I DID MY TIME

or better said, IM DOING MY TIME! 12 MONTHS OF IT! IN JUAREZ ESTACA NORTE! (slight referencing to one of my favorite movies. bonus points if ya know ;) ) 

For those of you new here, I would like to inform you that I will OFFICIALLY completed a year of my mission! And what's more, it has been in the same stake! I'm blessed :') 

But, seriously, all joking aside, I have loved every minute of it! I have grown to know the ins and outs of these areas and how to do my job as a missionary more effectively. Not to mention that I now know where all the best burritos and tortas are. 

(I am going to aoligize ahead of time because there is one letter on this keyboard that doesn't work every once in a while., I'll let you figure out which one jaja)

This week was really interesting. I had felt a little down (shocker) as we've been having a hard time finding new people to teach. i prayed a lot this week that god would give me the strength to keep doing my job well. needless to say, I have seen His hand in my life. I love Him so very much. On Sunday, all of the talks seemed geared towards me! God works in marvelous ways :)

In the past few weeks, we've also been working with a less active family. They are super sweet and came to church this Sunday! Every time we go to visit them they give us ice cream. a fuerzas jeje. The first time we went to visit them, it just so happened to be an hour after their two year old daughter had broken her arm. After a few other things, the husband seemed to come back to things. He told us that he was ready to come back. He said, 'When I was a missionary, I never thought that in 10 years I'd be inactive.' He and his wife expressed desires to be sealed in the temple for time and all eternity. To help them reach this bigger goal, we set some smaller goals. And those who know me i went into Hermana Thompson mode and made them some cute little charts :) they each have individual and family goals to complete and are working hard to do so. We are excited to see their progress!

Recently, we have been very affected here in Juarez by what happened in El Paso. For those of you who don't know, a man walked into a Walmart and opened fired on all those there. Later on, we learned it was specifically against some of the Mexican citizens that cross the border frequently to live their life. Here in Juarez, the people live life between the two cities, coming and going. It just normal life and all good feelings :) However this tragedy has affected us a lot. We know several people that had family members involved. We have been praying a lot for everyone. One thing that stuck with me that a member told us was that maybe if we could have taught him the Gospel, maybe things would have been different. She stressed the importance of spreading the Gospel and the love of Jesus Christ to all people. 

We also ran into a member and he taught me a valuable lesson. 

'Giving makes you happy, receiving makes you grateful.'

Just think about it. 

In other news, here are our adventures this week:

- We finally took some pictures with Juarez's famous slogan. 

- We ran into more puppies. 

- Found some darn good fresas con crema. 

- Our ward mission leader took out a broom to cut down some pomegranates near the church. 

- I'm living the good life. :)

I love you all so very much and I miss you! 

See ya in 6 MONTHS! 

Cariños, 

Hna Thompson