Elder Coleman Thompson: This week's email (late just because I was lazy)

This week went by so fast, but it was so full. We did so many things I
don't even know where to begin!

There's a few people I'll talk about first.

We met this guy last week named Godwyn, who is from Italy! He was
walking down the street and we stopped him and his son, and after
talking to him for a few minutes and talking about religion he said
"I'm just looking for the true church" because he didn't like the
church his wife was going to. So we were like "we go to the true
church, we can come tell you all about it!" And this week on exchange
Elder Hardy and I went to his house and taught him and his wife about
the restoration. Godwyn loved it, but his wife isn't sure. We're going
to see them again tonight!

When we went to go visit Godwyn, we pulled up into his street (we had
never been there before) and there were two guys talking outside their
houses. We went up and talked to them and found out they were from
Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) which is where Akram is from, and a member
in our ward named Gary.

Side note - Gary owns a garage in Byker, and he's always there, so
about once a week we go and stop by his garage to talk to him and the
guys that work there, and they're hilarious. Also, Gary has a
roommate, and one night we were in his area and decided to try by his
flat, and Gary wasn't there but his roommate Hassan let us in and told
us all about his plans to open up a takeaway. Long story short now
we've been to this takeaway loads and he gives us half off every time!
Kurdish guys are awesome.

But anyways back to our new Kurdish friends. We met these two guys
outside of Godwyn's house. Their names are Gardi & Adnan. Adnan is a
Christian, who converted about 6 years ago and is fully active in a
Christian church here in Newcastle, so wasn't really interested in
changing, but he speaks fluent Arabic, and we just happened to have
one copy of the Book of Mormon in Arabic in our car, so we gave that
to him. Gardi on the other hand just decided the day before that he
wanted to become a Christian. We explained that we teach people all
about how to do that. He asked us for the address of the church and
then he showed up on Sunday! And brought two of his friends! We taught
them all the restoration and now tonight we're going to visit Gardi
and his whole family!

We also met two guys from Iran this week who's English is very sub
par. But luckily we have a recent convert in the ward who is from Iran
and speaks Persian! So we're going to bring her to their house this
week. Their names are Akbar and Amir. Such funny blokes.

Other than that our Investigators Alvin & Gemma both came to church
again on Sunday. They are both University students. We're going to
play basketball with Alvin at Northumbria University again on
Thursday.

Funny story - this week Alvin watched this program on YouTube called
meet the Mormons (not the same as the movie) but this one was not
produced by the church, it's about a Mormon missionary named Joshua
Field, and it portrays serving a mission like a cruel punishment, it's
really funny. Anyways after watching it Alvin called us and asked us
if we wanted to have dinner with him, and he made us like a delicious
meal haha. So that was awesome.

Gemma is a funny one. She never replies to texts, or if she does it's
like two days later. There was one week a few weeks ago where she
asked us to text her every morning to remind her to read the Book of
Mormon, and we did, and she read it every day. And then we stopped,
and she stopped. So this week she asked us to do it again. Also she
really hates being late, but she also hates being early. Church starts
at 10:30 on a Sunday morning, and this week at like 9:50 we got a text
from her that was like: "is there a park near the church?" So we
called her because we thought she was lost, and she was just like "no,
I'm here but I just don't want to be early, so I'll just go sit in a
park" and we were like "ok Gemma" so funny. She'll get baptised
eventually because she definitely knows it's true - she just doesn't
recognise it.

Also we met this less active this week named Vincent. I called him
last Sunday night and he's from France so I spoke to him a lot in
French. We went and visited him and invited him to come back to
church, and he did! And he bore his testimony! It was awesome but it
was the kind of thing where we're not sure he's all the way there so
when he got up to bear his testimony we were like holding our breath -
but it was fine. Awesome and hilarious guy Vincent. Seeing him again
Wednesday.

We also knocked this massive Terrace one day, it took us a long time,
and we found one bloke who let us in! His name is Adam and he's
actually from Somalia. He told us his whole crazy life story about
fleeing from Somalia because he didn't want to be Muslim, and how he
worked as a safari driver in Kenya for ages before he got enough money
to get himself out. Pretty cool story. Also hilarious he let us in to
talk to us because he'd had a friend give him a Book a few days prior
called 'the four major cults' and one of them was "Mormonism". So
funny, we were like okay mate it's not a cult, nor is it called
''Mormonism' and it ended up being a really good lesson about the
restoration and now he wants to come to church. We're seeing him this
week again too.

Also spent some time singing with the ward choir in North Shields
again because the choir lady called and asked if I would come. So that
was fun.

We also had a Zone Training meeting that Elder Nielsen and I ran on
Friday. It was three hours long and included several instructions and
role playing and musical numbers, and videos, and scripture studies
etc. It was so good though! The spirit was really strong! Near the end
we played the new Easter Video that came out recently called
#PrinceofPeace (go watch it if you haven't yet) and after the video we
recalled the action points we wanted to take from the meeting, and
then we bore our testimonies and I cried so bad, and then because I
cried it made Elder Nielsen cry, and so the whole Zone was like
bubbling up, and we had to make a bunch of jokes so that we didn't all
just cry. The spirit was really strong though.

And then to top it off I bore my testimony again in church for
testimony Meeting, and I cried again....

I just talked about how much peace knowing about the Gospel of Jesus
Christ can bring into people's lives, and I talked about how I've seen
it do that for me and for other people. I love this new Easter video -
it's one of my favourites that the church has made so far. It
highlights the peace and then the joy that the gospel brings into my
life. Especially I the world we live in today that contains so much
hate and turmoil, people really need the gospel of Jesus Christ to
feel that peace they they long for. He is real, He lives, His
Atonement has the power to change lives, to turn guilt into peace,
sorrow into joy, hate into love. I want everyone to know.

Anyways there's so much more, and probably so many more people I could
talk about - but those are the ones I thought of. Oh we also had
interviews with President and Sister Turvey and mama Sister Turvey is
just like you it's so funny. In our interviews we just chat and laugh
and I miss you lots.

Love you guys!