This week was super awesome for multiple reasons but lets just start with the basics, We had some baptisms this week! It was a super awesome experience once again at the beach with three amazing people.

First off we have Joao who has 22 years and is soooo faithful. Every sunday he is the first person to get to the church, he runs his own business and when we taught O dia do senhor (the Lord's day) and told him he cant work on Sunday he simply said, "wow that sucks.... but a commandment is a commandment what can you do" and changed his schedule.

Then we have Linda who has 17 anos, she is super amazing. At first she really struggled finding an answer but she said that one day she was sitting in church and just felt an overwhelming feeling of comfort like she hadn't ever felt before.

Jose is the last person and he has 14 anos. He is super timid and quiet but he is so faithful. He has been coming to church for almost a year now and although he is really soft spoken he expressed a real desire to follow Christ.

The people here are amazing, just one more story, yesterday we had a lesson with a guy named Ortilho. We met him at church as a reference from a member, we went to "teach" the restoration but when we sat down and started talking we found out that his member friend had already given him pamphlets and the book of mormon and he had already read all of them. He knew the lessons practically perfectly. We invited him to pray to know if these things are true and found out that he already had and that he knows this church is true..... hahahaa yeah idk just the blessing that come when you live without water and energy;) hahaha no just an amazing man who searched for the truth and found it, I just feel blessed for being a part of it.

Love you all, the weeks are just running by, I only have two years left before I come home so that's pretty exciting! Love the work and love the people. That really is what keeps me going day after day, God is real and he is ACTIVELY touching the lives of those around us, sometimes it just takes a simple invite to start them down the path we know as the Gospel. Amo voces, Fiquem bem ate proxima! (I love you. Stay well until next time.)

Elder Thornton

Joao, Jonny, Jose, Elder Moreira, and Linda

Elder Moreira with ward members and those being baptized

Elder Moreira and Jonny in church

Rain boots only work when they dont have holes... also Maputo

I would just like to inform everyone of a recent discovery that I stumbled upon yesterday..... so apparently when walking through deep masses of water you need to take care that you don't step on any broken beer bottles because rain boots with holes don't function properly. So that definitely happened.... hahaha then i had to walk all week with boots just cheias de aqua (just full of water). eu queria tentar comprar outras mas nao consegui. (I wanted to try and buy others but I could not.)

The work went by super fast this week. I helped out my district this week with their baptisms ON THE BEACH because we didn't have any water in the chapel. 

Also I wanted to say sorry to all the people out there that wrote me and didn't get a reply because currently i am in Maputo... way far from my area doing a training with president. He flew in all of the lideres do distrito para nos ajudar a saber mais a respeito de nosso desempenho. (district leaders to help us learn more about our performance) So sadly i only have about 30 min today to write with everything that we are doing.

But WOW maputo feels like america compared to beira..... it's insane how much different it is here. I cant even explain but the poverty of the north is incredibly sad. Love you all, when I get a chance I will write about everything that went on and send pictures!

Elder Thornton

P.S. from Jonny's mother - the words in the parenthesis are google translation for what he wrote. 

                  The next two pictures were posted on facebook of the district training meeting

Elder Bailey, Bennion, Stevenson, DePaula, McCorr??, Virgin, Flitton, Coelho, Barreri  Front Row - Jonny, Elder Pedrosa, Pres. Senna, Elder Stegman

Ohhh the Chuva

HAHAHAHA I love the rain so much......(what i had to tell myself all this week).... Lets just say that I am 95 percent convinced that rain is of the devil. this week we walked and talked to a lot of people but because of the enormous amount of rain that we received this week we didnt get to sit down for many lessons. Turns out that when it rains everyone in mozambique stays home.... great right? wrong, they stay home and pretend that the outside world doesn't exist. THis includes avoiding the missionaries and any form of visit.

 But walking around in the flooded streets with boots was fun. This week went by super fast and although we didn't have any baptisms this week we did do some really great family nights, one with the stake president and his SUPER INCREDIBLE family and with another family who happens to be the oldest member family here in Beira. Both of them were absolutely awesome.

Also I found myself with this kid wearing a shirt from the hogle zoo... wow that traveled a long ways.... so of course I stopped him... took a picture and then we did an awesome contact with him.

Just to give a picture of what the work is like here in Palmeiras (side note for ya'll out there, palmeiras means palm trees..... hahaha the city of palm trees..... i love it) we have no problem finding people to teach.... the contacting, reference thing hasn't been a huge part of the work for a while..... right now the work is going so quickly that we haven't had time to sit down with all the people we have..... it's actually starting to get really hard for us. We have to run from lesson to lesson to try and fit everyone in. And then we have to decide if the person is really interested or just wants a bunch of free stuff from the missionaries....(sadly a while back we had a missionary that was going home so he gave all his stuff to investigators and stuff and now everyone thinks that we have all the stuff just to give away to people).

I don't have much time left but I just wanted to testify that the Church is true. Something that I had brought to my attention is that every day we receive small confirmations that the church is true, that Joseph Smith was a prophet, that some small principle in the church is true, but because we don't take the time to stop and realize these small manifestations we start to convince ourselves that we never knew. Its like change, its super easy to look at 5 cents and think, what in the world will I do with this? and then we "loose it"(or throw it somewhere in the road you know you have all done it once;) but if we take the time to realize the value of what we have and keep it close, soon the small and simple will become grand and unshakeable.

Love you all. Keep going strong out there

Elder Thornton

Young man they found with a Hogle Zoo shirt

wading in the rain

Elder Moreira and Jonny

I have a comp!!!

Hahaha, it feels weird to say but i am so thankful for the opportunity to have a comp. It has been super hard over the last little while to care for my area and worry about who i am going to have to walk with today. Any ways, this week I got my brand new comp for Portugal and his name is Elder Moreira. His accent is super different and at the beginning we had a hard time communicating but we are doing awesome now. This guy is so awesome. His dad happens to be a seventy and he is super obedient so I think this is going to be an amazing transfer.

We had  Zone Conference yesterday and wow I loved it. We talked about the importance of the book of Mormon in the process of conversao. It hit me so strongly that this book was written for us and that it has a power to change lives if we do a good enough job and teaching and showing our investigators how they can gain access to it.

This week we had the baptism of two brothers named Junior and Afouso. They are such awesome little guys. They both have 9 years and are the brothers of July and Fausia that we baptized a few weeks ago. I love seeing their family accept the gospel even though it has been one person at a time. We have started teaching their parents too and we really hope that they will join their kids in the amazing gospel.

Just a quick experience from the week, we went to church and during sacrament meeting a family of 5, dressed super well and super polite entered and sat down. After the meeting we talked with them and found out that the wife had investigated the church before but ended up going somewhere else a little bit afterward. Then later she got married, had this family and had a conversation with her husband about how they should be more united as a family and attend the same church. She said when they talked about that, The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter Day Saints was the first thing that came to her mind as she remembered the unique focus that this church has on the family. just a little something that stood out to me.

Love you all. The work is going great. I haven't died yet;)

tchau

Junior and Afousa are being baptized - brothers of Juli and Fausia baptized a few weeks ago.  Jonny and Elder Moreira

Jonny, Junior, Afousa and Elder Moreira

the rest of the pictures are of Zone Conference

Elder Petersen, Virgin, Cox, Phirri, Grange, Bertagini, Godfrey, Campira, Moreira, Jonny  Front Row - Pres. and Sister Senna, Sister Espada and Sister Harbour