Jonathan's Mozambique Mission 2017-2019: The Office: Maxixe

Maxixe, a small city up the coast of mozambique, a place where not many missionaries get to go, and guess what, WE WENT ON A ROAD TRIP and we totally went up there to help out with a conference and drive some people around stuff so that was incredible, I have a ton of pictures. But what happened is we took the missionaries that were going home and the zone leaders of Maxixe up there in our cars, about a 7 hour drive. The whole way is just so beautiful and the experience was way fun. Anyways we get to Maxixe and the missionaries had prepared a meal for us and everything was just amazing.

We slept in the missionaries house but because of lack of space I had to sleep out in the living room right? But when I tried to go to sleep an angry horde of MOSQUITOES ATTACKED ME, I have never been bitten more in my life. I woke up with over thirty bites on my face and a ton on my arms and all over my ears, arms, neck. It was terrible. But luckily so far no signs of malaria. hahaha

But then that night I walked around with an elder name Abilio who was about to go to the Ghana mission. We did so many contacts and we had two brothers that were really interested in the message. Then the next day president said we could just go and do more contacts or whatever, So me and Elder Stevens drove out pretty far in Maxixe in the middle of nowhere and we did contacts out there and it was so cool to meet the humble people out there. We met this lady named Louisa Joao who was living out there in the brush by herself and her cat and so we had to take a picture with her. We shared brief messages about God and Christ and left with a prayer over their house. It was one of my favorite things I've done here on the mission.

We then had the conference the next day, church and we drove home. When we got back we had to send off the Elders to their homes super fast. We ended up staying up all night preparing and taking people around to get stuff. The curse of the sleepless transfers continues but everyone got home alright and just yesterday we got another group of 3 missionaries.

Life has been soo so good lately. The mission is amazing and I love the people I am around. This last week my two best friends on the mission got called to be APs.... my first companion on the mission, Elder Flitton and Elder Cordy, the Elder that spent a ton of time with us after getting his appendix out. So now we are going to travel with them and president to do some other stuff over the next couple months and we are living in the same house and it has all been like a dream.

The work in our area isn't going as great as we haven't had any time to work lately. The next couple of days we have plans to go hard in the area but we are dealing with a ton of different things right now that might keep us from doing as we like but we will keep on trying our best to get the work done here! I know that God is there for us always. Choose him and see the blessings that will come. I love you all and I'll talk to yall next week.

-Elder Thornton

P.S. Just a note, I don't know if anyone will notice but almost exactly a year ago when I first got to the mission on the way to my first area, Dondo, we drove through Maxixe and stayed there a night, so this trip was pretty cool as we went back to a lot of the same places.

At the Missionaries apartment in Maxixe