One More Week!

Hey everyone,

Wow. This is possibly the last weekly email I will send as a missionary, pending on what happens that last Monday before I hop on the plane. This is super crazy, just like how this week was!

Monday was another relaxing P-Day hanging out at the church and emailing home. It was super relaxing and a lot of fun. We picked up laundry and dinner and after P-Day ended and we were about to start eating when the AP's called and informed me that my departing temple trip got moved from Wednesday in Portland to Saturday in Medford. That threw a wrench in our week haha! We got to stay in our P-Day clothes and played badminton for FHE. Nichole, our investigator who came to church, came to FHE and had fun! I did MyPlan afterwards and I got to do some planning about how I am going to go about dating and getting married! Yay!

Tuesday morning we headed over to the Senior Center and did our routine for about an hour before heading over to our first lesson with Nichole. She is a blank slate! She doesn't know too much about the Church (or anything to do with religion) so that was pretty awesome. We invited her to be baptized but she wasn't quite sure about it so we invited her to pray and read the scriptures and she said that she would do it. She is pretty awesome and we have a super awesome fellowshipper in her roommate Sienna! We got all packed up and after dinner we drove on down to Brookings for an exchange. It was a two hour drive and man it was a beautiful drive! I loved it! We got into Brookings about 10ish and once I got settled I was out for the night.

Wednesday morning we were all geared up to do three different service projects but after we missed one because of a CO2 alarm install and the other canceled we headed over to the humane society thrift store and volunteered there. Elder Bowers and I started weedwhacking some weeds and that's where the fun began! We were obviously cutting grass and a couple rolls up in a rental Mercedes Benz and parked right where we were cutting and they asked us to not cut the grass around their car... So we did the best we could but we still ended up getting grass on the car. The lady noticed us trying to get the grass off with the weedwhacker.... Ha-ha I am totally kidding. The lady did see us trying to get the grass off and came out of the thrift store and started yelling at us that it's a rental and they are responsible and blah blah blah. I understand that it's an expensive car but there wasn't any damage yet they took the thrift store's insurance information... Some people! When we got that done, I had to go shower because I was covered in grass and I was super sweaty (I'm sure that doesn't surprise anyone!). When I got cleaned up, I headed out with Elder Christiansen to do some missionary work. We attempted to contact some of their investigators but no one was home. We drove to the church so we could do an iPad check and we realized two things; we had both phones and the other Elders had the key to the church and the apartment! The Sisters unlocked the church for us and after we did the iPad check and had dinner, I did a baptismal interview for a guy named Kurt. He is so awesome. As I sat there with him, I saw how the Atonement changed his life for the better and it was pretty amazing. Needless to say, he is getting baptized! We spent the rest of our night driving back home to North Bend. We made a stop at Cape Blanco, the farthest west you can get in the continental United States. It was super cold and foggy but we made it out there!

Thursday was a blur. We did a lot of finding after the senior center but we didn't teach anyone or find anyone. The only thing that happened was the AP's stayed the night with us!

Friday we had specialized training and then we had a zone activity afterwards. We played volleyball and signed transfer journals. We went out and about contacting after dinner but it was a rough crowd. We ended up getting ready to go to the temple to end our night.

Saturday morning we left our apartment way early in the morning to get to the Roseburg transfer spot so I could go on my departing missionary temple trip! We went to the Medford temple and I got to see some of the members that I served around in Medford and Central Point. It was the highlight of the day! We also got a referral for a lady that wants to get baptized in two weeks!

President Russell, Sister Russell, Sister Newsome, Sister Ansus, Sister Geisler. Back row: Elder Wells, Elder Tonini, Elder Roller, and Elder Fetzer. Elder Provstgaard couldn't make it as he had three baptisms that day!

Sunday was good! Nothing much to report though.

That's all I got! I can't believe that I see my family next week!

Love y'all!

Elder Tonini

Oregon Eugene Mission
"Days Never to Be Forgotten"