June 30, 2014

Hey Thorne Fam!

Well, President and Sister Woodbury are officially home safe in Salt Lake City, Utah. We will miss them terribly. I know I already do. :( We now have President and Sister Brough! I haven't gotten to meet them yet, we will do so Wednesday at Zone meeting, but I've heard from everyone that he's really awesome and exactly what this mission needs. I'm so excited to get to officially meet our new mission parents!

So this past week has been a really good week for us! Well... it started really really REALLY crazy, but after priesthood blessings for both Sister Minson and I, it got much better. So in explanation, Sister Minson and I got a referral for two teenagers last weekend and we contacted them via phone and they both seemed really excited. We got there and the parents were leaving, taking the two younger kids to dinner and said the two older ones were inside and excited to meet with us. The parents were also really kind. It was a trap. We got in and Jailyn (14) and Justin (17) talked to us for an hour and a half about how we were wrong, going to hell and have been deceived by Satan. They had a paper with scriptures to "prove" this to us. They are southern Baptist. We can only assume their pastor or parents put them up to this to "pit" their testimonies against ours... Sister Minson and I left, very very shook up and heart broken to be told such awful things from the mouths of children. We both ended the night in tears. Tuesday, we got priesthood blessings from a ward member and from there the week just got better and better. Wednesday was a little rough, but Friday and Saturday ended by running from appointment to appointment with miracles and great experiences at each. Opposition in all things. :)

Other than that, we are officially passing Chris off to the Louisville Singles Elders (aka the Assistants) because he is 26 and has a major crush on a woman in our ward and may have a crush on us. So we figured the Elders would be a much better fit for him. We will pass him off to them on Wednesday.

Misty, has had a really rough week. Her father passed away Saturday night but she's handling things pretty well. He's had cancer since December. We got her a priesthood blessing from Bishop and the Rolling Hills Elders during Sunday School and have been staying in contact with her.

Other than that, we've been meeting with a lot of LA's and working a lot from that angle. We will see how it goes!

Sounds like everyone is doing great on the home front! Staying SUPER busy and having many adventures! I hope they are being written down in journals! Please tell Elisa welcome for me and I really wish I could get to know her more. She sounds super adorable!

Love you all so much! Talk to you next week!

Love always,

Sister Thorne

We got a birdfeeder this week and we got to see a beautiful blue jay!!!! They and the Cardinals are my favorite. :) This is Tipsy. As you may be able to see, he constantly feels like he's going to fall so he always keeps one wing slightly unfolded, just in case. His lack of balance earned him the name Tipsy. He's my favorite. :) 

 Someone learned how to hijack our BIRDfeeder...... Silly Squeakers. 

We taught the Sharing Time lesson yesterday so we talked about writing the name tag on your heart and being an example. We also talked about the importance of the 2 different names on a missionary name tag: your family, Christ and the church. It was fun!