Week 59: Miracles!

Hey Guys!

This week has been super great! A little interesting but super great! We saw a bunch of miracles and found some new investigators, which is always super great!

We have been helping a less active who originally from California, and has a really really long story, and she has been having some serious problems. She is getting evicted from her house this week, and so we helped her get all of her stuff moved out on Saturday. It was really dirty... But in addition to that we have been texting scriptures to her daily, and she told us that one in particular really helped her! She has some friends who were willing to pay for her to leave the country, but she got our text of Alma 7:12, and decided that if Christ suffered then she can withstand her trials a little longer and not illegally flee the country... So that was a miracle!

One other miracle is that one of our new investigators is Elder Dial's aunt! She believes in almost all of the same things we do and she seems super ready. She even wanted to get baptized a couple years ago, but her husband didn't support her. Now she is divorced, and seems to be pretty willing to take some steps! We are really excited!

We went to Gent last week for P-day, so lots of the photos will be of that. It is super beautiful, and so old! One thing that was kind of funny is that they have so many churches. The tour guide said that the reason for that is because they believed that you either had to do good things or build a church to be saved, so they built a church :). I don't know how true that is, but there are a ton of huge and beautiful churches.

 Boat tour with other missionaries!

Gent Castle! The only "battle" that has ever happened there was with students in the 1950's complaining about beer prices, but it was still pretty cool :)

 

The whole city is so beautiful!

Keep it real!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 58: A new investigator!

Hey Friends and Family!

This week has not been too shabby. We have spent a bunch of time helping people move and also lot of time finding. I don't know what it is with less active members and moving, but they sure do seem to do it a lot... 

We got a new investigator! Finally! We have spent so much time talking to people on the street and knocking door, and we finally found someone to teach! Her name is Sarah, and has lived in Belgium for the past 17 years since she moved from Congo when she was 5. She was super open to the Restoration, and asked where the church was before we invited her, and where she could buy a Book of Mormon before we gave it to her. I thought that was pretty cool. She accepted the invitation to be baptized on the 30 of September!  She didn't come to church yesterday :(, but hopefully she will have at least a semi-decent excuse for us tomorrow during her lesson.

Our lesson with her was also on an exchange with Elder Stopper, who is on his first transfer, and I was really impressed with his language abilities. It was a pretty great experience for both of us.

A couple of our appointments didn't go through this week, but hopefully we will be able to reestablish contact and get them back on track

to baptism. 

 A castle in the park behind our house!

 Moving stuff. Again :)

Studies in the Park! (We might have locked ourselves out the apartment, but that is an unimportant detail :) )

I love you all! Enjoy the ending of your summer!

Love,

Elder Thornton!

Week 57: Finding!

Goedemorgen!

This week has been fun! We have spent a lot of time looking for new investigators, and it is finally showing some progress! We have several appointments set up this week, and we are excited to see how it turns out! What is even cooler is that two of them are from the Philippines, where my dad served his mission! I have always really wanted to teach someone

​from​

 the Philippines, so I am pretty excited. 

We met with two of Elder Dial's cousins for dinner, and that was pretty cool. They are living in

​a ​

mansion (Europe standards) that was build in 1906, and it was so cool! I didn't take any photos... :( They were both super cool, but we still aren't sure where they really stand with the gospel.

 We made foo-foo (a traditional Ghanaian dish) with an investigator! It was... interesting... but I ate it all!

Belgium waffle with ice cream! Super lekker

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 56! Elder Dial's family!

Dear Family and Friends!!

This week has been pretty great! We are still trying to find some people since we had to start from scratch, but it has been a lot of fun! We have met some pretty cool people, and hopefully we will be able to get them to progress.

One cool thing about this week is Elder Dial's family. His mother is originally from Antwerpen, so his grandparents, aunts, and cousins still live here. He has never met any of them before, and they are all super excited to meet him. His grandparents don't come to church because of health problems, but the rest of his family is not really active, so it will be cool to see how they react. One of his cousins showed up to church for the one of the first times since she got baptized when she was eight, and she even came up to give a testimony in sacrament meeting. We are meeting with her as well as other family and friends for dinner for the next couple days, so that should be pretty cool. 

Antwerpen is super beautiful! We got to walk around it for last pday, so here are some photos

 We also smashed a shed for service! It was pretty fun

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Thornton