Monday, November 16, 2015

If you ever want to see really happy missionaries, just go to a baptism!

November 16, 2015

Hey family!

It was another good week up here in Portland.
Unfortunately Elder Holt was pretty sick most of this week and had to
stay in, but we were still able to have some cool experiences.

By far the coolest experience was the exchange we had in the Tongan
ward. The members are SO missionary minded. For the first couple hours
of the exchange, the district leader and I were going around to
member's houses and offering them a spiritual thought. Without fail
the first thing each member said was, "oh my Elders! you are too
skinny! Come eat!" Then after they force fed us they're like "thanks
for helping us be better missionaries. I'm already working on these
three neighbors and two of my co-workers, but we can be better!"  Then
we went to their young men's and young women’s that night because we
were supposed to give like a 5 minute spiritual thought. When we got
there the bishop was like "Elders! We’ve set aside 30 minutes for you
guys to speak!" So we kind of winged it, but I thought it was ok ha.
Without us doing anything, the young men and young women brought 8
non-members to the activity. I asked the bishop how he got the young
men and young women how to bring friends and he said that they couldn't get
funding for activities unless they brought non-members. Ha the Tongan
ward is awesome!

We also had the baptism on Saturday, which was awesome and only
included a few hiccups. Phoebe was so happy and a lot of her non-member
friends and family came. Elder Stone baptized her and Elder Reyes
confirmed. If you ever want to see really happy missionaries, just go
to a baptism!

The hiccups included having mysterious green water in the font, and
the Elders who were filling it up for us forgot to put hot water in
the font haha. President Taylor also came to the baptism, which was very
cool! Missionaries always give the restoration lesson while the baptized and baptizer are changing into dry clothes, so it was nerve wracking giving the message in front of the president, but we did a pretty good job considering how sick my comp was.

We also got a letter from our mission president today that says
starting on Thanksgiving we can listen to ANY Christmas music! Yes!!
So if anyone has an extra Christmas CD lying around feel free to send
it to Portland!

Much love,
Elder Thomas

Note from "the missionary's mom," don't worry about the CD request! We'll be sending him Christmas music!!!




No comments:

Post a Comment