Week 92: Beautiful!

Goeiemiddag Iedereen!
It is yet another beautiful sunny day here in Nederland! The spring is here, and it is finally warm. The birds are singing, the sun is shining, and the people are smiling! and staring ​at us ​

a little bit more now that our white shirts are no longer covered up by coats and jackets :). Missionary work is also going pretty well, and we had a pretty successful week as a companionship and also as a zone.
We had a couple really good first lessons this week. One was Bert, a really nice old Christian who loves to talk. It was a little hard to keep him on track in the beginning, but he loved the restoration and the Book of Mormon. He even came to church with one of his neighbors! We are excited to see where it goes with him.
The other was with a young student named Angela. We found her knocking the day before, and she seemed pretty interested. The problem was that we aren't allowed to be alone with someone of the opposite sex, and the Sisters already had an appointment, and no members could come. Plus I have just recently decided to be "exactly obedient," and that was actually the only rule that I was slightly more lax with... Otherwise I am really obedient. So we had a problem. We decided to just go and follow the spirit, and as we were walking up the stairs her door was slightly open (the sign that they expect you to come inside) and she was waiting for us... with her boyfriend! We were super grateful, and they both listened really well and want to learn more! That was just a little miracle that we had.
As for the zone, we shattered some records! We found 118 new investigators this week! (For clarification, a new investigator is someone who has had a lesson and made a return appointment, so often it is someone we met on the street, shared a short lesson on the Restoration, God, or something like that, and made a return appointment.) On a good week we find about 70, and an average week is about 50. So that was pretty crazy. We also had 21 investigators in church, which is way higher than the normal 13 or so.
But what is even cooler than the numbers are the reasons and people behind it. The Lord is hastening his work, and the missionaries here are hastening with it. The missionaries in our zone are working super hard and following the spirit, and that is why we are finding so much success. Because we are doing his work, not just ours. He helps us, and as we let him do that even more he shows us even more success. I am super grateful for the missionaries here, and am super excited to see what the rest of this transfer will bring! I love you all!

Love,
Elder Thornton

-Beautiful view of Deventer (the city we live in)

-Beach Volleyball on P-day!

-Rainbow!

Week 91: Lots of Changes!

Hallo Iedereen!

Yet another awesome week! My new companion Elder Niederhauser is super cool and spiritual, so I am excited to learn a lot from him this transfer.
We had a super good MLC (Missionary Leadership Council) this week, and a lot happened.  The new language standard for the mission is to speak Dutch whenever we are outside of the apartment, which is super difficult because the mission is super young and 90% of us are Americans. But it is going to be really good for the mission since the average level of Dutch has gone super down.
We also decided that in order to build our faith in our work and especially in our ability to baptize, we are going to redo 12-week (the training for new missionaries) as a mission. Pretty crazy! That means that I will be doing the beginning training for missionaries every day for my last 12 weeks.
The District Leaders and Sister Training Leaders are also super pumped about it, so I hope that their excitement will catch on with the other missionaries.
The missionary work here is Apeldoorn is still going well. We continue to find new people, and we are doing our very best to continue to progress. Anita, the golden investigator that we gave to the Sisters, is still super golden! She said that she asked God this Saturday what she could do to show him her love, and he told her to get baptized. Pretty cool. She also had a super spiritual experience during the baptism of an 8-year-old this Sunday. What is even cooler is that Elder Niederhauser found her with me while we were on exchanges this last transfer, so he will get to see her get baptized! Needless to say, we are super excited.
I tried to attach some photos but the computer is giving me problems.  The one that did work is a last minute photo of Elder Niederhauser. Have a great week everyone!
Love,
Elder Thornton

Week 90: More Changes!

Goeiemiddag!

Transfer calls again! Elder White is heading home and I will be getting Elder Niederhauser to train as a new Zone Leader. Transfer calls were pretty crazy because nearly all of the zone leaders will be going home in the next few months, so all of the positions need to be refilled. Elder Niederhauser has been on his mission for nearly a year and he is super spiritual so I am excited to work with him and learn from him.
The end of the week was a little crazy since it was the beginning of a school vacation, we helped our ward mission leader move, and of course ​Ge​neral ​C​onference. But we still did have plenty of time to find some new potentials and investigators.
We watched General Conference with Familie Koenen and Remco, and even though it wasn't the most exciting session for a nonmember he still got a lot out of it.
And Anita is still super golden! The sisters challenged her to bring a question to conference, and she brought a couple. And of course, they were all answered! I love her!
That is pretty much it for this week! Have fun, and enjoy the ​Sp​ring!

Love,
Elder Thornton

The photo was after watching general conference. I had just called Apeldoorn ugly and that was their reactions. :) don't worry, they still love me

Week 89! Fullfilled Promises

This week was pretty incredible! We were super busy with teaching the 3 districts in our zone during interviews with President Bunnell, and going on exchanges in Leiden with the Assistants. The interviews went super well and I think that all of the missionaries were able to take something out of it.

The exchanges were also super cool. I got to work with Elder Enger who is a missionary in my ​MTC ​group. It was super cool to see his enthusiasm for the work, and it is always wonderful to work with other experienced and strong missionaries. We taught nearly the entire day, and we found quite a few new investigators.

We also helped our ward mission leader move, which did take a while, but still was a lot of fun.

So even with nearly 4 full days eaten up by Zone Leader responsibilities and service, we still had a ton of success! We got into contact with several formers, we found 3 new solid investigators, and several other potentials from an Easter DVD campaign. What was the coolest about these past few days is that they have been super guided by the spirit. As we have been planning carefully and asking God what he needs us to do, he has been placing us where he needs us to be.

And even better is that Anita, the polish woman we found last week, is on track to be baptized on April 21st! She is so golden and prepared! We ended up handing her over to the Sisters though... I guess I will have to be content with ta​l​king to her during church and stuff like that. I am pretty excited for her!

I'm sorry the photos haven't been working. The library computers are not the best. Hopefully this one goes through. It is us with Fam. Methorst after we helped them move this week.

Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 88: Miracles

Hallo!
This week has been pretty terrific, not only for us but for the entire zone! We had 3 people in church this week, which we were pretty excited about. One of them we met on Friday. She let us in on the door, and we shared the Restoration with her. When we shared a scripture from the Book of Mormon, she said that it must be true. We brought her a Polish Book of Mormon the next day and she told us that she had prayed about it yesterday and said that God told her that it was true. We invited her to be baptized, and she accepted! She didn't want to set a date until she came to church. And she loved it! She was smiling and nodding through the entire 3 hours, and she said that she felt like she was home. We are so excited for her! God truly does bless us with success as we are working hard. 

Remco was also in church, and he is still making slow but sure progress. 

The other investigator was Laurence, a man who just showed up to church a couple weeks ago. We managed to raise a few questions for him during our Gospel Principles lesson, so we will be meeting with him this week to answer his questions and share the Book of Mormon with him.

The rest of the zone also had some pretty great miracles. There were two people who asked to be baptized at church, and Groningen found a super golden investigator. Elder Kennel (a convert from only a few years ago) says that the new investigator is even more prepared than he was himself.

It was super wonderful to be able to see some tangible blessings from our hard work.

We also had Zone Conference this week, and it went really well. My companion, Elder White, had a to talk a ton through it and when it got to his departing testimony, he just went for it. My favorite part was when he told us about a dream he had had about his future daughter, and then said,"I know that our Heavenly Father loves you even more than I love my future daughter." Needless to say, he is pretty excited to go home, but he is finishing super strong, and I am sure we will still see a lot of success in these coming weeks.

Have a great week everyone! And don't forget how lucky you are to know about the restored Gospel! There are people who have been searching for a long time for it. Don't take it for granted!

Love,
Elder Thornton

(Again, his photos did not come through😕 but here are his captions so you can imagine. . .)

Zone Conference! 

We did a Bunker themed Escape room for district Pday last week! It was pretty fun 

A majestic photo on top of the famous aardvark in Arnhem

Week 87: NLdoet and Groningen!

Goedemiddag!



This week was super fun! We were pretty busy, and it continues to fly by. We went on exchanges with the Elders in Groningen (my favorite city), we had some pretty good lessons with some of our investigators, and we got to do a lot of service with the national service day of NLdoet.



When I was in Groningen on exchanges with Elder Plant we got the opportunity to look up some old potentials from when I was there, nearly a year ago. One was a super cool guy from Ghana, and the other was a student that we had met miraculously. I don't have time to tell the full story of how we found him, but it was super incredible. He was home, and we had the opportunity to teach him the restoration, he took it very well, and I can't wait to see him progress, even though I won't get to teach him. Even cooler is that as I was pondering that morning of what I was going to train on during exchanges, I was told that we would find someone who would be baptized, and I do believe that it will be him.



We did a bunch of service for NLdoet dag, which was a ton of fun. Friday we did a few jobs around a school, and then Saturday we got to do a few heavy jobs at a scout camp. It was a ton of fun.

​

I don't have a ton of time, but I want you all to know how grateful I am for this gospel! I love you all!



(He sent some photos, but I was unable to access them, so maybe next week. . .)

Week 86 Interesting Miracles

Hallo Iedereen!

We had a pretty varied week, and I really enjoyed it. It flew by like normal, and I have a hard time remembering everything we did, but overall it went really well. We went on exchanges, had some good appointments, went to the Mission home for Mission Leadership Council, and like usual spent a lot of time finding.

We had a pretty funny and unexpected miracle this week with one of our investigators. We were pretty certain that our investigator was lying about reading in the Book of Mormon, so we probed a little bit by asking what story he was on and what he had learned. After a subtle subject change, and another promting from us, he started flipping through the pages to "find where he was." At the last Stake conference a member of the Seventy promised us that we can find answers to our questions by just flipping to a page in the Book of Mormon. I can't say that I believed this promise 100%, but this investigator randomly flipped to 2 Nephi 27 where it speaks about many churches who will claim to be of God but will argue and fight with one another with the knowledge of men. He tried to prove a point with the scriptures, but it was pretty impossible because we had just been talking about that. God definitely answers questions through the Book of Mormon! Hopefully he will actually read this next time, otherwise we will have to stop teaching him :/.

We also ran into a ton of less active members on accident this week, which doesn't happen often. One of them is an excommunicated member who wants to go back to the temple, so we are hoping to help him to that goal

It was super cold this week, so the canals froze over!

We played soccer this last pday with some dutch kids. It was below freezing but we had a ton of fun.

Love,
Elder Thornton