Did You Know That Eugene Is Ranked As The Least Religious City In The US?

Hey everyone!

So this was a good week for us! We were able to teach quite a bit so that's awesome!

Monday was P-Day. We weren't able to get much done in the evening because Elder Bower's bike conked out on us.

Tuesday the district leaders were invited to go to MLC so that's where I was! All of MLC was about finding and some new things were introduced during this MLC. I really learned a lot about how I could be a better finder! By the time it was over, it was time for dinner though haha! We headed over to the church to go on splits and our ward mission leader came out with us. We went out and attempted to contact a recent convert who was engaged to a member in the ward. He wasn't at the members home but we talked to her mom and her non-member boyfriend. We had a super good conversation but the boyfriend is going to be interesting to work with!

Wednesday the 4th Ward Elders took us over to the church for a correlation meeting for ZTM. Afterwards, we went over to the Salg***'s for lunch and we were able to provide some service for them. In their convenience store, they don't have any shelves for their number one selling item; alcohol. So, Elder Perrine and I helped Marcus put together a set of shelves to make it easier to move it all and Elder Bowers and Elder Strech went and did missionary work! We watched a talk from General Conference with Marcus and Monica before heading back to our place to do training. We then had a lesson with Brother Whi*** and we talked about the importance of controlling our thoughts and the things we say. We really cracked down on that with him because sometimes the things he says detracts from the Spirit and we have been working hard to help him understand the importance of the Spirit. The zone leaders took us over to the Half***'s for dinner and afterwards we read scriptures with Brother Half***. He took us back to our apartment and we got out bikes to go see David and Leighanne. We shared the talk about ponderizing the scriptures and invited them to do that. The thought had come to us to share that scripture because they are lacking in their spiritual progression and if we could get them to do that, that would be the jumpstart they needed.

Thursday morning was spent in planning for zone training meeting and doing weekly planning. We pretty much spent all day trying to find people but we didn't have success. We had a weird experience that afternoon while trying to find people before dinner. We biked over to a certain street and when we got there, we just didn't feel right but we didn't feel any impressions to go anywhere else... So we just tried to contact the people we had in our areabook before taking dinner. We had a funny experience right before our lesson with Tim and Courtney. We knocked on an inactive's door and a lady started talking to us... through her bathroom window. He wasn't home so we started heading over to Tim and Courtney's apartment complex and as we were walking, a girl yelled out "I love you guys!". That was a nice change compare to most of the nonsense that we get haha! We then tried to contact a potential but his grandmother said he wasn't home. She then asked us how we knew her grandson and we told her that he had talked to missionaries in the past and she told us that he said he was always confused when we came by because he hadn't talked to the Elders ever; he had only talked to the Sister missionaries! We then went to Tim and Courtney's place and as the conversation went on, we started talking about the Roseburg shooting. That lead to a conversation about why bad things happen to good people and we shared a little bit about the Plan of Salvation. It was a super good lesson but they got distracted at the end because of their cat... The 4th Ward Elders picked us up and we finalized our plans for ZTM before calling it a night.

Friday morning we had training and then we dove into ZTM! It was a super good ZTM! Me and Elder Eldridge did a super good job of teaching about teaching when we find people. There was a statistic that we shared that shows that while Provo/Orem are the most religious cities based on church attendance and members living what is taught, Eugene, Oregon is tied with Boulder, Colorado for being the least religious cities! Fun stuff haha! After ZTM, we exchanged with 1st Ward and Elder Huntsman came into my area. After lunch we headed out to go teach Brother Whi***. On the way to the church, we OYM'd a guy named Jesse and he seems pretty interested. We watched Elder Christofferson's talk with Brother Whi*** before taking dinner. We went contacting before our lesson with Traci and Dwayne. It went super well! Dwayne didn't do the reading because of his sight so we read Alma 40 with them. We had a discussion about how Jesus Christ is the only way back to live with our Heavenly Father and we asked him to be baptized when he came to know that the things we were teaching him were true. Without hesitating, he said yes! He just needs to start coming to church and he is golden!

Saturday morning we went to the church to do an iPad check before trying to see Jesse. He turned out not to be home so we went back to the apartment and waited for our companions to show up. After that, we contacted people until about 3 and went home to do training when the Duck game started and also to take dinner right after. Right as we got home, it started pouring buckets! Luckily it was over by the time we finished everything up! Other than that, we just tried contacting people all night!

Sunday we had church, lunch, and then we went out and tried contacting people! We ended up helping a lady move some groceries into her home and we left her with a picture of Christ and our number. We visited Brother Half*** on a hunch and it turned out he need some support! He took us to dinner and afterwards we did training to end the night.

That's all I got! Thanks for all you do for me! I know that this church is true!

Elder Tonini

Oregon Eugene Mission
"Days Never to Be Forgotten"