Edmonton Canada Mission: Well that was Awkward

So I have found it really funny every time "I'll be home for christmas" plays because me and my comp will look at each other and just be like nope! not us. haha it really kind of gets annoying. Also I wanted to thank Grandma and Grandpa for the package. It was awesome! i only had to buy milk and I am set on cereal for a while. And I haven't opened the present yet, in case you were wondering I am going to wait till christmas.

This week I focused on a couple of Christlike attributes for my studies and I found some interesting things. Faith is absolutely essential, obviously. I was going through a rough time this week and I just put it in God's hands and said a quick prayer and did a blind scripture open up sort of thing. The scripture was in 2 Nephi somewhere and it said something like I am a god of miracles, But, I work according to man's faith. So if we are expecting miracles or help or anything really, we need to have sufficient faith. I also studied charity and decided I probably need a little more of it haha. The big thing that stuck out to me in my studies where we can be great at everything except charity, and we are really not all that hot stuff in God's eyes. without charity, we are nothing.

I also studied up on being sensitive to the spirit and I came to realize that the spirit often is only a soft gentle prompting and not very often is it something super powerful. I know that sometimes I get caught up in wanting a super powerful prompting in regards to something but thats not how it works. God expects us to have the faith, and to listen for the spirit. So needless to say i have plenty of things to work on in the next couple of weeks.

At Zone Training M we got a bunch of stuff that we need to work on. The biggest thing that a lot of people including my self is not saying sucks or crap at all. Ok that's understandable. But the next one is what got me like what? We are supposed to not say sweet or awesome when we describe things. That is going to be tough because everybody uses that a lot. so who knows, I guess we will see. But we did get the info that we can now go ice skating and curling! Curling is such a Canadian sport so you better believe im going to try it. We are also going to play the HS basketball team in a week from friday so we are super jacked about that! We will destroy them!

Mom, you would be so proud of me. We deep cleaned our apartment, which hasn't been done for like a really long time. So now it's super clean and it feels great! We also went on exchanges this week. It was awesome, oh wait it was sweet, oh shoot man it was great I guess haha. that is what always happens. Something we talked about with the people we visited was putting Christ back in Christmas. So I just want everyone to do that. That could be service or whatever. I know some of the most memorable Christmas's I had were when we did some kind of service. I hated it at the time, but now that I'm not so self centered, iIrealize that those were the most memorable.

The roads were super slippery after it rained... yeah it rained at like -10. so it would hit the ground and freeze. so it was interesting riding the bus and then going sideways in the intersection. after that happened, the buses only went like 10 mph or like whatever that is in kph. Just extremely slow

But Sunday was the highlight of the week. Gospel Principles was super super awkward. The lesson was on the law of chastity. So the teacher had some statistics and there were people talking about, well you know, and how it was in their own life and me and my comp were like whoah I didn't need to know that about you. but the whole class was having a discussion, minus us and the sisters, so yeah it was pretty dang awkward for us missionaries. We also found out from that lesson that one of the sister missionaries was extremely extremely sheltered growing up. She was just appalled at some of the statistics and I'm pretty sure she had to wash her ears out with soap haha.

In other news our dinner calendar is hopping! it is booked solid for the next 2 weeks which has never happened before apparently. So we must be doing something right because we get invited back but the sisters don't. haha we have some theories about that but I wont divulge them to you. I almost threw up at dinner last night because I was so full. #firstworldproblems being too full that you can't eat dessert and you almost throw up haha. But after that we had the stake Christmas devotional and it was super good. There was only one speaker, and he gave an awesome talk. the rest was just Christmas music which is always good, unless it is being played way to early... Canada. But yeah it was really good.

Love you all and I hope the week before Christmas isnt too terribly hectic for you.

Keep it real,

Elder Thompson