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

It's Gonna Be May

Hello everyone from another HOT week in California. Last Spring/Summer in Fortuna and Rohnert Park it was nice because on the coast, a blanket of fog comes in every morning and every night which cools things down.  We don't get that here in Lake County since we're a little more inland. It's weird that it isn't even May yet and it's been in the 90s every day this week. Makes for a good time walking around! 

We had a lot of long days finding with little success but we had some other cool experiences I'm happy to share. 

On Wednesday, we went to see our friend Richie at 2 but sadly, he wasn't home. We then went to what we had planned to do if he wasn't there and started tracting a street along the lake, ironically called Lakeshore Avenue.  Not too many people were home since it was 2pm. After about 30 minutes I felt like we should go back to try and see Richie again. I shook it off a little bit because he wasn't there before and maybe it was just me trying to get out of the hot sun. But I kept feeling like now was the time we should go back and try again. So I told Elder Hunsaker we should try one more time. We went back up there and as we got there, he was just pulling up with his kids! We got to talk with him more about the Book of Mormon, which he is really interested in.  It was cool to be able to receive such a distinct prompting and follow it to see a small miracle. 

A wild experience from the week: As we were tracting a trailer park, across from a door we were knocking were some obviously very drunk guys probably in their mid 20s. As we approached their house, one of them was really aggressive and cussed us out and told us to leave. We did, but his house faced the rest of the street we were going down so he yelled at us all the way down the street and also every time we came out from knocking one of the houses. The problem was that the street was a dead end so we had to walk all the way back and past his house with all of his friends. As we got close to the house, we saw about four of them coming out from the garage where they were sitting and cracking open a cold one with the boys. "Uh oh, here we go," I thought to myself. But then all of a sudden the guy became a really nice drunk and he told us his grandpa had come and chewed him out for harassing us and he wanted to apologize. They gave us some cold water and invited us in their garage. I was hesitant to go in because I wasn't sure of their intentions. The grandpa came out, apologized to us and assured us that we would be fine. We went back through their garage and into the man cave complete with A/C blasting cold air, a flat screen, pool table, and my personal favorite and tender mercy: some sweet speakers blasting good ol Van Halen! They offered us some Coors Light, we said no thanks. Then they asked if we wanted to play a game of pool. I know God's time is valuable so I said that we had to go but they were not about to let this one go. So I told them that we would play one quick game of nine-ball and then we had to leave. As some of you know, I'm pretty bad at pool and I didn't make a single shot but I still won by default because the other guy hit in the wrong ball. They poured me a shot of tequila as a prize for winning. I politely turned that one down too and decided it was definitely time to go. The super drunk guy started to get aggressive again and was yelling at us wanting to know when we would be doing service for his family because they were cold and wanted us to bring them some firewood. I reminded him it was 90 degrees outside and we had to be on our way. The grandpa apologized  again, gave us more bottled water and then sent us off!  So we got cussed out, invited inside, given refreshments, offered a lot of alcohol, won a game of pool by default and left with a couple new friends, all within the space of 20 minutes! 

I fasted yesterday as directed by President Meservy to know what we need to do for the Native Americans. We are slowing things down while President Meservy consults with the Area Authority and Seventy, then we'll get notice of what we will do from here on out. It's a big deal and we need to be sensitive to their culture and traditions.  Teaching them is different than any other teaching I've done.

Finally, we did some service at The Narrows in Blue Lakes which is a lakeside resort set to open in a few weeks.  It's been neglected for a while and the new owners needed some help.  Hard work but worthwhile.

The Song of the Week is, "Pretty Good at Drinkin Beer" by Billy Currington in honor of our new found friends! 

Have a great week everyone! 

With respect,

Elder Thompson 

The only picture I took this week, haha sorry, but I'm sure it'll make my dad happy.

Elder Hunsaker doesn't eat any fruits or vegetables and I've taken on a personal challenge to change that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtMy5IBmX7E  Pretty Good at Drinkin Beer Billy Currington

Makes The Hard Days Worth It

I hope you all had a great Easter Sunday yesterday! It was a pretty good one for me as well. 

The week was full of ups and downs for sure, but we still had cool experiences which made it all worth it! 

On Tuesday night, we taught a bomb Plan of Salvation lesson to Paula and Dave. They were soaking it all up and listening so intently. They told us it made the most sense out of anything else they've ever heard! 

The next day, we had a lot of lessons planned, which I was excited about, but every single one except for one of them cancelled.... But the one lesson that we had was awesome! We met Ritchie the week before last but this week when we came back, his car wasn't there and we were super disappointed.  Par for the course for the day, I figured. We decided to go and knock anyway. He answered the door and told us that he had literally gotten home 2 minutes earlier and had walked because he took his car for an oil change. He stepped outside and we were able to teach him the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As we were teaching he kept saying how interested he was and how he had been looking for a church which is really family centered and he loved what we were teaching him! Music to my ears! He has a great family as well. We are excited to go teach him again this coming week! It makes the rest of the hard days worth it! 

Also exciting news from the reservations: the spiritual leader of the tribe on the Big Valley Reservation (the largest of all of them in our area) has a date to be baptized on May 22nd along with about 6 other people on the reservation! We are super excited about that! Basically we threw a match down and the whole place caught fire, it has been awesome to see. We are hoping to put some more people on date there this week.  We are cautiously optimistic... we want to make sure they all know 100% the commitment they're making because we definitely don't want to baptize a whole tribe into inactivity.. But miracles are being poured out!   

We were instructed by our great Mission President, President Meservy, this week at Zone Conference! After a really winding road down to Santa Rosa (mom wouldn't like it at all), we talked about how to study effectively for the people we are teaching. I learned a lot about study techniques and habits and I am continually trying to improve my studies! I actually like studying now which is the weird part! At least the gospel..... we'll have to wait and see if I will like studying for other things too but we'll be hopeful. 

As Easter approached this past week, I was thinking a lot about the Savior. How he went through everything that we have ever gone through and everything we will ever go through, something he didn't deserve because he was perfect. But He suffered to know how we feel when we do make mistakes and so that he can perfectly know how to help us through it and to make us better. It's comforting to repeat the words in my head "He is not here, for He is risen." Not only do I know that Jesus Christ lived and died for me and for you, but I know that He lives today. And because He lives today, you and I can be with our families forever and not even death can separate us from each other. That, I know for sure. I've studied it and I've felt the confirmation of the Holy Ghost as I've studied and prayed about it. It's the biggest blessing that we could receive! 

Easter Dinner with the Stogner family

The Song of the Week is Aribella by the Arctic Monkeys. Another solid one. One day I'll be able to listen to all of these again. Until then, please enjoy them in my place! 

A few shoutouts for this week as well: shoutout to East Lax! I haven't heard much about what's going on this year but I hope you are absolutely crushing it! I still have Hearn's number on the back of my name tag so always remember him when you play! 

Another shoutout to my boy from Day One, Josh Ford! You're a straight baller and I'm super excited for you this upcoming week! 

Have another great week everyone!

love,

Elder Thompson 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn6-TItCazo  Aribella the Arctic Monkeys

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 

Clear Lake

View from Lakeport

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeJ55sUacPM  Red Red Wine  Neil Diamond