Week 55! Antwerpen

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lance Andrew Thornton <lance.thornton@myldsmail.net>
Date: 31 July 2017 at 04:40
Subject: Week 55! Antwerpen
To: Deveri Thornton <deveriwthornton@gmail.com>

​

 MVI_0820.AVI

​Hallo!

My first week in Belgium was an adventure! Thankfully nothing bad happened on the way here, and even though neither of us had been to the apartment or even the city, we made it just fine.

Belgium is really different! They speak Flams, which is a different dialect, but thankfully I have been out long enough to be able to understand the different dialects. It actually is way more pretty than Nederlands since they don't have quite as strong of a gutteral "g." And Antwerps (the city dialect) sounds like irish dutch. I like it! I probably will stick with my Nederlands accent though.

It has a different feeling here, but I can't really tell what. The Transportation systems are a little worse than Nederland, but still pretty good. The milk is good until New Year, so hopefully we don't die, but other than that I am super excited.

My new companion is Elder Dial! He is super smart, hardworking and obedient! (and he destroyed me in a quick game of Stratego, so that destroyed my pride :) ) He just got here on Tuesday, but he already speaks pretty good just for being just a greenie. And what is even cooler is that his mom is actually from Antwerpen(he has never been before)! So that means that his grandparents are in our ward! He saw them for the first time since he was 4 this Sunday, and it was a beautiful reunion. So we will have the opportunity to work with them and visit some of his non-member cousins and aunts. So we should be pretty set for dinner appointments :). 

I am dirt poor! We had to pay for some bus and train passes up front, and Elder Dial didn't have any MSF yet, so I had to use all of my money that I have had leftover. I have 5 euros to my name... But we are getting money tomorrow, so we will survive. :)

Overall, the week has been great! We are going to kill it here in Antwerpen!

Loading 8 suitcases and 2 bikes onto the train... We made it!

Loading our 6 suitcases into the tiny elevator from the 70's. 

I hope the video works... If not, it is Elder Dial's Grandpa playing the organ that he made himself! I didn't get it out in time for the best song, but he is really good!

I love you guys!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 54: Training!

Goedemorgen!

This week was super great! But unfortunately it will be my last in Groningen :(. I am going to Antwerpen on Wednesday! That is in Belgium! A completely different country! I didn't think I would ever make it down there on my mission, but apparently I am. And what is even cooler is that I get to train again! And even cooler is that Elder Etchells will be training too, in Groningen. And so are 3 of the Sisters here in Groningen. The only missionary in Groningen who won't be training next transfer is actually at the end of her 1 1/2 years, so literally everyone who could be training is training. That means 3 out of the 6 missionaries in Groningen will be greenies!

And on Wednesday I will officially be a "Grandpa!" (meaning I am the "father" of Elder Etchells because I trained him, and he will be a "father" on Wednesday!)

Anyways, I am pretty excited. I will be the District Leader as well, but I am most concerned about the fact that I have no idea how anything works in België, and that we will be re-opening an apartment. I have heard they do things really differently there, especially with the language. So I hope I understand them, because I assume my greenie won't for at least a couple weeks.

As for miracles here, an old investigator called!!!!! Mike was super golden, but he disappeared after we initially met him. We tried for a while to get into contact with him with no luck. He called us on Thursday and told us that he has been in the hospital for the past few weeks with heart problems, which is crazy because he is only 19. But he really wants to meet with us, so hopefully our appointment will go through tomorrow.

For last p-day we went to a second hand store and bought a monopoly board, a really fun dutch thingy that I don't know how to spell (you can see how we transported it in the photo), and I got Stratego for an euro, so you could say it was a success. We also got to something called the Blode fuottenpaad, where you go through a bunch of obstacles in the mud. We got pretty dirty.

I love you guys! Enjoy your summer!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 53 New Investigator

Week 53 New Investigator

HALLO!!!!

This week was super busy, and I am super confused where it went, but it went really well! We FINALLY found a golden investigator! We have been looking for such a long time with no success, and we finally found her! We met Linda while knocking, and we had a great first lesson with her this week. She really thought about the restoration and when we asked if she would be baptized through the authority that was restored she said that she couldn't give a yes or no answer right then, but she would pray about it. She couldn't make it to church this week, but she should be coming this next week, so yay!

Otherwise our week was filled with a lot of service. It was not originally planned in, but it wasn't too shabby. We spent a lot more time than planned helping set up for a member's wedding reception on Monday, then we got called on Wednesday night by someone from the church that asked us to help clear out the Assen church (they recently got combined with the ward in Groningen) the next day. So we did that for about 4 hours, mostly clearing out the chairs and tables and heavy stuff, and then biked to our previously planned appointment with some members who needed help with their garden, and then biked back (approximately a 50 minute bike ride). You can imagine we were pretty tired.

Photos!

We got some super fancy milkshakes at this really funny "rainbow shop." They put sparklers in them, but I wasn't fast enough to get a photo when it was lit.

Nederland is super pretty!

I left district meeting for 1 minute and when I came back everyone was balancing books on their heads...

Love,

Elder Thornton  

Week 52! 1 year on a mission!

Howdy!

This week has been yet another good one to add to the pile! And I am really happy that I have gotten to have so many good ones! and also that I still have many more good weeks to come.

This was a pretty average week of knocking doors and finding. We found several potential investigators, and I am excited to see them progress. 

We had a super incredible afternoon this Thursday! After a hectic morning of traveling back from exchanges, we finally got back and did some studies. Both of us were pretty done, but we still had the whole afternoon in front of us. We just decided to go out and find! After trying a few places, we ended up on a street we had knocked recently. We started knocking on a part we hadn't gotten to, and eventually we had a good conversation with a college student who was a member of a Christian Student Society, the "Navigators." She invited us that they had a meeting later that night, but it conflicted with our original plans to eat dinner, so we decided not to go. We headed over to Marcel (the convert who was baptized 2 months ago) and we had a great conversation with his mother and grandmother. After we were done there we had 30 minutes left before we were planning on heading back, so we decided to knock his neighbors' doors. On one of the doors a large black man opened the door, and Elder Etchells did one of our normal approaches of "What brings you happiness?" He told us and then got really angry, saying that we didn't really care, and that we were only here to convert him to our church. I reponded calmly that we were here to share happiness, and his face immediatly changed, and he said, "Come in." We talked a little bit about the restoration, and he said we are always welcome!

Two doors later we ran into a student who was on his way to the "Navigators'" meeting, but he had some food for us, and he invited us right in! We were originally planning on heading back home at that time to eat, but because he just happened to have food for us, we were able to accept his invitation to go with him to the meeting! He acted as our guide, and introduced us to all of his friends!! He then sat with us on the front row and explained everything to us when we had questions. The meeting was really cool, and I was very impressed with how active all of those students were with their faith. 

What most amazed me was that if we had done anything differently that afternoon everything wouldn't have worked out. God guided us to be at the right place, and at the right time. It was one of the most cool nights of my mission!

We had an excellent p-day, so here are the photos!

Prinsentuin! A super pretty garden in the Centrum

We tried some clothes on. Yes, that is a mens jacket :)

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 51: Working Hard!

Good morning!

Groningen is doing great! It was a little rough with investigators, but we have found some new people, so that is nice. We spend a lot of time finding this week, and it was really fun, even if we didn't see a lot of solid investigators come from it. I worked really hard this week on not letting people get away with weak excuses on the door, while being extremely nice and polite, of course. If they were willing to listen, I just kept on talking to help them understand the importance of Joseph Smith and the fact that he saw God and Jesus Christ. It amazed me how many people could be confronted with a solid argument and a personal testimony and say that it is cool but that they don't think it is for them, or one of the many different ways of just saying no. These people are really really hard-hearted... But there are people who are ready and willing to listen so we are going to keep searching. We did find 3 new investigators, so we hope we can help them progress.

All of our investigators who were progressing dropped off of the map, so we hope we can find them again, but I think they are purposefully avoiding us. We were pretty bold with our purpose last week, with love of course, but I think it scared them off. That includes Sander (the deaf investigator I talked about last week), and a couple others. 

Photos!

Last P-day we went to a Pannenkoeksschip! So we ate some tasty Dutch pannenkoeken on a boat.

We also climbed Martini Toren. That was pretty cool It is super old and it was over 300 steps.

Love,

Elder Thornton