The One Where I Ride The Bus!

Hey everyone!

This was a good week for Elder Bowers and me! We didn't teach a whole lot but we had a ton of fun doing it!

Monday was the good 'ol normal P-Day activities! We went to the mall and hung out there and then went to the church to go email. We walked over to dinner and then we headed out to go contact some potentials and other investigators that we have in our area book. We attempted to contact a family that was investigating the church at one point or another and the father told us that he wasn't going to entertain us and that he really didn't want us to come by. Nice guy. Not! We basically spent the rest of our night.

Tuesday morning we spent doing training and other things before lunch. We headed off to go contact some people but we always seemed to leave something behind at the apartment. Luckily for us, the zone leaders needed something from us and we gave it to them in return for a ride. We tried to contact JayDaQuin but he wasn't home. We were looking through our areabook for someone to go contact and JayDaQuin happened to pull up as we were doing that! We taught him outside and despite him being totally hyped up on sugar, we were able to have a lesson about charity. He is a super good kid who wants to know who God is. He told us some stuff about his old church and we talked to him about our missions and what it is like. It was super fun stuff. We had a lesson with Robert Wh*** before going back to our apartment for dinner. We then went on splits with a guy named Jacob and we went to go teach a guy who is technically outside of our area but he forgot about our lesson so we went back to the church and waited for Elder Bowers to get back.

Wednesday was crazy! We did some training about finding people to teach before going with the Spanish Elders for lunch at the Salgado's store. Elder Strech and Elder Perrine had a lesson with Marcus and Monica, some recent converts that are going through the new member lessons, so Elder Bowers and I spent the next area in that area contacting people. We didn't have any luck unfortunately. We got a ride home and we weekly planned due to the temple trip on Thursday. After we weekly planned, our day got a whole lot more interesting! Instead of riding our bikes, we took the bus! We bussed on over to the west side and contacted a lady named Latefah and she said that we could call her sometime this week and get a lesson set up with her. We also talked to an investigator named Alyssa and she said we could come back Friday. We got on the bus to go back to the east side of the area and at one stop, this guy almost got on the bus and started yelling and swearing at the bus driver! It was crazy! We got dinner at the church before getting on the bus (yeah, we rode the bus a TON that day) and went over to an investigators home. Thankfully they were home so we were able to get a lesson set up for the next day. We caught the bus over to David and Leighanne's home and had a lesson about the Atonement. It went well, it has just been tough being able to have the Spirit while we are there due to screaming children and things like that. We got back on the bus to go home and man it was so sketchy... Everyone was staring at us and all the lights were off! It was a fun bus ride haha!

Thursday was something that I needed; a trip to the Portland temple! I haven't been at the Portland temple in over a year! It was a super good session. Something that was cool was that there was a man there who was confined to a wheelchair and it sounded as though he was on an iron lung or something. Despite his limited physical abilities and limited speech capability, he was still able to go through the session! It was a neat experience and a good reminder that I shouldn't have any excuse for not going to the temple. Another cool experience happened after the session. I walked out of the dressing room and there stood President and Sister Young, the former mission president and his wife! I couldn't believe it! It was good being able to introduce them to Elder Bowers and telling him how my mission was going! We got back from Portland in time for dinner and then we had a lesson with Tim and Courtney. We talked about trials and enduring to the end and it went pretty well!

Friday Elder Strech and Elder Perrine picked us up for training/district meeting. The district meeting went pretty well, and I taught my portion using a CES devotional talk from Tad R. Callister. Afterwards, I went on exchanges to the Spanish area with Elder Strech. We went and knocked a couple of doors and we talked to a guy named Alan. He seemed pretty interested in the message that we had so we were going to give him the Book of Mormon that Elder Strech had but it turned out to be misprinted! Luckily, I had one in my bag so it all worked out. We then headed over to Marcus and Monica's place to watch the talk called "Sleeping through the Restoration" by President Uchtdorf. After dinner we had a couple of lessons planned but they ended up falling through so we went tracting in a trailer park. We taught a kid named Alfonso about the Plan of Salvation but other than that, we didn't have much luck. To end our night, Elder Strech did language study and I studied out of Gospel library.

Saturday morning Elder Strech and I attended to some zone leader business that Elder Strech had to get taken care of. We exchanged back at lunch time and then we spent pretty much all day contacting people. We weren't really able to teach anyone though so that was a bummer... We were able to contact a referral that we had received so that was pretty sweet!

Sunday was Fast and Testimony meeting. We had some awesome testimonies and I loved the Spirit that was there! We came back and exchanged with 4th ward so Elder Eldridge and I could go to Stake Correlation with the zone leaders. We had some good discussion with President Ennis about the work in the area so that was good. We got back and exchanged back to bike over to dinner. We didn't leave until a little later than we thought so we went to the church and did some training to end the night.

That is how my week went! I love y'all and thank you for all the love, support, and prayers!

Elder Tonini