2016

January 4, 2016

We were so cold! It was raining all day.

My new years' resolution is to not make a new years' resolution! For New Years we watched "The Polar Express." We had the church couches brought into the gym and we all got food from Wendy's and watched it on the projector. Half of us made it through the movie without falling asleep; the other half were "greenies."  I could barely stay awake. 

On the way home I drove us and the other sister we live with.  I had the feeling to just stay on the frontage road and not get on the freeway.  As the freeway went up I stayed on the frontage and about 30 seconds later someone lit off this huge exploding firework right where we would have been!  We made it home without dying.  There were a lot of drunks.  We went to bed at the late hour of 9:30.  I was actually super happy about that.  I was afraid of turning into a pumpkin at midnight so I thought I'd play it safe this year. 

Last Sunday after church we didn't have super set plans, which I normally wouldn't leave the apartment, especially training but we decided to leave and go look for old formers.  After about the third one I decided that we were going to go by a super less active that the Bishop gave us.  He just randomly popped in my head so I went with it.  We got over there and another guy answered the door.  As soon as the door opened I felt uneasy.  He saw us and came out and talked to us on his porch.  By this time it was dark outside and it was super cold. We had a 40 minute talk with him. During the first maybe 10 minutes I had the thought that his eyes looked kinda creepy but didn't think anything about it.  As the conversation continued he was talking about the church being in the Illuminati and about Ouija boards and chem trails and crazy stuff.  His thoughts made sense but they didn't connect like a normal persons chain of thought would; it was from one random thing to the other.  One of the first things he told us was that "I'm far out there."   I could tell that he obviously wasn't inviting good things by the things he was reading and talking about. During the conversation maybe 30 minutes into it I realized that he hadn't looked either of us in the eyes up to this point. I don't even remember what he was talking about at that point, I was just focusing on how long it would be until he looked me in the eye.  After about a minute of consciously waiting for him to look he looked Sister Castro in the eye and then at me and then looked away and didn't do it again the rest of the time.  He was then telling us this story of how he went to the Bar and on his way home a girl came home with him.  She was a normal young girl but she didn't have a body.  He told us that he had looked in the mirror right went he got home and she had scratched him all over. As he was telling this story,  I'm not kidding... the wind just randomly blew SO hard I thought the tree in his front yard was going to snap in half.  It felt like we were in an eerie Halloween movie. By that point I told him we had to go. We got in the car and Sister Castro started to cry. She obviously felt the same thing I did. We went home after that.  I felt like I had just rolled around in the mud and felt so drained and heavy.  It was the grossest feeling ever. 

The birds have migrated south apparently because there are a billion of them! Normally you can't even see the telephone wire because there are so many!!

We have been working with Robert a lot. He went in the hospital for his throat and so we went and visited with him there and taught him a few times. On the way into the hospital I grabbed three Books of Mormon out of the trunk. We gave one to somebody in the elevator and the other one we gave to Robert so that he could read it. (he is on chapter 20 now!) While talking with him I had the thought to give him a little challenge. I gave him the other book and told him that he had to give it to somebody before we come back the next time. We taught more about the priesthood and he got a blessing and that was great. The next morning we got a call from Robert saying that he gave to Book of Mormon to his nurse. He said he was talking with several people wondering who to give it to and he got talking to his nurse about God and he wrote his number by our number in the book and gave it to him!  It was super awesome!

Teaching Robert at the hospital

This week was a good one. We worked hard and saw lots of miracles. I've learned that there is no discipline in discipleship if you're doing it right. It's all for love!  Do what you love and love what you do. I love you all. Have a great week!

Love Sister Thompson