Week 24 - Transfer this week, Zone Conference, and choosing the Lord's plan

Wow what a crazy week! I was so surprised to find out I am being transferred, and anxious to find out where I will be on Wednesday. This week has been a cold one, and I am anxiously awaiting the warm weather that will come as soon as winter is over. I can only imagine how much enjoyable it will be! It was literally -20 degrees on Thursday and I'm not kidding when I say that half of my face literally froze numb. I was trying to smile and talk and I couldn't do it right because the whole right side of my face couldn't move. It was miserable! Hurry up summer! (I'll probably be complaining about the intense heat when July comes around)

So P.  is still doing great as she progresses towards baptism. We have been able to visit her almost every day, so we have already taught her all the lessons and now we just go over there and read key chapters with her from the Book of Mormon. She really loves our visits and she's making a lot of friends at church. She even volunteered to help decorate for the branch activity we were going to have on Saturday, but due to all the snow we received the night before, the activity was cancelled. It's great to see how willing she is to follow the Gospel. 

Some more great news is that P. and M.  still want to get baptized! M.  was always one who had a desire to learn more and he appeared to have more potential, but his wife seemed a little skeptical. One day A.  (their member daughter) was talking to P. about her Patriarchal blessing and she was researching the tribe of Manasseh and reading it to her mom. Suddenly her mom just looked up and said she wanted to be baptized! Sadly, she's returning to the Dominican Republic soon for about 6 months. We're working on helping her get baptized before she leaves, but it's hard since she hasn't even come to church yet. But we are all super excited, especially they're daughter A.! It's great to see how much joy she feels because her parents are finally accepting the Gospel that she has come to know is true.

We had our Zone Conference on Wednesday and it was really good. We had some great trainings and at the end Pres. Cleveland had a little basketball clinic since he probably misses his coaching days. It was a lot of fun! One question Pres. Cleveland asked us at Conference was how we could explain why we chose Christ's plan instead of Satan's. He pointed out that as a person unacquainted with the plan of Salvation, it would be difficult to understand why we'd choose the "high-risk" plan with Agency over Satan's guaranteed plan. This had me thinking. If you look at it from a wordly or let's say "business" perspective it doesn't really make much sense. We could either choose the plan that guarantees 100% success for our company, or choose the one that could cause us to fail and lose a huge part of the company. The thing is, in an eternal perspective, there is no way we could achieve perfect joy without occasional failure and sorrow. If we reached exaltation without having to do any work for it, we would not be able to achieve the fullness of joy that our Father in Heaven wants for us. It may be hard for a lot of people to understand, but through the experience of sin and sadness, we can feel the immense joy behind the reasoning of Christ's Plan of Happiness. 

Thank you for everything! Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Thayne

Basketball clinic at Zone Conference - Josh is smack dab in the middle in a white shirt...he's so cute!

White River zone at Zone conference with President and Sister Cleveland - Elder Thayne is in back row just left of the tallest guy in the center.

Zone conference - sewing activity

My District:  L to R:  Elder Labrum, Elder Markward, Elder Thayne, Elder Wright, Elder Blood, Elder Hansen

Last Sunday in the White River Branch

​Saying goodbye to the Coranguez family who feed us every Sunday

Week 23 - Teaching, Tamales and Touring!

 
'







This week has been a way cold one! We started out this week really really slow, but luckily it picked up at the end and we were able to get some really good work done. 

We're still working with our investigator P. She has come to church 2 weeks in a row now and she seems to really like it. A lot of the young women in the branch are doing really well at making her feel welcome and there are a lot of people in the branch who are saying hi to her and I can tell that it's helping. But P. is way awesome and she is way open to everything we teach her. One day we went over to her house and taught her about tithing and fast offerings. At the end of the lesson she asked us, "so do I have to be baptized in order to donate or can I do it now?" I was stunned! It was incredible to me that she already has a desire to pay her tithing! I know when I was her age I was really reluctant to give up my money. It's great to find someone who is so mature and has her priorities straight. 

Other than that there isn't really all that much going on here. We're still trying to find more people to add to our investigator pool, but it gets harder as the temperature drops. 

We did have the opportunity to tour Lucas Oil Stadium this week which is where the Colts play football. It was pretty cool and I've always been a fan of that kind of stuff. 

Me in the Colts Locker room.  Peyton Manning may have sat here once!

So this week we had a couple meal appointments with a member in our branch named Maria de Jesus. On thursday we went over and she taught us how to make tamales dulces. I thought they would have been a lot more complicated, but it wasn't really that hard. These are all the tamales we made! ​

Then on Saturday she told us she was going to feed us shrimp, so I was really excited. When we went over there she had a huge pot on her stove and it smelled really fishy. I looked in the pot and was a little bit surprised.

Those are really the most eventful things that happened this week. Oh and our mission president lets us play church ball if we have an investigator that goes so we got to play church ball on saturday which was fun :) good old church ball. 

Well that's pretty much it! We have Zone Conference this week so that should be good. It's still really cold and I miss the mild Utah weather! Thanks everyone! I love you all so much! Thanks for your valentines package with the balloon and the funny card and the delicious chocolates! Love you!

Love, Elder Thayne

Week 22 - temple trip and a commitment for baptism!

This week has been a pretty good one! I've taught more lessons this week than any other week my whole mission! It feels good to just get out and share the gospel with as many people as possible.

So.. there's a little something I forgot to tell you about last week. We got to go to the temple on Friday! We drove about 3 hours to the Louisville Kentucky temple and did baptisms for the dead. We were going to do an endowment session, but we barely missed it after we did all of our baptisms. It was great to be able to go to the temple for the first time in 5 months and feel the wonderful spirit that abides there. 

Louisville, Kentucky Temple trip

So a couple months ago, Elder Schoeneman and I found this lady named C. We taught her a couple times, but then her pastor told her that if people come to her door and give her pamphlets and stuff, then she shouldn't listen to them. So then one day a few weeks ago, Elder Wright and I went over there and knocked her door and her 15 year old daughter P. answered. We decided to just share a little scripture with her and she invited us to come back and talk more! We have been teaching her for about 2 weeks now and we've already taught her all but 2 of the lessons, and she has a baptism date for March 7th! She is really open to all that we teach her and she says she really wants to get baptized! She was a little disappointed when we talked about the Word of Wisdom bc she loves to drink Iced Tea, but she said it shouldn't be a problem to give that up. She came to church yesterday and she seemed to like it. She's really quiet so she doesn't really express her feelings all that much, but I think she liked it. So we're way excited that she's making some good progress! We ask for your prayers to help her keep that baptism date for March 7th.

We still haven't been able to meet with P. and M. since they heard about the whole Priesthood thing. They've cancelled on us 3 times since then, but it's just because Mig works a ton. We have another appointment with them tonight so we're hoping that it goes well.  

We're still working with that family that visited Utah, but we've only been able to teach them once. They work a lot and they're always super busy, but they're way nice people. We had a church tour set up for them on Friday but they had to cancel so that was a little disappointing.

Thanks for all you do Mom! I'm so glad you got to have a great time with the grand kids! Make sure they don't forget who I am ;) I love you so much and I miss you a ton! Have a great week and I'll talk to you next Monday!

Week 21 - We need to show our beliefs through the way we live

 I'm almost 1/4 of the way done! When I look back at it, it feels like it has flown by! 

Yeah there are a lot of people who are very confused about why we do what we do. It's hard for them to grasp the idea that we would sacrifice 2 years of our life to go and do service for no payment. But we know that what we have is much more special than money or any other worldly possession.

That's so exciting that you guys get to go down to Phoenix for the Spartan Race! I'm way jealous that I can't do it :( but I'm glad that Zach finally has the experience to run that race.)

That's way sad to hear that Zach totaled the car. I bet he's pretty upset about that. I know I would be. I'm just glad he's ok though! That's definitely something he will learn from, and it's good he didn't have to learn by receiving any injury of some sort. 

So I've got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that our investigators, P. and M., heard from an anti-Mormon friend about how blacks were denied the Priesthood for a time. Being from the Dominican Republic, P. and M. are both black, so this one kinda hits home for them.  They are struggling to believe in a prophet/church that would deny someone just because of their skin color. If you have any suggestions at all on how we could best explain that, please let me know.  

The good news is that we recently got a couple new investigators. It was a referral from Churh HQ which means they requested missionaries whether it was by phone or internet. When we got to her house we started talking to her about her faith in God and how she has developed that in her life. She told us that through the experiences she's had, she has seen His hand in their lives. She told us an experience where she and her husband were driving through Utah and their car broke down in the middle of no where. They said that a Mormon family came upon them and let them stay at their house for a while. They told us that they were so impressed by the peaceful, and happy way that this family lived their lives, and that's why they decided to contact the missionaries. 

I have a strong testimony that God puts people in our lives for a reason. Everyone is watching us and we need to show our beliefs through the way we live and conduct our lives. Through our example, we really can open people's hearts and prepare them for the gospel.

Well I don't really have much time, but thank you for everything! I love you!

Love,

Elder Thayne