Farmer Joe

Hey everyone! I hope y'all had a great week and a great week and a great fathers day! You will have to tell me if you did anything fun. We had a pretty productive week where we were able to meet with quite a few people and get stuff done!

So this week a couple of highlights went down. We had our ZTM where the rest of our Zone got distributed iPads, so they were pretty pumped about that. We were able to talk about a lot of great things and hopefully we all learned something and had a greater desire to be better missionaries. 

After ZTM we went of exchanges and i went to Cold Lake where the main highlight of the week happened. We went to a ranch and helped slaughter and skin not one, but two pigs! It was crazy! it was definitely a first(and potentially the last) time i have ever done that. I think its really cool how many different things you get to do and experience on a mission, and that is one of many reasons i am grateful that i have had this chance to serve for almost 2 years and im thankful i still have some time left to finish strong.

We also had a great lesson with one of our progressing investigator. We taught lesson 3 (The Gospel of Jesus Christ). He took everything very well and it has been a really neat experience to see the spirit working with him. He has that real intent that everyone needs to have to be able to receive an answer. Our next step is to help him understand Priesthood Authority a little bit better, because that is his main concern with baptism right now. But i am excited for him and i am grateful i have had the opportunity to meet him and help him along the way of conversion with my companion.

Scripture of the week is 2 Nephi chapter 9 verses 28-29

"28 O that cunning plan of the evil one! O the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not. And they shall perish.

29 But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God."

Keep it real,

Elder W.Chad Thompson

God Bless America!

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a great week and were able to get lots done. Our week was pretty great.

We went on exchanges with the Spanish elders and had a great time. This time i stayed in our area and we got some good finding done. We got to meet up with our investigator Jonathan who is getting married and moving to Lethbridge in about a month, so hopefully we can help him progress as much as we can before he takes off. We picked up new Investigator named Pape "poppy" and he is black so i call him big poppy. the only problem is he speaks french and has pretty bad english and we dont have any french missionaries yet. We are getting a few in the next couple of transfers though so that should be good. Right now we just have to rely on the members that served french speaking missions.

We did a Booth type thing on Whyte ave this week, except it was raining so that kinda sucked. But it was still good. My companion would get people to give him a topic and he would freestyle rap about it and relate it to the gospel, and it went pretty well. We actually got lots of people to talk to us.

So as you all know my companion is British, and let me tell you, you dont know how patriotic you are until someone starts bagging on your country haha. It has been fun because most of the missionaries are American so we have a good time with it, joking around and what not.

Scripture of the week is 2 Nephi 1:7
 "7 Wherefore, this land is consecrated unto him whom he shall bring. And if it so be that they shall serve him according to the commandments which he hath given, it shall be a land of liberty unto them; wherefore, they shall never be brought down into captivity; if so, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land for their sakes, but unto the righteous it shall be blessed forever."

Keep it real,

Elder W.Chad Thompson

Ooh Look, Another Beach!

Hello everyone, hope you all had a great week! 

We were able to keep busy this week. Very busy. We got to proselyte in our area for about 3.5 days busy. We went on exchanges out in Cold Lake which is one of the furthest east areas in our mission. So there was the drive out there, we had a District meeting with the elders out there, then did service for a lady the rest of the day.

The service was fun because we got to clean up a lady's yard where she just had a bunch of animals chilling all over the place, especially birds. I also figured out that Elder Liddle has a slight phobia of birds haha. We also were supposed to sheer sheep, but they broke the electric fence and got out from where we were taking them, because the electric fence wasn't turned on... the reason was because the lady "didn't want to hurt the sheep"...dang animal lovers!

We also had Mission Leadership Council this past week which was very very long. Usually they last for about 4 hours, but this one went from 10-7:30 with a lunch break of 30 minutes. But we got our iPads and initialized them, so I guess it was worth it! Elder Christensen of the presidency of the 70 was also there and gave some awesome insight into some things. I got to talk 1 on 1 with him which was super cool. We talked about Yucaipa (because he actually knew where that is!) and what he could expect of Edmonton, to how I was liking my mission. It was legit! but now I am kicking myself because I didn't get a picture with him and he is now an apostle candidate. But we did take an MLC picture so hopefully we can get that.

Using the iPads has been super nice. it makes everything so much more efficient and it's nice having everythying in one place. I have also been using the scripture mastery app and been getting better!(which is a LOT easier as a missionary, after actually been reading the scriptures constantly for almost 2 years.)

And last of all, we had transfer calls this morning, and I'm staying!! I'm happy to have at least 6 more weeks here in the Mill Creek YSA area and looking forward to working hard.

Quote of the week is from Elder Liddle on our drive out to Cold Lake. We passed a sign that said beach and he couldn't figure out why they would call a lake a beach, so every time we passed a lake he would sarcastically say "ooh look, another beach!" haha it was super funny.

Scripture of the week is 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3(which is a Scripture Mastery!)
 "1 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
 2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.
 3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;"

I am thankful for the knowledge that we have of the priesthood authority being lost through the great apostasy and I can testify that those priesthood keys required to have God's church on the earth have been restored and are being exercised today.

Keep it real,

Elder W.Chad Thompson