A new chapter

Gracias a todos por (thanks to everyone for) the birthday shout outs! I really appreciate it. I know it isn't easy to email hahaha, time is so short, but I really appreciate the notes. 

Shout out to Crew bug for your baptism this Saturday! I want you to know that I will be thinking about you on this special day. 

Okay.. so it's true, my time in El Conquistador came to an end. It was hard a despedirme de todos (to say goodbye to everyone), they are seriously my family. I have shared a lot with all of them, cried together, laughed together, felt the spirit and grew together, but I know God has a plan for everyone of us. He places us in the paths of others so that we may help one another on this crazy road to return to Him. 

Now I am in Ochagavía with Hermana Farner from Washington. She is super awesome! Seriously, we are so ready to work hard. We are now in cargada de 23 misioneras (in charge of 23 Sister Missionaries)... woah. We have a ton of work to do with our sector and to help the other hermanas (sisters) out. I am super stoked, seriously, I love serving people so much. It just feels so good to help others and to truly listen to them. 

So this last week...wow. Well, Emily got baptized!! She is such an adorable 9 year old girl. She is the daughter of a menos activa (less active), she is super capa (cute/cool). She answered the baptism questions like a boss. Seriously, she knows the 10 commandments by memory and is memorizing the Articles of Faith. Her brother Josè received the sacerdocio (Priesthood) on Sunday too! So awesome. I feel content leaving El Conquistador knowing I was an instrument in the Lord's hands to bring people unto Him. I love the work of Salvation!! 

I am so pumped to continue working here in Chile. The people are so special. I want to end this email with my testimony: I know this is Christ's work. I know He lives. He is leading this church. It is His Church. We are the soldiers on earth fighting for the good, but we need to be dedicated to the war we are in; we cannot have one foot on the field and one foot off...we have to be ALL in. We have to do all we can to protect ourselves and to protect those around us who are fighting along with us. God needs us to give everything we have. He needs us to be strong, to be faithful. This is true... 

I love my Savior and I am eternally grateful and in debt to Him.

Happy Birthday to the best mom in the world!! You are awesome :)

Hermana Thompson

Big Day!

Received this from Hermana Thompson today:

Hey, so I got transferred and I am now an Hermana Leader so we were in a meeting pretty much all day so I will write my "mass" email tomorrow. I am in Ochagavía with Hermana Farner, she has been like my bff since the start of the mission. We were totally freaking out when they called us. Thanks so much for the package Mom, you are awesome!! Your little post it notes made me cry!! Love you guys too! Please tell everyone "thanks" for the birthday wishes...not enough time to reply to all! 

the love of God

Primero quiero expresar mi amor por mi Salvador... (First I want to express my love for the Savior) de verdad esta valentines day pensé mucho en el amor él tiene para mi y estoy tan agradecida por el sacrificio de amor que hizo para mi y cada uno de nosotros. me ha dado todo el apoyo, el entendimiento, el consuelo, èl es fiel, amoroso, y mi mejor amigo. due un dìa especial para mi para recordar todo el amor de èl (really, this Valentines Day I have thought a lot about the love the Savior has for me, and I am grateful for His loving sacrifice for each one of us.  He has given me strength, understanding, comfort; He is faithful, loving, and my best friend.  It was a very special day for me to remember His love)

Dad, you can't get trunky on me!!! But this week was kind of a wake up call as we had our 1 año almuerzo en la casa de la misiòn... (one year luncheon at the mission home) Ah, I thought that day would never come. It feels like life seems to go so slow, and then we blink and we don't know how we got to where we are. It blows my mind. But I am so excited for the months I still have in the mission. I am sad to be leaving this sector, it has become my home and the people have become my family, seriously. Mom, Dad, I am planning to come back here in a year...just a heads up :) 

Anyway! We are seeing a lot of progress in this sector, everything is really falling into place. We are finding quite a few nuevos, people are really receptive despite the calor (heat). We have a fecha (baptismal date)  this saturday for emily. La hija de una menos active (she is the daughter of a less active). She is really excited. :) She knows that baptism is a requirement to enter into el reino celestial (celestial kingdom). It is so awesome to hear about prayer experiences. I have seen it so many times in my mission, people pray and they feel something in their hearts and then the spirit starts working in them to help them feel the truth of the gospel. I know this is the only true gospel;  other churches, yes, have part of the truth but only the church of jesus christ has all of the truth. 

Carla y Cesar are progressing well :9 Cesar shared his testimony in priesthood and someone told us that he told everyone that he knows this church is true! music to a missionaries ears :) seriously, I love this family so much. ah! 

Bueno... right now it is summer so everyone is on vacation, but yesterday the stake president asked "what would happen if God went on vacation?"  An interesting concept... haha I know I would be so lost if he went on vacation for an hour! 

Happy Birthday Tate!!

Saludos de Chile

(loads of love)

Hermana Thompson

Side note: Hey, guess what Dad?! Elder y Hermana Gonzalez (Rick's Mission President) vinieron a tener una conferncia con nuestra mision(they came to have a conference with our mission) y guess what, I totally got a picture with them! The hermana was bragging to me about you and how hard of a worker you were and what faith. She told me you were one of their gran misioneros y es muy orgullosa de ti (great missionaries and is very proud of you). She gave me about 5 hugs on your behalf. She even called me out in front of everyone and said how special it was to be there, it was really awesome :) I have a picture with them just like you have with them!  

1 year luncheon at Presidente's home

The Love of God

Happy Valentines Day! I hope everyone has a little bit of time to focus on the love of Christ. Moroni 7:47 comparta este amor con los demás eso es la caridad, compartir el amor de nuestro Salvador y Padre Celestial. Yo sé que cada uno de nosotros somos hijs de Dios y él nos ama tanto que envió su hijo que podemos tener la vida eterna. (share this love with others, it is charity, sharing the love of our Savior & Heavenly Father. I know that each of us is a child of God and He loves us so much He sent His Son that was may have eternal life.)

Bueno... okay. ¿qué paso esta semana? (what happened this week?) Every Monday I have to think hard about what to write haha So many things happen every day, it is difficult to include everything in an hour. But let's see... 

So I kinda have a lot of time in this sector... more than 6 months, so I pretty much know it backwards, forwards, and side to side. I know my neighbors here better than I did at home lol. anyway, so I know a lot of people and sometimes it's hard because I feel like I have talked to everyone, knocked every door... but as president says it is time to knock the windows. so we went exploring. it's kind of hard to explain, but we found these houses behind houses... incredible! I don't know how I missed there were houses behind this BIG wall en el sector. There are like 6 or 7 houses on this terreno (ground). I can't explain the houses but they are different than every other house in our sector, they are really humble homes. anyway, the first house we knocked on, they let us in. Turns out there is a family with 9 kids living here! ah. Gold. 2 of the daughters are 20 and 22 and accepted fechas (dates) for the 7 of march! amazing. 

This same day we found a man in another house and his name is Claudio. We started this new thing in our mission of handing out a card with christ ton it hat says "sígueme" and the other side has a picture of baptism so people really understand our purpose as missionaries. So when we contacted him with the card, he got teary eyed and said that he has really been missing the spiritual things in his life. He let us in and began to weep saying that we were angels sent to his home to bring him what he needs. He was so receptive to the message of the restoration. I know this is the true gospel. The Spirit is real and will touch the hearts of people in need. He is so awesome!! I love being a missionary and bringing the world Christ's true gospel. 

Stand in holy places, do not let people pull you down, have courage to walk away when you can feel that the Spirit is not present. A lot of times I feel like we feel the devil for the things he is capable of but muchas veces olvidamos que Dios es aun más poderoso (often forget that God is even more powerful). We should fear God and the judgement that WILL take place rather than the devil at THIS moment because of temptation. 

Look up and around and enjoy the beauty of this wonderful creation from a wonderful father

At the end of every day we need to ask, "what did I do today to follow Christ?" What do I need to change so that I am not following a different path. When it all comes down to it, what is most important is if we chose to dedicate our day to following Christ or did we get caught up in the world. 

lots of love and hugs and kisses this week 

Hermana T

Zone Olimpo

Happy Valentine's Day

Every soul is important to God

Javiera and Agustin were baptized this last saturday!! I can not even express the emotions I was feeling that day... a little stressed, anxious, but oh so happy. It was kind of crazy getting everything worked out, we could definitely feel the adversary working against us. There is opposicion in all things right?! Satan is dumb but we just have to keep fighting against him. He knows our potential and does not want us to get anywhere near reaching it! He puts things in our way as obstacles to stop us from progressing. The family of javiera and agustin have received cualquier desafio (every challenge) thrown at them, seriously... I am amazed at how strong they are. Especially the kids, they have such a strong desire to follow Christ and do the things he did while He was here. This family has taught me so much about trusting in the Lord and even though things may be bad temporarily, we control the spiritual side of our lives. We may choose how we look at things. God gave us that great gift of Agency. We talked a lot about agency yesterday in principos del evangelio (gospel principles). We choose what we want to do in this life, who we want to be, and only we can choose it. Choose wisely!

Oh my gosh, this week we were attacked by dogs!! We were knocking doors and all of a sudden we turn around and there are 4 or 5 little dogs at our ankles barking like crazy and my 'daughter' decides to try and feed ME to them! hahaha She reminded me of you mom, always hiding behind us on roller coasters haha;) We ran away quite quickly,  luckily no one else was around to see us run away like sissies!! haha I so did not want to have to go the hospital for rabies shots! ay ay ay

chi chi chi le le le viva Chile! Looks like my country beat yours in the game this week. Chile pride! Woot woot haha I love how people here always inform us about los partidos de fútbol (soccer games).

Well,  that was everything that was exciting this week. It is so awesome, we are seeing many miracles. One of my goals for this year is to learn how I can consagrar (consecrate) myself more to the lord and this week we had a conference with presidente about the ley de consagracion (law of consecration); it was so awesome. We have to be consecrated to enter into Heaven,  so ask yourself  "what can I do to be more consecrated? What more should I be giving to the lord?" Try as hard as you can to make your path back to the lord STRAIGHT.

I love this work. I love the Lord. Choose to follow Christ.

Hermana Thompson

BAPTISM DAY!!

The Bria's & a completo