One and DONE!

March 14, 2016

Hello from....... Laredo!!!! 

The cars in the picture are in Mexico

My new companion is Sister Moore. We are the STLs for North Laredo and South Laredo Zones. My area is called South Gate and we are in the South Zone. You can literally see into Mexico from the balcony of our apartment! Our apartment is in the middle of this ghetto neighborhood and I love it! Yesterday while driving home from church I saw a guy on the sidewalk with no shirt on holding a hand gun! While contacting I also watched a pit bull eat a rock the size of my fist. I'm already in love with my new area. I hope I die here (in the mission). I might die literally too. Just kidding mom. Everyone is nice here:) 

We drove to Mexico!  That is the river and on the other side is Mexico

When I got here the first house we went to was an investigator named Maria. She has come to church three times. We knocked on the door and her mom came out and told us off. She said for us to not come by anymore because she was already baptized and that she has things that she should be focusing on right now. Sister Moore was pretty upset about that. We decided to go bike up a couple more streets and contact houses. As we were biking we saw this guy sitting on his porch. We decided to talk with him and he had us walk around the gate and come sit on the porch with him. We got to talking with him, his name is Robert. The elders had been teaching him and he had come to church two or three times but he left his wife and moved into our area. The elders didn't know that, they thought that Robert had just been ignoring him. They hadn't been in contact with him for two weeks or so and we just "randomly" found him! He was going to get baptized and wasn't able to because he has problems with smoking cigarettes and pot. When we went to go show him a video his background on his tablet was a pot plant so I changed it for him to a picture of Jesus. He liked it and ended up keeping it haha. He also calls me Thomas. Which I think is great. I don't have the heart to tell him my name isn't Thomas so I just go with it. At the end of the lesson I told Robert that I was taking some of his cigarettes. I was going to take five and he said three so we agreed on four. I took his joint away from him too. As we were walking out I broke the cigarettes in half over the garbage can. I thought he was going to have a heart attack! He was SO funny about it. I decided that I wouldn't torture him so we threw the blunt into the sewer after we left so he couldn't see. The next time we came back he was like "Thomas I hid my smokes from you!" I told him that he couldn't hide them from God! We had a good laugh. Robert's story is crazy. His brother was taken by the Cartel just across the border. Robert had to sell his ranch to pay for the ransom that they were demanding. He paid up and he still has never seen his brother since. We are going to continue working with Robert and help him to stop smoking.  

The blunt I took from Robert- hehe!

I'm still trying to get into the swing of things. We have already had two exchanges and I left for both of them so I'm still not sure of all that is going on. Here in Laredo there are only branches. We are working hard to make it a Stake. That is the focus for all of the branches. We are going to see lots of miracles and I'm excited to be here! 

Exchange with Sister Stanfill.  We were twinners!

I love you all have a splendid week!
Love Hermana Thompson