First day of Christmas

December 2, 2012

Hey there, 

Hope everything is still going well at home, that's good to hear about Tammy going through the temple! I hope you are all prepared for Christmas! We went to see the lights at the Temple last night and it was pretty good! Nothing like Temple square but it was probably the best in Sydney!

This week for me has been awesome! My core experience with God this week was a huge answer to prayers. We had been getting the baptism ready to go and finding someone to baptize Kayla because we know that it's better to have fellowship baptize rather than a missionary who leaves in a few months. We had 4 different people fall through before it was time and we found someone last minute. We also had talks and other things cancel the day of the baptism and it was kinda frustrating to be honest. My patience was good all week, I was optimistic and knew that God would answer prayers that everything would work out okay. That Saturday morning I kinda cracked, I decided that despite my diet, I was so stressed out that I was going to eat McDonalds! hahaha (that's my cracking). My companion was able to talk me down to getting Subway though. It came time for the baptism and I never doubted that Heavenly Father would help everything work out and he did! The baptism was awesome!!! The spirit was strong, it presented as very organized, the amount of people, support and fellowship was a really good turn out. That adds to my testimony that God hears prayers and he especially hears desperate prayers, and then answers them. 

My studies on patience were more of a case study this week. I like to think that I'm a fairly patient person. I almost thought I had mastered patience, but then I found out this week that I'm not perfect. Ha ha!!! I never really got around to studying patience in the morning but I definitely learned a lot about it. I'm not saying that I was complaining, whining, worrying, and stressing all week, but I definitely learned more about this Christlike attribute. All in all, it's been another amazing set of days.

Got the newsletter, glad you included the part about Hostess :) haha I'll have to print that out because I won't have enough time to read it all now.

Tonight we have Zone Leader Council again so it will be a pretty busy night! I'll have to talk to Sister Hill there about the visa situation. We as zone leaders will probably make the policy tonight about phone calls/ skype so we'll see what happens.  I won't get the new retainer until Friday, I hope it fits because it's been like another two weeks since the mold was taken. I'll just pray that it all works out. 

We actually do get the Ensign magazine and it's funny that you say that now because in the last week Elder Bringhurst and I have gotten sucked in to them! An old old old old lady,  Sister Route always gives us old Ensigns every Sunday and we read those. The mission office also gives us the new issues so it's really awesome. I love reading them! 

Anyway, Hope all keeps going well and getting better. I will be sending off a package home today for everyone. Hope it gets there in time for Christmas. :)

Love, Elder Thompson