Week 42: Marcel Got Baptized!

Hoi jullie!

This has been a crazy week! Super busy, and we are going to have to do a lot of finding this next week, but it has been pretty miraculous.
Marcel got baptized! I don't think I have talked a lot about him, mostly because we set his baptismal date only a few weeks ago. He is from Groningen, but his parents are from St. Martin and Suriname. His dad investigated the church 10 years ago, and he was actually the one who referred Marcel to the missionaries after a really hard time in Marcel's life back in October. He met occasionally with the missionaries from then, but he started meeting consistently with us about 6 weeks ago, and through that process he decided he wanted to change his life and get baptized! His service went really well, and he can't wait to keep on progressing.

We received transfer calls this Saturday! And I will be training here in Groningen! On top of that, I will be the district leader, which is pretty abnormal since most districts are led by a companionship of District Leaders in this mission, so this transfer is going to be an adventure! I will pick up my greenie this Wednesday, so that will be pretty exciting! Elder Mostoller is headed to Tilburg to be a zone leader. He is going to do great!

On top of that, it was Koningsdag​ ​(Kings Day or the King's Birthday) It is a huge national holiday here, where everyone has work off. There are always a lot of stands where people sell miscellaneous things on most streets in the Centrum, so as missionaries we get to take advantage of this opportunity and set up our stand to hand out free copies of the Book of Mormon. We were in Leeuwarden and it went super well. We gave out more than a box of books (over 20 books) and got several new potential investigators. It was pretty fun!

Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Thornton


​We asked if he ever gets to do anything fun on P Days: "Last PDay we didn't do a lot except clean and do some yardwork since we live in a house that could probably sleep 8 people. But most of the time we head down to the Centrum to do something fun. Today we are going to eat Sushi for Sister Merz's birthday. I will make sure to take some photos.​"


Photos;
​1) ​Koningsdag! Orange is the national color, so I did my best to be patriotic with the rest of the country.
​2) ​Service! We got to chop and stack wood for an older couple in the ward. It was super fun!
​3) ​Marcel!