New Years Eve!

Hey everyone!

So I am sorry for not getting an email sent out last week, I thought I had finished it but I never did! My bad! It was a good week though, especially getting to talk to my family on Christmas!:)

This was a super slow week for us. We had some good things go our way but we also had some rough spots.

Monday was good as always! We did our normal P-Day stuff before going back to Sutherlin for dinner with the Hay***'s. Sister Hay*** wasn't there so it was a guys night out of sorts! We had a ton of fun eating pizza and sharing a New Years message with them.

Tuesday was rough. We had a lesson set up for Savannah and Brian that night and when we texted Savannah that morning to make sure we were on for that, she said she didn't want to take the lessons anymore.... So that really stunk. All of our lessons fell through until the evening when we saw Andrew and Jackie. Andrew is our ward mission leader's son and our WML wanted us to teach his son the lessons so we started with the Restoration. Afterwards, we went and taught Jackie on her porch. We talked to her about putting a stop to her smoking and she said she wanted to do it as part of her New Years resolution! It was a super good lesson with her!

Wednesday we headed on over to the food pantry for some service. It was a slow day for them so it gave us time to talk to some of the other volunteers there. They are mostly older people and it is a ton of fun being able to talk to them and getting to know their life stories! We had a lesson with Chelsea and Daniel in the afternoon and she kept her reading commitment! It brought up the question of why our baptism is the right form of baptism instead of the way she was baptized. We were able to get it cleared up for her and we focused in on the priesthood authority. It was such a good lesson that we almost missed the soup kitchen! We ate a pizza that a member dropped off for us before going and teaching Andrew again. We ended up staying a doing a correlation of sorts afterwards and had some hot chocolate!

Thursday was New Years Eve! We did our weekly planning and then not too much happened the rest of the day. We tried to contact people but we didn't have too much success. We had to be in at 6 so after dinner we headed back to our apartment and played some Battleship before going and talking to the members that own our apartment until bedtime.

Friday morning we woke up to frost everywhere! We almost got to new missionary training late because of how frosted over our car was. Our district meeting consisted of talking about prayer and how it could help our investigators. It went pretty well even though i had to deal with some missionaries goofing off during role plays. It's whatever though hah! We helped the zone leaders get set up to watch Wreck it Ralph before we went grabbed some lunch. By the time the movie and cleanup were done, it was almost 4:30! We headed straight to Oakland for dinner and then afterwards went over to the Simm*** home and talked with them about the things that are going on in their lives. We talked a little bit about fasting with them and Sister Simm*** said she was going to fast on Sunday!

Saturday was a good day for us. We helped Chris build a helicopter because he only had one hand and couldn't put the pieces together very well. We took some time to be with him because he is still on the fence about being baptized and we figured that we could connect with him more so it was a good time all around. We went over to the Od***'s and they went out with us to see Sister Lear*** and Sister Har***. We ended up helping them clean their apartment and taking their trash out... We decided that we weren't going to teach them after that lesson, considering the fact that they listen to a 7th Day Adventist preacher more than us... We went back to the Caldw***s and had dinner with them and then had a short lesson with Chris and Samantha. We talked about what they needed to do for baptism and covered the law of chastity and word of wisdom. Samantha is really gung ho about being baptized but Chris was still on the line. He has a concern about being in the water for the baptism... We are going to help him overcome that one! We then headed over to Jackie's and we talked about charity and how she was doing with her New Year's resolution.

Sunday found us nailed by ice again, this time in the form of frozen rain. This caused the roads to get super icy and in turn, a lot of the ward wasn't able to make it to church! We were still able to get Samantha to come so that was good. We had a lesson with her afterwards and we taught her the plan of salvation. It was pretty solid. She understood it all and was able to stay focused with her brother not being there and not having any distractions. That was really the highlight of the day, besides for the Nerf fight we had at dinner with the family that fed us on Christmas! That was fun!

I love this Gospel! It has been a tough 19 months but it has produced some of the most memorable experiences I've ever had! I know the Church is true! I know that Thomas S. Monson is God's prophet on the earth today! There is no doubt.

Love y'all!

Elder Tonini


Oregon Eugene Mission
"Days Never to Be Forgotten"