Before I get into the heart of my email, I want to say congratulations to Drew and Shavaun on their engagement this past Thursday! I am so grateful for an awesome brother and I cannot wait to meet Shavaun after my mission! I hope I quoted Princess Bride correctly in the subject line! :)
Y'all ready for my week? Here we go!
Monday was our normal P-Day stuff. The Elders from Central Point 1st Ward and Gold Hill came to our place to play The Game of Life in the morning. After laundry was finished, we took off for Wal-Mart to go do our grocery shopping for the week. We went to the stake center after lunch and messed around for a little bit with some of the other Elders. We threw the football around and it felt so good to loosen the arm up! We left the stake center with Elder Segrera and Elder Porter around 1:30 to go help a lady in the ward move a sink. However, we were not told what kind of sink it was! We had thought that it was going to be a kitchen or bathroom sink but when we got there we found a steel, heavy duty, 20-foot long sink. After we unloaded all the pots and pans, it was a tad easier to move the thing! It was pretty dang heavy! We went back to the stake center and I chilled with Elder Galloway in the family history center while everyone else went and played flag football. We had dinner with our ward mission leader and Elder Galloway was challenged to a light saber duel by one of the kids and he accepted haha! It was pretty intense! We had a FHE set up with a family in the ward but they had to cancel so we walked around and tried to talk to people before calling it a night.
Tuesday was a day of service! After our studies, we headed over to the temple to do some more landscaping. We were (and probably will be next week) working on this plant that is a pain to get out! Brother Ba*** came and picked us up after we were done at the temple so we could help him with leaves. When we finished there and had lunch, we walked over to an elderly sister's home and mowed her front lawn. After we got the grass off of us, Sister Hage***'s husband came and picked us up to do service and have dinner. We moved some wood they had in their backyard and in this old shed on their property onto their truck to take to a sister's home in Central Point. We came back to their home and did some more outside work before cracking nuts for a bit. We had a pretty awesome dinner (homemade lasagna!) and shared a great message with them.
Wednesday we were out of the apartment by 8 to go help a lady move into her new home in the 1st ward. She had breakfast burritos from McDonald's and donuts ready for our small group that consisted of six missionaries, a senior missionary couple, and a ward missionary! We went to the storage unit and loaded it up into the UHaul. We barely got everything in that truck and in the back of Brother Sta***'s van! The move was going smooth until we showed up to the house to unload the truck. She did not want a single thing to be moved into rooms or even the living room until she had the futon and the bed in the house. They were both buried in the back of the truck so the kitchen/dining area was getting pretty full and we were running out of space fast! Luckily we got the futon and the bed out and set up so we were able to move some boxes into the rooms. We also unloaded a whole pallet of pellets for her to use in her wood burning stove. After we finished with the move, Brother Sta*** took Elder Galloway and me to Medford to a bike shop to get the crank bar for my bike. We later found out it was the wrong kind of crank bar so Brother Sta*** told us he was going to take it back and get the right one on Friday. The member who was supposed to feed us dinner couldn't do dinner so she got us Subway for lunch! We had a short lesson with Jay after lunch about prayer. We decided to read Alma 34 with him and he really liked the scriptures we read with him. There was a referral that the Sister missionaries gave us that lived right around the corner from Jay so we tried to contact him. It did not go well haha. We were standing on the door step and we could hear someone yelling at the referral to "tell your Mormon friends to leave". He wouldn't even come to the door so we decided to not even bother going by again. We got a call from Brother Ba*** asking us to come by and when we did, we were rewarded with cheesy bread and some of his family history stories! We had dinner at the apartment before trying to see some investigators. None of the people we tried were home so we saw the Coleman's and talked to them to finish out the night.
Thursday was Thanksgiving! We had received an invitation to go play in our ward's Turkey Bowl and we gladly accepted. Despite not having the best field conditions, we had a pretty good time. I had two picks and a touchdown so that was pretty good I guess haha! After the Turkey Bowl we went back to the apartment to shower and wait for Bishop to come get us for Thanksgiving. It was a FEAST! The Bishop and his brothers and sisters pretty much all live here in Central Point so they get together for a huge meal! I ended up talking for about five to ten minutes about BYU and what has changed since the adults were there! We came back to the apartment and planned on going to McDonald's to go do Facebook but it had closed down for Thanksgiving. As an alternative, we walked around and tried to contact some of the members in the ward but no one was home. At 7, our ward mission leader came and picked us up for correlation and Thanksgiving dessert at his home. We played Thanksgiving picture-nary (however you wanna spell it) and then Elder Galloway and I got into a light saber duel with the two youngest children. It got pretty intense! It was a ton of fun!
Friday we had district meeting in the morning. We did a scripture chase about the questions of life that the Book of Mormon can answer and talked about OYMing and such. After district meeting, we went to this burger place called Jasper's. Usually in my emails home, I don't talk about what I had for a meal but this is pretty noteworthy! I had a wild boar burger and holy smokes that thing had so much flavor! It was an amazing burger! We did weekly planning early in the afternoon because we didn't have time on Thursday to do it and that is usually our slowest time of the day. We tried seeing an investigator that was about a 30 minute walk away but he wasn't home and we didn't have a pone number for him! Oh I can't wait to get my bike fixed haha! On our way back into town, an elderly gentleman called out to us and we went over and talked to him for about 10 minutes. He had a lot to say about his church and his pastor and his family (he jumped around a lot but those were his main focuses). It is so interesting to see people who think that just because they got baptized means they have a first class ticket into heaven! There is so much more than that! Just saying haha! Anyways, we had dinner at our apartment before we went and tried seeing some members. Once again, hardly anyone was home! Other than that, that was pretty much our day! A lot of misses and not a lot of hits!
Saturday was pretty slow haha! We were out of the house by 8 to help our ward mission leader move a piano out of his home. His wife made us an awesome breakfast haha! We came back to the apartment to change and get ready for our weekly service at the Calvary Temple food pantry only to find out that they were closed for Thanksgiving and the weekend after! We ended up meeting up with Adam and talking to him before lunch. After lunch we walked over to try the same investigator we tried the day before but once again no one was home. On his street, there were a lot of people doing yard work but every time we offered to help, we got turned down... Oh well! We tried setting up appointments with members and potentials but we had nothing come out of it except that they all said they would get back to us. We did set up an appointment with an investigator named Larry and he was pretty cool! We talked about family history a little bit mainly because we both have Italian last names and I asked him what part of Italy his name came from! It was pretty cool. Brother Sta*** called us and told us that my bike was finally fixed up so we walked over to their neighborhood and, after trying to see another potential investigator, we picked up our bikes and rode home to wait for the member who was feeding us to pick us up. Sarge (yes that was really his name!) was the member that took us to dinner and we had a pretty great conversation over Chipotle burritos. He had a pretty cool conversion story and is super active in the Boy Scouts! He not only did Wood Badge but he received the Silver Beaver as well! We came back to the apartment and we had to make a choice; either we could go do a Facebook post or try and see a guy named Ted who we haven't been able to see since I have been in Central Point. We decided to go try Ted and he was home! He was out of town for Thanksgiving and had just gotten back that morning before we came knocking. We taught him the plan of Salvation using the pamphlets and it was interesting to say the least. He keeps saying he is not ready to come to a church service but loves hearing our message. He is an interesting fellow! I got to bear my testimony on the Atonement of Jesus Christ! Oh how I love the Atonement! It is the greatest gift we can ever receive and without it's cleansing power, we cannot receive salvation and we would not be able to return to live with our Heavenly Father!
Sunday was pretty good. We did a lot of studies in the morning and the Sta*** picked us up for church. We had some great talks in sacrament meeting and a great lesson about eternal families in Gospel Principles so that was sweet. The best part of church was third hour. Bishop went over this article he read in the newspaper about churches and what is happening in churches all around the US I guess! He did it in a open response setting where the members could share their input about certain topics and it was really cool! Lots of great insights were shared! After church, Elder Pease took us to his home for dinner and we had a great time with Elder and Sister Pease. We came back and tried to contact people but we had no luck.
I love you all so very much! I am so excited for Drew and Shavaun and as much as I want to be there, I know I am needed here in Oregon to share the message of the restored gospel!
Love ya!
Elder Tonini
Sent from my iPad
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