Week 27 - Happy St Patrick's day!

The weather has been SO nice lately and I am loving it. There are many times when we choose to take the bikes even though we could take the car because the weather is so beautiful. I am loving it so much! 

This week was one full of success! We found a few more people to teach and the other elders in our branch had 5 people at church so it was a really good week for us. 

Our investigator recently told us that she's quitting her weekend job so she can come to church. I know that is an answer to our prayers. I'm so glad she'll be able to progress more towards baptism!This week was a great one with a lot of success. We taught a lot of lessons and found a few new people to teach.

One person we found was a really interesting experience. We knocked on the door and we could hear really loud Spanish music playing from inside. Out came a super drunk hispanic guy. At first I just didn't want to deal with it because he smelled bad and he was talking gibberish and I had no faith that it was going to turn out well. He talked and talked and talked for about a half hour straight about his life and his problems and why he drinks so much and eventually I just had the feeling that I need to be super bold and interrupted him and said, "Listen! We are representatives of Jesus Christ and He is talking to you. Are you going to listen??" It got kinda quiet for a bit and then he started telling us about how he used to be really religious and he had kinda fallen away so lately he'd been fasting and praying for God to help him get on the right track. He said that when he decided it wasn't working he started drinking and partying again. He said he never answers the door for random people that come by but he said that something told him he needed to open up to us. Eventually he let me throw away the rest of his beer and we set up another time to come back when he was less drunk. It was a very spiritual experience!

Our investigator, N., is still on a baptism date for April 18th, but she has been having a hard time coming to church because of her work schedule. We've been praying a ton so she can have the opportunity to come to church. She was able to come to church yesterday and she was smiling the whole time. After Sacrament meeting she came up and told us that she's giving them her 2 week notice today so she can come to church! It's definitely an answer to our prayers and I am so excited for her!

I had the opportunity to teach English class last week and it was actually really fun! It wasn't all that hard. We just cover a certain subject (we did "Hobbies") and then learn various words and phrases. Such as: sports, piano, like, dance, and things like that. All the people that go are very kind and humble, and I know how they feel because that's exactly how we did it in the MTC. I'm just not very good at making the class exciting or fun so I'm not sure I'll be teaching it any more. We'll see. 

My old investigator P,  in my old area, just got baptized on Saturday! I was bummed I had to miss it, but I'm so glad she stuck with it! I texted her after her baptism and she said it was a great experience and she loved it. I'm so happy for her. 

Well that's all I really have this week! 

Love, Elder Thayne 

Elder Thayne and Elder Latu

Week 26 - Seek ye first the kingdom of God and a baptismal date!

This week was great! It's getting a little warmer up here and I can't wait until we're done with all this cold weather. Fun fact: The Spanish words for "winter" and "hell" are only different by 1 letter! Coincidence? Hmmm probably not. 

We have been doing a lot of finding lately and it's been great! We found this couple named M. and G and we gave her a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and she said she'd read it and we could come back and talk with her husband too. I was SO excited about this. When we showed up on Saturday we sat down and talked for a little to get to know them, and then they said they had tons of questions. After answering their questions G. started shooting more and more questions at us trying to disprove us and soon enough it just turned into a lot of bashing from him. We tried time and time again to just lead it into a discussion about the Book of Mormon, Plan of Salvation, Joseph Smith, or anything that would stop the "bashing" attitude that he had. Finally we just read Moroni 10:4-5 and invited them to just pray about it and he just said he's not going to do anything that isn't in the Bible. So by that time we had spent 2 hours in their home and it ended up being a waste of time. We gave him many examples in the Bible that clearly disproved his ideas and theories of the Gospel, but it's true that convincing someone of the truth won't do any good if they're not willing to be open and listen to the Spirit. 

On a happier note we have an investigator on a baptismal date! Her name is N.and she's 23 years old. The rest of her family are all members and her dad is in the branch presidency. She has strong desires to change and bring herself closer to God. She told us she's seen the change it's made in her parents' lives and she wants that happiness for herself. She's way excited to be baptized, but the only problem is that she works so many hours between 2 jobs that it's hard for her to meet with us, let alone go to church on Sunday. Just please keep N. in your prayers that she can have the time to learn more and come to church. 

Something I read in the Bible this morning was a story I really liked. It was the story about the Prophet Elijah and his encounter with the widow of Zarephath. At this time, Elijah had just caused a huge drought in the land. He came into the city and asked the widow to get him some water and make him some bread. She explained to him that she didn't have much left and she was just about to go make a last meal for herself and her son so they can lie down and die. Elijah promised that if she fed him first that she would have all the food she needed until the drought ended. Imagine how hard it would be to follow such a commandment. He was asking this poor widow to give up the last of her food. She obeyed and the Lord kept his side of the promise. It reminds me of one of my favorite scriptures in 3 Nephi: 

31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat?or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

 32 For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

 34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.Sufficient is the day unto the evil thereof.

It's true that when we seek God's Kingdom first, we are blessed with everything we need.

We have a returning less-active member in our branch named L. He has been coming to church pretty consistently now and it was great to see him ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood yesterday. It's so good to see him turning back to the Lord and becoming more active in the church.

Well I hope everything is going wonderful for you guys! Any fun plans for spring break? I'm sure you guys will have a blast! 

Love, 

Elder Thayne

Elder Schoeneman, Elder Thayne Elder Hansen and Elder Latu
with Brother Juan Carlos Alarcon their branch mission leader

Shoveling snow...Brother Arcon says the axe is for chopping through the ice.
Indiana doesn't have any wussy winters like we are having here in Utah!  

Week 25 - So Sick of Snow!

So as you all know I got transferred last week. My new area is.... Elkhart, Indiana!  It's smaller than the Orem/Provo area for sure. It's a pretty small city. It's the farthest north in the mission so it's pretty frigid up here. It's been snowing every other day... Can't wait for spring!

My new address is:

1019 Wolf Ave. 

Elkhart, IN

46516

My new companion is named Elder Latu. He's a big Tongan guy from Hawaii and he's been out for about 16 months. He's a way fun guy and I'm definitely excited to serve with him. Our apartment only has one little heater so it's really really cold in the mornings. The branch we're in is pretty small. There were probably about 30 people at church yesterday, but they are all super nice people who want to feed us a lot. Elder Hansen moved up here with me from Indianapolis and he's serving in Goshen, Indiana which is about 30 minutes away from where we're at. 

We got double transferred into the area which means that neither of us were previously here. It's a little difficult because neither of us really know the area or the investigators so we're just working on meeting people and seeing where they're at. We apparently have a couple of investigators that have shown desires to be baptized this month, but we haven't exactly met them yet... We have an appointment with one of them tonight. Her name is N. and her family was all converted to the Gospel about 3 years ago, and she recently moved back in with them so she started learning more from the missionaries. 

Something fun about this area is that we teach free English classes twice a week at the church. Elder Schoeneman and Elder Latu teach the classes while Elder Hansen and I take care of the kids of the people taking the classes. It is quite exhausting, but it's good practice. ;)   President Cleveland told Elder Latu he'd probably be here for one transfer maybe 2 so I'll take over teaching after he leaves :) we usually have 15 - 20 coming to English class. It's pretty good Spanish practice talking to the kids too. 

So I've started reading the Bible because I've never really read it all the way through and I just finished the story of David. David was such a righteous king and servant of the Lord. He was greatly blessed by the Lord, but it's interesting how in a matter of a few verses in the story he falls from exaltation due to his small mistakes that eventually lead to serious sins such as adultery and murder. It's incredible how quickly he fell from his glory. If he would have just turned around and went back inside after seeing Bath-sheba on the roof everything would have been ok. Even after committing adultery he could have confessed it honestly and stopped there and he would have been forgiven. But he took it even further and shed the innocent blood of Uriah which caused him to "fall from his exaltation." 

This story has always made me a little sad due to all that David lost because of his sins, but it shows us how careful we need to be. We must never think that we are too far gone and justify more sin in this way. We can always turn back to the Lord and receive his forgiveness. As Isaiah says in chapter 9: "For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still." The Lord's hand is always stretched out to us, we just need to take hold and accept his forgiveness the the Atonement of Christ. 

I love you and thank you for all that you do! I miss you more than I can say, but I love serving the Lord. I love you mom! 

Love,

Elder Thayne

With Investigator P. in White River Area.  I'm going to miss her baptism since I got transferred.

This is Y.  She fed us every week in our old area

We found this chair thing on the sidewalk when we were riding our bikes, so we took pictures haha

Elder Latu

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!

 
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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