January News

January 20, 2013

Dear Mom and Dad, This week was a little unusual. We went on three exchanges with other missionaries, so we were hardly in our own area at all but still managed to have success and make a lot of progress with our own area. We spent almost all day down in a place called Sutherland "the shire" working with the Elders down there and then on Friday we went and worked with the Samoan Elders out in the heat. That day it got up to 116 degrees F or 47 C. We went tracting.... but luckily we tracted into a member from a different ward and they let us in, gave us KFC and a juice comparable to jamba juice! Tender mercies! When we ended the exchange it started pouring rain, & it had cooled down to about 45 C though... 113 F and 100% humidity.. fun fun fun! :)

This weekend will be Miriam's baptism. She doesn't want it to be a big shin dig so it will be more quiet and casual I guess. Just a few people there and what not. That makes it easier on us though because planning a baptism is really stressful! Anyway, that's a little bit about our week!

I would say that reading the Ensign counts, I love reading the Ensign! That is modern day revelation and just as helpful to us as the scriptures. I would encourage you to actually give a read to the scriptures as well. Couldn't hurt, I know they are hard to understand but a scripture helped me know how to understand those hard things. I think it's 1 Nephi 15:11, when Nephi tells his brothers how they can understand the vision that Lehi had, because they were complaining that it made no sense to them.

A kid told us a story of an activity they did at EFY this last week. He said their counselor told them to close their eyes and imagine they were on a plane to where they were going to serve their mission. They were not far away from the destination when the right wing starts to have a problem. Then a few moments later the left wing breaks and they find out they have about 5 minutes to live. In those last 5 minutes they are prompted to write their final testimony to their family and friends so that it can be preserved. All the kids were then given 5 minutes to write their testimony down and he said it was very spiritual. The counselor then gathered all the testimonies and continued the story. The plane after 5 minutes crashed and with it, their testimony was destroyed, it never made it to the family or anyone. The counselor then took all their papers and ripped them to shreds and the kids freaked out! He then explained that if we do not read the scriptures (which are the testimonies of those ancient prophets, words that they all died for) then we might as well rip up their testimonies as well, rip up the scriptures. Wow that was powerful listening to that. The kid told this story in sacrament meeting. I know there are messages in the scriptures to help us with what we need. We just need to 1 Nephi 15:11 in order to have it take it's affect on us.

We did watch movies last week. Lion King and Tangled. It was a blast! I haven't seen the Lion King in like 10 years!! and I have never seen Tangled so it was a blast. Tangled is one of the best movies I have ever seen.

I got the pictures last week right before my time ran out on the computer but I had more time today to look at them longer :) haha that is SO MUCH SNOW! cool picture of Duke too running through the snow. I noticed you had the yard stick backward on one of the pictures haha I confused for a sec because it said like 35" or something! Anyway It's time to go for me. Good luck with all righteous things this week! :) Hope everyone is doing well. I am really hungry.

Love, Elder Thompson