WEEK 5????

Dear family and friends,

I have been in the mission field for about 5 weeks now!! How time
flies. I wish that time would slow down a bit out here. I don't like
how quickly each day as a missionary passes by. Still so many people
to meet, so many people who need the gospel.

This has been a fabulous week! We had another exchange. This time,
Elder Tippetts from Sundance came to Newcastle. Elder Tippetts was
trained in Newcastle so he knows the area pretty well. We had a lot of
cool experiences. We got to teach Trent, our newly baptized member,
and we did a lot of Tracting. My area covers three little towns,
Upton, Osage, and Newcastle. Lately we've decided that we need to stop
focusing on Newcastle more than the other two cities. We don't have
too many members in Upton or in Osage so we do a lot of Tracting. This
last week we were Tracting in Osage and we walked past a house that we
had knocked on a few days before but no one had answered then and I
felt like I needed to knock again. As we walked down the street,
passing the house, we noticed that there was a large black dog sitting
on the porch where there had only been a cat before. It was barking
and bearing it's teeth but we both felt that we needed to go to that
house, but were both afraid to say so. We passed the house and moved
on, when we came back up the street on our way back I paused, looking
at the dog again, and said, "That's a good looking dog, but I don't
trust it," then continued to walk back to the truck. Elder Tippetts
stopped and jokingly said, "Do you trust God?" Not really expecting
anything to come out of it. I responded with a smile, "I will if you
do. Start walking, I'll follow." He laughed and then realized I was
being serious. We turned and slowly, apprehensively started walking
towards the gate. I stopped at the open gate looking at the nice
doggy... Big black thing with teeth and a loud bark. I knew we needed
to talk to these people. We stepped inside the gate, and the moment we
did, a shirtless man swung the door open. He looked at us both
critically for a second, laughed, said he'd go grab a shirt and shut
the door. We turned to each other and, in unison, said, "Faith!" While
he was gone, a woman reached outside and pulled the cute little (yeah
right) doggy inside. He came out to talk to us and was interested in
hearing our message. His name is Fabian. We gave him a brief summary
of the restoration, gave him a restoration pamphlet and bore our
testimony. He shared that he believed in God and that he loves us. He
also believes that Christ died for each one of us. Elder Tippetts felt
prompted to give him a Book of Mormon so he presented it to him and we
both bore our testimony on the Book of Mormon. The spirit was so
strong and Fabian was very solemn at the end. He said we could come
back but that it would have to be after this week because he was going
on a hunting trip. We are very excited to get back there.

Another amazing thing from this week was when we got to visit A
less-active member we have been teaching. He is a very good man and we
have really been trying to get him back to church. He knows he needs
to come but he hasn't had any motivation. This week our main goal was
to get to the bottom of his reasons for not coming. We knew we needed
to remain sensitive to the spirit if we wanted to get anywhere. We
basically abandoned our whole lesson. The spirit was so strong in
there and scriptures we never would have remembered on our own were
called to our memory. I think my favorite part of being a missionary
isn't only being able to help others come closer to Christ but it's
the opportunity to see them through his eyes. It's being able to feel
how much He loves them. He told us about someone in the church and how
they had wronged him and how being at the church brought that back to
his memory. I was able to testify to him that the same power that
allowed us to be forgiven of our sins would help us to forgive others.
That Christ didn't die for only us but for those that wronged us as
well. I gave him a promise, that as he actively attended church
weekly, that memory and those feelings would be completely wiped away.
That it would be as if it never happened. I cried, as usual haha. It
was a wonderful experience. He was there on Sunday. He gave a lot of
input in our gospel principles class. It was remarkable.

I love this gospel, I know it's true. I pray that you are all strong
in the faith, endure to the end. I love all of you.

Love,
Elder Thomas

Pictures:
When Elder Tippets steals your iPad. 

The kind of stuff we post on Facebook when online proselyting. 

Cool suit picture. :)

Beautiful light. I like to imagine that Christ is on the other side of
those trees.

November 9, 2015

Elder Thomas

Dear Family & Friends,

What a crazy week! Holy guacamole. We went on two different exchanges
this week! First I went down to Gillette Wyoming to work with Elder
Perez. Gillette is a pretty nice place and people actually answer
their door. WHOA. We got a lot of work done. We taught a lot of
lessons... well he taught a lot of lessons, you see, more than half of
his people speak spanish... Haha but that was fine. I just sat and
stared at a picture of a rose, or a fish tank, or a wall. The most
eventful place was a less-active family with very active children, and
not the religious type of activity. Their parents weren't home so we
just visited on the porch for a second. They all told me there names
and quizzed me about five times. Things started getting out of hand
when Elder Perez, teasingly, told the adorable little girl who had
been poking him with a spoon to stop. Immediately, it was a game.
Whacking the Elders with this metal spoon seemed to be the funnest
thing this girl had ever done. We then did everything we could to
leave the house of that adorable spoon-wielding menace. We left the
house with the boys still calling out their names and the young girl
laughing her head off waving her spoon in the air... whoa.

After that exchange, I went on an exchange with Elder Delimata, one of
the Zone Leaers, back here in Newcastle. Elder Hatton went with Elder
Hastings. We got to do weekly planning all day!! What an ordeal. He
had a lot of really good advice and ideas though which made it a lot
easier. That exchange was a lot less eventful unfortunately, not much
happens when you sit in the same room all day. Elder Delimata is so
cool though. He is super retro, he makes his own pomade, shaves with a
single blade safety razor, listens to records, uses film cameras and
polaroids. He is the coolest.

I'm also going on exchanges again tomorrow... geez.

This has been an eventful week when it comes to investigators. Elder
Hatton and I were finally both back and we could hit the road. In
these last few days, we were able to get a referral and set up an
appointment at the members house, meet a referral and the member who
referred her came with us, and find one new investigator from
tracting. We tracted into Dan while he was working on fixing up an old
trailer home. We talked to him a little bit and he seemed very
receptive. We invited him to church and he said he would come. It was
a very cool experience. He calls us 'The Brothers' and his views were
quite similar to ours. He had not showered in 4 days when we contacted
him because there was no running water in the trailer he was working
on. He was somehow able to get showered before Sunday though. He
really seemed to enjoy Sacrament Meeting. Ashton is the girl we met
with, referred to us by Alex Henkle, soon to be Elder Henkle. She was
kinda worried about meeting with us, the weird "church guys" but we
were able to have a really good conversation and she realized we
weren't crazy preachers, just two men that believe in something
greater. We didn't have much of an opportunity to share the first
lesson and every time either of us were about to, the spirit warned
us not to. It is probably good because we were in a restaurant. not the 

best place to feel the spirit. Alex said that it went perfectly and that she 

would be willing to meet with us again! We are gonna be setting that up 

tonight. We have not met with the other two new referrals yet, but we're 

excited!!

My invitation to each of you today is to prayerfully think of someone
that needs the gospel, find the missionaries, and set up an
appointment at your home with that person and the missionaries. I
learned this week that for every 1000 doors a missionary knocks on, 1
person will be baptized. For every 3 people taught in a members home,
2 will be baptized. It seems to me, that members and missionaries
working together is definitely the most productive form of missionary
work. I'll keep you all in my prayers!

I love you all so much. The Lord is hastening his work and what a
wonderful opportunity it is for us to be able to be a part of this
work. The Lord lives, this is his church on the earth in the latter
days. There are people out there, lost sheep, just waiting for us to
reach out to them and guide them to the straight and narrow. LET'S GO
GET THEM!!!!!!!!! D&C 18:15 (Read it!)

Love,
Elder Thomas

Tracting!!!!! Haha

Happiest Week Ever

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope y'all is doin well! I ain't gon' lie to ya, this here week's
been hard, but so darn good at the same time as the other'n...

Jkjk i don't talk like that, well, not yet at least. This week was great!

We had a crazy experience this last Tuesday on our way from Sheridan
Wyoming to Worland Wyoming. As we made our way over this snow
mountain, we watched as a truck headed the opposite direction began to
lose control of their truck. I had been taking pictures of the
mountain that I thought looked kinda cool when this happened but when
her drift started, I was so surprised, I forgot to take pictures till
after. So you have the before picture (notice the headlights are not
pointing the right direction) and the after picture (all that snow is
her drift). My companion, Elder Hatton, is a very good driver and
steered us to the side of the road before she was even very close. We
heard a crash shortly after she passed us and we all jumped out of the
truck to go help. As we approached the truck, the front end had rammed
into a tree and the tailgate was completely detached. I was nervous
until I saw the woman get out of the truck and
walk around her truck angrily, swearing like Wyoming cowboy. We were
just so glad she was alright. She had almost done a 360 when she slid
off the road and hit her tail end on a tree. This took a lot of her
momentum away, which is good because she smacked into a tree with her
front end next, which could've been a lot worse if she had been at
full speed. We weren't the only helpers, two other truck full of men
pulled over and we all got to work, changing he tire, figuring out how
to lower the tire, and backing her out of the snow drift. It was. Cool
to have so many helping hands to help this woman out. Even the snow
plow, pulled over to help. She was very grateful and thanked everyone
multiple times. I am so thankful for the Lord. I am quite certain that
he was watching over this woman. Everything worked out with her crash
and with all those that stopped to help. His is a testimony builder to
me, at God doesn't take away our trials, he makes them easier to bear.

Next story with pictures, we have had a huge bunk bed in our room ever
since I got here. It is only useful as a place to hang my clothes when
I'm too lazy take them to my closet in the other room. The bunk bed
was used about two transfers ago when my companion was one of three
sleeping in that room. Well, this last week, they decided that they
had need of the bunk bed elsewhere in the mission. I think clear
across the mission. The plan was that we would disassemble the bed and
load it into our truck. Now, i know how to load a truck, but things
get really difficult when you don't have any tie down straps. All we
needed to do was get the truck down to the church and then we could
run across the street and get tie down straps. Well, needless to say,
our first packing job was a little bit bizarre... But it did it's job!
We got it down to the church! Personally, I attribute the success of
this mission to the fact that we tied it all together with my jacket
and some jump rope. The Zone Leaders showed up and for some reason
felt the need to "reorganize" it, can't imagine why. They did alright,
but we definitely win in the creativity category.

This Halloween was SO GREAT! We started off the morning with a service
project. We were helping some people move, and I love doing that. I
got to disconnect someone's washer and dryer for them, I knew this
last summer job would come in handy:) (shoutout to the Converses! Love
you guys!) we had to leave a little early because... We had to FILL
THE FONT for a BAPTISM! How exciting is that??? Trent Engle was
baptized this Halloween! Teaching Trent has been such a pleasant
experience because he is so humble and perceptive to the spirit. Trent
just wants to be good and he'll do whatever it takes to follow Christ.
His main concern during our last lesson was how long he had to wait
till he could go through the temple:) he has good things in store.

Next we went too he town trunk or treat activity. The people who
handed out candy were different groups or stores around town. We were
obviously the Mormon group! It was so cool to be there and be part of
the town. There were so many great costumes and the kids were
adorable. It made me miss my nieces and nephews. Y'all better send me
some good pictures!! Don't test me now... Haha.

We finished the trunk or treat at about 6. The order from the mission
president was that we be in our apartments or a members house from 6-9
that night. Proselyting, especially tracting, is a bad idea on
Halloween night. You'll get candy not converts. We had asked some of
our favorite people the week before if we could come stay at their
place that night, the Lequia's. The Lequia's are the best! They are a
young married couple in our ward and our really good friends. We spent
the night playing music, laughing and eating. I got to PLAY THE
GUITAR!! I've forgotten a lot of songs already because I didn't get to
play much before my mission either, but I remembered my favorites:)
Katie Lequia plays the Banjo and gave us some great songs on that,
Nick did his hilarious hick accent and made fun of banjo's, Elder
Hatton played creepy stuff on the piano, and I jammed on the guitar:)
we also decorated cookies. It was so great!

Sunday was super good as well! The highlight of Sunday was my first
lesson on online proselyting. Online proselyting is hard because you
never know what someone is gonna think about some random dude
messaging them on Facebook haha. I was talking to a young man named
David And when I asked him if he wanted to learn more about our church
he was super receptive. We had a super cool discussion and it was
amazing to feel the spirit guiding me in this style of teaching just
like it does in face to face teaching. David is coming to church with
us this Sunday! Please pray for him!

I love you all so much, pray night and day. Read always. Never stop!

Love,
Elder Thomas

Pictures of crash. Sorry I didn't get better ones, I just thought we
might die is all... 

The beautiful drive from Sheridan to Worland

Our cool packing job... 

Their boring one...  

Trent's Baptism!

Elder Hatton and the Feminine Skeleton 

Ran into my good buddy Elder (Stockton) Rentfro! Love this kid :) 

Because Preparation Day is the best

Too Many Meetings

Dear family and friends,

What a busy week.  Tuesday was probably our most normal day this week.

We were able to do a lot of tracting, And we even tracted into

someone. His name is Matt and when he answered the door he seemed

really interested and he set an appointment for Saturday, but when we

went back on Saturday to visit him he didn't answer the door. It was a

little disappointing. We think he may have just forgotten so we will

be going back later to see if we can contact him then.

On Wednesday we had district meeting which is about an hour away and

about 3 to 4 hours long. Most of our appointments canceled that day so

we got a lot of tracting, however no one really seemed interested. The

best thing about this is that I got a lot of walking in and maybe I'll

lose some fat. I've already gained about seven or 8 pounds since I've

been on my mission... I guess I better start taking those morning

workouts seriously haha.

Thursday was definitely the strangest day of this week. I've been

feeling pretty sick this week and it hadn't been getting any better.

When I woke up on Thursday I was congested had a headache and was

feeling sick to the stomach. Elder Hatton wasn't feeling well either.

We realized that if we were going to get work done anytime soon I

needed to get better and Elder-Hatton needed to stay healthy. It's

hard to stay in the house for a full day when you're on a mission,

especially when you have to cancel plans. We had to cancel our service

activity at the old folks home which made me really sad. I slept for a

few hours in the morning which was probably the biggest help, we

studied for the rest of the time. We also had to cancel our dinner

appointment which really stinks because we didn't get "Real

home-cooked food" that night.

It would've been nice to get right back into work on Friday but we had

another meeting. This meeting was further away. Gillette is an hour

and a half away but we also had to pick up another companionship.

Picking up the other companionship added about an hour, round trip, to

the travel and the presidency conducting the interviews was late. We

were gone from 11:00 that morning till 6:30 that night. We spent the

rest of the night by visiting an investigator named Christene, doing

some online proselyting and tracting. We were only able to visit

Christene on her porch for a few minutes and not teach her because she

is a single mom and the member couple that was coming with us canceled

last minute.

Saturday was a little better than the rest of the week. We started out

the day trying to visit Matt Who we had tracted into earlier that

week. He didn't seem to be home so we ran back to the apartment to

grab my inhaler before we went and visited our investigator named

Pete. Pete is a really interesting old man. He is about 80 years

old, used to live in Germany, requires oxygen at all times and he

smokes which is why we needed to grab my inhaler. Visiting Pete 

goes something like this: we walk up to his door and try to walk in because

that's what he's asked us to do. It's locked but he hears us rattle

the door and he yells for us to "come in." We try to tell him through

the door that the door is locked, but because he is quite deaf he just

yells at us to "come in" again. We yell a little louder and tell him

that the door is locked and we can't get in. Depending on the day, we

have this exchange for a minute or two. Eventually we hear him

grunting and grumbling as he makes his way to the door. When he opens

the door we see A very old man standing in the doorway wearing naught

but his shorts. He always has a very big smile on his face because he

loves the missionaries. Because of his age it's very difficult to

teach him the lessons. We always just read the Book of Mormon with

him, Or rather, yell the Book of Mormon to him because it's the most

we can do that he'll understand. When we're done reading with him he

tells the stories of how he came to America when he was 15 years old.

Something we didn't notice the first time, is the plaques on his wall

signed by Ronald Regan and George Bush. He has four of them and they

all say thank you but not what they're thankful for and he's too

humble to tell us why he has them.

For the rest of the day we simply drove around with rakes and offered

to help people rake their leaves. We call this service tracting and we

were able to meet an elderly man named Ted, who told us stories about

when he was in the army while we raked.

This is one of my favorite things about the mission, meeting new

people. I love the friendship that can be developed in such a short

amount of time.

OK, well I'm out of time, but you guys got pretty much my whole week

in this letter. Don't be expecting this every week, we had a little

extra time this week. :)

I love you all, be safe, and pray always!

Love,

Elder Thomas

Preparation day! 

 We got ZUCCHINI BREAD! We love it when we get real food :)

Some "tag photography"

October 19, 2015

Dear family and friends,

Wow, first six days in the field. This is also the first Preparation day I've had in 9 days. I am so exhausted, today is definitely needed.

We have spent a lot of time here looking for new investigators. We have three investigators, one on date for baptism, and tons of potential investigators. People don't answer there doors much here in Newcastle and if they do, they're usually associated with another religion. There is a super strong belief in Christ here and I really love that, but I wish they'd listen to our message. Why, you might ask? Um cause I'm a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ and the message I have to share may just lead them to eternal salvation if they'll listen and accept it!! Geeze Louise. :) There are some times when I just want to grab a box and stand on it in the middle of the sidewalk shouting 3 Nephi 5:13 (look it up!) at the top of my lungs. That would be sweet, but probably wouldn't do much besides get me shunned... Haha but hey, maybe it's worth a shot!

I do love the lessons we get to teach though. I love feeling the spirit and knowing how to help them. This morning we got to eat breakfast with one of my favorite people ever. His name is Dallas. When the missionaries found Dallas 3 years ago, he was only a week away from becoming a catholic priest. He had been catholic his whole life. Dallas never finished becoming a priest but instead became LDS. Dallas loves the missionaries and has them over for breakfast a lot. The first time you go he washes one of your feet as Christ would. While washing your foot he explains the symbolism behind it. The symbolism and meaning behind it is that the master of the house in old times would wash your feet to let you know that you were always welcome in his home. He is such a good soul and everything in the church is very sacred to him. His calling is as the music coordinator. He gets the topics of the talks, goes to the topics section of he hymn book and prays about which of those hymns is needed. Many individuals have had amazing spiritual experiences during sacrament meeting because the Lord knows which songs they needed that day. He also just got called as the teacher of the 13 and 14 year olds, something that's very big for him. Today we were able to sit with him after breakfast and talk about the fact that God trusts him and will qualify him for that work. 

In other good news, there is a young man named Trent that we gave the last three lessons to last night. He has been and still is working toward baptism on the 31st. He has great faith.

Our newest investigator is named Tasha. We found out about Tasha when studying the area book. We found that she had been tracted out by missionaries before and had agreed to more appointments but she had cancelled the next two appointments. The book told us that she worked in the phone store on Main Street so we went and found her there. We talked to for a bit and she said she would meet with us the next day. When we met with her and her daughter at a little restaurant, she said she didn't want to take "the lessons" but that we were allowed to share a message with her every so often. That is currently our plan, and we hope the spirit will touch her heart and that we'll have opportunities to bear testimony of the church. 

It's been a busy week and I hope we have another one next week. I love you all! Keep up the good work:)

Love,

Elder Thomas

 P.S.:

We live in a teensy little cottage in the middle of the woods. It's
super fun. My bed is made out of memory foam :O

The picture of me throwing wood was a service project we did for an
elderly member of the ward, Brother Moody. He is a really cool guy but
he refuses to call me Elder Thomas and only calls me by my first name,
Neal. Weirdo haha. We also provided service at a senior center this
week. We do it once a week. We dish up their food and then we dish up
some for ourselves and go eat with them. Afterward, we clean up the
kitchen.

I love this ward. Everyone is so kind and helpful all the time.
They're so much fun.

BLOG P.P.S.:

If anyone sent me a letter by long hand while I was in the MTC and it
got to the MTC after I left, it's gonna be a super long time before I
get it cause they'll mail it to the mission home in Montana and then
the mission home will mail it to my residence in Newcastle Wyoming.
Therefore, the letter might have to travel from Utah, to Montana, and
then to Wyoming.

For the next six weeks my actual address is 351 East Wentworth, Newcastle WY.

Anyways, love y'all!

PICTURES:

This is my mini house

These beetles are everywhere and they're always getting into our

house. We call them "Apple bugs" because they smell like apples when

you... y'know, do what you do to bugs.     

Elder Hatton's many shoes. And a few of mine.

 The kitchen and living room. 

Study Room

 Bedroom

Bathroom. This bathroom smells weird.

This is Boo. He's the neighbors dog. Our neighbor is the only other
person on our secluded dirt road and he just roams between our two
houses:) they gave us a house AND a dog!!

I am very happy to be here. :)

Service with Brother Moody :)

Our backyard :)

Text message from Family in Wyoming

It was fun to receive this picture and a little text: "Sorry to send this so late tonight, but we just met your missionary! Here he is with Elder Hatton! We are so excited to have him here. They are coming again tomorrow to teach a discussion at our house!"
~The Wilkes Family from Newcastle, WY

Email from Sister Wadsworth

This is the email we received from Neal's Mission President and his wife on October 15th:

Dear Brother and Sister Thomas,
Just a quick e-mail with a picture to let you know Elder Thomas arrived in the Montana Billings Mission and is doing great!

Regards,

Sister Wadsworth