Week 11 - Feeling so blessed for opportunities but would love some people to teach!

It is WAY cold here and it is always so windy. It actually warmed up the last couple of days so right now it's not too bad. 

Thanksgiving is so soon and I can't wait!  Yeah we actually got invited to 5 different thanksgiving dinners, but I think we're just gonna accept a couple of them. One of the members cooking for us said she's gonna give us a Mexican thanksgiving. I don't really know what to expect, but I'm excited! I definitely have a ton to be grateful for. Especially after seeing the people here. There are a lot of people living in poverty and struggling just to get by, and I'm so blessed to have the opportunities I have been given. 

This week has been OK. We had a lesson with a friend of Hna. Lyons.  Her friend is a non-member christian who came to the baptism of the Lyons' kids a couple weeks ago, and when we talked to them they seemed way excited to listen and invited us to come and teach them. We were looking forward to teaching this lesson SO much. So when we got there, we were expecting to be teaching her whole family, but her husband was asleep because I guess he works all night, and her kids didn't really want to listen. So we ended up just teaching her. We taught the lesson of the Restoration, and it went SO bad. I don't know what happened, but it wasn't organized and there wasn't really any spirit there either. We asked her to be baptized at the end of the lesson and she just straight up said no because she had nothing telling her that this was true. It was really discouraging to hear that. We were both so excited to teach the lesson and we had such high expectations, and it just bombed. Luckily, she agreed to meet with us again some other time and she said she is going to come to church to see what it's like. Hopefully at church the Spirit of the Lord's house will confirm the truth to her. 

On a happier note, we did find a couple who seems pretty interested in learning more. Their names are J. and C., and they are Catholic. We were talking, and C. asked us why bad things happen in the world, so we decided to teach the about the Plan of Salvation.  We talked about the Atonement and what happens after this life and stuff like that and they were both asking so many questions. It was great because they both seemed to have a lot of interest in understanding our message. Then, near the end of the lesson C. asked us how we are supposed to know which of all the churches we have today is the right one. That was the perfect question for us to set up a second appointment to teach about the Restoration! So we have an appointment with them on Friday and I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully it goes a lot better than the other one. 

That's pretty much it for this week. We're just still trying to find people to teach. We just have to keep pleading to the Lord that He will send us to someone who has been prepared for this message.

I love you so much and thank you so much for all your prayers and support! And Happy Birthday Mom!! I hope it was a good one! Only one more birthday without your favorite son ;)

Love,

Elder Thayne

Week 10 - Blessing others through the priesthood

I am feeling much better this week. I actually woke up Tuesday morning and pretty much all of my sinus pressure went away over night! Missionary work is wayyyyy better when you're not sick.  

J. is still struggling. He seems to think that if he gets baptized he has to be perfect and he can't have any fun anymore. It's hard to help him understand the happiness he will receive from this gospel. L. is doing really well. She would progress much better in a different circumstance, but she seems to like having us over and she feeds us every once and a while. We try to get referrals from members as often as possible. Usually it is just a referral to a less-active friend or something. Something I didn't realize about missionary work is that it isn't just about finding people and teaching investigators. A big part of it is teaching less-active members. That's something that we were working on a lot this week. We actually had a couple less-active members come to church yesterday, so it felt good to know that our visits helped them return to church this week.

I was asking him how they determine which door approach they will use.  We mostly focus on the Restoration when we teach at the door, unless we feel that the Plan of Salvation is something that they need. Tracting is pretty tough, and even more so now that it's so cold! (3 degrees today) 

I was telling him how I met Sister Lyons online.  She is a sister in his area who has been feeding him and watching over him.  She is such a sweet lady!  Her 2 children were baptized this past Saturday.  Hermana Lyons is so nice! (Hermana is the word for sister, but it feels weird to say sister). She is always taking such good care of us and making sure we've got everything we need. Ever since she started talking to you she always tells everyone that "Elder Thayne's mom is the sweetest lady". Hermana Lyons is such a strong member of the church. If I didn't know her story I never could guess she was inactive. It just goes to show how much people can change and the happiness that the gospel can bring to their life.

That's so fun that you guys get to host thanksgiving! Oh good times. Too bad the Hess side isn't all that much into basketball so you won't have the traditional game of speed ;) 

To use the Internet we just go to a library downtown. 

This is the view of Indianapolis from the Library where I type my emails

I asked him the difference between a zone and a district...I can never quite remember how all that works.  A zone is made up of 2 or 3 different districts in an area. The zone leaders are leaders over all those missionaries. A district is a smaller group of missionaries. Like, my district is just the Spanish speaking missionaries. I don't really know how to explain it.

Probably the most interesting thing I've eaten so far is cactus. We had it from a Taqueria (taco shop) and it was actually really good!  Hermana Lyons does cook some really good food! I love eating at her house!

This week was pretty slow. We're still trying to find a solid person to teach and progress in the gospel. We have gotten a lot of return appointments this week so we'll see how that goes. 

I had the opportunity to stand in the circle for the confirmation of Hermana Lyons' kids. It was a sweet experience. I love how in the prayer it says "I say unto you receive the Holy Ghost".  We truly must choose to receive the Holy Ghost in our lives. It is not a passive action. We have to invite the Spirit and strive to let it dwell in us. 

Elder Schoeneman and I had a great experience this week! On Friday we got a text from a member in our branch that said her non-member friend needed a blessing. Her son in El Salvador had just had an operation and she wanted a blessing of comfort. I gave my first blessing in Spanish and it was way scary! Everything went OK though and she said it helped a lot. Then later we were at a members house eating dinner (we go to her house every Friday and it's my favorite meal appointment of the week). We were there for like 20 minutes and then got a call from our zone leaders saying that a member has a son who was in the ICU and she wanted someone to go and give him a blessing. So we had to leave our dinner appointment early and drive to the hospital. Now I have to admit I was a little upset we had to leave that dinner appointment early because I look forward to it so much. We got to the hospital and found the guys room and he was asleep. His mom wasn't there but she told us over the phone that he had been put on some pretty intense drugs so he would be pretty out of it. We went in to give him the blessing and as soon as I put the oil on his head he opened up his eyes and he was pretty alert for the whole thing.  Elder Schoeneman gave the blessing and afterwards the man was so thankful and happy that we had come. On the way out of the hospital we called his mom and told her how it went. She was so happy to hear it went well and how glad he was that we came. She started crying because of how happy she was and it made me feel really good to know that we could help. After that I wasn't really worried at all about missing that dinner appointment because I was so happy to be able to help. 

Well that's all for today! Thank you so much for all your support and your prayers. I love you and I'll keep you all in my prayers! I'll talk to you next week!

Love, 

Elder Thayne

A drought of investigators

This week has been OK. I'm still pretty sick and it's been hard to sleep because of the sickness so I'm running low on sleep. I haven't really taken many pictures yet.. Sorry! There's just not much to take pictures of quite yet. 

It's still really slow since we don't really have many investigators with whom we regularly meet. J recently dropped his baptism date which was disappointing.  He's just afraid that he won't be able to live the commandments after he's baptized and he says he doesn't want to commit to it until he knows he can do it.  We have another investigator named L who is progressing pretty well, she just has some personal legal issues that are making it hard for her to commit to baptism so we are trying to work with her. Other than that we don't really have any other investigators.

Last week we found this lady named B who lived with her friend C. We were talking to them about the restoration and B seemed to know quite a lot and was pretty excited about it. We were so excited to have finally found a good investigator.  We returned to her house and taught her again this week. We were talking to her about baptism and she kept telling us that she was already baptized. We assumed she meant into the Catholic church or something, so we asked her which church she was baptized into and she said, "you're church!".  We were so surprised! I guess through the Spanish speaking there was a little bit of a miscommunication and we didn't hear that she was already a member.  We still think C would be interested though, so hopefully we will start regularly visiting him soon.

When we go tracting, the door approach we use is usually centered on Christ.  First we start out by getting to know them (name, where they're from, how long they've been in America). If we are focusing on the Restoration we say something like "what do you know about Jesus Christ when he was here on the Earth?" and then proceed to talk about how He established His church and then go on to the Restoration.  If we are focusing on the Plan of Salvation we will usually say something like "do you think God loves you?" and then go from there. If people aren't interested they usually make up some excuse like "oh we're about to leave we don't have time" or something like that. But every once in a while we find some really nice people.  I have done the door approach plenty of times, but I'm still trying to get the hang of it. 

Dad, I love that thought you shared about prayer. I feel like prayer is always something I have taken for granted. Something that I would just do as a routine thing before I went to bed and stuff. But ever since I have been on my mission, it has become one of the most important things of my life. It is such a blessing to be able to talk to our Heavenly Father whenever we want. I truly have learned how important it is to just pour out your whole heart and soul in prayer to God and it strengthens me so much. I feel that through prayer I have grown much closer to my Father in Heaven.

I know that God lives and He loves us. He is mindful of every single one of us and He knows us. I know that in this work, I am not alone. As I try to bring the knowledge of this light and love to others I can feel help from the Lord. I see it in my own life and in the lives of those around me. I also know that without Christ nothing is possible. He has made an eternal sacrifice for us and none are exempt. It's beautiful to know that no matter what we do or who we are, we are always children of God His hand is always stretched out to us. I know he watches over us.

I love you and I thank you for all of your support!

Elder Thayne

Biking Selfie!

Elder Thayne, Elder Weese, Elder Schoneman, and Elder Markward with a branch member who is moving

Week 8 - Getting very cold in Indiana!

Yeah it is really really cold here! It was even snowing for a little bit on Friday which was crazy!   I don't have those sweaters [you sent] yet because the mission office has to forward it to me. You can send packages/letters straight to my apartment if you want. My address is 6465 N Lynnfield Ct #621 Indianapolis, IN 46254. If you send it there they will all get to me much faster.

This week has been really rough. All week I have had the worst cold of my life and it has been awful. But on Friday we got one of our investigators set up with a baptismal date which is awesome! He is kinda flaky though so hopefully he keeps it.  On Halloween we had a trunk or treat activity with the English ward and Spanish branch and it was a lot of fun.

I actually was able to watch Meet the Mormons at the mission home on my first night but sadly I fell asleep right after the candy bomber part... I get that from you Mom, I guess!

Elder Schoeneman and I are getting along great! It has been a little tough to find people to teach, but we finally found some other people who seem really interested on Friday so we'll see how that goes. Tracting is OK. We usually ride our bikes to a certain neighborhood and try to scout out the houses that would have Hispanics and knock on those doors. There are hardly ever people just walking about outside since it is so cold here.

We get up at 6:30 in the mornings and get ready until 8.  Then we have personal study until 9 and then companionship study until 11. From 11-12 we have language study and then from 12-1 we have a break for lunch. So we usually don't get out of the apartment until about 1.

The bike is great! I love riding the bike except for the fact that I'm sick and it's freezing cold, but that will get better. But I am told that it may get so cold that they won't even want us going outside.  It's supposed to be a pretty brutal winter this year. 

The branch members take pretty good care of us up here :) We ate at this members house named Hermana Corranguez yesterday and when she saw that I was sick she was telling me all of her Hispanic remedies and such in order to help me get better and she even made me some lemon and cinnamon tea stuff to help with the cold.  She gave me some Dayquil and a sweater I could use until mine come. It was really nice of her.

This week started out really hard for us. We don't really have many people to teach so we just tract most of the time. On Wednesday we rode our bikes for about 45 minutes to this apartment complex (and it's kinda scary sometimes because a lot of the roads have hardly any shoulder space) and it was FREEZING. And of course I didn't bring my coat so I was dying. We knocked on almost all the doors in the whole apartment complex for about 2 hours and only taught one lesson. And it was in English so even if they were interested we'd have to pass them off to the English missionaries. We were pretty discouraged. But then on Friday we went to another apartment complex and knocked over there for a couple hours and we ended up teaching about 8 lessons and finding a few people in an apartment to teach! And then one of our investigators called us and said that he wanted to talk to us so we went over to his house to meet with him.  We talked about prayer and how he can know that this church is true. He prayed with us right there and asked the Lord if he should be baptized into this church and the spirit was so strong! He said he felt so peaceful and warm and excited. Sadly yesterday he said he's not so sure about it now, but we'll continue working with him to be ready for that date.

Daren sent him an article about the Kansas City Royals Pitcher who left the MLB for 2 years to serve a mission. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865614237/Royals-Pitcher-Jeremy-Guthrie-expresses-gratitude-for-opportunity-of-a-lifetime.html  I love that article about the pitcher! I like the part where he says "I'm going to give this up, and I know whatever happens will be the best for me."  As long as we are sacrificing for the Lord and obeying him, whatever happens is part of his plan for us.

I love you all and I love the work! I'm so thankful for all your support and all you do for me. You are all in my prayers and I love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Thayne