¿Qué tal mi familia y amigos? I hope everyone is doing well and has been having a great week!! Life in the MTC is still good!!! I am getting really excited to leave though!!! Life in the MTC can be a ton of fun and I love the other Elders in my District, but I'm ready to get out there and start working. It is crazy how time flies though... I feel like I just got here yesterday, and now I will be leaving for California in a week from Monday!!! I'm a little nervous, but I'm more excited than anything! My Spanish feels pretty good (I know basic conversation and can understand people pretty well) and I just feel ready to hit the streets! I can't wait to meet the people I will be teaching and serving. It's gonna be so tight!
So this week was good! On Sundays, our Zone (about 30 missionaries) and the branch presidency meet in one of the huge bubbles that we have gym time in for our church service. It is always super scary because you never know if you will be giving a talk! Every week, you are given a topic to write a talk on and everyone writes a talk. Then, DURING the church service, the branch president or whoever is conducting the meeting says, "We will now be pleased to here from__________." Well this week, that person was me. Woohoooo!! The topic for the week was Repentance. I thought I had prepared a pretty solid talk and so I went up there pretty confident. Oh by the way, the talks are in complete Spanish. So I get up there and start reading my talk that I wrote and it last about one minute! The talks are supposed to be a good 3-5 minutes so I was freaked out! When I finished reading, I just looked up and started talking about Repentance in Spanish and what it meant to me. It actually went really well. I talked for a good two or three more minutes. It felt really good. Basically what I said was, "I know that I need to repent every day. I make mistakes every day and there is always something I can repent for. I know that Christ died for all of us so that we can be forgiven of our sins and become more like Him." I know 100% that that is true. Christ loves us and he died for us so that we can become more like. That is so awesome!
This Tuesday was way cool too! Every Tuesday we have a devotional with all two thousand some missionaries up at Main Campus. There is a speaker who gives about an hour long talk, and they are usually really awesome talks! This Tuesday was especially awesome, because the person who gave the talk just so happened to be the son of an Apostle of the church. And that Apostle just so happened to come to watch his son give the talk! That Apostle was Jeffrey R. Holland! It was so awesome. He didn't give the talk, but he spoke for about ten minutes, introducing his son. It was so cool to see an Apostle. At the end of that meeting, I bumped into another Elder going to the same mission as me!! I haven't been able to find another person headed to Bakersfield yet so it was way cool to find one! And he is leaving the same day as me so we'll probably be on the same flight! He seemed like a way cool guy and maybe he'll be one of my companions down the road.
Today has been awesome! P-Days are awesome because you get to just chill out a little, write letters, and leave the MTC (sort of). We usually walk to a strip mall down the road to grab a bite to eat. Today we went to a Philly Cheese steak place! We really take advantage of being able to eat non-cafeteria food when we can! Well when we walked in, one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands was playing. It was Never Say Never by The Fray! It was sooooo good!!! hahaha While I was there they played The Fray, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, and Michael Buble. Are you kidding me?! It was so sweet. I'm going back there next week..... hahaha
Well, I better go! I hope you all have a great rest of your week! I can't believe that in a few days, I will have hit my one month mark. That is totally INSANE. Adios!!
Love,
Elder Chad Thompson
So this week was good! On Sundays, our Zone (about 30 missionaries) and the branch presidency meet in one of the huge bubbles that we have gym time in for our church service. It is always super scary because you never know if you will be giving a talk! Every week, you are given a topic to write a talk on and everyone writes a talk. Then, DURING the church service, the branch president or whoever is conducting the meeting says, "We will now be pleased to here from__________." Well this week, that person was me. Woohoooo!! The topic for the week was Repentance. I thought I had prepared a pretty solid talk and so I went up there pretty confident. Oh by the way, the talks are in complete Spanish. So I get up there and start reading my talk that I wrote and it last about one minute! The talks are supposed to be a good 3-5 minutes so I was freaked out! When I finished reading, I just looked up and started talking about Repentance in Spanish and what it meant to me. It actually went really well. I talked for a good two or three more minutes. It felt really good. Basically what I said was, "I know that I need to repent every day. I make mistakes every day and there is always something I can repent for. I know that Christ died for all of us so that we can be forgiven of our sins and become more like Him." I know 100% that that is true. Christ loves us and he died for us so that we can become more like. That is so awesome!
This Tuesday was way cool too! Every Tuesday we have a devotional with all two thousand some missionaries up at Main Campus. There is a speaker who gives about an hour long talk, and they are usually really awesome talks! This Tuesday was especially awesome, because the person who gave the talk just so happened to be the son of an Apostle of the church. And that Apostle just so happened to come to watch his son give the talk! That Apostle was Jeffrey R. Holland! It was so awesome. He didn't give the talk, but he spoke for about ten minutes, introducing his son. It was so cool to see an Apostle. At the end of that meeting, I bumped into another Elder going to the same mission as me!! I haven't been able to find another person headed to Bakersfield yet so it was way cool to find one! And he is leaving the same day as me so we'll probably be on the same flight! He seemed like a way cool guy and maybe he'll be one of my companions down the road.
Today has been awesome! P-Days are awesome because you get to just chill out a little, write letters, and leave the MTC (sort of). We usually walk to a strip mall down the road to grab a bite to eat. Today we went to a Philly Cheese steak place! We really take advantage of being able to eat non-cafeteria food when we can! Well when we walked in, one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands was playing. It was Never Say Never by The Fray! It was sooooo good!!! hahaha While I was there they played The Fray, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, and Michael Buble. Are you kidding me?! It was so sweet. I'm going back there next week..... hahaha
Well, I better go! I hope you all have a great rest of your week! I can't believe that in a few days, I will have hit my one month mark. That is totally INSANE. Adios!!
Love,
Elder Chad Thompson