taylor. I'm the one on the right.

We didn't have much time to do missionary work this week since the first 2 weeks of the transfer are always a killer, but the time that we did have was pretty good! Here are a couple of things that happened

-It rained SO hard this past week! We were tracting in it for about 3 hours on Wednesday morning and nobody was willing to listen to us. We got a lot of "stay dry"'s though. But then a guy who looks like Mad-Eye-Moody from Harry Potter opened the door. He invited us in for some hot chocolate and a little bit of pizza. He wasn't very interested in learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ, but he told us some crazy stories of his about how he left home in the UK only planning on being gone for a few weeks but ended up being gone for about 4 years and wound up in Israel for 18 months, climbing Mt. Sinai and walking through the desert of Egypt to get to the pyramids of Giza.  He was interested in my trip to India because he had also been there and had been to Pakistan for a few months as well. It's crazy all of the stuff that he's done. I enjoyed hearing about it and it was nice of him to let us in to get out of the rain for a bit. I took off my shoes that night and my brown shoes had leaked through my socks and stained my feet brown and yellow. It freaked me out for a second but it's all good. 

-On Thursday, during our daily 6am run, it started pouring on us and we had to do the second half of our run way faster than I ever have before! 

-We had a super spiritual lesson with Barbara about how she can receive answers to her prayers about the Book of Mormon. She is in Jacob now and continuing to read with the help of the study guide we are making her! All we need is a sincere heart, real intent, and faith in Christ. Then the Holy Ghost can let us know that it is true when we pray! She is a tough cookie to crack, but I know that she felt the spirit because I felt it. Slowly but surely, she will come around. She still loves meeting with us and learning more, but she is a bit shy of change because she has been part of her religion for all 76 years of her life. I would imagine change would be hard at that point. But nothing is impossible with Christ on our side. 

-We got put on bikes for the night because the other Elders needed our car.  We had to go take more of the Book of Mormon study guide to Barbara since we are making it a little bit at a time. We biked to the church to 3-hole punch it and then rode across town to Barbara's house. It was Saturday night so we weren't sure if she was going to be at church or out doing something but we went for it anyway. When we got there, her truck wasn't there so we were sad about that but I thought we should knock on the door anyway just in case. We knocked a few times and no answer. But as we were walking out of the driveway, she pulled in with her truck coming home from dinner! It was great. We were able to give her the timeline in person and also have a nice chat with her. Looking back on it, if we hadn't have been on bikes that night we wouldn't have been able to get to Barbara's just as she was coming home, we would have gotten there much sooner and totally missed her. 

God is in the details and one of my new goals is to focus on the small promptings we get which sometimes don't even feel like promptings. Sometimes it's just a thought or a feeling and it doesn't feel like anything special or spiritual whatsoever. But I've seen miracles come from those small promptings so I'm trying to follow them more no matter how weird or inconvenient they may seem.  There's always a reason and sometimes that reason is to see if we will recognize and follow it. It's a pretty big blessing to be able to show God that He can trust me with more in the future. We can know that it doesn't matter if you think its a spiritual prompting or not.  If any thought or feeling prompts us to do good things, we know  that it's from God and all we have to do is act. 

Sorry this is long, I guess I just have a lot to say. Congrats on making it this far. 

The Song of the Week is "Oceans Away" by ARIZONA,  it's a really good one. 

Love from the North Bay,

Elder Thompson 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MoAdVyuEuU  Oceans Away  ARIZONA