Even More Pictures from Today!

We went to TGIFriday's for Elder Charman's birthday

Elder Charman and I pre-haircut

Saying goodbye to Elder Barney

Transfer Week

North Shields crew

Hey guys! This week is transfers - and guess what? I am finally staying!!

I'm staying here in Newcastle - but Elder Charman is leaving, he's
going to serve in Beverly with Elder Pilling (his family is from
Calgary, in the south Stake maybe) to be the district leader there.

Prince Charman & I doing key indicators together for the last time

My new companion is named Elder Nielsen and I've met him before, he
started his mission in Huddersfield 1 and he's really cool. He's from
Utah I believe. He'll be a new Zone Leader so I'm going to have to
show him the ropes and such.

Also all 4 of the District Leaders in our Zone either finished their
missions or got transferred this transfer! And we have 4 brand new
district leaders that got called in the zone! So this next few weeks
is going to be a little crazy, because I am the only leader who stayed
in the whole Zone, and we have all new leadership everywhere else. I'm
a little nervous - but also excited for the change.

We had to organise it all as well - so on Saturday the assistants sent
us a big spreadsheet with all of the missionaries being transferred,
and we had to sit down and organise where they're all going, what
trains they're catching and who'll they wait with and be picked up by,
we had to organise it with all the other Zone leaders as well - it was
a bit crazy, but it was really fun.

Tomorrow is transfer day, so I'm going to be in the Newcastle Train
Station all morning helping everybody catch their trains and such and
make sure they are all good to go where they need to go! I'll be there
from about 7AM to 1PM tomorrow organising it all haha.

Also - today is Elder Charman's birthday, and he's never had a burger
from Five Guys - so we're going to Five Guys in Newcastle today!

This week has been super busy again too. We visited Susan & Sophie
three times this week, and they came to church again - and they are
preparing to be baptised! It's really nice to visit with them as well,
they even made us a cake and a pie! I'll send you a picture.

The pie that Sophie made us! It's got a smily face in it

Some cupcakes Sophie made us

I'm pretty nervous about leading the Zone right now. A new Zone Leader
and 4 new district leaders is a bit of a daunting task, but I think
I'll be able to handle it. There's going to be a lot of training
required.

Oh - also there was a worldwide missionary broadcast on Wednesday. I'm
sure the missionaries at home have already told you - but there were
changes made to the missionary daily schedule and the key indicators.
I'm not too sure what the changes to the schedule are going to be like
yet in our mission - we're following up with the AP's about them
tonight, but the changes to the key indicators are immediate. We only
record investigators Baptised & Confirmed, with a date, at sacrament,
and new investigator. It'll be interesting to see what this change
does.

Love you guys! Have a good week!

Pictures, an Email, and a Video!!

So I guess I've been back out already for over 3 months now. I
actually can't believe how fast it's gone. I kept saying before that I
knew how fast the time would go - but it's happening and I can't
believe that it is going this fast. I have less than 6 months now to
go.

I'm so excited about the apartment in Edmonton next year! I've been
telling everyone that I'll be starting University in September after a
3 year break from school - but I'm actually so excited! And finding
out about that apartment has made me even more excited about it!

This week has once again been a crazy busy week here - but I'm loving
it so much. There's so much to do! On Sunday night we were taking in
key indicators again - and after I saved them I was like 'oh, this is
my sixth week of being here in Newcastle' and it blew my mind. That
means I've been here longer than I was in Dewsbury and Bradford now. I
was only in Dewsbury for 4 weeks and Bradford for 5.

There is a mother and daughter that we've been teaching named Susan
and Sophie, who are so awesome. They've decided to be baptised on Feb
11th(Dad's birthday) and are super excited about it! Susan is in her
50's and Sophie is only 14, but they both are so ready to receive the
Gospel. We just knocked on their door a few weeks ago, but they are so
ready!

We taught them the Word of Wisdom on Tuesday (which is about how we
don't smoke, or drink alcohol or tea or coffee) and Susan just
accepted it as a commandment. She smoked for a long time and drinks
lots of tea, but since we taught her the Word of Wisdom she hasn't
drank any! It's really cool!

There's a bunch of other people that we're teaching as well, but none
who are progressing as much as those two.

We get the Ensign (a Church magazine) delivered to our flat every month - and the other day I opened up the one for February, and the first Presidency message was like exactly what I needed to hear that morning. We'd had a lesson earlier in the week with this born again Christian guy who kept being like "why do we even need a modern day prophet" and we gave lots of answers, but none of them satisfied him. Then I sat down a few days later and read some words from the prophet that had a deep impact on me - and I was like 'oh yeah, that's why we need a prophet, he receives revelation that can help even me.' 

Newcastle is the coolest place though.

It's so funny to see all the pictures of the snow and ice etc. In
Canada. People here keep complaining about how cold it is - when it's
like 3 degrees outside. Then I show them the pictures of Canada and
they just laugh. They're all like "I could never live there"

Susan's son named Neil is 33, and is a huge Newcastle United fan - and
I asked him where I could get a Newcastle United Shirt, and he gave me
2 of his! One is from this last season and one is from 1999, and is
signed by the whole Newcastle United team from 1999! It's the coolest
thing ever!

We have a nickname for my companion - sometimes we call him Prince
Charman - because it sounds like 'Charming'. And Sophie made elder
Charman this little crown thing! And it's the funniest thing! I'll
send a picture.

Things are going well! The Zone is constantly improving.

Love you guys!


And the best part -- click here to see a video of Coleman singing!

Elder Barney and Scheffner got me this guitar! 

Best way to dispose of a Christmas tree I guess

A Baptism!

Hey guys!

This week has yet again been a crazy busy week! There's been so much stuff to do, but it's been amazing as well.

Last Saturday we went on exchange with the Elder's who are serving in South Shields, and we knocked on the door of this mother and daughter, named Susan & Sophie. They invited us to come back, and we did. This week we had a couple of lessons at their house and they really absorbed all of the things we had to say! They came to Akram's baptism on Saturday and church on Sunday as well! 

So yeah, Akram was baptised on Saturday! We had a few more lessons with him this week to prepare him for it, and he was really excited to be baptised! We had a decent amount of the ward come for it, and we had Susan & Sophie come, and the Sisters Missionaries had 2 of their investigators that came as well! It was a really spiritual evening and Akram was really happy. He doesn't speak much English, but he felt the spirit. 

There is this family that we've been visiting as well who live in like the depths of this council estate, and have one of the messiest houses I've ever seen. Last week we went by one time, and their yard is literally just full of rubbish, like loads of stuff - old furniture, ancient bags of who knows what thats spilled everywhere, it was just nasty. So we were standing outside their door amidst this stuff, and talking about the mess, and all the sudden I just blurted out: "We'll come clean this up for you". I don't know what got a hold of me. Worst idea ever haha, but it really helped them out.

So on Thursday morning we went over and cleaned it all out. We stuck all the rubbish in our car and drove to a tip - except where our map said there was a tip - there wasn't...   so we just took all the stuff and threw it in a dumpster by our house haha. It was the nastiest service I've ever given on my mission, but it was worth it because they were grateful.

We also drove up to Alnwick to go to a companionship study of the Elder's up there this week on Saturday morning - it was kind of a crazy drive on these really narrow roads! It was cool though. 

On Sunday night Elder Charman and I prepare a bunch of reports for the zone and for the Stake and do our weekly planning session and follow up with the Assistants, which all takes several hours to do. But yesterday after church we got a call from the Mission President - and we had an Elder in the Zone that was being emergency transferred, so we basically went and got him, he packed all his stuff up, and we drove him to Leeds and back - about a 3.5 hour round trip. So we had to prepare those reports a lot quicker than usual - after doing that whole long drive!

All in all, a really good week! Elder Charman and I have been happy! We also had interviews with President and Sister Turvey so that was a blessing this week as well.

Oh - also. On Saturday night one of the members of the Bishopbric came up to me at the baptism and told me that one of the speakers for the next day had cancelled - and so he asked me if I could speak for 10 minutes on missionary work! And so I did, and it went really well! And Elder Charman and I taught Gospel Principles, and we got called in to Primary to help teach the kids too. A busy Sunday yesterday!

Love you guys!

Have a good week!

Elder Thompson 

MLC

Akrum always gives us a bunch of fruit when we go over 

English Motorways

And with snow

Short but Sweet

Hey fam!

This week has been the busiest and craziest week of my entire life.
I've never been this busy ever. Literally every day we are go go go,
with no time to really think about home really haha!

It's really great though. We've had the opportunity to help a lot of
missionaries especially this week.

This week was MLC in Leeds again, so we drove down on Thursday night
and stayed with Elder Rodriguez in Leeds the night before. It was
really interesting, we sat in a Council and made a bunch of plans for
the mission - it was really great actually, I learned a lot. Plus
Elder Boswell & Rodriguez & Iakopo were there, so that was sweet.

We taught a bunch of other people this week as well! There's a guy who
is going to be baptised this Saturday! His name is Akram and he is
Kurdish. We've taught him with a member who speaks Kurdish as well.
Get this - he lives in England because he had to leave his family in
Iraq because he decided that he wanted to be a Christian. But he has
friends here and things are going well for him, and he's excited to be
baptised!

There's another lady in Sunderland named Christina who's getting
baptised on Saturday as well. The elders have been teaching her for a
while, and there came up a big concern last minute that was going to
hold her back from being baptised, but Elder Charman and I went over
to Sunderland to speak with the Elders about helping her overcome the
concern, and it worked! She is going to be baptised. It was a big
miracle!

England is awesome, I'm really busy but I love every minute of it!

Love you guys

First Email of 2017

Hi family!

This week has been so busy it's unbelievable - I don't think I could
describe half of the things we've done in this e-mail! Things have
been going a lot better up here in Newcastle. We've found a load of
people to teach, we have a few who are working towards a baptism date,
and I'm getting to know how to work with my companion and how to help
the missionaries here in the zone.

For some reason for the last little while, several months I think, the
zone leaders that were here weren't doing too much in terms of
missionary work in the Newcastle area. I think they emphasised a
little too much going to visit other teams and build up their areas -
and didn't forget, but neglected a little the Newcastle area itself.
So we are building it back up, finding quite a few people to teach and
working hard to develop good relations with the members here.

On Monday it was Boxing Day - and flashback to Boxing Day two years
ago - we went to the Metro Centre in Gateshead, one of the biggest
shopping malls in Europe, which was fun. Afterwards we went and had
tea with a part member family, with the only member (the mom) being
less active that we met last week, and who were going to start going
through the missionary lessons with.

On Tuesday we went to a Carvery (like a restaurant but buffet style I
guess) with our ward mission leader Brother Howe! It was great. I'll
send a picture.

On Wednesday we went to several district meetings and helped out
there, and in the evening we had a couple of teaching visits with
investigators that we found last week - those were both really good!

On Thursday we found this former investigator named Thomas who was
taught in 2015 by a missionary that I knew. We knocked on his door and
he let us right in. He told us that he hadn't seen missionaries for a
long time, and he'd been going through a hard time when they came last
time. He said that the last time they'd came they'd given him a
blessing - and most of the hard things that had been going on in his
life seemed to go away, but then he didn't see the missionaries again!
So when we came this week he committed right away to coming regularly
and being baptised. He said that he'd felt like he let the
missionaries and God down last time by not going through with joining
the church and he wants to do it right this time. So that was a major
miracle.

The same day there were a few emergency transfers going on that we had
to work out - there were some sisters leaving an area and some elders
moving in, and so we had to get them to the train station and things -
it took a while, but it was good.

That night we also taught this guy named Akram, who is from Kurdistan.
He's been coming to church for several weeks, because he came with his
friend who was baptised several months ago, but who's now moved to
London. Akram keeps coming but he speaks almost no English, and
finally this week a member came to church who speaks Kurdish! So we
talked to him about joining the church and he's going to be baptised
in a few weeks as well! We went over with the member on Thursday and
had one of the most crazy lessons I've had - because I don't think the
member was actually translating what we were saying, but it was still
good!

On Friday we taught Thomas again, and that day and Saturday we knocked
on a lot of doors. On Saturday we went to this area of Newcastle where
there are loads of foreign people, like seriously every door was
either African or European. We met loads of people who came here from
the Czech Republic and Slovakia who want to learn more about the Book
of Mormon - and luckily some missionaries before must have known this
was the case because there are loads of Czech and Slovak copies of the
Book of Mormon in our flat!

We also met several fence speaking African families! And we're going
back to teach them as well! So Newcastle is way fun.

On New Year's Eve we had to be in early. But it was fun! Newcastle is cool.

Love you guys!

The new whip

Toby Carvery with the Ward Mission Leader Bro. Howe