Hey y'all!
Merry belated Christmas! I hope that all of you had a wonderful Christmas and that you were able to travel about in safety! Ready to hear about my first Christmas as a missionary?!
We had a short P-Day on Monday due to Christmas on Thursday so we did all the basic essentials to get us through the week plus helped the Gold Hill Elders get their car in to get tires rotated and oil changed. We were only at the church for an hour to email! After our shortened P-Day, we tried to contact some people we had in mind but either they were busy with family or not home!
Tuesday we had a zone lunch at a member's house in the Jacksonville ward and it was super good! We had breakfast for lunch! After that finished up, we walked around the Twin Creeks area and talked to some of the members that live over in that subdivision. We had recently received several "Joy to the World" DVDs that we had been waiting for so we gave a missionary challenge to the members we were able to get in contact with to hand out a DVD to a neighbor. We had to make a pit stop at the apartment and we had a sketchy experience there! An old lady kept banging on our door and windows and ringing the doorbell for like 10 minutes and yelled at us! She even knocked over our trash can! Pretty weird haha! We had a great FHE with a family in the ward towards the end of the night.
Wednesday was realllllly slow. A ton of people were gone or with family so we spent our Christmas Eve walking around in the cold! We went and talked to Adam for a little bit. He was watching a show trying to prove that Santa was real. Some people just don't realize what Christmas is all about! After talking with Adam we walked on over to dinner. We were able to talk to a member family right before dinner and we got to know them so that was great! We had a very interesting Christmas Eve dinner! Instead of a normal dinner (I don't what I would consider normal!), we had Chinese food! It was at a less-active member's home and we got to spend a lot of time with him and his kids!
Thursday was Christmas! We were up at 4:30 to go play basketball with the other Elders in the zone and opened presents afterwards! After we got cleaned up from our morning of basketball, we had an awesome breakfast with the Harn*** family! The kids got an inflatable ball looking thing that they could climb in and roll around in it! It was pretty cool! We then watched "How to Train your Dragon 2"! IT WAS SUPER AWESOME!! After the movie finished up, we went over to the Hull's and Skyped home! Oh it was so great talking to everyone!! It was definitely the highlight of my Christmas! We hung out with the Hull's for the rest of the night, playing board games and having a HUGE Christmas dinner!
Friday started off on an interesting note. We had a conference call from President Russell in the morning and he read some scriptures with us before informing us that he was suspending Facebook "for a season" due to some of the things missionaries were doing on Facebook. It is going to be interesting going about without Facebook to fill that tough 8 o'clock hour, but if President Russell feels that is what we need to do, then we will do it! We headed out to contact an old investigator that lives off in the boonies! As we were walking, the Gold Hill Elders came by and picked us up since the guy we were trying to see lived off the road between our areas. We caught Jeff as he was getting ready to go with his wife to celebrate their anniversary. We were able to set up a lesson and a service project with him for Wednesday! We saw Mike afterwards and shared a New Year's Eve message with him and he thoroughly enjoyed it. We were able to set up a couple of FHE's with members so that was pretty sweet. We had correlation in the evening and we learned that the members we talked to on Tuesday about handing out "Joy to the World"'s had done so! That was some awesome news!
I don't have much to tell about Saturday! We didn't have the food pantry in the morning so we tried service finding for a few hours. No one was out and about and no one needed help.... lame sauce. After lunch we tried contacting several members about setting up FHE's but they weren't home. We went by the church and tried to get our LDS Tools up and going again! We had synced them the previous night and they would not show us the Central Point stake directory! Bummer! We weren't able to get that fixed so we went off to dinner and we were able to have a great discussion with them and watched a couple of Mormon Messages on his MASSIVE TV! It was super cool! Oh, we also got transfer calls! I am staying in Central Point with Elder Galloway!
Sunday we had church at one pm for the last time in this ward... huge bummer haha! We are switching to 9 o'clock church so it will be fun with ward council and such! We had a wonderful sacrament meeting before talking about family history and temple work in Sunday School! We talked about being disagreeable without being confrontational or something like that! Elder Galloway and I were able to talk about how we handle those situations when people try to Bible bash with us. After church we were able to teach Angelo and Spencer part of the Restoration. It is a lot different teaching an adult than it is a kid! I struggled with it a little because I was used to teaching to an adult's understanding and not to a kid's understanding. After dinner, we tried contacting some less actives and tried to set up some FHE's with members but seeing the number of members at sacrament meeting, I am guessing they are out of town!
I can't believe how fast this year has gone by! I am grateful to be out here in Oregon serving a mission! I know there isn't anything better for me at this point of my life than serving a mission. I have really come to know the Book of Mormon and the truth that is written on its pages. Joseph Smith was truly called to be the Lord's Prophet to open the last dispensation. I am grateful for my wonderful family that I was able to talk to this past week! I miss them and love them!
Have a great New Years! Remember, as it says in Genesis 19, "look not behind thee"!
I love y'all!
Elder Jacob Tonini
“Do your duty, that is best. Leave unto the Lord the rest.”
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