The Exodus

Haha i know weird title, but thats something we learned about this week with our mission president. It was crazy, it blew my mind haha.

So yeah, i will just tell you what the exodus story is, because we have been learning it all week and we have been teaching it to everyone. So you all know the story of Moses and Israel coming out of Egypt to the Promised land. It starts off with the Israelites in Egypt as slaves, they are living in captivity and so the Lord calls a Prophet Moses to lead them out of there and get them to a better place. Before they left they needed to have faith or believe in Moses and that he was called of God to lead them. So our mission President compared it to what we do as missionaries, that we are sent to ask people to get out of bondage, to get out of the world.

Then next in the story, they get out and they go and travel in the wilderness. They had to follow the prophet and keep commandments and repent of what they did before. Yet they still weren't perfect. Then they came to the Red Sea and through the power of God, Moses split the Red Sea. In Corinthians, Paul said that this is a similitude of Baptism. Entonces, they were baptized. After they were baptized they continued their journey in the wildernesss where they were guided by a pillar of fire by night and a cloud in the day which was the Spirit. So they recieved the Spirit. BUT they were still not perfect, they still had the world (Egypt) in them. It took them 40 years to get the world out of them before they could go into the promised land.

And so he taught us that the people who we visit and teach will not be perfect at baptism they dont need to be. All we do is ask them to come out of the world to get out and then after a while they will get the world out of them. And so i thought that was a pretty cool story.

Oh well real quick kus i better tell a funny story to give you guys a couple laughs. if i can. Ok so everyone knows how unorganized i am, well my companion is the same way haha. So we lose the keys to our apartment a lot and have to break into the apartment sometimes... ok a lot of times. The other night, the other elders were teaching the people who lived across from us and so when they were teaching they asked if the other elders (us) were still living across from them and they told them that we were still living there, and then they started laughing and telling them how they always see us breaking through the window to get in to the apartment... haha

Oh another thing, actually its a miracle!! So we had a missionary come into our area this week and train us to make sure we are doing well. So we were trying to find some new people to teach and we had this address of someone, that we had been trying to get a hold of for a while now, and they never answered the door, it was frustrating and so we went to try one more time and knocked on the door twice, again nothing!! Then the other elder who was with us went to knock on the window... i was like what the heck are you doing?... thinking he was crazy. Then he said oh in mexico when you knock on the window, it means it's a friend... so bam, then this guy opens the door and we talked to him i was thinking, what the heck this is awesome!! So we started to knock windows now, it works so good! They get all surprised most of the times hahaa kus i guess they think its a friend, but its actually the missionaries!! even better... haha, so by small ways are great miracles brought to past. That is my sprirtual message for the week. Knocking Windows, haha man...
alright, well i better get going now. Have a good week. Miss you guys and love you a lot.

Elder Thomas

Low Riders

Hey Everyone,

Hope you guys are having a good week, things are pretty good out here, but man it was getting a little bit hot this past week. Jeez we were sweating like dogs or at least i was haha. Tons of bike riding because we haven't had a lot of appointments, just can't get a hold of anyone. So we have been trying to just visit Less Actives and Members and knocking on tons of doors too. That's one thing, we can't do nothing without members, well we can but it's not as effective like the ratio of people accepting the gospel multiplies with the help of members, like i think for every 1 out of 10 people we find might get babtized by ourselves and then it goes down to 1 out of 3 people with the help of members. So its crazy, but its true. So don't leave those Elders hanging out there guys haha.

Oh but yeah during the week, we went over to this guys house, Chris and yeah you already know him and so his cousin was there too and he wanted to go eat out somewhere kus he was hungry and so we ended up all riding our bikes to some burger place called Rally's, which is really good by the way. But it was so funny, kus it was me and my companion and then it was him and his cousin. and he and his cousin had these two small low rider bikes haha, man i cant stop laughing kus the bikes are ridiculously low, and super slow and so when we were riding there man we were pretty much going so slow that we could have just walked fast and still been able to keep up with them. i wish i had a picture becuase it was like these two missionaries and then two gangsters. maybe i can try get a picture this week when we go visit them and show you guys. So thats one example of how bad we just want to teach people, that we'll go to a burger place to teach um.

Let's see, what else oh so yeah this past week we weren't able to have alot of lessons. Just tons of bike riding trying to find new people, we knocked out a trailer park the other day, and there seemed like a couple people that we could go back and see so that was good. But all that hard work turned out good because we had 4 people at church this past week. One of those was Marcelo, which was so sweeeet! kus we havent seen him in a while at church and he actually called us and said he wants to come to church because he knows he needs to and that he has been getting a lot of blessings and so it was cool to see the Lord working with him and him feeling the spirit and knowing this is what he needs to do. We always try to pass by his house and he is never there and so we get discouraged some times but he told us this past Sunday that he appreciates us never giving up and so that was really cool to hear, to know that they see it and someday they will get the feeling to come to church again or read the scriptures or pray. We just can't give up on anyone and just always have to share the gospel with um.

But i got to go now, got to get a haircut, but have a good week and have fun. Love you and miss you guys!

Elder Thomas

Missionary Raider

Hey Everyone!

Hope everything was good for everyone this past week, Oh mom you said in one letter that you had the Elders over, how was it pretty good? Things out here are good, this past week was way long though, We just had transfers that's why. It was weird too because out here there is Brawley and 4 elders cover it, but its split North and South and we cover South. Then there are two other Elders who cover some out skirt towns, so 6 altogether. At transfers the two Outside Elders got pulled out and we found out that they weren't bringing new missionaries in so now there is just 4 Elders out here. Its crazy becuase we got to share the outside areas too now. So we'll see what happens i guess. It was funny though because we all have our own apartments, each pair of missionaries and so when the others left we just raided their apartment for food and stuff, just like vultures, haha. I got some good stuff though, best thing i would say would be the ice cream and blender. Made some pretty good smoothies this week.

But the work kinda slowed down this week. Just didn't have anything and a lot of the people we were trying to visit just couldn't meet with us and so that's why it felt so long. But on the brighter side of news, on Sunday it was like 8 pm so it was late and usually no one wants to meet with us, kus they are all sleeping. So all our plans fell through and we were just trying to think of what to do and so i just thought oh Marcelo. We haven't seen him for like 2 weeks or something like that, and so we stopped by and there he was and we talked with him for a while. You remember him right? the one who has seen all these miracles whenever he prays or reads the scriptures. Well we found out he wasn't doing any of that and we were bummed out. So we read with him and talked about why we need to do those things and just the whole time, the spirit was testifying to him, you could tell, i just saw the desire he had to do those things and he started to understand, it was just way sweet to see that happening and then at the end we had a kneeling prayer and he said it. But the thing with Marcelo was that all the other times he always just has us say the prayer, everyone always rather just have us say it for some reason. This time he was like yeah sure, he would say it. So hopefully he keeps reading and praying and listens to the spirit.

Oh another thing this week that i thought was pretty cool to learn. Well... man, sometimes its tough living with someone 24/7 haha and like you just always find out things that annoy you and so i was reading some things and i remember i read a qoute from President Monson. I think it said if you are judging someone, then you have no time to love um. I thought about that pretty hard and all the stuff about charity and forgiving and stuff. I figured i would try it out. To try and live the gospel... i know, it sounds bad, but so yeah one day i went in the kitchen to make some food and there was a ton of dishes, it was like ridiculous. We didn't have anything to eat on and it was all my companion's dirty dishes, so usually i would have just washed what i needed and then wait till he cleans up his own mess. But then i realized that man, that's prideful and weak sauce, so i just cleaned all the dishes, and it felt alright, i felt good trying to help out. I'll admit like i was hoping for a, "oh wow, thanks Elder Thomas," but nothing and then i was like, wow ungrateful.. But yeah then i though of Charity and how it doesnt seek a reward and so i just shrugged it off. And i mean im not trying to brag or anything like that, but like after all that, i felt good! i dont know, i cant explain it, it was just good and i have been thinking about it and its like you know what? we can choose whether to be offended or whether we can jus not be offended and Love and help and we may not get rewards from people but we will have a peaceful feeling that we know we are following Jesus Christ. I thought that was pretty cool, so i am gonna try work on that more. So Yeah

What else can i tell you guys about here in the desert? Oh man dad we might have alot of surfing lessons to give when i get back, because a lot of people want to learn and i tell um if they ever come to Hawaii just give us a call. So hey maybe we could start a business.. haha nah nah just kidding. Oh man but i was thinking about how next month is General Conference again and jeez time is flying by way too fast i got to press the slow down button a couple times. So wait when is Cait graduating. April? oh yeah that reminds me, anything from BYU provo?

Well hope everything is going good over there, oh yeah jeez almost forgot, i meant to thank you Mom and Dad for everything you do. I am grateful! Well Have a good Week!

Love ELder Thomas

Eating off the street

Hey Everyone,

So this week was transfers and nothing changed I am still with my companion Elder Avalos in the same area, so its pretty good. I still don't want to leave here because i like it out here and there is a lot of stuff that can happen. So I am gonna be here until April. Hopefully i make it and stay out here the whole summer, that would be sweet haha but i probably would die from the heat, they say it gets up to 125 degrees and that it's so hot, you can fry an egg on the street, jeez! that's crazy.

Anyways this past week was really busy, the most we ever taught. It was fun but way tiring, i remember on thursday we were running all over the place, we had appointments every hour it seemed like, so it was definitely a good day. Oh this past week we found someone new, his name is Chris oh wait i think i told you about him right? Well anyways we taught him like 3 times this past week it was really good, he came to church again and attended some other activities as well. He really likes it and wants to keep going with it and so hopefully everything continues to go well with him. He can talk though! but it's not useless talk, it's good talk, but never ending.

It was funny because this past Sunday we couldn't find a teacher for Gospel Principles and so we had to teach it, and man i always get nervous in teaching a group, but this wasn't that bad. We asked one question and than bam next thing you know we had to end, haha that was pretty easy. Chris and then another new member now Sergio just kept talking so it was good. Oh yeah Sergio got confirmed this past Sunday which was way sweet, hopefully he gets the priesthood soon, because then he could baptize his wife Myra. But she hasn't said anything about baptism, we still need to talk to her about it, but hopfully she will, that would be way good to see them go through the Temple and be sealed. Their family is awesome.

Shoot i can't think of what to write... Oh ok so the city i am in is called brawley but there are all these different outside towns close to here. The farthest one that some other elders cover is called Niland. it's way small and far from where we are at, it takes like an hour to get there. I was on exchanges with someone else and we went out there to visit a member, and it was sweet kus her husband is not a member and so we got to talk about the Restoration with him and he seemed really curious and interested, and he lived in that small town for his whole life and so he didn't know anything bad or rumors about any of the churches, and so it was nice because he just wanted to know the truth and there wasn't any bad rubbish blocking him from finding it out. So that was nice to see.

Just yesterday we actually didn't have anything to do, so we were trying to find some new people and we met this one guy who the missionaries used to see years ago! He was way nice. He came to us and was saying Hey Brothers! and we didnt even know him haha. Usually people are just try to avoid us. So yeah He asked us yeah you guys have the other bible, the Book of Mormon and well how come no one else has that? So i was like well, that's a good question, i think we may have an answer to that one haha. So we set up an appointment with him this Thursday and so that will go well.

So yeah, everything is going good out here. Hopefully you guys are doing good and have a good week!

LOve you all

Elder THomas