Elder Jantsen Thorpe August 2017-2019: A bunch of changes!

Hey gang!

This week on #whatsmysnack we have a heart shaped pizza! On Valentines Day we were planning on eating dinner with the North Elders, but we weren't sure what to eat so we decided to order a pizza. While ordering the pizza the lady asked Elder Hollist if we wanted to make it a heart shaped pizza for Valentine's Day. So Elder Hollist said, "Flip yeah we want to make it heart shaped!" Haha! So my man elder Hollist got us a heart pizza to celebrate V-day!

This week was kind of uneventful. All of our investigators are very slowly progressing. A is still very spotty at messaging us so it's made it really difficult to figure out his baptism and everything. As a matter of fact, most of our investigators are really bad at getting back to our messages haha. On Thursday we were tracting in an area and we stopped to talk to this lady in front of her house. We asked her if she was religious and she said, "Honey, I'd probably catch fire if I walked into a church!" Then her husband/boyfriend came out onto the porch and yelled at us asking who we were. The lady told him we were from a church and so he said, "we've already got a church, we worship satan, we have a pentagram on the floor, get out of here!" Good ol Illinois. After this happened I felt pretty crappy. Just a few minutes after this I had a cool experience, though. We were planning to just keep tracting all the way around this block, but I noticed there was a little alley way that cut through. I felt prompted that we should go through there. It was pretty sketchy looking so I wrestled with this prompting a little, but then I decided to listen to it. I told Elder Bagley I felt like we should go that way and he said, "Are you sure?" And I said yep, so we went. Towards the end of the alley there was a guy working on a car. We stopped and started talking to him. His name is T, he has a wife and 5 kids ranging 3-11. He has a strong faith in Christ and asked us for some pamphlets to study. He then told us we could come over and teach his family! This little 1 hour tracting experience I think sums up most of the mission. You will have some pretty tough times but there will always be awesome spiritual experiences that outweigh the bad ones.

Pretty crazy I hit my 6 month mark on Friday! The first couple months of the mission seemed to kind of drag on, but these last few have really flown by! Friday night the North elders came over and we had the ceremonial tie burning. Good times.

We got transfer calls on Saturday and a lot is changing here in Rockford! Elder Bagley will be leaving and going to Peoria. I will be taking the reins here in Rockford as the new District Leader and I will also be training a brand new missionary! I'm pretty pumped! Unfortunately my main man Elder Hollist will being heading down to Oswego! It will be really weird not having him and elder Bagley here, but change is good!

Elder Thorpe