Meanwhile in Paraguay...

Apparently I am the worst blogger ever. Like in the history of blogging. This is probably why I am not Blog and Instagram Famous. It is most SURELY not because no one would care what I am wearing or where I shop.... It has to be my lack of timely blogging skills. (Emoji Winky Face)

Enough about me. Here is a rundown of Elder Alex's Emails recently:

Week 9:

Christmas came and went in Paraguay and we had the chance to Face Time with Alex! I posted a picture on Instagram. That was amazing! He said

"Christmas was weird waking up here in the heat and not having family around and a big breakfast, but we did what we could do to make it the best it could be and it turned out an amazing day, just different. I had the opportunity to Facetime my family which was the greatest Christmas present I could have ever asked for, it was so amazing to see their faces and talk for a little bit, it really re-energized my mission and I'm ready to get back to work!
We got three big Christmas presents, one was new mattresses, which the old ones were like 10 years old, so we got new mattresses and we got Christmas and new years off all day! So after talking to my family we played monopoly and soccer and basketball with my zone and it was a lot of fun. And our third big present was that we got to sleep in till ... wait for it... 7:30 Christmas morning!!!!! Instead of 6:30!"

Week 10:

"So we are still working hard and still sweating everyday, not much has changed. We have a lot of really cool investigators that were working with and the lessons we have are really good!
Paraguay is having El Niño right now and its destroying the northern part of Paraguay, apparently its basically underwater, we have a ton of rain here in San Isidro also, but its still super hot and dry sometimes, but yeah other missionaries have stopped proselyting some days just to help rebuild houses, its crazy.
One thing that has gotten really fun is simply walking in the streets, becasue all the kids always run up to us and ask us to say stuff in English, but they also call me trucko, for all the stupid human tricks I always show them. I do magic tricks, wiggle my ears, make weird faces and just every stupid human trick I have, its really fun. I also do handstands with them and whatever i can do to put a smile on their faces. I did a few backflips for kids while in regular clothes for service, but haven't tried it in my shirt and tie yet... mainly don't want to rip my pants..."

He also said that he is getting cat called. Geeze. Is there anywhere in the world people don't love Alex? His word of the Week: Donjuán : Lady killer/ Womanize. Naturally.

Week 11:


Apparently he is serving a mission in fruit heaven. I am sure it gets old for the people of Paraguy but I am convinced trees in Heaven are full of the ingredients to make guacamole and mango salsa.

So fruit here is in full bloom, so much fruit we did 2 service projects of just raking mangos and throwing them away, like 6 full 200 liter garbage bags full of mangos that we threw in the trash, its ridiculous how many mangos they have here and just throw away or burn. For a joke people give each other mangos as presents
But also avocados have bloomed and we have like 15 in our fridge, and we make more guacamole then we know what to do with, and also lime trees are full bloomed so we have a ton of limes in our fridge too, basically we dont have to shop for fruit, just walk 20 yards and pick fruit off the trees.

One thing that I did last week that cracked me up was we have this investigator named Arcenio, and he wants to quit drinking and smoking and so does his kids, so during a lesson I stood up and said I can help you. How many cigarettes do you have in you pocket, and I asked if I could count them. He gave me them, and then I asked what type of beer do you like, and he grabbed me a beer out of the fridge and I took it, and as uncle Rico says in Napolean Dynamite ¨I threw that beer bottle over them mountains over there¨ But seriously, I launched this beer bottle and smashed his cigarettes on the ground and said no more. He was shocked  Then I taught him about faith. Theres two parts of faith, 1- believing in something you cant see, 2- acting on that belief.

Also we had this old guy named Luis who said he didn't want to talk to us anymore, so we stopped passing by like 3 weeks ago. But Wednesday we were close to him and I had an idea to pass by, so we did. We clapped at his door (because he didn't have a door to knock on) he came by and asked why did we come by? We didn't say anything and he said last night he prayed for us to stop by and teach him again because he wants to be baptized, that was a really cool experience.

He has also kept track of his mission by the numbers
Push ups:17,400
Prayers: 784
Days Out: 87 days
Cat Called: 12 times
Haircuts: 5     

Week 12:

This weeks email!

Well we had our cambios (transfers) last Wednesday and I stayed in San Isidro with Elder Baxter, so nothing new. Its funny how I told yall like 2 weeks ago that El Niño was destroying Paraguay... well he left. IT WAS THE HOTTEST WEEK OF MY LIFE HOLY FREE HOLY WOOOOOWWW I'm not kidding it was hot. Like 104 degrees everyday, but that means our apartment can't get flooded when its not raining haha, gotta look at the bright side of life sometimes. And by sometimes I mean everytime!

So some people have asked for my address so this is it:

Elder Alexander Thompson

Misión Paraguay Asunción

2881 Del Maestro Casi Caballero

B Herrera

Asunción, Paraguay

We had dinner at this members house and they are SUPER POOR. Like I cant describe it, like on average people her make $2,000 dollars a year, and this family is bellow that, so we decided to by food for them and cook it at their house. We bought a ton of stuff for sloppy joes and cooked it for them. And as I was cooking meat, in this shack, in the middle of Paraguay, I stepped outside and looked at the stars and the moon and it was the coolest feeling I cant describe it. Like it was so relaxing to take a breather out of our hectic day and be thankful for everything I have and for the beauty in this world. 

Our sloppy joes were delicious FYI

Another cool experience we had we clapped at a random door, and a Girl named Montse answered, and we shared a scripture about faith and she asked why we came by and we were just kinda like I don't know just stopped by, and she goes on to say that her best friends brother died yesterday and she prayed to know if there was a god out there and we stopped by: booyah

Everyday is the longest day of my life, but its a blast out here, thanks for all of yalls support and love! 

ALSO! ALEX IS TURNING 20 ON FEBRUARY 7th! EMAIL HIM A BIRTHDAY MESSAGE! 

thompson.a@myldsmail.net

 Do it and you're cool! Do it and you're cool! (that's for you Brandon and Ty and Carter)

Snail Mail

If you want to send Elder Thompson a letter or a package (and I think you should, mail is the BEST and missionaries LOVE MAIL) here is his info.

Letters:

Elder Alexander Thompson
Mision Paraguay Asuncion
818 Casilla de Correo
B Herrera
Asuncion, Paraguay

Packages:

Elder Alexander Thompson
Mision Paraguay Asuncion
2881 Del Maestro Casi Caballero
B Herrera
Asuncion, Paraguay

Also, apparently people wont mess with your packages if you tape a Virgin Mary picture to it....or so he has been told.

Side note: Alex wants candy for Christmas. Literally.

PARAGUAY

Our favorite missionary made it to Paraguay! He has already had a few flooding issues in his apartment... "Welcome to Paraguay!" he said!

He has tried some amazing foods and already talked to so wonderful investigators.

"My first meal was something called Milanesa with familia Fouz, and its like carne with a fried outside with rice and its amazing, I loved it" he said. (which is amazing because he is super picky with food. He even ate a hamburger WITH THE BUN! (The kid hates bread). Maybe my fear or his starving to death is unwarranted.

Here are some pictures of our Elder Thompson on Paraguay!

Prosletismo

This week we got our email a little late... but late is better than never!

Alex feels like the time is flying by. It has almost been a month! 1 down 23 more to go!
He said that maybe one of the reasons is because he and his fellow Missionaries have come up with different "Holidays" to look forward to.

Every Thursday is the P Day or Preparation Day. Its basically a day off. They made up "P Day Eve" and "P Day Eve Eve" to be excited for at least three days. Pretty smart.

The big thing that happened this week is that Alex had his first real connection with someone. He tells it so well so I will quote:

Biggest thing that happened was during Prosletismo, the first weekend was a bust in reality and I was determined to not let this second try be like the first. We were dropped off a few blocks from our zone, and walking to our spot we stopped a man named Juan we met the week before and asked if we could practice our Spanish for a moment, and Juan was harder to understand than the farmer off of Napoleon Dynamite (if you don't know what I'm talking about look up a video of him) anyways he was impossible to understand but we talked to him for a minute and went on our way.

We stopped for lunch, and for some reason I had a feeling to take 5 more minutes to relax before starting up again, and as we stood up and old man was about to cross the street, and we decided to wait for him to cross and then talk to him, after he finally crossed the street he asked to talk to us and told us to sit back down. His name was Alfredo and was 84 years old, after talking to him about the gospel and Jesucristo, he mentioned how he was lonely ever since his wife passed away two years ago. We taught him about God´s Plan of Salvation that families can be together forever. After our lesson I offered a prayer for him, and when I finished I looked at him and tears were rolling down his cheek and he said,¨Thank you. I needed that. I knew when I saw you Elder Thompson you had the words I needed.¨It was awesome to finally give a real lesson to someone, and it amazed him that I had only been speaking for 3 weeks and was that fluent, which is true.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints is the fully restored gospel. I am so happy that Alex is teaching and impacting people already! He wanted to share the following scriptures:


1 Nephi 3:7 
And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: Iwill go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shallprepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.

Alma 32:31
 And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.

Popcorn Song

So Alex is still hilarious even when he is learning to teach the gospel. It is awesome to read about his hi-jinx. If he was being boring, I would be sad. 

This week he choreographed a dance (hello Mr. Cy-Woods... still think he should have won, just saying) to get the Missionary Mom to give the guys popcorn for movie night. 

**Side note: Us Thompsons believe in popcorn. Well, and Diet Coke. But I don't think they have Diet Coke in the Brazilian MTC, and if they did it would taste like regular Coke, Ew. 

Apparently popcorn is not something they have at the MTC and they needed the Missionary "Mom", if you will, to get them popcorn. The dance was choreographed to the Primary song "Popcorn Popping" and performed for the Missionary Mom. 

He said: " After two days of perfecting it we marched into her office whistling the tune, stopped and sung and danced our hearts out and at the very end of the 2 minuet dance I jumped forward onto my knees and pleaded with puppy do eyes for my district and she was crying laughing but immediately said no because it was not allowed upstairs, but she did bake us cookies so that was awesome and she said it was her favorite thing that has happened to her in her 6 years being in charge of the mission"

He has also started a crazy prank war which doesn't surprise me at all. 

They are starting to practice proselyting this week, which he is very excited about. 

The word of this week was Pescado: Fish Pecado: Sin. He said "Don't tell people Jesus dies for our fish. Its embarrassing"

Ping Pong and Spanish Champ

Apparently Alex is not only learning Spanish, taking lots of classes and growing his testimony, he is schooling all of the other Missionaries in ping pong! Guess those Thompson Household Battleramas have come in handy. He also has taught the natives a little something called kickball. He thanks CyWoods for those skills.

He is still very happy and getting the goofy happy Alex pictures made my heart melt. If you want to be on Alex's email blast email him! Or if you want to just say hi I know he would love your support.

thompson.a@myldsmail.com

This week he did gave us a verse and word of the day. It is Esposa. Means wife and handcuffs.....

Proverbs: 21:19 It is better to dwell in the wilderness than with a contentious and angry woman. 

Argentina or Bust!

After the tearful yet joyful good-byes at the Houston Intercontinental Airport, Elder Thompson had an interesting experience getting to Argentina.

His plane was delayed in Houston for an hour, so he missed his connection in Atlanta and was stranded!

In a later (his first!) email home he said:

"I arrived in Atlanta and had to take the train from terminal A to terminal F and while running in his suit and tie, arrive at the Gate in time to see them punching the gate code in. I have never been so sad or disappointed in my life"

Luckily he was able to get the number for the church travel services and took the next day's flight out.
He made it safe and sound!

He loves Buenos Aires. He said that he has "Never eaten so much fresh fruit in his life" and said "I could live here forever".

He is super busy and is learning Spanish at an alarming rate.

I asked him if he had a favorite scripture to add to his blog and he said he loves

Ether 12:27
And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.