Hey ya'll!
So this was a busy and crazy week, adjusting to a new area and a new
companion! We had a lot of stuff go on! Ya'll ready for this?!
Monday was transfer day. We were up at 6 and out the door at 7 to head
down to the 18th St. building so I could get on a van to go down
south. We were on the van for a long time (2-3 hours) and we ended up
driving through my new area, just like last transfer! When we got to
the transfer spot in Medford, there were actually a ton of
missionaries that I actually recognized and knew! Elder Peas, a senior
missionary, took my stuff back to Central Point and it turns out, he
did a lot of work in North Dakota! After we unloaded my things, we
went grocery shopping at Wal-Mart and then headed to the stake center
to email. After dinner we tried to see a couple of potential
investigators that we have but no one answered the door.
Tuesday we walked down to the temple to go help with the grounds!
On
the way there, the ZL's texted us and told us that Elder Galloway had
district leader training so that delayed us doing service for a little
bit. We pulled out a bush and worked on getting all these annoying
little plants out so the grounds crew could plant some new plants. On
the way back to our apartment, we had two appointments cancel so I
took the time to unpack all my stuff before heading out. We tried to
contact people up until dinner but we didn't quite see the people we
wanted to. We did stumble on a member of the ward who is less-active
while looking for an investigator! After dinner we had a couple of
lessons set up with members so we could really get to know the ward.
We had a blast with the Cop***'s, talking about the gospel and other
things! We shared the "You Never Know" video and they really enjoyed
it. We then ended our night with the Day family. We had a
missionary-specific lesson set up for them and we had some awesome
discussions about missionary work as a member and other things!
Wednesday we got on the bikes and biked to the east side of our area
to try to set up appointments with some potential investigators.
Unfortunately, they either were not interested or had moved out and
not interested haha! We then biked over to a neighborhood closer to
our apartment and tried seeing some members to set up a family home
evening with them but they were not home either! It is almost as if
people work during the day haha! :) After lunch we went on foot to the
west side of our area. On our way there, we walked past a group of
high schoolers and one of them looked at my bag (which I had strapped
around my waist to help my back) and said "nice fanny pack!", thinking
that he would get a reaction or something I don't know! I just laughed
and said thanks! We then talked to an investigator who said she was
too busy at the moment for missionaries to come by. Bummer! As we were
heading to our appointment with a guy named Jay, the sisters pulled up
and gave us a referral! Our lesson with Jay went well! He is a big
dude covered in tattoos but he is an awesome guy! He had some big dogs
too! We read some scriptures with him and invited him to the baptism
the sisters were having on Saturday but his kids have a wrestling
tournament that whole weekend. After we taught Jay, we went to the
Twin Creeks neighborhood to see some members and set up FHE's with
them. We had dinner with an older couple who were actually engaged
when the husband was called to serve a mission! I thought that was
pretty cool! After dinner, Brother Ped*** drove us to another
member's house who let us in but had to get going to Mutual. We had an
appointment with a couple in the ward in an hour so we went and street
contacted on the way to their home. We walked past a basketball court
and there was a guy shooting a basketball in the light drizzle. We
talked to him and shot hoops with him for a couple of minutes.
Although he wasn't interested in our message, we hope that we
nourished a seed that was already planted by missionaries he had met
before! The family home evening we had with the Goe*** family was
awesome! Brother Goe*** was going to the temple for the first time
Thursday and so we were able to talk to him and Sister Goe*** about
their conversions!
Thursday we had weekly planning so that took up our morning. We had an
appointment set up with a member to come over and introduce ourselves
to him so we hopped on the bikes and biked over to his home. Brother
Skin*** was pretty cool! He served in the Vietnam War! Anyways, on our
way back, I noticed my pedal wasn't rotating as it should have. It got
worse as we got closer to the freeway and I noticed that the pedal was
stripping the crank bar! I was praying the whole time that my pedal
would stay in long enough to get over the freeway and we were about
less than a block away when it finally popped off. Luckily, we have an
investigator who works on bikes and has fixed Elder Galloway's bike
before for cheap so we are taking that to him on Saturday. We left our
bikes at the apartment and walked over to see Dana. We watched
President Eyring's talk at the Vatican Summit and talked about how the
world is changing according to the wishes of the people and not the
Lord. We went back to the apartment and got changed into our suits for
preparation for stake correlation. The stake president shared a pretty
cool story about his mission in Scotland and we talked about the work
in the Central Point zone/stake. When Elder Galloway and I walked out,
the member who was going to the temple with the Goe*** and had to
cancel dinner was standing there with a pizza and some root beer! We
did a dry run for the baptism on Saturday and it is going to be
interesting to see how it works out! Nikki, the sister who is getting
dunked, has severe MS and so we are having to take a lot of
precautions and safety measures to ensure her safety. Elder Galloway
was supposed to interview her at 7 but she could not make it so we had
correlation to finish our night.
Friday I hit my six month mark! Holy cow the time has flown by. We had
district meeting in the morning and it was Elder Galloway's first ever
district meeting as a district leader and he knocked it out of the
park! We talked a lot about how we could work better with the members
and also the ward councils. We went to Sonic for lunch! Oh I was SO
excited! We have the only Sonic in our mission if I remember
correctly! After lunch we came back to the apartment and I burned an
old tie that I found in a closet here in Central Point. It didn't burn
very well though but that is ok! I still burned a tie at my six month
mark! After the burning of the tie, we went to Nikki's home for her
baptismal interview. She had quite the collection of country music,
especially George Strait! Afterwards, Elder Peas needed help moving a
couch from a widowed sister's home. It took a little longer than we
expected (we had to take the door and the legs off) and so it took us
right to dinner. While we were there, we got a call from an officer
saying that there were shots fired at the apartment complex across the
street and was asking if we could check for bullet holes in our
apartment! Apparently some lady got into a fight with her boyfriend
and tried killing herself... she missed herself five times! Luckily,
we did not have any bullet holes in our apartment. Dinner took longer
than expected so we only had a short window at the end of the night to
go try talk to people. It got really rainy so we took shelter for a
couple of minutes at the Abby's pizza town. We have an investigator
that we normally see Friday's but we couldn't see him.
Saturday was pretty dang awesome. We went to the Calvary Temple Church
food pantry and helped deliver the food to the people's cars. It was
awesome hearing the members of this church telling us how much they
appreciate us helping them out! While we were there, Elder Peas called
and asked us to help move another couch from the sister's home. We did
it much faster than we did the other night and then had lunch with
Adam B. He got reactivated a while ago and is now looking to
receive the Melchizedek Priesthood! We shared D&C 84 with him, a
couple chapters in the Gospel Principles book, and a Mormon Message!
He got super pumped up to progress in the Church!! We walked back to
our apartment and got dressed for Nikki's baptism! We had a light
dinner with the Sta***'s and while we were there, Brother Sta*** asked
his neighbor, who fixes bikes for St. Vincent de Pauls, if he could
fix my bike and he said yes! We had to leave early to get to Medford
because the font is bigger and better there so we arrived at the stake
center at 5:30 and we were one of the first ones. Elder Galloway and I
got dressed and man I was getting nervous! This was my first time
being in the font for a baptism! Nikki showed up and she got dressed
in no time for pictures. We had meticulously planned out how the
baptism was going to go, especially with getting her in the font.
Well, I witnessed a miracle. Not only did she walk into the font, she
walked out of the font (with help, but we were planning on carrying
her up and down the stairs). In the font, she had this big smile on
her face and I knew she was feeling the Spirit. She is such a sweet
spirit. The Bishop was talking about how she was able to walk and be
able to be baptized and she said something I will probably never
forget. She looked up and said "Yes, I did it. I believe!". It was a
brief testimony but to hear her say that with everything that the MS
is doing to her body was powerful. We came to Central Point and went
to a fireside that was being held at our church building. A young man
named Luis Be*** was talking about his experiences growing up in
Africa and watching his mom, dad, and older brother all die. His
brother was preparing to serve a mission and that made Luis curious.
He got baptized and his brother served until he got sick and ended up
passing away. It was amazing to hear his story and his faith in the
gospel. He had gone through so much yet was adopted by a LDS family in
Arizona, went to BYU (and I swear I had him in a class or saw him at
the Y) and even went on a mission to the California Ventura Mission
(he said it was paradise and the Riverside mission was close to
paradise!). It was an amazing opportunity to hear from him.
Sunday morning Brother Sta*** came to our place and picked up us and
our bikes to get them to his neighbor who fixes bikes. It looked as
though I was going to get out of this without paying a penny but the
crank bar he had didn't fit on my bike. We had lunch and had some time
to get ready for church. When we got to the church, we greeted people
at the door. When we got the programs to hand out, I looked at it and
saw that they had misspelled my name, spelling it with an O at the end
instead of an I! To make it worse, the Bishop pronounced my name the
way it was spelled in the program over the pulpit! It was Invitation
Sunday so all the missionaries got to speak. I spoke about faith and I
thought it was a pretty good talk! After three hours of hearing the
gospel and trying to help people pronounce my last name, church ended
and we went back to the apartment. We walked pretty much the rest of
the day. We tried to see one of our progressing investigators but he
wasn't home but we were able to catch another one of our investigators
and taught them a little bit about prayer and man it was a good time
for it! They had just lost a friend and needed prayers and comfort so
we were able to help them out.
It has been a great first week here in the Central Point 2nd Ward! I
am so grateful to be here! I love being on a mission soo much! It is
blessing my life immensely and I hope I am a blessing to the members
and the bishopric! I know that this church is true! My Savior and
Redeemer lives! There is no doubt!
Love you all! Hope you have a fantastic week!
Elder Tonini
Hey everyone!
So this was a very interesting week!
Monday after we emailed we went to the mall so Elder Bassett and Elder
Cook could get some things they needed. While we were there, we met
Santa! He is a member in a ward down south and was in one of Elder
Cook's old wards. We went into JC Penny and they had their clearance
tie section so I was looking through that and I found a $30 tie that
was marked down to four bucks! I was doubtful, however, and asked the
lady at the check-out if she could check the price on the tie. As it
turns out, the tie was actually $2.49! SWEET! After the mall we went
to the stake center to play sports with the other elders in the zone.
We started off playing basketball and then we played some dodgeball!
Man, I have not thrown that much in a long time! We came back to
Junction City for dinner with the Fr*** and we ended up teaching a
short lesson out of Preach My Gospel! They were super pumped up to do
missionary work after the stake conference we had this weekend and
wanted to learn more about how to introduce the gospel to those they
meet!
Tuesday was Veterans Day. I want to take a quick second to thank all
those who have served our country! I am so proud to have the
grandparents that I have who were both in the military and I thank
them especially for their service. It was super cold all day and
sunny, which made for an absolutely beautiful day! Unfortunately we
did not have much go for us early in the day but we had the
opportunity to help a less active member named Cami start her move to
St. George, Utah. Her father came up from St. George to help her with
the move and we connected pretty well. I ended up bragging to him
about my awesome siblings as I helped him organize the truck! I also
ended up taking a bed apart by myself! One hand holding the headboard
and the other hand unscrewing screws out of the bed posts! It was a
great workout to say the least haha! After dinner with the Hi*** we
went and saw Dotti to see how she was doing. Knowing that she has had
a rough couple of weeks, we shared with her a quote by Elder Jeffrey
R. Holland about enduring to the end and she really enjoyed it!
Wednesday we got into service clothes to go over to Cami's at 10 to
help her continue her move. We got there at 10 and they were basically
already done so we went to the church and did Facebook for a little
bit before lunch. We had a lesson with Charlotte scheduled for early
in the afternoon but something came up and she couldn't meet with us.
We decided to go share a Mormon message with Bob and Margret before we
got ready to go to Camp Alpine for the rest of the day. Elder Tucker
came and picked us up around 2:30 and took us up there. Upon arrival
at Camp Alpine, Elder Cook and I decided we were going to go around
with Elder Tolman and get some wood that they had cut up around the
property. The first load was pretty easy; pretty level ground and the
wood was relatively light. The second load, however, was tough! The
load was next to the lake down a small hillside. With me being the
biggest and having the shoes with better grip, I decided to go down
and haul/throw the wood up. It was probably the toughest workout I
have had on my mission haha! I was battling the mud and the incline as
I was throwing up stumps of wood to Elder Cook and then he had to deal
with hauling the wood through the mud. During this, I was trying to
throw up another stump when I lost my balance. I fell forward but the
incline threw me down the hill and onto the other stumps. Luckily, I
was only battered and I didn't hit anything important on the wood! We
wrapped up the second load and got it unloaded before doing a third
load near the other elders. We split wood using the splitter and I got
to split some wood with an axe before dinner, which consisted of
Hawaiian haystacks! We got back into Junction City at the end of the
evening and we tried to go see Dotti again but she was passed out!
After all that work at Camp Alpine, I was sore and extremely tired and
promptly fell asleep after planning!
Thursday was my first taste of the cold rainy weather of Oregon! We
had weekly planning in the morning. As we were doing our weekly
planning, the potential investigator that we had a lesson planned with
for today canceled because her and her family were sick. We decided
after lunch to go see Brother Thorenson and share a lesson with him.
While we were there, we had ANOTHER lesson cancel on us. Bummer! So
after Brother Thor***'s, us and the other Elders went up to
Harrisburg to search out the less actives and also try to see some of
the people that other missionaries had visited with in the past. The
couple of people we tried to go see before helping out with Gle*** either had a bad address listed or just weren't home. We did our
service at Gle*** before dinner.
Friday we had district meeting in the morning. We talked about how to
get the members more involved in missionary work. After district
meeting, we had a pizza party because our whole zone got the mileage
reports turned in on time!
After we stuffed ourselves with pizza, we
got dressed in service clothes to go clean a house. This house wasn't
just any old house however. It was a hoarder house!! There were
newspapers and other things EVERYWHERE at least 4 inches deep. It took
a crew of about 13 elders 15 minutes before we could even see carpet.
There were a lot of things that we saw that I am not going to include
in the email because....it is disturbing. You really don't want to
know!
Afterwards, we helped Elder Bassett do his last exchange with
the 3rd ward Elders and headed back up to Junction City for a much
needed shower! We had an excellent dinner at Abby's, a pizza chain
that is pretty popular apparently in Oregon. With most of our lessons
bailing and Friday night being the night when leadership positions are
called, we decided to take an invitation to go play dodge ball at the River Road building to be able to get an inside scoop on who is
leaving and who is staying. By the end of dodge ball, two of the
district leaders were called to be zone leaders in Springfield and
Klamath Falls (one being Elder Bassett!) Elder Cook and I did not
receive a call from President Russell or the AP's so we had to wait
until Saturday!
Saturday we headed down to Santa Clara to exchange Elder Watson back
for Elder Bassett and to go to a baptism that the 6th ward Elders were
having. After the the baptism, almost the whole zone was in the Young
Women's room to see who was being transferred. The Junction City Elders were the last two sets of missionaries and with us knowing
Elder Enman was staying and Elder Bassett was leaving, it came down to
me and Elder Cook. I was then told I was going down to Central Point
2nd ward with Elder Galloway, who actually went to the same high
school as Elder West! This is my first six-week hitch of my mission!
After we found out where everyone was going, we went back to Junction
City and got some stuff Elder Bassett and I needed for the weekend. We
had a great lesson with Charlotte at 3 o'clock! We went over the
chapters she read and shared a Mormon Message about praying to know
what path we should take. I got to bear my testimony of the
truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and the importance of prayer! We
saw a couple families in the ward before dinner and then we were
invited for a volleyball night at the church. Since we normally did
basketball, we agreed and played some volleyball with some of the ward
members to end the night.
Sunday all we pretty much did was pack. We had a couple families to go
see and had an opportunity to give a blessing. Other than, I have
nothing else to report!
I am in the transfer van right now. It is awesome having iPads on the
mission because I get to read emails and letters in the van. I am
grateful for this wonderful thing called the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I
am grateful for the Atonement and that we are being prepared everyday,
if we do the right things, to live with our Heavenly Father.
I love all of you! Have a great week and I will talk to you next Monday!
Elder Tonini
When Joseph Smith was imprisoned in Liberty Jail, he asked Heavenly Father how much longer he and the Saints had to suffer. In response, Heavenly Father said "my son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment" (D&C 121:7). We all go through trials in our lives but as we endure to the end and keep pushing forward, we will be blessed. Maybe not now or tomorrow or even next year, but there is "help and happiness ahead" as we endure our trials with faith!
#keepthefaith #endure2theend
Hey all!
So yeah this week was a decent week. We didn't have too many lessons
unfortunately but we have a lot of good potential for the following
week! You ready? Leggo!
Monday after emailing we did our usual grocery shopping and playing
basketball at the stake center. We didn't do much that evening because
of the late dinner we had with a family in the ward! The other Elders
had taken the car to go run some errands and it took longer than
expected so we were a couple minutes late. The greatest thing about
Monday was I came home and I saw two packages on our doorstep! It was
a box from Aunt Sheryl and a box of cookies from Mom and Dad! And I
got a letter from Grandma! So it was a pretty great day!
Tuesday we had our normal studies before heading down to Santa Clara
for our zone training meeting and specialized training with President
and Sister Russell and the AP's. Before the ZTM, Elder Cook and I
ordered some new nametags and then we went to Goodyear for an oil
change and tire rotation. At the ZTM, we had a couple of lessons from
the zone leaders and Sister training leaders before hearing from Elder
Argyle and Sister Russell. I really enjoyed the message the zone
leaders shared with us about building a celestial area and how we as
missionaries can do that. We then heard from President Russell and he
went into so much depth about the Plan of Salvation that my head
almost exploded. It was insanely awesome! He also challenged us to
stretch ourselves and set a new standards of excellence for the
mission. Elder Bassett and Enman did an exchange with the Santa Clara
3rd ward elders and Elder Fernilius. We had an appointment set up with
Charlotte but she canceled so we tried to see people to end our night.
Wednesday after studies we set out for the church to work on a
Facebook post for both of us. On our way to the church, we found a
drainage ditch that had some water in it that Elder Cook eventually
used as part of his post about sin and the Atonement. As we were
taking pictures, we had more flyovers by military jets! It has been
crazy how many planes we have had flying over the past couple of
weeks. After we did our posts, we saw Bob and Margret and Elder Cook
and I had the opportunity to bear our testimonies of the Savior. We
walked back to our apartment and got changed for Camp Alpine. Elder
Cook and I threw wood onto a trailer and stacked some wood in a wood
shed. There might be a time lapse video included later! We had dinner
with the senior couples and we learned about how the temples used to
work back in the day, like how you had to get a temple recommend for
EACH temple and such! It was pretty enlightening!
Thursday we had weekly planning in the morning and spent our afternoon
trying to see some potentials before we headed up to Gle***.
Gle*** took a lot longer than expected because they had their
monthly meeting that took FOREVER so we were only there helping for
less than 30 minutes. We didn't have much going on for us that day...
a lot of appointments fell through...again.
Friday we had a great day of going through our potential and formers
list planned out.... annnnddd it didn't happen. We went to the church
to plot out where people lived and we realized several things while we
were doing this;
1. Multiple people live 30 minutes or more away from us
2. A couple of addresses were bad
3. The map function on our AreaBook app can't plot addresses very well
So because of the three reasons above, we didn't do much finding. We
helped out Brother Thor*** at the church for a little bit and super
glued Elder Cooks shoes back together (his dad is sending him a new
pair; his sole on one shoe isn't connected to the rest of the shoe).
After dinner, the other Elders picked us up with sad looks on their
faces. Upon inquiry, they told us Roscoe had received anti-Mormon
stuff from a friend of his... The good news is that it just made him
more determined to come closer to Heavenly Father so that's awesome.
Saturday we got dressed in service clothes in anticipation of a move
that was happening at 9 a.m. We showed up at 9 and, along with 15 Boy
Scouts and other members, got the whole truck unloaded by 9:20. The
heaviest items they had were the washer and drier (no pianos!). We
went to the church to help clean but it was decided by the members to
do a quick clean of the building since we had stake conference over
the weekend. The four of us then decided to take some time and scrape
moss off the concrete near the Relief Society room. Elder Cook and I
finally got to see Dotti around lunchtime! After lunch we got dressed
and freshened up for the pre-adult session social that was happening
at the Danebo building. We had a great adult session of stake
conference! President Todd Knapp
talked about the stake's focus on missionary work and what more can we
do to become like Christ. The other members of the stake presidency
gave excellent presentations (just like Dad will this coming weekend
if I am correct!). It's been an awesome experience not being
distracted by cell phones or social media at church meetings because I
stay awake and am more attentive!
Sunday we were on the road at 8:30 with Brother Thor*** so he could
help with the parking. To save miles and to get a good parking spot,
we left the car at the stake center overnight when we showed up for
the adult session. The session started at 10 and it was pretty
awesome! We heard from President Knapp and had a musical number before
turning the lights off for a broadcast from Salt Lake City. Elder KentF. Richards, Sister Jean A. Stevens, Elder Neil L. Anderson, and
President Thomas S. Monson all spoke. They all shared things I know I needed to
hear! The coolest talk (all the talks were amazing; I am talking about
the coolest talk) was from Elder Anderson. He spent a couple of
minutes talking about the World Series and Jeremy Guthrie, a pitcher
for the Kansas City Royals who pitched in Games 3 and 7. Before Game 7
of the World Series, Guthrie shared his experience as a missionary for
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Pretty awesome. In
fact, he is an Oregonian native and his parents live in Ashland! After
stake conference, we had a late lunch with the Ga***'s, who also
invited Roscoe over for the meal. We watched "On the Lord's Errand"
with them before our lesson with Charlotte. We also saw the Goo***
and Brother Thor*** to end the night.
I am so grateful for this gospel. It is an amazing feeling to be
serving a mission right now. Yes I get doors slammed in my face. Yes I
spend hours walking around. However, despite all the negatives, I get
to testify of my Savior Jesus Christ on a daily basis and strengthen
my testimony of the Book of Mormon and also the divine call of
President Monson and the other General Authorities. I cannot believe
that I am almost done with my fourth transfer and will hit my six month
mark on the 21st of November! It is going by so fast. I am so grateful
for the time I have to serve a mission and I hope I make the most of
it!
I love y'all! Have a great week!
Elder Tonini
Sometimes life gets hard. For some, it might be getting through college to earn their degree. For others, it is to put food on the table. And then there are those who struggle with every aspect of life. Yet, in the darkness of trouble, there is a lighthouse who will show us the way. Jesus Christ is that lighthouse and as we put our trust in him and "walk as He walked", He will show us the way back to our loving Heavenly Father.#becauseofhim #firmfoundation
Hey everyone!
Holy cow it is already November!? Time is just flying by! It feels
like yesterday I was in the MTC! Now I am approaching my six month
mark fast!
Ready for my week? I hope so!
Monday after emailing we went to the Danebo stake center to play some
jack o lantern kickball! It's like normal kickball, but you have to
wear a pumpkin on your head. We lost though... I did have an awesome
sliding catch though! :D we got a pizza party despite losing because
we had the cleanest cars in the whole mission! The other Elders did an
exchange with the 3rd ward Elders so we had Elder Fernilius for the
night and the next day. We had an awesome time with the Fra*** at
dinner! They are an awesome family:)
Tuesday we had a lesson with Charlotte. We decided to go over the
restoration again by watching the first half of "Joseph Smith: The
Prophet of the restoration". She really enjoyed it. However, we found
out she wasn't doing her scripture studies so we left her another
chapter to read in the Book of Mormon. We tried to see some less
active members but they weren't available so we took the other Elders
back to Santa Clara to exchange back. The Book of Mormon class is
struggling at the moment but we are trying to expand our horizons and
get more people to it! We then exchanged with Elder Bassett and Elder
Enman for the next day. Elder Bassett came with me to my area!
Wednesday morning we went to the church to do a Facebook post and meet
up
with the Zone Leaders to give them a HDMI cable for their iPads.
Unfortunately at some point in the morning, I lost one of my name
tags! Oops! I'm glad I can just order another one from the mission
office! Anyways, we decided to focus on the extensive potentials list
we had so we took off walking. We were walking down Prairie Rd when an
F-18 flew over us only a couple thousand feet above us! It happened
twice! We got to talk to some people along the way but for the most
part the address we had were either wrong or we just didn't try hard
enough! We did meet a woman who looked like a Stephen Tyler
look-a-like! That was interesting!
Thursday we had lesson set up right after weekly planning with a
potential named Natasha but she went out of town unexpectedly so that
didn't happen. The member we were with offered us turkey soup and we
said yes. We headed up to Harrisburg to visit less actives before
heading over to Gle***. After Gle*** and dinner we headed up to
the church to help set up for the Fall Festival!
Friday was Halloween! Before we went to district meeting in the
morning, we had to swing by Walmart to pick up some stuff for district
meeting and we saw someone getting arrested in the parking lot! After
district meeting, the district leaders organized a costume contest to
see who could have the best costume for under 5 dollars. I was going
to go for a tacky tourist kind of deal (socks with flip flops, button
shirt, etc.) but I went with Asian Tourist and got second place! And
then nothing really happened because it was Halloween. We went to the
Fall Festival at 7 for a few minutes before leaving to go home (we had
to be in at 7 but we got special permission from President Russell).
Saturday we helped Brother Thor*** clean the church along with a
member family. After that we had lunch and were walking over to the
church when we remembered that a sister in the ward told us on Friday
that a sister who lives near us needed a blessing. So on our way to
the church for a lesson, we stopped and gave a blessing to the sister.
After we had done that, we were about to keep going on our journey to
the church when an older gentleman stopped us. He asked "who is Jesus
Christ" and my first thought was "man, this guy might try to bash with
us!" We told him that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer and he
responded that he hears a lot of stories about the church and wanted
to know. He also asked us how many wives we were going to have (only
one!) and then told us that he respected what we did as missionaries
and the devotion we give. So that was pretty neat!:) We met with
Charlotte at the church to finish watching the Restoration movie. She
had read the chapter we had given her so we talked about the movie and
gave her another chapter to read. Later that day we went and helped
Cami, a less active, break down her daughters bed and vanity for their
move to Utah. We had basketball that evening with Roscoe!
Sunday was fast and testimony meeting. We had an interesting testimony
meeting to say the least! Apparently, the harder I work determines how
hot my wife will be and that drugs are bad and should be voted against
in the upcoming election. We had a huge turn out for gospel
principles! After correlation, we had a lesson with Margret and we
shared a Mormon Message about the hope of Gods light. That video has
become one of my personal favorites! We had planned to go with the
other Elders to a lesson with Roscoe at 6 but they never told Roscoe
the time that the member was going to pick him up! Oops! So we talked
to the Goodmans for a little bit before Elder Cook and I headed to
Brother Thor***'s to share a message with him.
That was my week! I love you all so much and thank you for all your
prayers and your love! I know this gospel is true! And to end this
email, I am going to use hashtags to honor my companion! If you don't
know what hashtags are, ask Corina, Carson, or any other young
adult/teen!
#startstrongfinishstronger
#thereisnodoubt
#OEM
#SoCal
#ElderCookMadeMeDoIt
#kidding
#imgoingtostopnow
I love yall! Have an awesome week!
Elder Tonini
