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"