Neil Thompson was wrestling with God.

“You want me and my family to serve in Vernon, B.C., but you want us for full-time ministry,” he prayed. “That’s not how things work in the Army. We can’t be here and at the College for Officer Training. Don’t you know how The Salvation Army works?”

Well, it turns out God did.

“Follow Me”

Neil grew up in the faith; his parents were active soldiers at Alberni Valley Corps in Port Alberni, B.C.

“I knew the love of Jesus from a young age,” he says.

Despite that, when Neil turned 16, he started to go down a rebellious teenage path, which came to a head after a night of partying in the wake of a tragedy.

A close friend of the family had passed away in a workplace accident, and the senselessness of the death had shaken Neil to his core.

“The Salvation Army are really the hands and feet of Jesus.” CADET NEIL THOMPSON

 “I was curled in a corner, crying quietly. I could just hear Jesus speaking to me, and I felt his love for me so intensely,” he recalls. “He was literally reaching down to me, saying, ‘This isn’t the life I have for you. I have much bigger things in mind. You just need to follow me.’ ”

Faithfulness in Vernon

“I’m going to walk with Jesus,” Neil decided. Over the next couple of months, he became more involved at church, with people of faith, and he became a senior soldier the very next year, in 1998.

That summer, he started working at The Salvation Army’s Camp Sunrise in Gibsons, B.C., “which further helped me along my discipleship journey, being surrounded by amazing people who spoke life into me.”

Then in 2000, while working at camp, he met Jen. The 19-year-olds got married less than a year later and started their life together, with the first of four boys following a year later.

They were a family of faith “active in whatever corps we were at,” says Neil. 

In 2005, the family moved to Vernon where they have been ever since. 

“God opened the door for us to move to Vernon,” Neil says. “We were lay leaders and worship leaders and we sat on the leadership team. 

“God’s been faithful through it all.”

Torn Between Two Callings

In 2019, Neil began to feel a tug toward full-time ministry, but he had wanted his children to live in the same place and have the same friends from kindergarten through to high school, without the necessity to relocate as so many Salvation Army officer families did.

While the couple still felt connected and called to Vernon, Neil was finally able to surrender that piece of his heart.

“Lord,” he prayed, “if you want me as an officer, you’ll take care of my kids, and I trust you with that.”

So the couple attended an officership information weekend that year.

“We felt God specifically telling us, ‘I want you in full-time ministry. I want you to be officers, but I want you in Vernon.’ It was so specific: You’re not done in Vernon yet.

“We wrestled with God a little bit on that one,” laughs Neil. “It was a strange feeling. We were called to Vernon, but also called to full-time ministry.”

As a result, the couple decided not to apply for the College for Officer Training (CFOT).

Doubting God

But in March 2020, the couple got a call from their divisional commander, Lt-Colonel Jamie Braund.

To their surprise, he told them about a new auxiliary-lieutenant program, and the couple were asked to take over Vernon Community Church as auxiliary-lieutenants.

“So everything would be the same,” Neil says. “This was exactly what God wanted. He wanted us to stay in Vernon and he opened the door to officership for us. It was a no-brainer.”

The Thompsons took over the Vernon corps in August 2020. After a year, they decided to take some courses, such as theology, that would be prerequisites for CFOT once they were released from their calling to Vernon, which they did in 2021.

But God was not done with them. In the spring of 2022, they were apprised of a new fieldbased training program where they would continue to lead the corps in Vernon while conducting distance training with CFOT.

“We’re basically doing distance cadetship,” smiles Neil, who officially became a cadet alongside his wife in September 2022. “We’re plugging away at it and we’re about halfway to commissioning. For us, it’s really the best of both worlds.

“I laugh at myself now for doubting God. He figured out the answer before I even had the question.”

Living Out Micah

The Army and its mission and focus have always been dear to Cadet Neil’s heart.

“The Salvation Army are really the hands and feet of Jesus,” he explains. “We’re not just about sitting in a pew. It’s much more than that.

“We strive to live out Micah 6:8, ‘To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’ As an organization, as officers, as lay leaders, as soldiers, adherents, that’s what our DNA is, to act in such a way that we reach out to humanity no matter where they are in their walk.”