email: June 17, 2013

Mom and Dad,

So I read from Elder Feist's email that his parents met y’all. I also talked to Elder Johnson and his grandparents do live there. That is kind of a small world ha-ha. I love it though, I'll be able to know some people when I go home. So Jake leaves for Provo this week? He is going to do so well at school. He is such a good man. He has come a long way. Corina is getting so old! Funny story, I actually had one of the young men add her on Facebook that is her age so that was kind of funny ha-ha. Carson sounds like he is doing super well! Goodness, I have such an awesome family. Too bad that everyone is getting older and growing up. We better have family reunions! So I had an interesting week so here it goes. Nothing really happened with everything falling through but here we go:

This past Monday, we went out to a local golf course and we played nine holes! It was so much fun, it was much needed with all the drama that was going on. The Elder that was causing trouble said another thing and that set all of us off so I asked the zone leaders to sit down and talk with them after DDM about it. After golf, to eat with the P***** family and that is always a blast. I am super close with James P***** so it was fun to go and see them. After dinner, we left and got our contacts and tried to find new people. It was a much needed P-Day with all the crap that happened so it helped me to relax and get ready for the week.

We had our DDM on Tuesday and we had our talk with the ZLs. I basically told them with what was going down and how we needed to fix the issue. This was way overdue; this talk with them so I was excited to clear the air and start to get the issue taken care of. We then went out to find and then had our dinner with the C*****. They both are huge hunters and I feel at home around them. I have come to find out how redneck I really am ha-ha. I love it though. After that, we went and taught Aaron R**** and he told us he would come to church! His niece is down from Moreno Valley to watch his daughter while he is at work so it is good to have her there with him. And they actually came to church this week so that was a good thing.

Wednesday was exchanges for me with the zone leaders. I went out with Elder Santos and we made a whole bunch of visits: seeing formers, less-actives, and potentials. We did see an older couple, the G****'s and got to know them. They are pretty less-active but super friendly. It was fun to get to know them. Oh my goodness, our lesson with the B***** family went super awkward. We wanted to finish up the commandments so we taught the Law of Chastity. However, it didn't go as well as I wanted to. Their friend, Matt, piped up and asked about masturbation. He was all up in arms about it because he thinks it is healthy for you and stuff like that. So we committed him to live it and he said heck no! It was super weird... But hey, that's missionary life for you!

We weekly planned on Thursday and made some more visits and tracted. We did though, go by and see Matt and teach him again. He is slowly but surely coming around. Hopefully he'll be able to make it back. We ate with the P***** family again and they had family come in and eat with us. It was pretty fun; I love that family. We then finished up planning for the week and got ready for the next transfer.

Friday was intervention day. We sat down with the other Elder and we talked things out. He denied everything that he supposedly said but I forgave him regardless if he did or didn't. However, he still has hard feelings towards us so he isn't talking or giving us the time of day. Oh well, I'll get over it. I've forgiven him and so I feel at peace about it. We then ran off to our lesson with Stevie. We grabbed a priest and went off to teach her. Come to find out, we weren't supposed to take him out until afterwards so that was interesting ha-ha. We contacted for the rest of the night and then we got ready to go off to MoVal on Saturday to go to our transfer meeting. Super exciting!

So Saturday morning, we got ready and drove up to MoVal to have our transfer meeting. This meeting was super hard for President Smart and his wife. I can only imagine making this decision and seeing his missionaries leaving him. But my first area is now in another zone! They created a Banning zone now. Pretty cool to see the work progress. I found out that I am staying with Elder Hawkins here in Hemet! I was pretty excited. It will be sad to see people that I served with to leave but this is part of the work here. I then left to get an adjustment from Doctor Collins. It felt so good, I needed one super bad. He thinks that the reason why I have huge headaches is because my neck is always out and it is causing the headaches. So I am going to call the mission nurse and see what I can do. Our lesson with the N***** and JayR went really well too. Brother N***** shot an oriole that has been eat his hummingbirds! The lesson also went well, we invited JayR to think about getting baptized so we will see what he thinks.

Sunday was awesome too, we had another baptism fall into place for us! We have three on date now for this month! She was a young woman that came to girls’ camp and had an awesome experience there and now she wants to get baptized. Stevie is still good for next week and Ross is hopefully gonna be on the 29th. We had four people at church! That was the highest we've had so far here. I also taught gospel doctrine to all the adults about the Plan of Salvation. That was super fun and it went really well. Our dinner was with the ward mission leader and he had a good correlation with him. We then went and tracted and I caught a bunny! It was super funny ha-ha. Then that night, we helped Elder Albright pack. I am going to miss that kid! Overall, it was a good week even though not a lot happened.

Have a wonderful week and know that I love y’all dearly! Have a good time in Utah and have a good time. I am off to the driving range to golf so I will talk to y’all next week :). Love you!

Elder Tonini