Week 76: Christmas!

This week has been a lot of fun! And we got finish it off yesterday with Christmas!

We went on exchanges with both Vlissingen and Eindhoven, and it turned out pretty well. Elder Penman and I found a young (and quite pretty) new investigator in Vlissingen. You could tell that she really liked Elder Penman :). He is a super incredible teacher and speaks the best Dutch in the mission. I was with Elder De Castro in Eindhoven. He is from Brazil, and he is a super solid missionary. He knows how to work hard, and has a ton of faith. And his Dutch is progressing super fast.

We spent Christmas with Familie Van Den Vlis. They had a couple of their children and spouses there, as well as a Senior Couple. We spent the first little bit doing some service to help them prepare the last minute things, like hanging up light fixtures and cleaning a bit. (They have been remodeling an old farm house for a while.) This was the first meal that they have ever served in their house, and it was delicious! It was great to be able to Skype my family and spend a little time playing some games.

 We went bowling as a district last P-day!

 Christmas decorations at the fancy little shopping centrum in Roosendaal

 Opening Christmas presents!

This is where we had christmas dinner! That is Brother Van Den Vliss

Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy the break, and don't forget what is important!
Love,
Elder Thornton

Week 75: Snow!

Hey jullie!

This week has been pretty great! I'm honestly not really sure what happened this week. It is all a little blended together. We have been working really hard, and are still going to this next week. What we really need is some miracle investigators.

Last P-day it snowed. A LOT. We got over 6 inches of snow, which is pretty unheard of here. So for our last three hours of proselyting that day we decided to borrow a couple snow shovels and we shoveled a pretty large section of a nearby neighborhood. The first neighborhood was a little too rich so they all were just super confused at why we were helping. We moved to a less rich area we knocked a little while ago and we got a lot better of a reaction. "Blessed are the meek," I guess :).

We dropped by our gay investigator to see how he was doing and we were surprised to hear that he was still following the law of chastity! We have been praying super hard that he will feel a difference, and decide to keep it up.

My Bike after after the first storm


We shoveled a ton of snow.


A snowy view of Roosendaal. The entire city is houses like this, with a little bit of variation.

Have a great Christmas!
Love,
Elder Thornton

Week 74: White Christmas!

It is snowing!

This has been a pretty eventful week! We have been working really hard and it has been paying off. We had a couple super cool miracles this week, even with all of the craziness 

Friday night we looked up a referral, and since he wasn't home we knocked in his area. His neighbors had somehow all read anti material, and the other side of the street were all non interested muslims. We were pretty convinced that it wasn't the best area. We still had 15 minutes, so we said a prayer to ask for some guidance. We had a very slight feeling to head back down the street, and the 2nd door we knocked was super excited to talk to us, and we will be headed back this next week!

The very next day we were looking up a less active member who supposedly just moved back from a long vacation in Africa, but we had forgotten to write his house number down. It was getting pretty late, and we weren't sure where to go to next. As we were walking to find somewhere to knock, I had a prompting of "that door." We knocked it, and the daughter who opened the door let us in. It turns out that the father had studied with the missionaries in the past, and his schedule has just recently become more free! It was pretty crazy to see how God helped us in those small amounts of time to find solid investigators. It also really strengthened my testimony with the need of the Holy Ghost. 

We taught one of our investigators the Law of Chastity this week! And even more interesting is that he is gay... And it actually went really well! He took the challenge to live it for the next 10 days, and so we will see how that goes. 

It is also definitely winter. It snowed really hard yesterday during church, so when we got out we had 2 or 3 inches, which is pretty abnormal here. We biked back to the station in the snowy slush, which was quite an adventure. All of the trains were cancelled, so we ended up taking a bus to Etten-Leur, a city inbetween Breda (where the church is), and Roosendaal (where we live) to look up a couple of referrals. Neither of them had interest, and so we ran back to catch the bus to get to the station. It didn't come... At this point it is no longer snowing, but pouring rain, making all of the snow nice and slushy. So we walked for 30 minutes back to the station in Etten-Leur, and finally made it back home at about 6. It was quite an adventure. But lots of fun!

Photos!

The Cathedral in Breda!

Biking in the snow!

Have a great week! Enjoy the Holidays!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 73: Roosendaal

Hoi!
This week was lots of fun! I said goodbye to Antwerpen, especially with our two solid investigators Joris and Calithos! I'm excited to see how they progress, and I am sure Elder DuWors will do an excellent job with his new companion.

Now I am in Roosendaal! My companion is Elder Jeanfreau, and he is pretty cool. He is really smart, speaks great Dutch, and we get along really well. The only downside is that he is from Utah... :) Meaning that he broke my 17 month streak of non-Utahn companions.
The Ward is great, and I am really excited to be able to work with all of the awesome members here.

It is also the beginning of winter, so it got really cold the past few weeks. With how cold it is and how early it gets dark, the people become a little more closed off. Especially when it is dark outside. But we are adapting to it, and I am sure we are still going to find plenty of the Elect!
 Tranfer Day! Traveling for 20 minutes on the train. Definitely the easiest transfer day ever.

Roosendaal Centrum!

 
I thought I send a photo of Elder Jeanfreau. So here it is :)

I love you all! Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Thornton

Week 72: Here we go again!

Hallo mensen!

I hope that your Thanksgiving was awesome. Elder DuWors and I kinda forgot about it, so we ate spaghetti. Oops.

We had a really good week! Lots of exciting stuff. Calithos is still progressing well, and we are hoping to put him on baptismal date later today. 

Joris just came back from his vacation in America! He came to church and brought us some coveted microwave popcorn, something they do not have here. He is still doing really well, and we are also planning on setting a goal for baptism with him tonight. 

Transfers are this Wednesday! And I will be headed to Roosendal, right at the bottom of the Netherlands. My new companion is Elder Jean Freau (I hope I spelled it right) and we will be co-district leaders. I have been a single district leader for nearly 8 months, so hopefully it means that I will get a little more free time at the end of the day. I am going to miss Antwerpen, but I am excited to go back to Nederland and get to know a new city!

I had a pretty life changing experience this week. Even though I won't share a lot of details as it is personal, it has really made me appreciate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He suffered all of the pains of everyone, so that he can understand us all even better than we can understand ourselves. I pray for at least a little bit of that understanding so that I can better my relationships with my companions and others.

Pretty cool tank that we always bike past. I thought I would take my last chance before I head over to Roosendaal to take a photo with it.

The bike shed! 

I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 71: Meeting some Greek Gods...

Hoi jullie!

How's it going? We had a pretty good week. We spent a lot of time finding and also got to go on exchanges with the ZL's. We also found a solid new investigator! That has been something we have been struggling with. We have so many investigators, but all of them are super unreliable. We only one prescheduled appointment that went through this week, and we had 5 of them in a row on Saturday...

But the one that did go through was awesome! His name is Calithos! It's a Greek name, but he's actually from Groningen in Nederland, which was my last area! We met him while doing banner contacting in the Centrum. He stopped on his bike to look at our poster of Jesus, and we had a decent conversation, and then he said "I'll come back," and just biked away. He didn't come back before we left, but he called us! And now we have had a couple good appointments with him, and not only does he respond to our calls and texts, but he actually wants to meet with us. He says that he believes Joseph Smith is a prophet! YAAAAS! Next time we are going to help him connect all the dots

We also went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders Elder Reaveley and Elder Jensen (both from my MTC group) It is always pretty cool to go out with Elder's my "age." I hope I get to have another older companion. It has been so awesome to train, but it would be pretty nice to be able to not have to lead all of the time. Not that Elder DuWors does that. He actually super responsible and dedicated. 

I hope you all have a great week!

They have hamburgers here, but they put them in the bun... So I tried one, just to check it off the list :)

The beautiful view ​from​ our apartment! The leaves have finally turned colors, and it looks pretty great.

Love,

Elder Thornton

Week 70: Temple!

Hoi!

This week was pretty great! I got to go the temple this week, and that was especially amazing because it had been a whole year since I had been. It felt wonderful! And I got to do it for an ancestor who I had performed the baptism for in Nauvoo a few years back, so that was pretty cool. I feel a little bad that I made him wait that long, but he probably never expected to recieve his endowment in Nederland. 

As for Antwerpen, it is going pretty good. Our investigators have kinda disappeared... We had one initial investigator near the centrum of Antwerpen, and since he kind of struggles keeping appointments, we ended up doing a lot of knocking in his area. And, seeing that it is pretty much the slums of Antwerpen, the people are pretty poor. And as we learn in Alma, also super humble and open! But... They tend to struggle with reliability and keeping appointments... So we are trying to figure that one out. We have 5 investigators on 1 street. That is really abnormal. But we only have contact with 2 of them.

But they are super cool! I am excited to see how much progress they will make.

We also got a text from Joris this week! He is currently on vacation in Seattle, but he still attended church! He is the best! (He also said he would bring some microwave popcorn back for me, so I may be slightly biased) :)

 The river next to Antwerpen!

The Temple in Den Haag!

Cake with Isabel! Isabel is one of the investigators of the Lokeren Sisters, and I got the opportunity to do her interview! She is so ready! She has completely turned her life around since she started learning about the Gospel. She got baptized this Saturday! It was Sister Klenk's birthday so we had some cake.

I love you all!

Love,

Elder Thornton