Monday, May 18, 2015

The One Where I am halfway there!

Hey everyone,

So this was a pretty solid week for us! We had some good lessons and we are getting pumped for Samantha's baptism on Saturday! Unfortunately, Kevin wasn't able to get baptized this week but hopefully he will be in the next two weeks or so!

You ready for my week?

Monday was pretty dang awesome! I got a call from President Russell in the morning and he gave me permission to call Drew and Shavaun. It was so awesome being able to talk to them and congratulate them in person on their marriage! We did our normal P-day stuff before going over to Sister Kan***'s home for dinner with Maddi, a teenage girl who has been going to church for 6 months but hasn't taken the lessons yet. We taught her the Restoration and set her on date for June 20th (although that is probably going to be moved up a couple of weeks). It was a good lesson and we are super excited for her!

Tuesday morning we picked up the 1st Ward Elders and we went and did service at the temple. We pruned some plants down to the ground and spread some dirt around. I am super excited to be able to come back in the next year or so and see all the plants that I have helped plant begin to grow! When we finished up with that, we stopped by the Family History Center and we created a flier for the Youth Sports night that we are trying to get started up. We got cleaned up and had lunch before doing car stuff all day. We got a replacement seat belt part, tires rotated, and the oil changed. It took a good chunk of our afternoon but we were able to go teach a guy named Keith. He is more into the connection between the Native Americans and the Lamanites but we were able to read a chapter out of the Book of Mormon with him. He is an interesting guy haha he sure does love his weed! We then went and saw the Zim***'s and gave Brother Zim*** a blessing to end the night.

Wednesday morning we collected two weed whackers and went to town on Nikki's backyard! It took us a whole hour to weed whack that thing! It was pretty intense haha we were finally able to get it down to our shins but that is as far as we could get with the weed whackers. We got cleaned up and tried to see a couple of people before having dinner in Gold Hill and then a lesson with Samantha and Eric. The Gor***'s opened their home up to us so we had both Brother and Sister Gor*** there and they were pretty awesome! We taught them the 10 commandments and the law of tithing and the Gor***'s shared some great insights on those two subjects. After our lesson, we went and had correlation to end the night.

Thursday was interesting. I was up at 6 and at a church building in Medford by 7 to catch a ride to a mission wide district leader meeting in Winston. Elder Carroll, Elder Roller, and I rode up with Elder Earl, Elder Lucas, and Elder Goode from the Klamath Falls zone. We had a ton of fun! Elder Earl is companions with Elder Flora, my trainer, so we had a good talk about him. When we arrived at the Winston church building, we were instructed by President Russell and the AP's about how to be better district leaders. It was a good meeting and I felt like I learned a lot from it. We had a fun car ride back which involved a pit stop in Grant's Pass for drinks and then goofing off on the car ride home haha! Elder Best came and picked me up in Medford with the 1st Ward Elders and after we dropped them off at their apartment, Elder Best and I took off for the stake center so I could meet with Elder Roller and Elder Carroll about teaching in the zone training meeting the next day. We went from there to the retirement home near the church for a dinner/discussion with a member and some of her friends in the building. It was pretty fun! One of our former investigators was there so that was cool. We wrapped up there and went to the church for the inaugural Book of Mormon class only for it to flop.... Hopefully we get a better turn out this week! To fill in the time, we made Samantha's baptismal program and took it over to her.

Friday we had zone training meeting in the morning. Elder Best and I were at the church by 7:45 so we could iron out the final details of our segment of ZTM. It was a really good ZTM. We had some fun role plays and the district leader segment went really well. Last time we taught at ZTM, people said we didn't do a good job but we knocked it out of the park on this one! We went and talked to a couple of people after lunch before our lesson with Samantha and Eric. Brother Couvre*** was able to come with us and we had a great lesson about the baptismal interview questions and then afterwards we worked on finalizing her baptismal program. We drove over to Sister Stam***'s for dinner before coming back into Central Point for our first ever Youth Sports Night. However, just like the Book of Mormon class, no one came! We knew that the Eagle Point Elders were doing theirs at that time so we talked to them and got some ideas on what we could do to make our youth sports night a success.

Saturday morning we helped Brother Wil** mix and pour cement for a garage that he is building on his house. It was a ton of fun! We got to use a mixer and I got a good workout in haha! We went to the Family History Center afterwards and put some finishing touches on Samantha's program before going home and getting cleaned up. We shared a message with Dana before going and talking to Adam. We had a good talk with him and unfortunately we took a touch too long because our dinner was supposed to pick us up at 4:30 and we weren't even out of Adam's house till 4:35! Ooops... Luckily they were still at our apartment and took us to Original Roadhouse Grill. It was super funny because the Idiarts asked us where we wanted to go and we said Texas Roadhouse (they said we could go wherever we wanted no matter the cost!) and they thought we meant this Original Roadhouse Grill! They asked us what we thought of it and I compared it to Texas Roadhouse and they said "Wait....this isn't Texas Roadhouse?!". It was really funny but at the same time it was a good thing we didn't go to Texas Roadhouse because we probably would have never made it to our split with Brother Low***! We went with him to see the Cuf***'s. Brother Cuf*** has been investigating the Church off and on for 45 years so we shared a message about the Book of Mormon with him and his member wife. We got back to Gold Hill and we drove over to Brother Vit***' home for correlation.

Sunday was a milestone for me! May 17th 2016 is the day that I get on the plane to come home so yesterday marked 365 days left on my mission! I can't believe how fast time is flying... I feel like I got out of the MTC a few weeks ago. Anyways, Sunday was like normal, just church all day long with a bunch of meetings. The Central Point 2nd Ward set a goal for 20 baptisms for the remainder of the year and I hope that they can exercise their faith and do just that! Samantha came to church but had to leave early to go get their son. Gold Hill was ok, just the normal stuff that happens in a ward filled with old people haha! We didn't even go to Elders Quorum because we had some matters of business to attend to. We had dinner with the Hul***'s and drove into Gold Hill so Elder Best could grab some stuff from the apartment over there. We came back into town and left the truck at the apartment so we could walk around and visit some people. We tried to see Angelo and Spencer but no one came to the door. We saw that Brandon, a guy that Elder Ellsworth and I ran into back in February, was working on his car so we talked to him for a little bit. We were not able to teach him anything but we left him the Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet for him to read since he read the other pamphlet. We walked back to the apartment and drove over to the church to update our lessons and sync up. That wrapped up our Sabbath!

I know that this Church is true. I know that my Savior loves me and I know that He lives. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God as is the Bible. I am grateful for all that each of you do for me and I am grateful for your prayers.

I love y'al! Have a great week!

Elder Jacob Tonini

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