Hey everyone,
I hope you are all having a great week. Nothing too exciting happened, but it felt like one of the fastest weeks of my mission. I hit my year mark! Dang, I cannot believe I have gone a whole year without seeing my family. I am proud to say that I have done my own laundry and bought my own groceries for a whole year! I never thought I would survive without my Mama. My year mark was a pretty fun day. We did all of our planning for the next week. After that, we had a sports activity at the church and Manny came. We played dodge ball and soccer and it was a ton of fun. Later, we had dinner with the Vasquez family. They are really cool and they have a son DJ who is getting ready for a mission. DJ is awesome and we have been having little mission prep classes with him every week. It is really cool to see him get ready for a mission. It feels like just yesterday I was getting ready for mine. While we were there, I burned one of my white shirts. It is a tradition that when a missionary hits his year mark, they burn one of their white shirt that has seen some wear and tear. It was a fun day.
Manny is doing really great. We had a lesson with him this week that went really well and he also came to church. I can see his testimony growing. He is making friends in the church and he loves coming to activities with the youth. His sister Lucerito is doing a great job encouraging him. She has been a huge help.
This week we have done a lot of tracting. I am actually starting to love knocking doors! You meet the most interesting people. It usually takes us a while until we actually find somebody who is interested. The other day, at the first door we knocked on, we were invited in. His name is Miguel and he is a 60 year old man from Mexico. He has a friend in Palmdale who is a member of the church and he has already read the Book of Mormon and he says he loves it. He is really cool and invited us back this week. We are pretty excited to keep working with Miguel. He is a great guy who seems really interested.
This week I had the opportunity to have another baptismal interview for a lady named Rhonda. She is in her 50's and is a really nice lady. I asked her how she first found out about the church and she told me the story of how her kids were actually the ones who found it and they joined the church a while back. She said she just let them do their thing, but didn't want anything to do with church. Almost ten years later, she finally decided to meet with the missionaries to learn more about the church her kids were attending. She said it didn't take very long after that to make the decision to get baptized. She is a really strong lady. Sometimes I get nervous about doing those interviews, but Rhonda is awesome. She was really excited to be baptized and was so easy to talk to.
We are heading over to Lancaster today to play some sports. I hope you all have a great week. Thanks so much for everything. I will see you all in a year! :)
Much Love,
Elder Chad Thompson