Week 40: The Prettiest Garden in the World!

The Bench from "The Best Two Years"


Gooien Morgen!

This week has been a crazy one, so I am sorry if this email turns out a little long! I sincerely hope that this will have been the busiest week of my entire mission. I was not in my area for half of the week.

This Wednesday we got to go to Keukenhof, the most famous garden in Nederland for Zone Conference. It was incredible! I will attach the best photos with me in it, but if you actually want to see the garden just google it.

Thursday we went on exchanges with Leeuwarden. There was a huge event called "The Passion," so all 4 of us stayed in Leeuwarden to work. The Passion is a "hip and modern"reinactment of the last days of jesus. It happens in a differnet city every year, so we were lucky enough to be present. A lot of people from all over Nederland attend, and many who don't come watch it on TV. I was with Elder Robinson, a Jamaican who visa waited in Jamaica for 7 months and just arrived. It has been weird for him to adapt from sunny, friendly Jamaica to a relatively cold (in multiple ways) Nederland, but he is doing great and we had an awesome time. We street contacted the whole day, and we gave out several copies of the Book of Mormon and got several numbers of the people who accepted them.

Near the ending of the Day I got pretty frustrated because everyone was rushing to get a spot a the show and there were a ton of representatives from other churches. We talked to a couple of them, and one of them tried calling me to repentance... So you could say I was pretty frustrated. After a while we decided to pray, and I got the average God to Elder Thornton answer, "You already know what to do. Get to work." The next person we talked to was Syrian (Syrians are the nicest people I know), and he wanted a Book of Mormon in Arabic, so they should be taking that to him this week. The next two people we talked to were two young students. I was continuously surprised the entire conversation with their reactiions and overall acceptance! And one of them lives in Groningen!

Moral of the story is, God is real, and he seems to enjoy teaching/teasing Elder Thornton often. :)

Easter Sunday was also pretty great with Marcel and Rinus. Marcel is progressing to his date on the 29th, and Rinus has come for the past 4 weeks! (I will probably talk about them more when I don't have so much to say)

I love you all!


Thank you for reading to this point :)



Exchange with Elder Robinson!



Classic Name tag photo :)



Really big klompen (old fashioned dutch wooden shoes)

Love,
Elder Thornton