An Elder Tonini Sighting!

Sister Ranae Christensen is in our ward and her mother-in-law is an office missionary in the Oregon Eugene Mission.  In addition to her mother-in-law, look who else she ran into!  Okay, it really wasn't an accident.  Sister Christensen (the missionary) has a soft spot for Elder Tonini and arranged the meeting so that Sister Christensen (from our ward) can bring back some of his stuff.

The Week Where I Get Sick...

Hey everyone,

So this is going to be a pretty short weekly email.

Tuesday we canceled our service at the senior center because I felt super sick. We went to the church instead and cleared missionary pictures off of the Family History Center computers. I still felt pretty sick and I sounded like a lung was going to be coughed out! In fact, I sounded so sick that when President Russell called us to talk about some of the people we have had on date, he told me to go take an hour nap! It was super nice but I didn't sleep much... I was coughing the entire time. We went over to the church in the evening and introduced Elder Swiderski to Brother Her*** and then we met Brother Leav*** at his house to end our day.

Wednesday was rough. I got maybe two hours of sleep the night before and I finally decided that I needed to go see a doctor and so after getting permission from Sister Phipps, I went to the Urgent Care and they gave me a prescription for some heavy duty nighttime cough medicine for my upper respiratory infection. We hung out at Walmart for half an hour waiting for my prescription and then I spent the rest of my day indoors! Elder Carter stayed with me while Elder Swiderski went with Elder Rawlings and did some work in our area. He found a new investigator named Cougar (yes, the kid is Native American) so that's good. Elder Swiderski stayed in with me after dinner so not much was accomplished. We tried to get lessons set up on the phone though so that's good.

After taking my meds on Wednesday night, I slept through the whole night and I felt loads better when I woke up on Thursday! We were able to go volunteer at the Senior Center and then we spent the afternoon planning and going through our areabook. We had a short correlation meeting and then Elder Swiderski wasn't feeling super hot so we took the evening lightly.

Friday we had training and district meeting in the morning. Elder Carter's district meeting went really well! We went and helped the Lopez's move some cabinets out and I did most of the grunt work because I was the tallest and the strongest! In return, they fed us lunch! However, all the work reactivated my symptoms so that made the day somewhat difficult. We made some contacts but we weren't able to teach anyone.

Saturday we called the family history center directors in our stake with the STL's and talked with them about what we could do to be better about using the family history centers. Elder Swiderski showed a former investigator some of his trumpeting skills before we took off for Coquille to give some supplies to the Sisters. We made some contacts throughout the evening but nothing was too fruitful.

Sunday was pretty good. We finally got a new bishop and he is one of the members that loves the missionaries so we are pretty excited! Patrick canceled our lesson for the day so we went out and contacted before dinner. We dropped off our laundry and then correlated with the sisters to end the night.

That is all I got for you this week! I love y'all and have a good week!

Elder Tonini
Oregon Eugene Mission 
"Days Never to Be Forgotten"

A Parental Confession

I have a confession to make.  I am trunky.  You may have noticed the countdown clock that I have added to the blog.  I didn't realize how excited I am for Elder Tonini to come home until I watched this YouTube video this afternoon.  

The Nashville Tribute Band performed here in Minot last night and Jason Deere, the front man for the band, made reference to this video during the concert for the missionaries.  The song itself is from their Trek CD but certainly has application to missionaries "Coming Home."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQcSGVmXKNQ

Last 6 on the Coast!

Hey everyone,

This is going to be a super short email. I spent most of my day in the car traveling to and from Roseburg. Elder Roller got transferred to Roseburg and my new companion is Elder Swiderski! I am pretty pumped up about that! I have served around him before and he is a hard worker!

To recap the week, we had MLC and spent the week planning or trying to deal with canceled lessons. It was a bad week teaching wise but we are going to change that this week! We also did a hike for P-Day so that was pretty awesome!

I love y'all! Thank you for all the support and the love! I know that the Church is true! There is no doubt!

Love,

Elder Tonini

Oregon Eugene Mission
"Days Never to Be Forgotten"

April 5, 2016 MLC

There are a couple of pictures on the OEM blog of Elder Tonini:


More Elders, and Elder Halam can really get around.

Elder Huntsman, Elder Tonini, and in the back, Elder Blackwelder.

http://oemrussell.blogspot.com/2016/04/april-5-2016-mlc-elder-hinton-and-elder.html

General Conference Weekend!

Hey everyone!

Don't y'all just love General Conference? Because I do! We had a pretty good week, even with Elder Roller struggling with sickness. We don't know what is going on with him but he is still trying to do missionary work so that's good!

Tuesday was our P-Day! We didn't do anything too exciting, just our normal shopping, playing basketball, and emailing. The lady who normal does our laundry couldn't do it so we asked the Blackw***s if we could do it at their place and they said yes. Elder Roller and I went over there first thing spin the morning and left after putting in our laundry, talking to Brother and Sister Blackw***, and being fed breakfast. I also got an email notification notifying me that I was "enrolled" in the MyPlan course for soon-to-be RM's.... So that was fun!

Wednesday we had some lessons set up but they all fell through so we didn't have too much luck teaching or finding anyone new to teach. One funny highlight of the day though was that after dinner and sharing a message with a member family, we were messing with a cat using a laser pointer. The family's youngest child gets outside to where the cat is and without any warning drops his pants and takes that time to use the restroom! It was pretty funny. All throughout the day, Elder Roller wasn't feeling too good so it was a pretty tough day (and week) for him.

Thursday was pretty awesome! We had our service at the senior center but we had an awesome experience that happened after we got done cleaning up. We got talking with Sonya and Jennifer, sisters who work there and they started asking us questions about why we were on missions and what the Church really believed in. We taught them a very basic Restoration lesson and then we left them the times for the General Conference sessions and they said that they would watch it. It was pretty awesome! We did our weekly planning afterwards and then we had an awesome dinner with the Blackwe***! They are such a cool family!

Friday we didn't have district meeting due to specialized training on Monday so we did accountability and then we were supposed to do training but the Elders had to run and get a prescription so that didn't happen. We had a lesson with Jake and that went super well. We went over the first couple of points in the Plan of Salvation and he is starting to get a hang of what we are trying to teach him. He has some really good questions but because of the time we weren't able to answer them as clearly as we wanted to but he committed to come to the priesthood session of General Conference. We had dinner way out in Hauser with a single sister and her less active son. We had a feast and then we shared the Follow Him video with them. The son was pretty into it and the Spirit was there so maybe he will feel the need to make some changes in his life. We tried to see the Jeron***'s but we just missed them according to the baby sitter who was watching the two kids. We spent the rest of our night out contacting people.

Saturday was jam packed with General Conference! I have come to really love this special time of the year. We showed up at the church for the morning session but to our dismay no one had set up the projector in the chapel. We got it pulled up on the family history computer and we watched it on there until the member who does all the tech stuff showed up and set it up for us and the couple of members that were there. We got lunch from KFC and took our lunch hour before the afternoon session got underway. When that session finished, we drove over to the stake president's house and picked up his son so we could go have an early dinner with Sister Wilma***. She had a ton of soda and pizza for us! We took Dan over to the church and we watched the priesthood session there. Right as we got to the church, Jake texted us and told us he wasn't going to be making it so that was a bummer but hey, there were some pretty good talks at that session! When the priesthood session was over, I kept with tradition and got ice cream! It may have not been Sonic but it was still really good ice cream!

Sunday was just another packed day of conference! I loved the talks that were given, especially Elder Holland's talk to end conference. When conference was over, we had a conversation with the Sisters and it turned into a discussion about why we came on missions. This district has been one of my favorite districts on my mission. We are super tight and it has been a great transfer. We had a conversation with the the stake president before visiting with a less active member for a few minutes. We ended up taking dinner at the other Elders' apartment before taking our laundry over to our laundry lady. We synced up our AreaBooks and correlated with the sisters to end our week.

So with this being General Conference weekend, here were a couple of my thoughts from General Conference. 

• Sometimes we forget that we are Heavenly Father's sons and daughters. When we run into those trials, the first thing that needs to happen is that we need to remind ourselves of hour divine heritage. 
• "You can have what you want, but you can have something better" -Elder Holland 
• Without the proper priesthood keys, we would still be locked out of the vehicle that will take us to eternal life and exaltation. 
• Humility will open the floodgates to a happy marriage, better relationships with those around you, and a happier life. 
• The closer our heart is to the Savior, the more gratitude we feel and we will also feel an increased desire to repent. 
• Not only is Jesus Christ the greatest leader to walk this earth, He is also the greatest follower! 

Just a couple of my thoughts! I love y'all and have a great week! My last transfer call is this week but more than likely I am staying to finish up in North Bend! 

Love y'all! 

Elder Tonini 

Oregon Eugene Mission 
"Days Never to Be Forgotten"

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"