The One Where We Teach at the Golf Course!

Hey everyone!

This last week was Spring break so we had a difficult time teaching and finding people to teach but we made due!

Monday was an unusual Monday. We woke up early and went to the church with the other Elders and played some basketball before our studies. We spent the morning proselyting before taking three hours to do our shopping and emailing. Brother Blackw*** showed up around 5ish and he took us up to Eugene so us and the other North Bend Elders could ride up with the AP's to Portland. Well we get there and the AP's didn't have anything for us to do so we just walked around in the pouring rain for an hour or so. We ended up grabbing some McDonald's and that is where the AP's came and got us. They took us back to their place and the Reedsport and Florence Elders came there shortly thereafter. We had a big 'ol slumber party and we had a lot of fun!

Tuesday morning we were out the door at 7:00 am to go to Portland! We picked up the STL's from the Eugene YSA sisters apartment and after grabbing breakfast, we drove straight through to the temple. We were there pretty early so I was able to take some time and read the scriptures for a bit in the chapel. I was able to see some of my old mission friends while I was in the chapel so that was pretty awesome. We had a great session and I loved being in the celestial room! We stopped by Deseret Book after eating lunch in the temple cafeteria and I got some things from there. We got back to Eugene around 4 and our ride picked us up almost an hour later. It was a fun car ride and I got to talk to our member about Scouting. He said something really interesting. He said that the Scouting program teaches eternal principles. It really made me think and really appreciate what the Scouting program has done for me and my family. We got back to North Bend around 7ish and we went back to our apartment and got changed into P-Day clothes and played basketball at the church to end our P-Day!

Wednesday was a blur for us. We spent the early afternoon cleaning up our apartment in preparation for an inspection by our ward mission leader and then we spent the rest of the day contacting people and trying to get stuff set up but nothing much happened with that.

Thursday we headed out to the Senior Center in the morning and did our weekly service there. We had a really good conversation with the people that run the center about how Jesus Christ has changed our lives for the better. We then did our weekly planning and while we were doing our weekly planning, we got a text from a lady in the ward telling us that she has an investigator for us. She told us about a lady that is interested in the Gospel and gave us her name and phone number. We go to call her and as we introduce ourselves, she hung up on us! It was super strange. We shot her a text and the lady told us that while she does want to meet with missionaries, she was dealing with a family situation and couldn't meet with us for the time being. We messaged her the link to the #Hallelujah video and told her to watch it! After weekly planning, we had dinner at the Kozy Kitchen with the Underwo***. I managed to finish off the country fried steak! It was pretty dang good! We had correlation afterwards and Brother Leav*** came with us to inspect apartments. He was like a little kid because he felt like a missionary again, being in missionary apartments with missionaries. It got him so pumped up that he shared a Book of Mormon with a man in the other Elder's complex! It was pretty awesome! He then inspected our apartment an we flipped through the old missionary yearbook and talked about some of the missionaries that had served in the North Bend area since he moved here. It was a pretty fun correlation meeting!

Friday we only had to do accountability because of the temple trip so we did that before we did some training with Elder Davis and Elder Kroll. It wasn't as exciting as some of the previous ones because of the different role plays that we had to do but it was really good. We have some awesome missionaries here! We had KFC For lunch that was provided for us by Sister Rice since we didn't have dinner that night. Our afternoon consisted of driving around looking for the golf course that Jake worked at. The reason why we did this is because Jake said that he would not come to church until we came out to the course and saw him there. We went to the one that we thought he worked at but it turned out that he worked at the golf course on the other side of the peninsula! We had a beautiful drive by the beach and through the heart of Coos Bay so that was pretty sweet! We got to the golf course and we talked to the guy working the shop there about where Jake was. We waited for a couple of minutes and right

before we were going to leave, Jake showed up! He showed us a little bit of the golf course and then he remembered he had to do something really quick before we could teach him. Instead of having us sit around and do nothing, he gave us a bucket of golf balls and some clubs and we got to dink around on the driving range for a few minutes while Jake got some things cleared up with his crew. We went up into his office and shared the #Hallelujah video with him. He keeps bringing up how he feels good when we come by and we pointed out the fact that that was the Spirit working in him. He committed to come to a session of General Conference with us like he promised so we are pretty dang excited about that! We had dinner with the other elders and then we tried to get some lessons set up to end the night.

Saturday we picked up the other Elders to grab our keys that we left with them the night before and to take them to where they needed to go. Well we dropped them off and got to the church only to discover that they didn't give us our keys! So we drove back and picked those up and drove back to the church. We talked to the Sisters (who were on exchanges) and we talked to Sister Poulson about the ward and to the sister she was exchanging with about one of their people on date for baptism. We did some Facebook and worked through our AreaBook until the other Elders were ready for lunch. After eating lunch with them, we headed back over to the church and I got to Skype Loretta after her baptism! It was a super short phone call but I got to talk to her and her step son! She is going to be a kingdom builder that is for sure! We had dinner by ourselves so we both took some time and read the scriptures before going back out and doing the work. We visited with a less-active member who has been going through some really bad health problems before seeing Sue. She requested that we find the video that was shown on Sunday so after making a call and writing it all out where she could find it, we got her the video! We took that time we had and shared the #Hallelujah video with her. The Spirit was pretty strong, even with her husband watching TV! It was strong enough to make her cry. We drove out to see the Jeron***'s but they are on Spring Break so we came back and grabbed some milkshakes at BK before going to the church and updating our lessons to end the night.

Sunday was pretty good. Sacrament meeting was so awesome! The talks were great and we sang in the choir so that was good. That was most definitely the best hour at church. After grabbing some lunch we went and saw Patrick. He hasn't been doing very well with his commitments... That was super depressing. We taught him about the principle of obedience and then he proceeded to show us a video of a WWE Easter scene... It was slightly blasphemous but the wrestler bore his testimony of Christ so that was cool.. The stake patriarch and his wife fed us a ham dinner and then we had a long discussion with them and a returning less-active member about the Atonement. The Spirit was so strong! We had correlation with the Sisters at the church to talk about the zone but that got interrupted because we found out that AP's rode up with President and we were going to have to chauffeur them around along with the other North Bend Elders... So we managed to get all that done so we could go to bed at a reasonable time!

Monday morning we were out the door pretty early to get the AP's to the church building and to get the other elders for specialized training. We had an extremely good specialized training that was taught by President and Sister Russell and the AP's. President Russell taught us about being Preach My Gospel missionaries and the AP's taught us about the Apostasy in a more secular way as to increase our knowledge of what happened during the Great Apostasy. Sister Russell then talked to us about being a missionary on fire and then President wrapped it all up. It was a very good training! We spent the afternoon contacting and then we had FHE to end the night. I love and miss y'all! I can't believe that this transfer is almost done. Have a good week and I know that the Savior of the world lives!

Love y'all!

Elder Tonini

Oregon Eugene Mission 

"Days Never to Be Forgotten"

Another Week in the Life of Elder Tonini!

Hey Everyone!

Monday was our P-Day. We dropped off our laundry first thing in the morning and went to the church to throw the ball around for a bit! We then did our studies at the other Elder's apartment before doing our grocery shopping. We also went to Ross and I finally got a new belt I had been needing. We headed over to the church and although they were doing the carpets, the carpet cleaning guys said we were fine to be there! So we played some basketball and did our emails as they cleaned the church! After that, we didn't have too much go our way. We had dinner with the family that fed us chorizo and then we found out that FHE was canceled when we showed up to the church and no one was there. We tried contacting people before going and getting our laundry.

Tuesday morning was rough. I was so tired and worn out for no reason... We went over to the senior center and helped out there. It is so much fun serving there! We went by the church before I got dressed in my suit and we drove the hour out to Florence to do a baptismal interview. This woman had been investigating the church for 11 years and after some experiences she has had recently, she decided that she wanted to be baptized before a couple that were influential in her conversion moved to Utah. I did her interview and it went extremely well and she passed the interview! After the interview we got talking to the couple that were moving to Utah and the wife turned out to be an RM that served in the OEM and went home last June! It was pretty fun being able to talk about missionaries who have gone home and what has been going on with other people! We booked it back to North Bend for dinner with the Bro*** and we went to a place called the Cozy Kitchen. I ordered a country fried chicken breakfast style and it came out on two plates! It was so much food! Almost all of us had to use the restroom so we drove to the church and used the facilities there. While we were there, we got to share a spiritual message with the Activity Day girls and eat cookies with them! We had plans to go contacting but Elder Roller was feeling pretty bad so we went home and I gave him some Doterra stuff to help him with his upset stomach.

Wednesday we started off our day by heading over to the church to help the other Elders look for some keys that they has lost the previous night. We searched around for a little bit but couldn't find them. Elder Carter and Elder Rawlings headed out to go contact people while Elder Roller and I stayed at the church so I could get a couple of things downloaded onto my iPad. I had just finished downloading the Elder Holland Face 2 Face (with the number 2) when we got a call from Elder Carter informing us that Elder Rawlings just wrecked on his bike pretty bad. We hopped in the car and got down the hill to them. Elder Rawlings had taken a bad angle while getting onto the sidewalk and wrecked, cutting up his hands and knees pretty bad and hitting his head in the process. Thankfully he had a helmet on! We thought we could just patch him up and get on with our plans to go tracting but he told us his vision had gone black and he was feeling dizzy. After a phone call to the mission nurse, we drove him and Elder Carter to the emergency room so Elder Rawlings could get checked for a possible concussion. We spent an hour there waiting for him to get checked in but they were so slow! We actually taught a lady there a little about the church before she had to go to her appointment so that was a bonus. We ended up leaving to go grab lunch and we made a couple of stops before the other Elders called us and told us that they were finished. We picked them up and took them back to their apartment for a 3:30 lunch! We took them to go get some stuff for Elder Rawlings (like a new helmet) before taking dinner at the apartment. We met Brother Hol*** at the church and he took us to our lesson with the Jeron*** family. We shot some hoops with Alex before watching the Follow Me video with Brother Jeron*** and his kids. It went really well and he brought up coming to church once again! Hopefully we will see them there in the near future! We ended our night updating the Areabook and getting on a conference call before our nightly planning.

Thursday we headed out to the senior center to do our thing there, making coffee and tea and cutting up desserts. We had a delicious St. Patrick's day lunch and then after we cleaned up we headed to the church to do our weekly planning. We ended up helping a member blow up some balloons for the Relief Society birthday party that was taking place that night. We did our weekly planning and I was in a SUPER bad mood for no reason... And my head was just pounding so I took a quick nap before dinner to get my head back in it. We had pretty much the same meal that we had for lunch but it was still super good. We didn't get too much done the rest of the night except for getting adjusted by Brother Blackw***. My back was killing me and Elder Roller had some issues with his body so Brother Blackw*** helped us out! They are probably my most favorite family in the ward right now! He told us all about the different kinds of chiropractic and we talked about our missions and stuff like that. It was relieving to have a member who remembers and understands the stress we go through as missionaries!

Friday morning we had district meeting and it was all focused around being better at doing our studies. We got some KFC before we got out of our proselyting clothes and doing some service at the Kid's Hope Center over by the hospital. This center provides counseling and help for children who have been abused and they were needing a work crew to pull the carpet out. Elder Roller and I managed to get one room done without too many issues but in one of the main rooms the carpet there was a pain in the rear! Luckily the other Elders showed up and with their help we managed to get it all pulled up. We got cleaned up and took dinner afterwards. We did some training with Elder Davis via Skype and it was a lot of fun! He is going to be a really good missionary! We were all so tired that towards the end of training we couldn't concentrate very well!

Saturday was an interesting day. We didn't get too much accomplished in the morning despite our efforts to contact people or the early afternoon because of some assignments that were given to us by the assistants. We went and saw Sister Wilma*** and we had a really good conversation with her. Her husband just passed away a week ago and we talked to her about many different things, all on a spiritual level. She has gone through so much in her life but she has remained so strong because of her deep faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. We had dinner afterward and then we worked through our Areabook to end the night!

Sunday we had ward council in the morning and like always, not too much happened or got accomplished. We had Sue come to church and man that was interesting. She did fine during sacrament meeting but flipped out after Gospel Principles because she thought the other Elders, who were teaching about scriptures, were "pushing" out the Bible but when she walked out of Relief Society she was fine.... Church as a whole was super good though! The talks in sacrament meeting were about Joseph Smith and to wrap it all up, the Stake President just pounded the message home of Joseph's mission here on earth. For third hour, Elder Roller and I got to go help in the Laurel's class. The Young Woman's president had set up the room to look like a mini visitors center and she wanted us to be there like a real one would. At the end of it, we had the opportunity to bear our testimonies of the Atonement and of the Savior. I love talking about the Atonement and talking about the Savior! We had lunch with the Hii***'s and then tried to contact some of our investigators. A huge storm rolled through during dinner but it cleared out by the time we finished dinner. Because of us going to the temple tomorrow, we took our laundry over to the lady that does our laundry right before we headed over to the church for correlation and getting a conference call. You gotta love the ZL life! #calls4days We collected numbers to end the night!

I love this Gospel and I have truly come to love my mission. It has been a tough two years but it has been the most satisfying. I'm grateful for the opportunity that I have to go to the temple tomorrow! I know that the church is true! Joseph Smith was called to be a prophet and Jesus Christ, my older brother and my best friend, is my Savior and Redeemer! Love y'all! Have a tubular week!

Elder Jacob Tonini

Oregon Eugene Mission 
"Days Never to Be Forgotten"

"It Is Not The Honor That You Take With You, But The Heritage You Leave Behind." - Branch Rickey

Hey everyone,

So this was a pretty crazy week! We had a lot of things happen this week!

Monday actually turned out to be our P-Day and it was so much fun! We went to the church after we did our grocery shopping and played some basketball and emailed for a little bit before we went bowling with the other North Bend missionaries, Coos Bay Sisters, and the Florence and Reedsport Elders! I actually bowled pretty well and got multiple strikes. I was really happy about that! We went back to the church and wrapped up our P-Day there. I'm going to mention dinner because it reminded me of home. The family that fed us made up some eggs and chorizo! Oh man, I was in heaven. It was so awesome. We went to the YSA FHE and played some dominoes before hanging out with the members that did our laundry while we waited for it to dry.

Tuesday morning we went to the Senior Center and volunteered there until the afternoon. They do bingo on Tuesdays and it was a lot of fun watching them play as I bussed tables. We spent our afternoon working on a part member list and praying about who we could go see. We went and contacted a part member family and we got in with them! The Jeron*** family met with missionaries in the past and they accepted a return appointment! We showed them a video about being an eternal family and they brought up that they want to come back to church but the wife's work schedule is pretty rigorous. I played basketball at the church at the end of the night and while it was fun and all, I decided that I wasn't going to play again. The whole purpose of basketball on Tuesday is to invite nonmembers to play and have fun but we have some guys who think they are one step from the NBA and it really gets me going and get SUPER competitive. So I won't be playing this week!

Wednesday we spent ALL day at the church. We had some training in case of a tsunami and President Russell instructed us about not gossiping and forgiving people. We then spent the rest of the day waiting for people to get interviewed. Basically nothing got done that day.

And nothing got done on Thursday either! President Russell called us first thing in the morning and told us that all the missionaries in the mission were to put missionary work on hold until every apartment was clean! Our apartment needed a lot of work (we have been working on it as much as time allows) so after we helped the other Elders with their apartment we worked on ours! It took forever but we got it done! We had correlation after dinner and I went with Dan to go contact some part member families but none of them were home. Elder Roller had some better luck than I did and we ended up with a new investigator!

Friday we spent the morning doing new missionary training and also doing some district leader training. We had a lesson with Jake and it went super well. We covered the Restoration and it made sense to him. He had a pretty good question about how we could know if the prophet was a false prophet but we bore our testimonies of the Restoration and of President Monson and he felt the Spirit! He accepted an invitation to come to church so we were pretty excited about that.

Saturday morning we had to exercise the priesthood in one of the Sisters' investigator's home. It was an interesting experience and you could feel the Spirit come into the home after we were done. We were super stoked to go tracting with the Easter initiative but we were told the wrong date so that was a huge let down. We had a lesson with Sue and man it is difficult to teach her. We will make progress with her but then she would loop us back to the beginning. We basically spent the entire lesson marking scriptures in the Bible and Book of Mormon to show how they are meant to be together. That was pretty much our day. We spent the rest of the day contacting but nothing fruitful came from it. Not even a cool story... :(

Sunday was pretty good! None of our investigators came to church but all three hours of church was super good! We met up with Patrick and shared with him the #Hallelujah video and discussed with him about some of his struggles. He hasn't done too hot as of late with some of our commitments but he is going to get refocused and hopefully come to church! We downloaded the Easter initiative and then we got caught up in doing some zone leader duties before our correlation with the STL's.

I love y'all! Thank you for all the support! I know that this church is true! I know that the Gospel is true and that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer! There is no doubt!

Elder Tonini
Oregon Eugene Mission
2014-2016

"Here We Are on Top of the Stars, Never Thought We'd Ever Get This far" - The Afters

Hey everyone!

So this was a busy week but unfortunately we weren't able to find anyone new to teach but we had some awesome moments this week!

Monday was pretty good, we just did the normal basketball and emailing stuff! We had dinner and family home evening with the stake patriarch and his wife along with a semi-less active family. I ended up doing the Rubik's Cube Restoration and that went pretty well! We got to the church in time for the end of the YSA FHE and we got to play badminton without the net. That was all fun and games until I got a random bloody nose! So I spent the rest of the night with a tissue up my nose!

Tuesday we spent the whole day pretty much at MLC in Eugene! It was pretty good and it was good to see all my old friends again! We grabbed dinner in Veneta before coming home. We had to take something to the Florence Elders so we met them in Reedsport and dropped it off to them. By the time we got back, we were away from North Bend for 14 hours.

Wednesday we spent the morning doing ZTM planning with the Sisters. We didn't have too much happen except our lesson with one of our new investigators Jake. He is so cool! At the beginning of our lesson, he was kinda stand offish but by the end the spirit was changing him and he accepted the invitation to be baptized on April 9th! We are super stoked and we hope he can make that date.

Thursday we volunteered at the senior center before doing our weekly planning and working on ZTM stuff. I got another bloody nose during it so that sucked. We had correlation in the evening before we got the relief society room set up for ZTM.

Friday we had ZTM and it went really well. I had to do the last half because Elder Roller and Elder Carter had to go do an emergency blessing. We had a zone lunch that was pretty awesome before we went and spent the whole day contacting people.

Saturday we taught our new investigator Sue about keeping the Sabbath day holy and we introduced the Restoration to her. She was so happy when we gave her a large print Book of Mormon and a large print Bible. She also accepted an invitation to come to church so that was pretty awesome!

Sunday was a rough day at church. Sue had panic attacks all during church so we are currently trying to come up with solutions to help her. We had a lesson with Patrick after church and we talked about his whole situation and about moving his date up. He is looking to come to church on the 20th so we are pretty hopeful for that. We had a lesson with Crystal and Wade came with us and we gave Crystal a blessing of comfort to help her with her stress. We synced at the church to end the night.

I love all of y'all and I love my Savior Jesus Christ! I know that He lives! #Hallelujah!

Elder Tonini

Bowling!

Bowling on P-Day!