Another great week in Joliet!

Hey Gang! 

This week on #whatsmysnack we have, in honor of Halloween, a scary bag of Haunted Ghost Pepper tortilla chips! These were given to us by a philippino family in our ward. Apparently they got a couple bags and the son tried a chip and was like, "Dad, these are too spicy. I can't eat them. Give them to the missionaries!" haha! So he did and we all tried them and daaaaang! Luckily I only had about half a chip, but my face was sweating bullets after that! The warning on the back pretty much says it all!

So we had another great week in Joliet! The temperature is beginning to drop over here, the warmest it got this past week was 43 degrees, and that wind is a killer! I am in need of a good warm beanie to keep my ears warm, so the newer missionaries in Joliet are going to get some winter stuff today. In the mean time, however, I got really good at riding my bike with no hands so that I can cover my ears while I ride, to keep them warm haha! One of the highlights of the week (outside of our awesome missionary work) was  that a member took Elder Kish and I to the Harrahs casino, never thought I would go to a casino on the mish, but I did! We went for the buffet they have there. It was so good! They had crab legs and I was in heaven! The member who took us, brother Ranchero, asked me how I could possibly eat so much and still be so skinny, haha.

This week I gained a strong testimony that I truly was called by God to serve in this exact location! I know without a doubt that this is exactly where I'm supposed to be right now, and that there are specific people here that I can influence and who can influence me! The first experience I had was in a couple lessons we had with Louie this week! He was asking some difficult questions and I wasn't sure how to answer them, so while he was asking them I prayed to have the Holy Ghost with me and that words would be put into my mouth. Almost immediately after I prayed, an experience I've had with sports came to my mind. I shared the experience and it was perfect, Louie said a couple times, "yes, exactly, that's how I feel!" It was awesome. I know I was sent here to help Louie! The other experience I had was with a member. I've mentioned before the amazing Abbene family who feeds us every Thursday. I can recall the first dinner I had with them and I remember Sister Abbene looking me in the eyes for a little while and saying, "I really like you, I just met you, but I really like you." I thought it was a little weird at the time haha. But at church yesterday she came up to me and said, " Elder Thorpe, I've been wanting to tell you ever since you walked in my house for dinner the first time, I've felt very strongly connected with you." She told me she has never felt this connection with any other missionary (and she has been feeding missionaries every Thursday for about 7 years). She kept saying to me, "I know that we are related, its either that or I feel like we knew each other and were very close in the pre existence!" It was a pretty cool experience for me because she is such an amazing woman with a super super strong testimony! Anyways, I know that Heavenly Father is working in my life, and he has put me right where I need to be! I hope everyone has an awesome week!

Elder Thorpe

Haunted Ghost Pepper tortilla chips!

Closest we can get to water.

Some beautiful scenery

New whip who dis?

Read the Book of Mormon!!!

Hey Gang!

This week on #whatsmysnack I have to do one for Mom... Mom check out how healthy I'm being!  I have no problem eating carrots everyday, but the broccoli I have to choke down! I'm not going to tell you how much ranch I use with the broccoli... in fact the ranch probably counteracts the healthiness of the broccoli but I mean c'mon, ya gotta do whatcha gotta do!

This first week of the transfer was solid! We got 2 fresh Elders in the area, Elder Einboden is training one and Elder Ruiz and Elder Aguirre are trio training the other one. Elder Butler is with Elder Einboden and he is way cool, I like him a lot. He is from Lehi and went to Skyridge! He's a funny guy and I'm excited to work around him! Elder Yount is the new Spanish Elder and he's from Gilbert, Arizona! He's hilarious, too, so it's going to be a fun transfer! Because our district was so huge, President Griffin showed up at our district meeting and he interviewed Elder Kish and told him he was going to split the district in half and he would be the district leader for the English district. So our district went from 13 missionaries to 6! I'm happy for Elder Kish though, he really wanted to be district leader!

On Saturday we had an exchange with the zone leaders, I went with Elder Westenskow. Of course elder Kish wanted to take the car so Elder Westenskow and I were going to ride bikes because we were going to be working pretty far from our apartment. However Elder Westenskow made a promise to himself he won't ride a bike the rest of his mission... don't ask why because I honestly couldn't tell ya haha. So we walked. I felt like that primary song that we would sing about how the pioneers "walked and walked and walked and walked". It was pretty exhausting but I had a ton of fun! Elder Westenskow is really cool and we were able to talk about a ton of stuff as we walked! It was a great exchange too, we found a couple promising potential investigators!

Our ward mission leader got released yesterday so we got a new one, it should be really good for us, I'm excited. We had Sunday dinner at the Malley's(our old ward mission leader) and dang they make the best food! They have a bunch of kids from age 12 down to 2! Dinner wasnt done yet when we got there so we went outside and jumped on the tramp with their sons haha it was so fun! One of their sons who is 4 said to me while we were jumping, "you need to quit being an elder so you can come over and play with me everyday" haha then he gave me a big hug when we left!

 The work is going well and I'm loving it out here in Joliet! I hope everyone has a great week! Read the Book of Mormon!!! It will work wonders in your lives!

Elder Thorpe

Carrots and Broccoli with Ranch Dressing...

Found a cool bike path in the forest.

After our exchange with Elder Champneys and Elder Westenskow

I love the Gospel and the joy it brings...

Hey gang!

This week on #whatsmysnack there were a couple pretty awesome things I could have put on here, so I'll save one for next week. But this week's is a pretty dang good steak and cilantro quesadilla I made! The steak and cilantro came from dinner we had at a members home, the Abbenes (amazing people by the way), they sent us home with left over steak, cilantro and tortillas. Of course, you can't just eat a quesadilla plain, so I've got my hot sauce to give it a little something extra! I'm not sure what happened, but something changed in me and I really enjoy hot sauce now! Elder Aguirre put some on a quesadilla he made me the first week here and there was no going back!

Another week has flown by and I've officially been out for 2 months and 1 transfer! I'm learning so much out here its crazy.  For example, Elder Aguirre taught me how to play HUMBLE by Kendrick Lamar on the piano lol! And it was another great week of missionary work! Elder Kish and I found 5 new investigators this week which was awesome! Our goal was 4!  So the beginning of this week was great, we had tons of lessons and a lot of stuff to do! The last couple days however, not so much. We were hit with a pretty good thunderstorm!  It rained like crazy and there was a lot of lightning, we live across from the high school so I could see out my window that there was a soccer game still going on during it and I just thought, dang, Lisa Walker would have never allowed that haha! So we had to mostly stay inside on Friday and Saturday because of the weather. We did go out on our bikes for a little on Friday and I had my first bike crash haha! I was definitely watched over and protected! We were riding, Elder Kish was inhead (I used inhead on purpose mom;)) of me and our phone rang in my pocket so I yelled to him that we were getting a call. I look down to pull it out of my pocket not seeing that he had stopped and wasn't looking at me. I looked up just in time to slam on my breaks with the one hand I had on the handlebars, which of course was my front breaks! I was definitely watched over and protected because, by a miracle, I flew over my handlebars and landed on my feet! I got a bruise on my leg and that's it, the bike went flying though and got pretty scraped up. But then I answered the phone and talked to our investigator like nothing happened haha. 

Today is the start of my 2nd transfer! We had transfer calls on Saturday and Elder Kish and I did not get a call, so we will be staying here for at least another transfer. Elder Hanks is leaving and Elder Einboden is getting to train a new missionary. The Spanish elders are staying, which I'm pumped about, and they will be training a new missionary as well, in a trio! I'm so excited to stay here and continue working with my investigators. I've seen a lot of power come from the Book of Mormon this week, I love that book so much and can't imagine not reading it every day! I've received so much inspiration and revelation for myself, my investigators and also for some people back home who I've been prompted to share it with! I love the gospel and the joy it brings to people's lives! 
I love and miss you all! Have a great week!

Elder Thorpe

Homemade Steak and Cilantro Quesadilla

Entrance to the Joliet Slammers Baseball Park

Used every last drop of our pumpkin frosting candle.

Sister Abbene gave me a mango!

Last picture with the District.

We are now an online proselyting mission!

Hey gang!

This week on #whatsmysnack we have some Oberweis chocolate milk! Nick and Brooks, you two would absolutely love this stuff!! It is some very rich, very creamy and very delicious chocolate milk! Elder Kish couldn't stop talking about it ever since he got here so he bought some for us last week and it definitely didn't disappoint. The only way I can describe it is, it tastes like melted chocolate ice cream! It's pretty great.

Well, this week really flew by! This week we officially became an online proselyting mission! So I get to use my Facebook to get in contact with investigators and we can now do Skype calls to investigators for lessons if they aren't available for us to physically come to their house! Weekly planning also got totally changed which is really nice. It used to be we had to go through all 13 steps in preach my gospel but now it's much more personalized to our investigators. It's supposed to make weekly planning a lot shorter, which It does depending on how many investigators you have. So for Elder Kish and I we have roughly 19 investigators we have to talk about haha so it's still pretty long! It rained pretty much all week and we got caught out riding our bikes in a couple storms which was crazy! 
We had a lesson with our investigator Rose and her two sons John and Rico. Rose is a single mom with an 18 yr old, 9 yr old, 7 yr old, 6 yr old, 4 yr old, and a 2 month old baby! Yeah that house is insane. It's impossible to teach her when all her kids are home so we go over twice in one day to teach her in the morning without the kids and once later to teach John and Rico. Rose, John and Rico all have baptismal dates for January 6! 
We also taught Stanley again. Stanley has a cousin that he lives with who can get on Stanley's nerves haha. He likes to come in and make jokes during our lessons and Stanley tells him to leave because he is learning, it's awesome. After we left Elder Kish asked who that guy that kept coming in was, and I felt like Jack Black from School of Rock (haha) I wanted to say, "that's yo yo ma's cousin, lil nepotiz!" 

This week I really realized that Heavenly Father truly has a plan for all of us. Last Monday evening we had a couple lessons planned that we were really excited about. We went to the first one and they weren't home which was a bummer, then on our way to the next one they texted us and cancelled. We were pretty bummed and didn't know what to do. As we were sitting there I had a very strong prompting from the spirit to go and visit Louie who is the guy who we met last week who asked us some difficult, deep questions. So we went to his house and right as I knocked on his door he opened it! He was just walking outside to sit and he was so excited to see us! We sat and talked with him for a while and he said he was sorry he wasn't able to make it to conference. We set up a meeting with him and the bishop that he was wanting and answered more of his questions. The next day he met with the bishop and us and it went super well, he got a lot of his questions answered. We then had a lesson with him on Friday and taught the restoration and it went super well.  He then came to church yesterday and enjoyed it. He told us he wants to continue to learn and come to church because he really wants to find out the truth. I'm so pumped for him! Anyways I now realize that those lessons Monday evening fell through because Heavenly Father had a different plan and that we needed to be with Louie! God works in mysterious ways, but as we put our faith in him, he will direct our paths!

Elder Thorpe

Oberweis chocolate milk

Making banana pancakes

Nothing like biking in the rain.

Got caught in a pretty gnarly head on rain storm.

West Joliet Tiger Stadium!

Elder Kish and I waiting for the North Elders to pick us up this morning

This week was like an ice cream sundae!

Hey gang! 

This week on #whatsmysnack we have a Chicago masterpiece. The famous deep dish "meat and more meat" pizza from Giordanos! It's about $35 for a large pizza but worth every penny! It contains a whole lot of cheese, a whole lot of meat, and it is a whole lot of delicious! Giordanos is famous for their "cheese pull pictures" and you can see why! 

This week was like an ice cream sundae, a ton of good missionary work and general conference was the cherry on top! I hope you all got to watch it! Haha I think this was the first general conference that I stayed awake and watched every single speaker! We went and watched it at the church building and the first session it was just us, the North elders, the Spanish elders and the hermanas! The other sessions we had some investigators come watch! Watching the priesthood session was super weird to me because I was used to having to show up an hour earlier just to get a good seat at the packed stake center. Here we got there about 2 minutes early and there was about 10 people total who watched with us. How awesome is it that we get to hear from the general authorities every 6 months!? We missionaries were challenged to go into conference with 3 questions. It's amazing how no matter what your questions are, they will be answered through what the general authorities say as well as through what the spirit says to you. One thing that I really liked was what Bishop Waddell said, "we cannot control what happens to us, but we have absolute control of how we respond." And "turning to our savior is always our best option"

I don't know what it was but we found a lot of solid investigators this week. We went on exchanges on Wednesday because Elder Kish hadn't been on one this transfer. So the first half of the day I was with Elder Aguirre who is super cool, we get along really well. He came out the transfer before me so he is still being trained too. He is a great missionary, he isn't afraid to talk to anyone! The second half of the day I was with Elder Ruiz, our district leader. We had such a cool experience. We went to visit a Hispanic lady in this Hispanic area and after elder Ruiz asked me which street I wanted to tract and street contact on, we only had time for 1 street because it was getting late. I picked a street and we started walking down it and only about the 3rd house in there was a guy sitting on his front porch looking at his computer. Elder Ruiz said hi to him and kept walking, I felt prompted to ask him if there was anything we could do for him and he said, "yeah, can you teach me something?" Haha I was so surprised I said "what" and he said "aren't you teaching about your church or something?" So I was like yeah haha we'd love to teach you something. We ended up sitting down with him on his front porch and talking with him for almost an hour and a half. He had so many questions that were pretty deep. He shared with us basically his whole life story and how he has been to prison 3 times and he's only 27. He had been researching a lot about religion because he really wants to know the truth. He asked us some difficult deep questions, but elder Ruiz and I were able to answer them. At the end I testified to him that Jesus Christ sent us to him at this specific time because we have what he needs. It was super powerful. He told us he had talked to a lot of people from different churches and asked them the same questions he asked us and we were the first ones to ever get through all of his questions. The last thing he said was "I'm really interested in your church and I want to learn more and find out if it's legit" it was so sweet! I'm really excited to keep teaching him! 

I hope everyone has a fantastic week!

Elder Thorpe

Meat and more meat pizza!

The Church is true and the book is blue!

New bike who dis?

Conference with the boys

Work hard play hard

Go Bears!

Some pics of the apartment

Baptism of Catera and Shondora