Chuva

Another fantastical week has come and gone and Elder Thornton is now sitting in an internet cafe without his nametag and with multiple cuts and bruises on my legs and arms.... HAHA what a week but before I explain how that all happened Ill start from the beginning.

We have energy which is awesome but we are still lacking the beautiful substance known as water.... too bad but whatever at least we don't have the plague.... (sorry Madagascar). But this week was sooooo good! We continued to teach the group of teenagers that we have and we prepared 5 people for baptism this week and we ended up baptizing all of them!!! except for one... haha Johanes who i talked about last week had another test.... wow... haha but We had one baptism that really was super special to me. His name is Matias and we have been teaching him since I arrived here.... I don't know how many will remember this story but one of my first days here in Dondo we were walking around trying to find someone to teach and we stopped and I asked if I could say a prayer.... after the prayer we stayed there waiting for inspiration and Elder Flitton asked if we should keep on walking but I felt like we should stay put.... anyways about a minute later Matias came walking out of his house and we went and taught him the restauracao. Anyways after that we spent about the last two months passing by his house and having him fugir which was super frustrating. But two days ago I had the incredible experience and privilege to baptize Matias and wow... It just hit me so hard that the only reason the mission works... the only reason that a bunch of teenage boys and girls can go out to all parts of the world and bring people to the church is because every single missionary is being guided by the same Loving heavenly father. I just want to quickly testify that God is real. His plan is real and he is ready to help us, all we have to do is ask. If I have learned anything out here it is the reality of inspiration. As we do our best to do our part God will make up the difference. This principle is true in so many aspects of life. In work, in the home as parents, in school, in callings and in our personal struggles. God is there and I testify that he hears you.

So to finish the email because sadly at times in africa you buy two hours of internet and you end up getting 1? I need to wrap this up but why I am sitting here without a name tag super beat up and such is because we were waiting in line to get on a chapa here in good ol africa and when a chapa arrived a ton of people who decided waiting is way lame rushed the chapa. Anyways we definitely got caught in the middle of the biggest shoving match of all time as 40 people tried to pile into a super undersized van..... at one point I was just shoved up with my face against the window of the van so that was pretty exciting! hahah but yeah we lost our name tags and took some collateral damage but hey what's a mission without some great stories right? but yeah...


Also this week... we experienced our first real "Rain"..... WOW I never had experienced rain like this in my life.... literally sheets of rain to the point where your visibility was literally like 10 feet in front of you.... super crazy and we had the coolest opportunity to baptize during the middle of it! haha I was trying to give the baptismal prayer at the top of my lungs and people still couldn't hear me. Love Africa and I love my mission. I am so grateful for Jesus Christ and the difference he makes in my life.

Until next week meus amigos

Jonny and Elder Flitton with baptisms

Jonny baptizing Matias in a heavy rain

Jonny in rain boots with holes !

Some days just stink but vale a pena

And here we are again at the end of another week full of suprises and terrible spelling because I am forgeting how to english so please dont judge. hahaha but anyways this week was really really tough... we had a lot of people prepared for baptism and tons of things happened that just really stunk....first off we got one guy interviewed to get baptised and the night before the baptism he found out he had a test the next morning.... obviously at the exact same time as the baptism.... but obviously because almost no one here has a phone he didnt tell us so we prepared everything for him and he never showed up... also two more people we had planned we couldnt get the interview done with so all three will be baptized this week.

We did have two baptisms with Irmao Geramias and also Irmao Cremildo which was super awesome! The only funky part was we had to spend like 5 hours this week trying to clean the pool that we have that was filled with lost of funky looking green stuff and sapos so... that wasnt going to work... luckily we got everything under control and the baptism was super awesome.

The next day we had a lot of good things happen and a lot of bad things also. We started out this week again without water... which I am honestly just so used to by now that it didnt really change much but the problem was that we prepared a huge crockpot meal before church so that we could eat really fast when we got back but guess what.... apparently they decided to cut the energy for the whole city on Sunday so guess which group of missionaries prepared a huge crockpot full of our monthy alotment of dinhero for nothing... yeah we did... hahaha anyways that stunk but then we walked all the way out to Irmao cremildo to pick him up for church and when we got there we realized that we had forgotten the paperwork back at the house so we had to run back home and get to the church because I had an amazing opportunity to give the gift of the holy ghost to Irmao Geramias and Cremildo but when we got to church Cremildo wasnt there and he got there way late so he has to wait until next week.... So we only really ended up with 2 baptisms and 1 confermation this week which was a little bit dissapointing but next week we are looking like we might have 7 more so we still have a lot of work to do.

also in the sacrament meeting we had our new high of attendence at 121 which was crazy awesome! and we also had a member receive a mission call to..... Democratic Republic of Congo which was super awesome!! haha But right now we have 23 people on date for baptism and we are being blessed every day with more. The work is getting really crazy because we literally dont have enough time to walk in between lessons to prepare all the people for baptism so its just been super crazy but the lord is blessing them with respostas every time that they pray.

It is super cool to see the night and day difference between the people that pray and those that dont. I just want to briefly say that I know that God is really there. He speaks to us daily but in ways that at times we cant see. Its our challenge to keep on looking and the more we look the more we will be amazed at the way our lives have been touched by the Masters hand.

-Elder Thornton

Group of members with Irmao Geramias and Cremildo on their baptism day

Jonny with member called to the Democratic Republic of Congo

member, Irmão Geramias , Jonny and Irmao Cremildo

The grind si chama a missao

Welp a super adventurous week that has actually been super good with a few bumps in the road. Right now we are back in Dondo because they fixed our energy which was super awesome!! until we found out that during that time without Energy our water ran out sooo... back on that no water grind so that's super awesome but as we know.... with trials comes great blessing right? SUPER true... We had our goal of having 5 baptisms this month and right now the work is exploding! It looks like we have the potential to baptize 5 people this week and maybe 7 next week.... this could be a huge month and we are super excited!

THis sunday we had 20 investigators at church with us.... (which may have required that we walk around Dondo for about two hours before sacrament picking people up) but the work this week has been super awesome. Right now we are teaching Irmao Cremildo.... who may or may not be the coolest investigator ever.... he has literally found us 7 new investigators this week and has been studying the book of Mormon right now and he says he already knows its all true. He is really converted and we are so excited for his baptism.... we also have Irmao Volvo, Irmao Johanes and Irmao Jeramias all lined up for this Saturday.

We had a kind of tough week too because of some unforeseen events like we had prepared one of the most expensive meals that we make with a ton of chicken and rice and Elder Flitton accidently dropped the crockpot.....shattered everything and yeah .... that was absolutely terrible. Also when we came back from Beira after our Energy came back we realized that we had had some meat in the fridge........... Anyways we got home to some narly mold and maggots... that we then had to spend about all week terminating.

But really the mission is so awesome. There has been no feeling like waking up each day having a purpose that I know is aligned with what God wants. I love the mission and I love the people. I know that this gospel changes lives because I have seen how it has improved the lives of the people here every day.

Well we need to go buy a new crockpot soo... peace out until next week and I should have some pictures to send. Love yall!

Hastening The Work

Just another great week here in good ol' Mozambique. Just the craziest of weeks.... haha so because we don't have energy or water in our house currently we were sent to Beira to stay with another companionship until we can get energy in Dondo again, but wow the work is coming along so well.

RIght now we have 7 baptisms planned for the 21st and they are all looking super solid. I really think we will meet our goal and maybe even more. WE are still teaching Cremildo and wow..... such an amazing dude. During our last lesson we were asking him if he had received an answer to his prayer yet and he paused for a second and said "I prayed and did what you asked and I wasn't sure if I believed, so I read the whole pamphlet you gave me and did the bible study in the back, and now I know its true, I felt that it is true. SO now I think i need to be baptised." ..... hahaha wow God really does prepare the way as long as we are willing to put in the work, and in some cases we don't even have to do much work at all!

haha but we are also teaching a Matias and Volvo and they are both really good friends that we were teaching separately and we were having a really hard time with them but we decided to teach them together one time and we taught the Word of Wisdom, Wow it was like they were completely different people. All of a sudden they were really excited about the message, they were asking questions and they were even helping each other understand the principles of the gospel. This really got me thinking about life and how sometimes we think that the solution is to just work harder and things will work out, eventually the spirit will be able to penetrate into their hearts but in reality the problem is our approach.

I think my challenge to all those out there reading this weeks episode is to find what doesnt seem to be working the way it should in our lives and to take that thing and study the scriptures and pray specifically about it and try to find a way to approach our problems in a different way. Because we all know 1 nephi 3:7, God will provide a way but maybe the pathway he prepared isn't right in front of us but is behind us and all we need to do is stop and look around.

 Hahaha so for the story of the week.... here in AFrica people really like their rice, fish and chicken and for some reason this precise combination has been causing a strange phenomenon in my stomach known as serious indigestion.... HAhahaha anyways we were walking to a lesson and I was telling Elder Flitton... Man I really really need to go right now, and he was like okay man but we need to teach this lesson first. So we walked insanely fast to our next lesson and found Cremildo with his good friend Sony who was super cool and way excited to hear about the gospel about to leave the house to go and brincar.  Anyways I would also like to testify that God will hasten his work... sometimes by giving his faithful servants a little bit of motivation to walk a little bit faster and arrive at our lessons just a tad bit faster.

 Hahaha oh yeah the missions great. Thanks for the support and the prayers that have gotten me through my severe indigestion...;) haha love you all

-Elder Thornton

General Conference!!

Hahahaha so yeah we didnt get to watch general conference.... apparently here they send us DVDs with conference and we show them to our wards so we probably wont be watching it here for another week or so! But from what I hear it was super good sooo... I am super excited! And also apparently my old mission president apparently spoke too which is way cool!

But this week has been super cool. We had a ton of success and with our goal of 5 baptisms this week we are looking like we might reach that. We did a lot of contacts this week and Elder Flitton has been trying to help me become better at street contacting so we were walking in an area that we haven't walked in yet and Elder Flitton stops and says... okay now you need to contact someone. Dang I was pretty nervous but I saw this guy sitting outside of his house who looked pretty nice and I had a feeling I should try him. ANyways I walked over to him and told him who we were and that we had a super important message to share about Jesus Christ. ANyways he was super mellow and did not show a lot of interest throughout the lesson but we finished by inviting him to pray to know if the things we taught are true.

When we returned the next to talk to him it was such an amazing experience. He was so excited to see us and when we asked if he had prayed to know he started to tell us about last night when he prayed and "felt something different" After he said that we testified that he had received an answer and also that he could continue to pray and receive that same witness for all the things that we teach. HIs name is Johanes and this week he showed up to church so we are way excited for him.

Also we found a dude named Cremildo in the same area. He is about 15 but is like 6 foot 3 and super skinny and way smart. When we were teaching him about the restoration and Joseph smith we asked him... how do you think you can know if what we have said is true? HE looked at us for about 5 seconds and then he said "I can follow the example of Joseph Smith and pray to God and receive an answer" Wow.... did he nail it on the head. It is so amazing the example that we received from Joseph smith... He really did show us the way that we can all come to know for ourselves the truthfulness of all things.

I want to bear witness that God really does answer prayers.... I have seen it in the lives of those here in Africa and I have seen it more in my own life. When I pray with urgency... God has always answered. SOmetimes it has been differently than I had thought an answer would come but they ALWAYS come.

 Right now we are doing really well. I am super excited for the people that we are teaching. We currently have 7 people on date to be baptized on the 21st of October and I couldn't be more excited.

This week I bought some Capalana here in good ol Africa and made a shirt that is super cool. The only problem we have right now is that we are having a hard time with energy in our house right now but no big deal we have candles and we feel super legit writing in our journals at night by candlelight... Hahaha but the mission is good and the people are good as well. We have been eating lot of xima and fried fish lately from the members and man the food here is so good. I also consumed my first fish head this week so that was pretty legit.

Sorry that this email is so jumbled but I have a lot on my mind and not a lot of time to write it all down. I just want to say thanks to all those out there thinking of me even just a little bit;) I genuinely feel strengthened by your prayers and by your thoughts.

Love you all and Ill give y'all another update next week!

Bought capalana and had shirt and dress made

studying by candlelight since there is no electricity

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