Elder Henry H. Thompson: Life On The Lake

Another week went by! It's crazy, each time I whip out another weekly email it doesn't feel like it's been a whole week.

Let me tell you though, Lake county is a wild place! We live right on the lake and you can see it from pretty much anywhere you go. It's really pretty and the people here are nice. Our area is huge. We cover the north part of the lake and all of the surrounding towns. We also cover 3 Native American Indian reservations and we are actually teaching people there! They think it's super cool to read the Book of Mormon and learn about their ancestors.

It has definitely been an adjustment coming from Santa Rosa but it's good because the work is BOOMING here!

We have 4 people currently on date for baptism in the next month or so. With probably 4-8 more that will be on date for baptism in the near future! Exciting stuff! 2 of the 4 people currently on date for baptism are leaders in one of the local Native American tribes, the Pomo Indians.

Can you imagine when they are baptized, the many from their nation who would follow their example?!

We are also teaching a woman named Amber who is on date for baptism and she told us this week her fiance would like to take the lessons and be baptized as well! We gave her a definite yes. We are going to meet him on Thursday. Amber is super prepared, she just had a relative pass away and when we taught her the Plan of Salvation, so many of her questions were answered.

I had a super awesome experience this week while teaching two sisters: Vicky and Cari. We taught them the Restoration and each time we brought up a point of the lesson, they told us they had been wondering about that very thing pretty much their whole lives. They asked us why prophets ended after the Bible and I was happy to testify that prophets were not done away with but that we have a living prophet today to guide us just like prophets back in the time of Moses or Abraham. We went over how the Priesthood was restored to the earth with the authority to baptize and give the gift of the Holy Ghost. I asked them if they would be baptized by someone who has those priesthood keys and they both said yes! They came to church on Sunday and the first hymn was "Count your Blessings," which is a song they knew from growing up in a different church. They said it was a sign to them, this will be their new church! We are just seeing miracle after miracle here. I'm glad to be part of it.

I know I've been a missionary for a while because when we went home at the end of the day and I was waiting for Elder Hunsaker to open our door, I knocked on it out of habit. I felt really dumb but at least my head is in the game. Elder Hunsaker is a good guy and he likes to work hard.

The Song of the Week this week is Red Red Wine by (I can't remember, sorry I've been out here for a long time.... originally by Bob Marley maybe?) in honor of the many vineyards up here.

Hank will be surprised to learn the song was originally written and performed by Neil Diamond in 1967. Tony Tribe and UB40 are among many who have covered it, but surprisingly Bob Marley never did.

Have a great week!

love,

Elder Thompson