The face of Thompson, MB Canada is depicted by this child; wild and innocent, full of life and curiosity. We never could have imagined what we are experiencing.
Once we left Winnipeg and headed north, the countryside gradually changed from the vast, flat farms typical of North Dakota, to the wooded, undulating landscape of the north. This place is far more beautiful than we had heard.
Mark was my first connection with a real, live Canuck. He works as a maintenance man for a company that services the local Branch.
We had a fun talk about cars and life. I hope to meet him again and engage some conversation about the purpose of life.
We’re told that bears are in the woods, but not aggressive. Leave them alone and they won’t bother you, we have been told. There are also lynx, deer and moose in the area, though we have yet to see any.
There are no social climbers in Thompson. People either live in large apartment buildings like ours, or in modest frame houses , festooned with dandelions.
We were still 3.5 hours from Thompson at the only fuel stop along our 8-hour drive, when someone called to us. “Are you our new senior Elder and Sister?” Sister Basallo is a member of our little Thompson branch, and spotted us far from her home. We were thrilled to be recognized.
We had no idea that we’d discover a wooded trail within 1/4 mile of our apartment building. We were delighted to find this wooded place along the Burntwood river, which is broad and deep.
Time Warp
Today marks one month since we first entered the MTC in Provo Utah to begin our mission. Unless the calendar said so, we’d never believe that only one month has passed. If feels like three.
When one is bored with life and simply going through their daily routine, time stretches into day after day of nothing new. But when life is disrupted by something as dramatic as a full time mission, everything changes. Days bloat into a week, and weeks become months.
Now that we’re finally here and settling into our new normal, we try to receive every day as a gift, and do all we can with our time to touch someone for good.
With the recent addition of the Internet, we are now finally ready to gather stories of faith from our neighbors. We can hardly wait to see that their response is, and how we can help refresh and build new faith from those we meet.
We participated in a community food bank project this morning, with our new friend Sandy (blonde in the middle) as our leader. It was fun to gather donated food and fill the bags for those in need.