Elder Thornton in Belgium/ Netherlands: 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!