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

Week 98: Lots of Service

Goedemorgen!

The sun is shining and summer is here! It is getting pretty hot, but it isn't really too bad. As for missionary work, this was probably one of the most difficult weeks I have had on my mission.
My whole mission I have been super used to "grinding" all day long, oftentimes meaning knocking with an occasional appointment in between. Here is has been pretty different with the combination of the Branch Council and Elder Blackwell. We spend a lot of time with the ward, attending the many activities, and strengthening the less active members, so that does fill in a lot of time I am used to spending on finding. And Elder Blackwell has a lot more of a laid back missionary style than me. So the pace of this week just really threw me off.
But what is still really surprising to me is that we still got a lot done, and found several new people who are interested. And now that Elder Blackwell and I have gotten through this first week and understand each other a little better, it will just keep on getting better.

We did a bunch of service for the ward this week, which was mostly just yardwork. We took out the entire backyard of the President Prins, which was quite satifying, and we worked on another member's yard with the youth.

I'm excited to see how this next week goes, especially since I don't have many left and I really want to make it count. Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Thornton

Week 97- Lelystad and the Branch Presidency

Goeiemorgen!

This week has been super cool! And really different from what I am used to. For most of my mission I have just hit the doors and streets super hard, just looking for those elect, but here we work a lot more with the members and spend more time with them. I like it, but I am still getting used to it. I'm certain I will able to a lot from the members here, my new area, and my companion.

My companion is Elder Blackwell. He is in the same group as me so we will both be going home together within the next 6 weeks. He from Canada, and he is a great guy! He does an excellent job here with the ward and I am excited to learn a lot from him.

I got to say goodbye to a few people this last week in Apeldoorn. I going to miss them! Bart and Remco are still doing really well, and as far as I know the baptism of Anita went through. I am excited to hear from all of the other missionaries how they are doing.

Fun fact about Lelystad:
Flevoland, the area/land/province that Lelystad is built on, is only 60 years old! They built the Dijks to keep the water from flooding Nederland (since most of it is below sea level) and then they filled in a HUGE area of the Ijsselmeer with dirt, and now we have Flevoland. That means Lelystad is super new, and not quite a picturesque as your average European City.

That is pretty much it for this week. Have a great week, and good luck with everything!
Love,
Elder Thornton

Familie Methorst in Apeldoorn! Last Dinner before I left

-Bert! One of my favorite investigators from my mission

Elder Blackwell hunting a "wild animal" during our hike with the Elders Quorum

 

Week 96: Last Transfer crazyness

Hallo!

This week was great! And filled with a lot of crazy stuff. We had Zone P-Day, MLC, exchanges, Mother's Day Skype calls, remodeling a member's house, and my last transfer calls.

And of course since I was planning on staying in Apeldoorn for my last 6 weeks, God threw me a good curveball to keep me on my toes. I'm being released as a Zone Leader and getting sent to Lelystad. There I will be serving with my companion Elder Blackwell as a Branch Counsellor, something that never happens on this mission because almost everywhere is a ward or has enough Priesthood holders. And what is even more exciting is that Elder Blackwell is in my group,  so President Bunnell told us that we have 6 weeks to reactivate 2 members to fill our places. Pretty crazy. We will be praying a lot this next transfer :).

I'm kinda sad to be leaving Apeldoorn, with all of our wonderful investigators,  and the incredible members. I will miss Bert and Remco, and I will also miss the baptismal service of Anita :(. But Elder Niederhauser and his companion will take good care of them.

As for the rest of the week I will just attach some photos and let them do the explaning.

-We did dodgeball for Zone pday. I thoroughly enjoyed it :)



-driving safely in the zone leader car :)


-destroying the drywall at a member's house