Monday, January 30, 2012

I'll go where you want me to go!

We're a little late today because we helped a member move this morning. It was good. Mom, that scripture in D&C 84:88 was very nice to hear.  Thank you.  My first night here in Wellington, I was lying in bed wondering like why I was here, and I missed Miami and my old area, when all of the sudden I started hearing “I’ll go where you want me to go” in my head.  That was very nice and reassuring.  Oh yeah, mom, congrats on the new call!  I guess they’re preparing you to be a grandma.  You’ll do so good in that calling.  I’m starting to be really good with kids now.  I had a ton of little Latin girls who I befriended down in Flagler/Fontainebleau.
Don’t worry, we don’t go to McDonalds that often.  Just once or twice a week.  The weather is nice here.  We share the car with the North Elders.  We trade off once a week.  We have the car this week.  Dad, I also love studying the Book of Mormon every day! It really gives me strength throughout the day.  Good luck with Youth Conference!  If I think of anything I’ll let you know.  I remember someone asking if horses are big here.  Yes, they are.  It’s Equestrian or Polo (or both) season, so everyone is here with their horses and I guess rent goes up a ton.  Some of the neighborhoods and houses here are super nice!  I’ve seen some Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and etc.  Pretty cool.  I really enjoy it here.  Oh, I forgot to tell you this about Keith.  So we had a great lesson with him on Friday and we asked him to say the closing prayer and ask if the things we’re telling him are true and to pause for a minute after so he could see how he felt.  So he said “amen” and we sat there for what seemed like an hour and I looked up at him and his eyes were twitching (they were closed).  Finally, he looks up and said he felt good and tingly.  It was so awesome!  He’s super prepared.  This past week was good. We found a family like last Monday night, a Mom and her 5 daughters ages 8,9,10,12 and 13. And the grandma actually just got baptized in New York like the day before. So we committed them for the 18th. All should go smoothly for that. Things are good with my new comp. We get along well and we're doing a lot of great work. 11 new gators, 7 at church and 9 baptismal dates.
I study Spanish an hour a day but I don't feel like I'm making progress.. I'm going to start asking the Spanish people in the ward to help. Nothing too exciting this week. Just working hard. We get like 3-4 meals a week from members. Which is nice. Yesterday we went to a Samoa family to eat dinner and I had so much food! Remember on Thanksgiving when I had like 3 meals in a row? Well I hurt more from this 1 meal! It was delicious but so much food! After we finished eating, the adults (there were 2 other families who came) stayed and talked around the table so Elder Shaffer and I sat on the couch with the kids and we got to watch the first quarter of the Heat/Bulls game! Ah I loved it so much. Oh the Heat all black uni's were so sick! Jeez i miss basketball so much.. How is the All Star weekend Going to play out? And who is that huge guy on the Mavs? It looked like Shaq... so I got the package and recorder. Thank you, I will send it today. The BoM lady isn't in my area. She's in Plantation. I haven't heard anything yet.. Dad, can you send me my line of authority? That would be nice. Well... This week was pretty boring.. Just lots of hard work. I love you all! Thanks for everything you do.


Monday, January 23, 2012

All is well in Wellington

All is well here in Wellington. It's nice actually being able to talk to people now. It's exciting. For Spanish... Idk. I'm just winging it really. It's hard when I can't really practice. Elder Benson (one of the north elders (we're the south)) speaks Spanish so he helps when I see him. The ward here is ok... Maybe it's just cuz I haven't gotten to know them too well. The ones I have I love. So we'll see. It's scary being around so many white people..... We do our most work in one of the worst areas (according to a city council woman in the ward) and it is mostly black and I feel fine there. But we went to another super ghetto place full of white people and I was super scared the whole time. Haha. We email here at the chapel in the family history center. “T”was on house arrest waiting for his court date. So we prayed and prayed that he'd get to court. Well he had court last Tuesday, and we thought Monday was the last time we'd see him. But we went over Tuesday evening just to see and he was there. He got sentenced to 156 days in jail. Idk what he did but the “T” I knew would never do anything bad. I was heartbroken when I heard that. He got Tuesday to spend with his family then reported on Wednesday. He took his BoM with him to jail and I wrote my info on there so he can write me. I put our home address (I couldn't think of the office off the top of my head) but I also want to keep in contact with him for a long time. I truly came to love “T”. He's such a great kid. So James. We went over there like the next day and his step son, Keith, answered. He wasn't there so we went back the next day (this was Monday, I think) Keith answered again and James wasn't home again. We asked Keith if we could talk with him. He said sure and we've been teaching him ever since. He's going to be baptized on Feb 3!! He's so so awesome. He loves the gospel and feeling the Spirit. He came to church yesterday and in priesthood, when they asked if anyone was new, he stood right up and introduced himself. Then the first counselor was like, it's good to have you and we hope to see you again. Then Keith goes, "Oh, you will!!” SO COOL!!! haha he's so solid. I love him too. He lives right behind “T”, so when I walk by I have a hard time. But we told Keith that he could probably baptize “T” when he gets out. Keith is 23.
 I found out this week that I use the same tie knot as President Uchtdorf. So, I'm pretty cool :) On page 12 of the January Ensign, there's a good article about what happy couples do. One of them is go on dates often. So what our district is doing is called 'date night'. On Fri and Wed night from 7 to 8 is where we just invite invite invite people to be baptized. So mom and dad, Friday night can be your guys' date night (Heather and Hailey, you can too. But not V..........) But I think that will be pretty cool.
The work here is awesome. We have some great investigators and I've met a ton of cool people. I love it here. I miss you guys but this is definitely what I’m supposed to be doing. I love it. I love you.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Loving the new area!

FREE MCDONALDS!! FREE MCDONALDS!! FREE MCDONALDS!! FREE MCDONALDS!! FREE MCDONALDS!! FREE MCDONALDS!! FREE MCDONALDS!! I love it here. The bishop of the ward here owns McDonalds so we get free McDonald's whenever we want. I love it. haha. I was sure Bro. Oaks would call you. I was sitting in the back of Bro Oaks car (here) and he was asking me where I was from, and he said he had a brother in Draper. I didn’t think anything of it, but he's like "Yeah, Sterling Oaks" And I was just like what? When I thought about it, they do look similar. But he called him and I talked to him on speaker phone for a bit. It was neat. So I'm here in Wellington FL. It's in the Stuart Zone so it was part of the Orlando mission. I feel like I'm back in America again. I miss Miami but it's good. We work a lot in this way ghetto neighborhood. But there's lots of good people. Like "T". We were knocking doors and we see this boy and girl hanging out in their driveway/parking lot hey're quadplexes? like four houses connected) and we asked if we could bless them. He said yes and went through his window and met us at his front door. He was just there with that girl and like 3 younger siblings. None of them wanted to participate, so it was just us and "T". We blessed him and his home and talked to him for a bit. He said he really needed a blessing. He's on house arrest (we don't know for what) and he's going through a hard time. Before he got arrested, he was looking for a church but he didn't have time. He also tried to get baptized in jail, but no one would. So he was praying that God would help him get out of the situation. So he said being on house arrest was a blessing (he was in jail about 2 months) But he is super humble and is really prepared to get baptized. He wants to get on the right path and he loves us coming over. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost, endure to the end) and he took it all in. We asked him to say the closing prayer and he pleaded God to forgive him for all the wrong that he has done. It was very spiritual. I feel bad, he's only 17 but he just wants to leave his old life and do the right thing. It's really cool. After we blessed him, Friday, we walk out and we see these two huge guys smoking on the driveway. I was feeling so pumped about meeting "T", that I just felt bold enough to go talk to them, thinking I might get punched in the face. One of them was just leaving (the bigger one) but one was like yeah you can bless my home. So James took us to his house (next door to "T") and we blessed his home. He felt the Spirit so strong and after the blessing he said he felt "blessed". We're meeting with him tonight. He's super prepared as well. It's awesome. And it's all in English so I love it. Except, I don’t know if President Anderson told you, but I guess he switched me to a Spanish missionary........................... ugh. So now I'm learning on my own I consider myself born and raised in Miami, I'm not a Utahn anymore. Anything under 60 degrees and I'm freezing. So my new comp is good. He's from Springville. Elder Shaffer. We live in a duplex. And it's just the 2 of us. It's pretty nice. Ah yesterday we went to a member's house to eat and they had the Ravens Texans game on. I saw the play towards the end where Ed Reed picked it off with like a minute left up by 7. He turned it off then but I'm suspecting that was the end. Oh, can you get the David Archuleta Christmas CD and put it on my ipod when i send it back? We had it at our other apt and i really liked it. You guys should read the article on page 101 of the Conference Ensign. It's really really good. That's about it.. Nothing else too exciting. Thanks for everything!
I love you guys!

Love

Elder Jaren Thorne

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

7 Homes Blessed and a Transfer


Welp..I'm being transferred. I don’t know where yet. I don't find out until tomorrow's transfer meeting. I'm excited to see new things. I got all the things you sent. Except the insulin. That was sent to the office but Elder Smith and I weren't able to pick it up so the zone leaders have it in their fridge and I'll get it tomorrow. I will be good til then. Speaking of, I got my first occlusion today. Like 30 min ago. So I'm pretty mad about that since I just changed it yesterday. Last Wednesday, we all went harvesting as a mission from 5-7. We left 7 blessings in that hour, which was our goal. As a mission, our goal was 200. We left 368 blessings! Isn't that cool? We are still following up with those people but none are solid investigators yet. Alejandra still hasn't come to church so she dropped very low on our priority list. It's bad because she was our main focus for like 2 months. So we don't have much other than that. Louis, Suli and Valeria Palma is the family we can only teach on Sunday. They're a referral from the Acosta family in the ward here. We had FHE at the Acosta's with them and taught about the BoM and it was so spiritual. They speak good English so I could teach. Sis Acosta bore an amazing testimony so they're definitely going to get baptized soon. I'm sad I won't be here. I'm about 90% recovered from my cold. So we went to this family from the ward who runs like a restaurant out of their house to eat and there was this old guy there who reminded me of Alex Mihel a ton! haha it was so crazy. But he was from Argentina. Keep my updated on the Jazz! Hopefully it's a good sign and they'll get things turned around. Dad, you should get a new Infiniti M37S. They're super cool. How is Bro Lomu? A brother moved in here from PG and he was on Highland rugby when they made Forever Strong so he knew  him. He's an awesome guy. Welp, next week I'll be in a different place. Crazy! I miss you all and Love you like crazy!!

Love, Elder Thorne

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Cold in Miami?

So first off, today is p day because President changed it. I believe it is because all of the libraries were closed yesterday. So sorry for the lateness. Also, it is so cold! This past week was about 65 degrees and I was dying! I have a cold :( yesterday was miserable but today i feel better. I don't know how I'll ever come back to Utah...  Anyway, the week was good. Mom, thanks for that great surprise! Everyone loved it. That day all day, I was thinking, I'm definitely ordering pizza hut tonight. But I couldn't get the number! So that was definitly inspired. .. So on Sunday, Elder Skousen and I went to PEC and the second counselor asked us if we could help him out with something. Of course we said yes and he asked if we could speak in Sacrament Meeting! Everyone, including the bishopric, thought it was fast Sunday. But when they got there, they looked at the stake calendar and saw that it is next week. So we both spoke on missionary work for about 10 min. each. I thought it went well...

Well, we don't have much work here.. No real solid investigators other than Alejandra and her mom, Patricia (But in the 2 months, they haven't come to church once!!....) So we're really focusing on finding. Especially those who are ready. Actually, we are teaching this dad, mom and daughter who is a referral and we taught them the restoration and they are promising. He can only meet with us on Sundays. That's a little tough. Other than that, all is well. Mama Braithewaite gave me some cold medicine so i'm taken care of :) thanks for everything and i miss you all!! I Love you!