Week 58: A new investigator!

Hey Friends and Family!

This week has not been too shabby. We have spent a bunch of time helping people move and also lot of time finding. I don't know what it is with less active members and moving, but they sure do seem to do it a lot... 

We got a new investigator! Finally! We have spent so much time talking to people on the street and knocking door, and we finally found someone to teach! Her name is Sarah, and has lived in Belgium for the past 17 years since she moved from Congo when she was 5. She was super open to the Restoration, and asked where the church was before we invited her, and where she could buy a Book of Mormon before we gave it to her. I thought that was pretty cool. She accepted the invitation to be baptized on the 30 of September!  She didn't come to church yesterday :(, but hopefully she will have at least a semi-decent excuse for us tomorrow during her lesson.

Our lesson with her was also on an exchange with Elder Stopper, who is on his first transfer, and I was really impressed with his language abilities. It was a pretty great experience for both of us.

A couple of our appointments didn't go through this week, but hopefully we will be able to reestablish contact and get them back on track

to baptism. 

 A castle in the park behind our house!

 Moving stuff. Again :)

Studies in the Park! (We might have locked ourselves out the apartment, but that is an unimportant detail :) )

I love you all! Enjoy the ending of your summer!

Love,

Elder Thornton!

Week 57: Finding!

Goedemorgen!

This week has been fun! We have spent a lot of time looking for new investigators, and it is finally showing some progress! We have several appointments set up this week, and we are excited to see how it turns out! What is even cooler is that two of them are from the Philippines, where my dad served his mission! I have always really wanted to teach someone

​from​

 the Philippines, so I am pretty excited. 

We met with two of Elder Dial's cousins for dinner, and that was pretty cool. They are living in

​a ​

mansion (Europe standards) that was build in 1906, and it was so cool! I didn't take any photos... :( They were both super cool, but we still aren't sure where they really stand with the gospel.

 We made foo-foo (a traditional Ghanaian dish) with an investigator! It was... interesting... but I ate it all!

Belgium waffle with ice cream! Super lekker

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 56! Elder Dial's family!

Dear Family and Friends!!

This week has been pretty great! We are still trying to find some people since we had to start from scratch, but it has been a lot of fun! We have met some pretty cool people, and hopefully we will be able to get them to progress.

One cool thing about this week is Elder Dial's family. His mother is originally from Antwerpen, so his grandparents, aunts, and cousins still live here. He has never met any of them before, and they are all super excited to meet him. His grandparents don't come to church because of health problems, but the rest of his family is not really active, so it will be cool to see how they react. One of his cousins showed up to church for the one of the first times since she got baptized when she was eight, and she even came up to give a testimony in sacrament meeting. We are meeting with her as well as other family and friends for dinner for the next couple days, so that should be pretty cool. 

Antwerpen is super beautiful! We got to walk around it for last pday, so here are some photos

 We also smashed a shed for service! It was pretty fun

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 55! Antwerpen

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Lance Andrew Thornton <lance.thornton@myldsmail.net>
Date: 31 July 2017 at 04:40
Subject: Week 55! Antwerpen
To: Deveri Thornton <deveriwthornton@gmail.com>

​

 MVI_0820.AVI

​Hallo!

My first week in Belgium was an adventure! Thankfully nothing bad happened on the way here, and even though neither of us had been to the apartment or even the city, we made it just fine.

Belgium is really different! They speak Flams, which is a different dialect, but thankfully I have been out long enough to be able to understand the different dialects. It actually is way more pretty than Nederlands since they don't have quite as strong of a gutteral "g." And Antwerps (the city dialect) sounds like irish dutch. I like it! I probably will stick with my Nederlands accent though.

It has a different feeling here, but I can't really tell what. The Transportation systems are a little worse than Nederland, but still pretty good. The milk is good until New Year, so hopefully we don't die, but other than that I am super excited.

My new companion is Elder Dial! He is super smart, hardworking and obedient! (and he destroyed me in a quick game of Stratego, so that destroyed my pride :) ) He just got here on Tuesday, but he already speaks pretty good just for being just a greenie. And what is even cooler is that his mom is actually from Antwerpen(he has never been before)! So that means that his grandparents are in our ward! He saw them for the first time since he was 4 this Sunday, and it was a beautiful reunion. So we will have the opportunity to work with them and visit some of his non-member cousins and aunts. So we should be pretty set for dinner appointments :). 

I am dirt poor! We had to pay for some bus and train passes up front, and Elder Dial didn't have any MSF yet, so I had to use all of my money that I have had leftover. I have 5 euros to my name... But we are getting money tomorrow, so we will survive. :)

Overall, the week has been great! We are going to kill it here in Antwerpen!

Loading 8 suitcases and 2 bikes onto the train... We made it!

Loading our 6 suitcases into the tiny elevator from the 70's. 

I hope the video works... If not, it is Elder Dial's Grandpa playing the organ that he made himself! I didn't get it out in time for the best song, but he is really good!

I love you guys!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 54: Training!

Goedemorgen!

This week was super great! But unfortunately it will be my last in Groningen :(. I am going to Antwerpen on Wednesday! That is in Belgium! A completely different country! I didn't think I would ever make it down there on my mission, but apparently I am. And what is even cooler is that I get to train again! And even cooler is that Elder Etchells will be training too, in Groningen. And so are 3 of the Sisters here in Groningen. The only missionary in Groningen who won't be training next transfer is actually at the end of her 1 1/2 years, so literally everyone who could be training is training. That means 3 out of the 6 missionaries in Groningen will be greenies!

And on Wednesday I will officially be a "Grandpa!" (meaning I am the "father" of Elder Etchells because I trained him, and he will be a "father" on Wednesday!)

Anyways, I am pretty excited. I will be the District Leader as well, but I am most concerned about the fact that I have no idea how anything works in België, and that we will be re-opening an apartment. I have heard they do things really differently there, especially with the language. So I hope I understand them, because I assume my greenie won't for at least a couple weeks.

As for miracles here, an old investigator called!!!!! Mike was super golden, but he disappeared after we initially met him. We tried for a while to get into contact with him with no luck. He called us on Thursday and told us that he has been in the hospital for the past few weeks with heart problems, which is crazy because he is only 19. But he really wants to meet with us, so hopefully our appointment will go through tomorrow.

For last p-day we went to a second hand store and bought a monopoly board, a really fun dutch thingy that I don't know how to spell (you can see how we transported it in the photo), and I got Stratego for an euro, so you could say it was a success. We also got to something called the Blode fuottenpaad, where you go through a bunch of obstacles in the mud. We got pretty dirty.

I love you guys! Enjoy your summer!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 53 New Investigator

Week 53 New Investigator

HALLO!!!!

This week was super busy, and I am super confused where it went, but it went really well! We FINALLY found a golden investigator! We have been looking for such a long time with no success, and we finally found her! We met Linda while knocking, and we had a great first lesson with her this week. She really thought about the restoration and when we asked if she would be baptized through the authority that was restored she said that she couldn't give a yes or no answer right then, but she would pray about it. She couldn't make it to church this week, but she should be coming this next week, so yay!

Otherwise our week was filled with a lot of service. It was not originally planned in, but it wasn't too shabby. We spent a lot more time than planned helping set up for a member's wedding reception on Monday, then we got called on Wednesday night by someone from the church that asked us to help clear out the Assen church (they recently got combined with the ward in Groningen) the next day. So we did that for about 4 hours, mostly clearing out the chairs and tables and heavy stuff, and then biked to our previously planned appointment with some members who needed help with their garden, and then biked back (approximately a 50 minute bike ride). You can imagine we were pretty tired.

Photos!

We got some super fancy milkshakes at this really funny "rainbow shop." They put sparklers in them, but I wasn't fast enough to get a photo when it was lit.

Nederland is super pretty!

I left district meeting for 1 minute and when I came back everyone was balancing books on their heads...

Love,

Elder Thornton  

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!

Prinsentuin! A super pretty garden in the Centrum

We tried some clothes on. Yes, that is a mens jacket :)

Love,

Elder Thornton