Elder Kent Thompson, India Bengaluru Mission: General Authorities, Birthdays, and the Temple

Wow! What a great week it was for us here in Manila. So many cool things happened so I will describe them to the best of my ability!

First, our mission had visits from Elder Richard Maynes of the presidency of the 70 and Elder Allen D. Haynie of the Seventy. Elder Maynes is the one who spoke last conference about keeping our lives centered on Jesus Christ just like a potter should keep the clay centered on the wheel and Elder Haynie is the one who also spoke last conference and he told the story about jumping into a muddy hole with his friends and not being allowed to enter into his house after. The things they had to share with us were so amazing and powerful. They literally had me on the edge of my seat the entire meeting. Elder Maynes took over for most of the meeting and did a question and answer kind of thing. He ended up teaching us a lot about how we need to be constantly finding new investigators if we are to be successful in missionary work. If we're so focused on our current appointments and not trying to find new people, we're not going to have much success. It was so cool to hear all of his teachings, stories, and experiences. I couldn't believe how much success and wisdom this man has had throughout his life. I could have sat there and listened to him speak all day long!

Here are a few of my favorite points from the notes that I took.

1. GOALS + CONSISTENCY. Missionary work completely depends on it. We need to set our goals and then be consistent every single day to find new people to teach. Not just for my mission but for my ENTIRE LIFE! Everybody that has ever been successful in life has understood the concept of making goals and being consistent.

2. Thinking about your goals every single day and acting in such a way that you can achieve them. It's one thing to set a goal, but if you forget about it after a week it's useless.

3. He told us a quote by Michelangelo. It goes like this- It's better to aim high and fall short than it is to aim low and make our goals.

4. FIND THE SEEKERS Heavenly Father has prepared people that are ready to hear our message! We just need to find them! Once we do, it will be easy to get them to church, easy to get them to read the Book of Mormon, and easy to baptize them. Once they understand the gospel and the atonement, they will want to do it on their own. We won't have to drag them to be baptized.

So this week we've been taking these teachings into serious action! We have been adamantly talking to every single person we could and just trying to find people that will listen.

On Saturday, we celebrated Elder Mangaoang's 26th birthday. Man this guy is so old! We got a delicious chocolate cake and joyfully sang happy birthday. It's cool to be working with somebody that's so much older than me. I'm learning a lot from him!

Today was so amazing to have the chance to visit the temple. I haven't been in over a year and it was just so great to be in a place so clean, so peaceful, and so sacred. It's such a blessing for me to have the chance to attend the temple while I'm here in the Philippines.

That's all for now. Have a great week!

-Elder Kent R. Thompson