Week 102: The Last One!

Hallo!

This week was great, and it was also my last as a missionary. I will be heading to the mission office on Wednesday, and my parents as well as Derek will be picking me up to visit my areas for 12 days. We're all pretty excited.
But I do feel quite normal. It is a little strange. I will make sure to make these last couple days as a missionary incredible.

This last week was good! We had a lot of solid lessons with members as well as investigators. The highlight was with Ursula, her husband Milton and 11-year-old son Tim. Ursula has been investigating the church for a long time, but for various health problems has not been able to be baptized. We ate Roti (easily my favorite food I have had on my mission) and then gave a lesson on the covenant we make when we are baptized. It went really well, and even though Ursula and Milton love talking, we presented it clearly and helped them with any concerns. We challenged them to prepare for baptism on August 18th, and they all accepted. I am really excited for them and wish I could stay to keep on teaching them and see them get baptized.

I will also miss our other investigator Ron, as well as the wonderful members here in Lelystad. Even though I only had 6 weeks to get to know them, I still got the opportunity to know them really well.

See you all soon! And you are all welcome to come to my homecoming on either July 15th at 11:00 AM in my old Shepard Ward (1955 South 350 East, Kaysville) or combined with my brother's farewell on July 29th at 9:00 AM in the Sunset Ward (925 Deseret Drive, Kaysville).
Love,
Elder Thornton

-Lelystad Skyline with the statue of Cornelis Lely, the founder of Lelystad.

Week 101: Den Haag Tempel!

Gooiemiddag!

This has been a pretty crazy week! We went to the temple with the young men and women, we had our last interviews with President and Sister Bunnell, we had our last Branch Presidency Council, it was the last week of Early-morning seminary, and we stayed pretty busy visiting less active members and investigators. So a lot of fun stuff happened!

The Temple was pretty cool since it was my first time doing baptisms for the dead for 2 years now, and only my 3rd time total for my whole mission, so it was really special. I recieved a lot of revelation, and was really impressed with the branch on all of the names they did. It made me excited to be able to enjoy the temple more when I get home.

Interviews with President was great as always. He is so good at making every missionary feel appreciated and needed, and that was wonderful for me this week. He will be going home with our group this next week, so I got to have him my whole mission. I am super grateful for how much he has taught me. He has truly changed my life.

As members of the Branch Council we have been attending Early-Morning Seminary, and they just finished this Friday. I'm really glad that we got to participate because it helped me get to know the youth really fast, and I was able to gain quite a bit of knowledge and spiritual growth in that 50 minutes every morning. I wish I had enjoyed seminary a little more when I was home.

I hope you all have a great week this week! I love you all!
Love,
Elder Thornton
Photos:
Elder Blackwell burnt a suit to celebrate almost 2 years on a mission.

We also had a super fun P-day with one of the members last week. He does leather working for a job and so he taught us a few of his tricks. It was probably one of the best P-days of my mission.

They are putting on a musical in our backyard! They built a big stage in the middle of the pond right behind our apartment and they practiced all day Saturday and Sunday to get ready.

Week 100! Good stuff.

Good Morning!

This week was good! It was quite busy and we had a lot of great appointments with the members. The members here in Lelystad are pretty great, and they have been taking good care of us

It was also Elder Blackwell and I's last Zone conference, so we both gave our "Departing Testimony." Elder Blackwell's was really good and I felt like I managed to a pretty decent job. I hope that someone was able to get something out of it. If not, at least I felt pretty good about it :). I also saw all of the missionaries from the Apeldoorn Zone, so that was pretty great to get to talk with them.

We talked with Mark, the guy I talked about last week, and he is pretty interested in the Book of Mormon, but I do think we will need to help him understand the whole restoration thing a little better.

I conducted church today as a branch counselor. It was pretty weird, but I did a pretty okay job.

As I have been studying the scriptures and the Liahona recently, I have come across faith, hope, and charity a lot. It has been quite interesting to see how many of the characteristics I have developed through the help of God throughout my mission, as well the many characteristics I still have to work on. It is a good thing I still have a lot of time :). But I am so very thankful for the Lord's daily guidance in my life, and for the constant hope that it brings me.That is one of the many reasons why I want to share this message with everyone, because it is so important and it has helped me so much personally. Don't take it for granted! And strive to make it more important.

Have fun this week!
Love,
Elder Thornton



Pictures:

-The shorter missionary, Elder Haddock, is my great-grandson in missionary terms, meaning that I trained Elder Etchells, Elder Etchells trained Elder Graham, and Elder Graham trained Elder Haddock. I guess that means I'm old :)


-Elder Kennell is a missionary who I have gotten to work with a lot on my mission. He is a recent convert to the church, and an incredible missionary. He just replaced me in Apeldoorn as a zone leader.

-A lot of Dutch people hate door-to-door salesmen, Jehova's Witnesses, and basically anything that touches their doorbell, so they put funny signs on their door to tell us to go away.

Week 99: Spiritual Growth

Hey Everybody!

How is it going? This week was not too shabby. It was a pretty normal week with a good mixture of branch work along with some solid finding time. I have been quite pleased with the amount of success we have with how much time we put into that area, so I do take that as a sign that God is pleased with this work. Things are starting to go a bit slower as Elder Blackwell is  starting to realize that he is going home really soon, so I hope that we can pull it out together and get some good work in these next 3 or 4 weeks.

But, on the bright side, I have been getting a lot more time to grow spiritually without all of the extra responsibilities of a district leader or a zone leader, and I am loving it. I feel like I have learned a ton these last few weeks. One of those things have been a reconfirmation of the power of prayer. That was something I learned a lot about in the MTC and throughout my mission, but I have recently had a strong reconfirmation of how much God will help us as we speak to him.

One of the miracles that we saw this week was this Sunday. We had about half an hour to knock, and and the 3rd door we started a good conversations with a man from the New Apostolic Church. He used an example of a vase being shattered and then all of the churches and people trying to put it back together. What is super cool is that that is one of my favorite examples to share as we teach people about the restoration. We didn't have a lot of time so we gave him a Book of Mormon, explained it a little bit, and made a return appointment. I am so excited to tell him that that "vase" has been restored to the earth in it's fullness!

I didn't take any photos this week... sorry!

I love you guys! Have a great week and enjoy the beginning of summer vacation!
Love,
Elder Thornton