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"
Monday, March 21, 2016
Monday, March 14, 2016
"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
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
Monday, March 7, 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
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
Monday, February 29, 2016
We Have Travel Plans!
Elder Jacob Tonini will return on Tuesday, 24 May at 7:20 pm at Minot Airport! He isn't allowed to get trunky, but can we?!?
Greetings from the Dirty Coos!
Hey everyone!
I had a pretty good week out here on the coast! We didn't teach as much as we would've liked to but we are going to make up for it this week! Monday I spent the morning leaving Sutherlin and going up to Eugene to meet up with my new companion Elder Roller. We packed up my stuff into a member's truck and headed out with the member and four Elders crammed into his truck! We got into Coos Bay in time to have a full P-Day. We got our grocery shopping done before going and playing basketball all afternoon. We got cleaned up and then we all pitched in to get some Little Caesars Pizza for dinner. We headed over to the church after dinner for FHE with the YSA group. It was so much fun and a great way to spend a Monday night! We played a different version of Uno and it was super fun. I ended up winning too so that made it even better!
Tuesday morning we were supposed to have service at the Senior Center but there were a ton of volunteers so we headed over to the church and I got my Area Book logged into the North Bend area. We went to go contact an investigator but he was hammered out of his mind before it was even 12 o'clock... We took lunch before going and helping a non-member move some stuff into storage. They were supposed to move to Coquille but their place there was apparently garbage. So we helped them move their stuff into two storage units and man it took forever! We were there for two hours and we could've put all of their stuff into one but the lady wanted us to do it a certain way (which didn't make ANY sense) so we had move the rest into the second unit. After dinner we had to figure out a miscalculation in the numbers reported the last week so we did that before our zone correlation with the STL's. We talked about the activities that we wanted to do and planned accordingly!
Wednesday we spent the morning contacting some of our investigators before heading to the church and making some adjustments to some reports on our iPads. We grabbed Elder Carter and Elder Rawlings and we grabbed some KFC! A member is the general manager there and since she is a single lady, she can't feed us in her home so she feeds us KFC instead. It was super good food. We had our afternoon lessons cancel but we were able to teach an investigator named Angela on the door step about the Atonement. She has been having a rough time but she has been reading her scriptures and the other assignments given to her by Elder Roller and his previous companion. We got picked up for dinner and by the time we got all the way out there, had dinner, and came back we just stayed at the church and organized our Area Book to end the night.
Thursday morning we didn't do our weekly planning! Instead, we volunteered at the Senior Center. It was a lot of fun! We actually got talking with the volunteer supervisor named Loni and we talked to her about tithing and why we go to church. It was a super good conversation. After the senior center we had to take Elder Carter to the bike shop so he could get his bike fixed. I ended up playing the Australian Shepard that was in the shop! It made me miss Yarra! We spent the rest of the afternoon doing weekly planning and then we picked up some pizzas that a member ordered for us and had that for dinner. We had a super good correlation meeting afterwards and we made a lot of progress on the ward mission plan and helping our ward make family mission plans.
Friday was AWESOME! We trained a new missionary and he is pretty awesome! During our district meeting, I got a text from Sister Christensen and she told me that Zowie had come into the world! I was on Cloud 9 the rest of the meeting! After district meeting we helped those nonmembers from earlier in the week move into a home they got in Coos Bay. Once again, the lady took over and we could've gotten in everything into the van but she wasn't having it! That took us another two hours.... Meh.. We got back to our apartment and found out that we got inspected... and our apartment wasn't the cleanest. So we spent the little time we had before dinner cleaning haha! We had a super fun dinner and then we spent the rest of the night trying to contact some of the members so I could get to know them!
Saturday was a bit of a slower day for us. We contacted some investigators and got some lessons set up but other than that we didn't have any success tracting or teaching anyone really. The one good thing that happened was we drove by an investigator's house and we saw that they were home so we turned around and talked to them for a few minutes. We ended up teaching Sue about the Book of Mormon and after we shot down some of her "concerns" (like the statement that Mormon missionaries could not enter a house if there was a cross with an angel that had wings on it...), she took a Book of Mormon and said that she would read it!
Sunday we had ward council in the morning before church and I got to meet some of the members of the ward council so that was good. Church was pretty good, especially the Gospel Principles class! That teacher was pretty awesome! We had a lesson shortly after lunch with a guy named Patrick! He is such a cool guy but has had some tough times as of late. Despite his now ex moving out, he is living the law of chastity and he told us he is going to be able to start coming to Church starting in the middle of March! We were super pumped! We taught him the baptismal interview and we gave him a blessing before booking it over and seeing a YSA member named Crystal! We had a super good discussion with her and another YSA kid before we had to go to dinner. We correlated with the STL's and updated the Area Book to end the night!
I love you all! I'm so grateful for all your support and your love! I know that the Church is true! There is no doubt!
Elder Tonini
Oregon Eugene Mission
"Days Never to Be Forgotten"
I had a pretty good week out here on the coast! We didn't teach as much as we would've liked to but we are going to make up for it this week! Monday I spent the morning leaving Sutherlin and going up to Eugene to meet up with my new companion Elder Roller. We packed up my stuff into a member's truck and headed out with the member and four Elders crammed into his truck! We got into Coos Bay in time to have a full P-Day. We got our grocery shopping done before going and playing basketball all afternoon. We got cleaned up and then we all pitched in to get some Little Caesars Pizza for dinner. We headed over to the church after dinner for FHE with the YSA group. It was so much fun and a great way to spend a Monday night! We played a different version of Uno and it was super fun. I ended up winning too so that made it even better!
Tuesday morning we were supposed to have service at the Senior Center but there were a ton of volunteers so we headed over to the church and I got my Area Book logged into the North Bend area. We went to go contact an investigator but he was hammered out of his mind before it was even 12 o'clock... We took lunch before going and helping a non-member move some stuff into storage. They were supposed to move to Coquille but their place there was apparently garbage. So we helped them move their stuff into two storage units and man it took forever! We were there for two hours and we could've put all of their stuff into one but the lady wanted us to do it a certain way (which didn't make ANY sense) so we had move the rest into the second unit. After dinner we had to figure out a miscalculation in the numbers reported the last week so we did that before our zone correlation with the STL's. We talked about the activities that we wanted to do and planned accordingly!
Wednesday we spent the morning contacting some of our investigators before heading to the church and making some adjustments to some reports on our iPads. We grabbed Elder Carter and Elder Rawlings and we grabbed some KFC! A member is the general manager there and since she is a single lady, she can't feed us in her home so she feeds us KFC instead. It was super good food. We had our afternoon lessons cancel but we were able to teach an investigator named Angela on the door step about the Atonement. She has been having a rough time but she has been reading her scriptures and the other assignments given to her by Elder Roller and his previous companion. We got picked up for dinner and by the time we got all the way out there, had dinner, and came back we just stayed at the church and organized our Area Book to end the night.
Thursday morning we didn't do our weekly planning! Instead, we volunteered at the Senior Center. It was a lot of fun! We actually got talking with the volunteer supervisor named Loni and we talked to her about tithing and why we go to church. It was a super good conversation. After the senior center we had to take Elder Carter to the bike shop so he could get his bike fixed. I ended up playing the Australian Shepard that was in the shop! It made me miss Yarra! We spent the rest of the afternoon doing weekly planning and then we picked up some pizzas that a member ordered for us and had that for dinner. We had a super good correlation meeting afterwards and we made a lot of progress on the ward mission plan and helping our ward make family mission plans.
Friday was AWESOME! We trained a new missionary and he is pretty awesome! During our district meeting, I got a text from Sister Christensen and she told me that Zowie had come into the world! I was on Cloud 9 the rest of the meeting! After district meeting we helped those nonmembers from earlier in the week move into a home they got in Coos Bay. Once again, the lady took over and we could've gotten in everything into the van but she wasn't having it! That took us another two hours.... Meh.. We got back to our apartment and found out that we got inspected... and our apartment wasn't the cleanest. So we spent the little time we had before dinner cleaning haha! We had a super fun dinner and then we spent the rest of the night trying to contact some of the members so I could get to know them!
Saturday was a bit of a slower day for us. We contacted some investigators and got some lessons set up but other than that we didn't have any success tracting or teaching anyone really. The one good thing that happened was we drove by an investigator's house and we saw that they were home so we turned around and talked to them for a few minutes. We ended up teaching Sue about the Book of Mormon and after we shot down some of her "concerns" (like the statement that Mormon missionaries could not enter a house if there was a cross with an angel that had wings on it...), she took a Book of Mormon and said that she would read it!
Sunday we had ward council in the morning before church and I got to meet some of the members of the ward council so that was good. Church was pretty good, especially the Gospel Principles class! That teacher was pretty awesome! We had a lesson shortly after lunch with a guy named Patrick! He is such a cool guy but has had some tough times as of late. Despite his now ex moving out, he is living the law of chastity and he told us he is going to be able to start coming to Church starting in the middle of March! We were super pumped! We taught him the baptismal interview and we gave him a blessing before booking it over and seeing a YSA member named Crystal! We had a super good discussion with her and another YSA kid before we had to go to dinner. We correlated with the STL's and updated the Area Book to end the night!
I love you all! I'm so grateful for all your support and your love! I know that the Church is true! There is no doubt!
Elder Tonini
Oregon Eugene Mission
"Days Never to Be Forgotten"
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
ZL Letter
23 February 2016
Dear Elder Jacob Romney Tonini,
Your purpose as a Zone Leader in the Oregon Eugene Mission is to help the missionaries in your zone understand and live the principles described in Preach My Gospel. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit you will lead your missionaries; teaching and providing the example for obedience, diligence, working by the spirit and humility. Specifically you will lead by example in planning, teaching, finding and working with members.
You earn the missionaries respect when you demonstrate effective work in your own area. As you produce and bring people to Christ, building a successful area, missionaries will want to be like you. You are expected to lead the way with your area; you should lead out in all key indicators. Lead by example - look at the sons of Helaman for an example:
"And they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold this was not all - they were men who were true at times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted.
"Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him." (Alma 53:20-21)
Always be teaching; what you do on exchanges will greatly impact your success. That's when you can demonstrate and develop in them, skills and ability to find, teach and commit. Don't forget the value of teaching your missionaries how to work with members. The most effective training you can do will be on exchanges with other missionaries. That's when you can demonstrate and develop in them skills and ability.
In addition to the above counsel, please see attached specific duties of a Zone Leader.
With profound love and trust!
H. Jeff Russell
Mission President
cc: Parents, Bishop, Stake President
Dear Elder Jacob Romney Tonini,
Your purpose as a Zone Leader in the Oregon Eugene Mission is to help the missionaries in your zone understand and live the principles described in Preach My Gospel. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit you will lead your missionaries; teaching and providing the example for obedience, diligence, working by the spirit and humility. Specifically you will lead by example in planning, teaching, finding and working with members.
You earn the missionaries respect when you demonstrate effective work in your own area. As you produce and bring people to Christ, building a successful area, missionaries will want to be like you. You are expected to lead the way with your area; you should lead out in all key indicators. Lead by example - look at the sons of Helaman for an example:
"And they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold this was not all - they were men who were true at times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted.
"Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him." (Alma 53:20-21)
Always be teaching; what you do on exchanges will greatly impact your success. That's when you can demonstrate and develop in them, skills and ability to find, teach and commit. Don't forget the value of teaching your missionaries how to work with members. The most effective training you can do will be on exchanges with other missionaries. That's when you can demonstrate and develop in them skills and ability.
In addition to the above counsel, please see attached specific duties of a Zone Leader.
With profound love and trust!
H. Jeff Russell
Mission President
cc: Parents, Bishop, Stake President
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