Fonts are Full in Lakeport

Good day from NorCal everyone! 

Super busy week, we had to plan for TWO baptisms.  Two in one week is a first for me! One was for our friend from the reservation, Alayah, and the other one was our great friend, Cari. Most of our week was planning for those baptisms and making sure they were ready.

 Alayah's baptism was great, the only hiccup was discovering she has an intense fear of water and we only found out right as she was going to walk down into the font.... But, we calmed her down and she was able to get baptized! Elder Hunsaker and I made cookies for everyone because if there aren't treats at a church function, did it even happen? Long story short, everyone loved those cookies and were very surprised that "the Elders made them??!" 

While preparing Cari for her baptism, her sister Vikki, sat in again because she has been gone for the past little bit. We asked if she still wanted to be baptized and she said yes! So we set her date for June 15th! We are super excited for her.  Cari wants to make sure we all go to the temple together after Vikki gets baptized. They are both stoked! 

Cari's baptism was great too! Everything came together pretty much last minute but it worked out amazingly. The talks were both perfect for Cari to hear and everyone was very welcoming. We made the water superrrrr warm so Cari was happy; I totally would have gotten baptized again in that water, it was nice. The only problem we had with Cari's baptism is we forgot to tell her to bring a towel so in the middle of one of the talks before she got baptized, I had to leave and sneak into the womens bathroom to make sure there was a towel there for her.  I took a blanket draped over a chair in the Mothers' Room and put it over the changing stall as if it were a towel and then I scurried out of there and went back to sit in my seat. Nobody knew a thing. We also made more cookies for Cari's baptism and they were a hit! She is such a great convert though, she invited tons of her friends to come to the baptism, one person even came all the way from Oakland to be there. She told me she hasn't cried in years but that day she felt really emotional and cried as she bore her testimony. It was a very spirit-filled experience. 

On Sunday, both Alayah and Cari asked me to confirm them and give them the gift of the Holy Ghost, which I had never done before so I was a little nervous.  Cool experience, right after Cari received the Holy Ghost, we had the sacrament. After the water was blessed, she turned to me and said "I got it that time; I understood it." and I was like: heck yeah, the Holy Ghost is already teaching her things! 

One funny story and then I'll let you get back to whatever you were doing before: We invited a woman we're teaching, Pamela, to come to the baptism. When she got there, she sat down in the room with the font and she started to take off her jewelry and we were like, "what are you doing?" She thought that SHE was the one getting baptized that day!  We explained she couldn't be baptized right then but we could certainly arrange it in the future!  She was all in and said yes! So we are going to set a date with her this week.  

I know if we follow the small promptings of the Holy Ghost, we can be guided, protected, and comforted as we go throughout our lives. I've witnessed how listening to those promptings can bless other people's lives, so maybe you could be the answer to someone's prayer! That is always a good feeling. 

The Song of the Week is, "Basket Case"  by Green Day. Shoutout to Tre Cool for some amazing drums. 

I hope you all have a great week! 

Much love,

Elder Thompson 

Nothing better after a baptism than a bowl of cereal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUTGr5t3MoY  Basket Case  Green Day

Beautiful Day(s)

It's definitely been another week here in California! We got hit with a crazy rainstorm which was pretty much the worst because I thought we were done with the rainy season, but hopefully it ends after this week. 

We had a crazy answer to prayer this past week: we had been praying for a way to get Cari and Vikki down to the Oakland Temple Open House but we just kept running into brick walls trying to find people to drive us... it's a 2 1/2 to 3 hour drive depending on traffic.  The ward rented a charter bus to take members down but it had been filled up for a few weeks. We got a call on Wednesday from the Relief Society president who told us due to some cancellations, there were 5 open seats and it would be free for all of us!  Cari and Vikki were all in!  So on Saturday, we loaded up at 5:30 am and we drive down to Oakland to take a tour of the temple. Vikki was sick and couldn't come but Cari loved it! She was so happy to be there and was excited to go again after her baptism, which is this Saturday by the way! I also ran into some of my favorite members from Dixon and Fortuna in Oakland, so it was like a great family reunion! 

I could have stayed forever in that temple, it was beautiful! It was really weird for me though to have so many people in one place recognize us as elders. Everywhere we went, people said, "Hello Elders!" I'm definitely not used to that. 

Another cool answer to prayer happened this week. About two weeks ago, we met a woman named Cherie who lives at the top of a hill in a town called Nice, on the north shore of the lake. We met her while it was raining super hard. Her dog was outside and I guess it really didn't like us because it was super mean towards us right when we got out of the car and was trying to bite me. So we went back a few days later for a return appointment but we were worried her dog would be outside and we wouldn't be able to even make it up to the door.... So we got there and sure enough, the dog was just patrolling the property. We literally prayed that God would soften the heart of the dog and it would recognize us as servants of the Lord. After we finished the prayer, the dog laid down under the shade of a tree, looking happy and content as ever, and did not make a sound as we walked up to the door looking for Cherie. It was not at all worried about us. I thought it was pretty cool! 

We are just chugging along here! We are going to baptize one of the Native American kids on Wednesday and a few others next month, hopefully. We have Cari's baptism on Saturday! It should be an exciting week.  Elder Hunsaker and I are going to be having 6 more weeks together here in Lakeport, let's hope it goes well! 

The Song of the Week is "Beautiful Day" by U2. Let's pray for some beautiful days here in Lake County! 

Much love to you all,

Elder Thompson 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co6WMzDOh1o  Beautiful Day  U2

Operation Sunday Transportation

Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there! It was a great time seeing my family. We had another hot week out here in California - and from what I hear, this is actually the nice part of the year. It usually gets to be about 110 during the summer so that's definitely going to be fun. 

We had a busy week for sure. The cool thing is we got about 8 Native American kids to come to church! We had to get them all rides and coordinate the rides carefully.  If a lot of cars show up all at once, it's overwhelming for the people on the reservation.  They kind of freak out, they're pretty sensitive. So we tried to not make a scene and it worked out well! The kids liked church and want to come back... they even stayed for Primary. Now we just hope their parents will come as well! It was successful though -  almost like an operation to get everyone rides and make sure that it went smoothly! 

We had two really fantastic lessons this week: one was with Dave and Paula.  We came into it knowing we were going to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson but if they hadn't read the Book Of Mormon since we last saw them, then we would switch gears and read the Book of Mormon. We got inside and sadly they hadn't read since we last saw them. We had to think on the fly of where we should read. While I was thinking, the member who was with us at the lesson opened up his scriptures on his phone and the first thing he had open was 3 Nephi 11 - where Christ comes to the Americas and teaches about baptism - so I thought to myself "yeah why not that one?"  We read probably 8 verses out of 3 Nephi 11 and while we were going around the circle reading, Paula landed on a verse that is the baptismal prayer (Paula is a convert from years ago) and the spirit instantly flooded the room. She choked up while reading the verse and started to cry. (This was a miracle because she seemed like a hard one to crack!) That lesson was such a great one. It wasn't us who taught her that day, it was the spirit. 

The other awesome lesson was with Cari.  Vikki wasn't able to make it but we had it at our Bishop's house. During the lesson, we decided to read 2 Nephi 31, also about baptism. Up until this point, Cari has been reluctant to set a date for baptism. In that chapter, Christ invites us to "follow thou me" - so I asked Cari if she would take Christ's words to heart and follow Him. She said yes, she would like to do that. We talked about how one of the first things we can do to follow Christ is to be baptized by someone who holds His priesthood authority. She said she'd like to do that too!!  The I asked if we could set a date for her to be baptized and she said she likes the month of May, so we set her date for May 25th! That was super exciting  for me. Now we need to set a date for Vikki  as well, we will do that this week.  We are also going to make a plan with them to go to the Oakland Temple open house. Exciting times! 

The Song of the Week is "Can I Kick It?" by A Tribe Called Quest.  

Pray for me so I won't burn up out here! It's the last week of the transfer, gotta finish strong! 

Much love,

Elder Thompson 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3pyCGnZzYA  Can I Kick It?  A Tribe Called Quest

Honored Guests

What's up again everyone? I guess it's been another week! 

This week, we had a weird amount of people willing to sit down with us and listen so that was a true blessing! 

I had a cool experience last Monday night: we were in Lucerne (kind of sketchy) and as we were driving down the road to see someone we're teaching, I remembered a lady we had talked to  2-3 weeks earlier in her front yard. We didn't really teach her and didn't set up a return appointment so I wasn't sure why I thought of her, but I told Elder Hunsaker to turn down her street and we went to go see her. She came outside, sat down with us and listened to the Restoration. She loved the idea of the Book of Mormon and told us that she would read it. I was really happy to have received a small prompting and followed it to have this experience, but it doesn't end there! We went back yesterday for our return appointment and she had read the BoM while we were gone!! Not the whole thing obviously, but she read the first few chapters and actually understood it and was so excited to tell us about it! When I asked her if she thought what she was reading was true, she told me "well, when you ask me that, all I can really say is 'how can it not be true?'" That was a great experience, hearing that. "Finally! someone gets it!" I thought. I asked her to come check out the church on Sunday and she agreed! So she should be coming to church this Sunday! Her name is Patricia. I was happy to meet her. 

This weekend was a really special one for the Native Americans in our area.  It is the weekend of their Roundhouse Ceremony. It goes pretty much nonstop for 3 days and we were invited to go! We have talked to a few people and they are amazed we were invited because, in their many years living around the reservation and knowing the people, they have never seen any white people get invited into the Roundhouse Ceremony. So it was a huge honor! 

With special permission from President Meservy, we were able to go. All sorts of people from reservations around the county and beyond come to celebrate with their families. There were quite a few people there. They always start off with a big meal together and good conversation. We got some weird looks at first, we stood out like sore thumbs, but as soon as they learned we were "JoJo's special guests" they immediately changed and were incredibly nice from that point on. (JoJo is their spiritual leader who wants to be baptized) We were invited to sit at the table reserved especially for the Elders of the tribe and their families which was so cool. The food was really good. Then the Elders of the tribe went inside their roundhouse (a literal round hut) and started their ceremonies by blessing the objects they were going to be using and the headdresses and stuff like that. Only the tribal elders were allowed in at that point, then the rest of us came inside and we all sat down around the edges of the roundhouse. There were probably a little less than a hundred people packed into that place. There are all sorts of amazing symbols in there. We were all seated on the straw floor around a big fire. I'm not sure how much of the symbolism I am allowed to explain because nobody is allowed to bring any phones or writing tools in the roundhouse, they don't want anybody recording the ceremonies. They did say I could tell people about my experience.  The rest of the night until about 11:00pm, when they took their first break, was full of chanting, singing and dancing...  amazing ceremonial clothing, headdresses, and other cool things.  It is something that is really special to them, it was unforgettable! I'll just say it was one of the coolest things I've ever experienced and I have a great amount of respect for their culture and customs.  It was also positive because we made  many friends and gained their trust.  They seemed to really love having us there! 

The Song of the Week is Life In The Fast Lane by the Eagles. We are definitely in the fast lane out here in the mission field, however California is aggravatingly not in the fast lane with it's 65 MPH freeway speed limits... c'mon what kind of garbage is that?? Just a few more months and we will be back to good old 80's. 

Have a great week everyone and remember, if you slow down, you go down!

Love Elder Thompson 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsYhDSR9mGI  Life In The Fast Lane  The Eagles