email: August 27, 2012

Dear Family,

It is transfer week! It was fun to meet that family that knows the Romney's in Texas. I love eating with the O'Harra family, we had a very good lesson that I will tell more about in a little bit.

I had a pretty good week. We got 170 OYMs and 17 lessons. We were 3 lessons short of where we need to be. Nothing exciting happened on Monday but we had a good P-Day. I played disc golf with Robert for probably the last time. He has been offered a job in Atlanta so hopefully he won't be unemployed for very much longer!

We taught Victor a lot this week. He actually is going to get his Patriarchal Blessing in the upcoming weeks so that is super exciting. We taught him three times this week with him teaching us on Saturday night at the O'Harra's. He is such a stud of a convert. He shares the gospel with everyone. I get so excited when I see him excel and grow in the gospel. He got a home teaching companion and families so he is super excited to start with that new responsibility. He is seriously thinking about serving a mission and he is getting ready to go to the temple.

On Wednesday, we went with Robert to go help a family friend of his. She is an older lady that he does work for occasionally. He went to install a dimmer in her house and we went with him to help him move a piano so we could get back there to install it. We ended up teaching her and she seemed pretty interested. The only bad thing is, she doesn't live in our area... But hopefully something will come of it.

As we have started to teach a lot more lessons, I have come to realize how important the Book of Mormon is to us. I love talking about it and sharing it with people. It seems like that when we teach active members, we talk about about the BoM. It truly is the keystone of our religion and it is what separates us from other Christianity. We are trying to help Antoinette to see how the BoM is the key to conversion and so hopefully we will be able to help her understand that.

I had a couple of interesting tracting stories this week. The first one was that this 17 year old girl answered the door in her bikini and then wanted to hear more about what we do. It was super awkward because I didn't want to make it seem like I was attracted to her (when I wasn't!) and to show that we are respectable men. She didn't want us to come back but it still was awkward. The second one is that we got in to two bashes on the door step with people on back-to-back doors. We had this Seventh Day Adventist try to tell us that he read the BoM and everything and how he cannot agree that the Sabbath is on a Saturday. I boldly told him that he did not pray about the BoM because he didn't feel that it was true. The second door, this Born Again Christian lady told us all sorts of false doctrines that we tried to clear things up but she didn't have an open heart to it. It makes me realize how important the Gospel is and what a blessing it is in my life. It truly is our job to share the light with people.

<EDITOR'S NOTE:  Drew's girlfriend Taylor changed her Facebook status from "in a relationship" to "single" as she gets ready to head out to BYU Idaho.  I usually omit these very personal experiences from the blog for obvious reasons.  However, this time I felt it was important to show how he is dealing with it.> 

So on the subject of Taylor, I actually had a testimony building experience with it. I read her letter and, as you could probably imagine, my mind took off and I started to worry. I was sitting in my room and I had a prompting come over me that told me "You need to go pray." I heard it three times so by the third time, I followed that prompting and I got on my knees to pray. I explained the situation to my Father in Heaven and asked for guidance to know how to handle it. After I finished that prayer, I stayed on my knees to listen to what the Spirit will tell me. I got this warm feeling that started at the top of my head and fell all the way to my feet and I got the feeling that everything will be okay. And it will be. It is hard because she was my everything... And now to hear the she wants to do her own thing is hard because usually that involves me. Sometimes you have to go through fire to get where you want to go and this is my fire. I will be okay, although sleeping at night won't be okay.

Anyways, I will find out this week if I will get transferred so if y'all are going to send anything send it to the mission home. This week is going to be hard for me so keep me in your prayers. I love you all.

Elder Tonini