Its real

Welp, another absolutely crazy and unexpected week here in Nacala. We have been working hard, trying to help the group reach its goal of becoming a branch. This week we had the Zone leaders from Nampula come up and do some divisions with us. It was an awesome experience to walk with Elder Strydom from South Africa and Elder Hancock our newest member of Nacala Squad. We also had a family night at the house of Tomas as he had moved and we wanted everyone to know where he lived. We had some powerful lessons and helped many people work towards their goals of Exaltation.

We had the opportunity to baptize some of the younger family members of Amisse named Artur and also his good friend Rapson. . They have been coming to church for the last few months and have sat with us as we taught many of the other people that have been baptized here. It was a great baptismal service and everything went well. We are teaching a couple other people right now that should be baptized this week, and will be my last baptisms here in Mozambique, Litos, Nivadolfa (younger sister of Flavia and Pascoal) and Junior. They are all learning to come unto Christ by making sacrifices and becoming true discipless. Then during church the following day we had the highest frequency while I've been here, a total of 87 people came to worship and learn together. We are so close to being a branch and I am sad that I wont be here to witness it but I have faith that the missionary's here will continue to help this incredible place to grow and soon we will have a two branches here.

Then as we were cleaning up everything after church and all, Euclides and some other recent converts brought out a projector that they had rented and presented a farewell video for me. They had taken a lot of pictures from Elder Latu's camera and put it into a video and gotten some of the people I know to talk. And i just cried. I remember saying to myself, "its real, i cant believe its real" I just hadn't felt like i was leaving until then but in that moment it hit me, and I knew that Nacala would always have a piece of my heart.

We left after that and did some more visits down the mountain and when we came back to the chapel that night to do a meeting with the leaders I went to open up the chapel and there was a group of members that had decorated the whole chapel and made a bunch of crazy good cake and other pastries. We watched the video again and they had some time for the members to get up and talk about me.... that was pretty special. and that was about it. Some of the members like Euclides and Jessica and Sumeia and Nicole and Suraia helped out a ton planning and setting everything up. Man I'm going to miss these people. Then today, as I was writing I got a text message from a girl named Graca. She said she needed help, I called her and it turned out to be Graca from Dondo, a member that Elder Flitton and I had sat with a ton during our time there. It was incredible to talk to her and hear how she was doing. I count it as a huge blessing as she wanted to give a reference to the missionaries there but didn't know who to send it to. She had asked a friend for the number of the missionaries near by and because our phone used to be a phone from Beira where she is at now she called us. kkkk I couldn't believe it. I don't know how much she really remembered me since its been such a long time but I never forgot how positive and kind she was to me as I was adjusting to missionary life.

The mission has been real, real hard, real rewarding, real joyful and really extraordinary. I will never regret these two years in which I learned how to be a better disciple of Christ. I don't think I will be getting on the internet here until I get home, I will have a full week before I go home. I should be having one more baptism and one more Sunday in Nacala and probably one hundred more surprises before I get home. But putting that aside I just want to let you all know that I know that Jesus Christ lives, I have discovered by the power of the Holy Ghost that Joseph Smith was called to be the revealer of The Son in these last days and that the True Church of Christ, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is here on this earth once again. This is the same testimony that I have bore as  a representative of Christ for the last two years and the same testimony that has brought me so much joy. I love you all and I'll see you in two.
and the journey continues....

-Love Elder Thornton

P.S.  no pictures because african virus deleted everything so that's great.

Luckily, Elder Latu was able to send pictures:)

Baptisms on the 8th of June 

 Artur and Rapson's baptism

 Going away party for Jonny