email: May 27, 2013

Subj: Another Week Down!

How was y'all's week? Did you ever find the Feist family up in ND? Their son is so much fun to serve with. We work hard and play hard together haha. It was a good week for us the area is really starting to pick up. Here was a low down of my week:

Monday was our PDay and that was always a good time. Even though I am fairly new to the zone, we have a lot of fun together. Elder Feist brought his two gloves from home and I got to throw with him. Oh my goodness, it felt so good to get out and throw. I got my hair cut at Sister D****'s house and that was amazing. She runs a salon out of her house and it was super nice to sit down and get my hair cut. That is one of the most relaxing things I can do, I love getting it cut. Our dinner unexpectedly had to eat at 4 pm so that kind of threw us off our usual routine but we made it work. We had two appointments for the night and all of them fell through. So we went and got our OYMs and tried to contact more people. It was kind of a weird PDay but it was still productive.

We had our usual DDM on Tuesday and went to DQ for lunch. We get free DQ, it is super awesome haha. We ran home and waited for our mini missionary to get to us so we could go out and work. I drove out to Homeland to go and work on the names that we got to go see from the Bishop. We knocked off almost five names off the list out in the middle of nowhere Homeland. It actually reminds me of Seminole in a way, just the set up of the city. Our lesson with JayR went really well! This is a family that we are trying so hard to get in and to teach. Elder Hawkins made really good analogy with a glass table and the analogy with the Apostasy. It really made sense to him and it is starting to click, hopefully. Our dinner was at Red Robin and it was terrible... There was baseball one the TVs and it was so hard to focus. Seriously, baseball is my weakness haha. After dinner, we ran to the O*****'s to give them a blessing and to leave a blessing with them. They are such a cute old couple! The husband is 90 and the wife is 88. It was awesome. We went and stopped by Aaron's place and we started to go over his old mission stuff. He misses his mission so much, I don't ever want mine to end! It was a good first day with our mini.

Our Wednesday started off with giving service to a family that is moving up to Anza. They has some big stuff so they called in the big guns to help move :) haha. That took up almost our whole morning. We showered, studied for a little bit then ran off to go knock some doors. We ended up finding these two high school girls that let us in. We had Porter with us so we could actually get in the door! The one girl answered the door in a tight shirt and spandex bottoms. Oh man haha but luckily we had Porter there so it all worked out. They asked us a lot of questions and we left them with a blessing. We set something up to come by on Thursday. We had another Ward Mission Plan (WMP) lesson with the B****'s and the craziest thing happened. So I gave their two year old son my military scripture case for him to play with. He walked around with them for a while then he does something that made my jaw dropped. The son THROWS the box at his pregnant mother's stomach. My jaw dropped! I felt so bad... It was terrible. It was a great way to end the night. NOT! But she was okay, it all worked out.

We weekly planned on Thursday and got ready for the week. Porter was a champ and he helped us out to plan for everyone. After that, we went out knocking and had our lesson with Kendra and Zante (the two girls we met the day before). We had a lesson and it went well. We aren't exactly sure how we are going to keep teaching them but we are going to make it work. Our dinner was awesome, the kids were amazing. I have such a good ward here in Hemet. I love it. Our WMP lesson with the C**** went okay. They drive me nuts and they believe in a lot of false doctrine. It isn't our place to correct but we did let the ward council know about it. The last lesson of the night was with the L***** family. They moved out of our area but we still went and saw them for the last time. We are going to hand them over the the correct elders for them to go over and see them. Thursdays are one of the hardest days to be productive because we lose a lot of time with planning but it all worked out :).

Friday was INSANE. We went on exchanges and Elder Baltazar came with me into my area. Our morning was filled with making more visits to the people on our ward list project and getting their info. We had some pretty nasty rejections; some guy told us to "leave him the HELL alone and get of my doorstep!" It was interesting haha. We had almost 40 OYMs by the time we had to go to our lesson with Stevie. She is getting ready to be baptized in June so that is exciting! After that, we had NOTHING. Everything cancelled and we already visited everyone for the day so we thought to go and contact people. I had an idea to hop in Porter's Wrangler and talk to people as we drove by at stoplights and people outside walking with is PA system in his Jeep. Guess how many people we ended up contacting for the day? 143 people! It was crazy. I had so much fun. We then ate dinner at DQ again because we had no dinner for the night. That was seriously one of the best exchanged I have ever been on. We even went off roading! Icing on the cake :).

Oh my, I seriously thought I threw my back out on Saturday. We helped a potential investigators move their house and it was rough. We moved these SUPER heavy beds up two flights of stairs. That seriously lasted all day. It was rewarding but it was rough. OH! Guess who came and saw me on Saturday? Elder Scoffield! I loved seeing him. I haven't seen him in almost a year. He road his bike down here from Utah, 720 miles. It was good to see him. We seriously moved all day and it super bad. My back hurts so bad. We got our OYMs and came in because I was hurting super bad. I am okay now but it was bad on Saturday.

Guess who ended up getting the chance to speak on Sunday? I did! The youth speaker got sick and so the second councilor asked me to speak five minutes before the meeting. I love speaking in front of people. Being a missionary is awesome because I can speak on any gospel topic with no time to prepare. Everyone liked it; I talked about myself and my family, basically introduced myself to the ward. I spoke on my favorite topic: the Atonement. I loved it. After our correlation meeting with our ward mission leader, he asked me about me giving up baseball to come on my mission. That amazed him, that I would give that up to come here. I guess I earned a lot of respect from people because of that. After our meeting, we ran down to Home land to teach Ross. He is such an awesome guy. He is really soaking up the gospel. We taught the first part of the Plan of Salvation and committed him to stop drinking and smoking so he can be baptized. He really wants to do it so we will be having a legit baptism here pretty soon! Our dinner was sick and so we contacted people and then came in to study for the rest of the night. Overall, we are seeing huge progress from this area already. It has HUGE potential and I am excited to get the work moving forward.

I sure love each and every one of y'all. I love the gospel and how true it is. I love my mission and I never want to leave it! Have a wonderful week and I will talk to y'all soon :). Thank you for sending me that package! If you could, could the iPod have a screen so it is easier to navigate through the content? That would help me out a ton! Love you and thank you for your love and support :).

Elder Tonini

email: September 10, 2012

I am so happy to hear things are going well for y'all back home. It must have been so much fun to have Grandpa there for a couple of days. School always seems to make things go by super fast. It is a good thing when time is flying, or at least it is a good thing for me!

This week has been an interesting week for me. After I found out that I am getting a new missionary from the MTC, I prepared for him to come into the apartment by cleaning it really well. He is adjusting really well. He played rugby for BYU so he is still pretty ripped. It is sooooo nice because he actually gets up to workout with me in the morning. I will hopefully start cutting weight and getting back into shape! He still has a long ways to go but he will do just fine. He is learning so much already.

We study an extra hour for comp study so that is kind of a pain but we need to do it. It is funny to hear him teach or contact people in the street because he will say the same stuff I say. I never realized that the people you have responsibility over really do look up to you and follow your example.

I have two experiences to share with y'all. The first one has to do with Carol, Robert's wife. As y'all know, we have been teaching them for quite a bit of time now. Well on Friday, we had dinner with them and we were planning on teaching a lesson to them. That morning as I got ready to study, I felt like I needed to study for someone so I got on my knees and asked who that person was. I got my answer almost immediately and it was Carol's name that came to mind. So I studied the Apostasy for her in preparation for our lesson. That morning, we had zone meeting and our stake president spoke to us and he said something that hit me so hard. He said "I see miracles happen daily because I EXPECT them to happen daily". That hit me so hard because it was going to take a miracle to see Carol's family come into the gospel. So I prayed and asked if I should invite her into the waters of baptism. Again, immediately I got an answer and it was yes. So that evening I asked her. Before the lesson, I went into the bathroom and prayed and asked to see a miracle happen. Sure enough, it happened! She has a baptismal date for the 29th! I am so humbled by what happened because it truly was a miracle that we were able to see her prepare herself to make the commitment.

The other experience I had was with our lesson with Ben. We were able to get his mother, Eva, to come going in on the lesson. We taught her and I invited her to be baptized on the first lesson. At first she was hesitant but I kept talking and I saw the Spirit hit her with a freight train. Her whole countenance changed and I could see that the words we were telling her were starting to sink in. We tried so hard to get her to pray but she wouldn't... However, it was so amazing to see the Spirit act so quickly on her.

On a sad note, Christopher M***** got ran over by a truck on Friday and had to go to the hospital. He broke his pelvis on both sides. He has surgery today to get plates and screws to fix the break. We went down to Loma Linda Hospital to go give him a blessing at midnight. We aren't supposed to leave our area but this was a spirit of the law situation. He could have gone into surgery that night or later so we got the call that he needed it now. I got so emotional seeing him in pain and he isn't even my child. The tears were flowing when I laid hands on his head to give him a blessing. I gave him a blessing as well as his mother. He is doing well now so hopefully he will start to get better.

We went tracting and it was Elder Johnson's first time going. We went with the Spanams so we could have Spanish and English together. We sent the two greenies together to go knock doors! It was awesome, Johnson almost killed me but it helped him SO much. His street contacting is so much better now from it. I love seeing him progress and grow. It is like seeing my own kid grow!

Some side notes, my Spanish is getting pretty good! I can contact someone and get their address for the Spanish Missionaries. My knowledge of the Bible is really starting to pay off because I can talk to people on the street about it. My OYMing is improving and it is from studying and being obedient. I am still struggling with the whole Taylor situation, as you could probably imagine, however things are getting better. My mindset has taken a complete 180 degree turn and I have become more focused. I hate admitting that I am wrong but... this is what is best for us. Even though it sucks like CRAZY, it is helping me become a better missionary. Plus it is making me become more reliable on the Lord because I seriously hit rock bottom... But things are looking up and all I can do now is pray. Maybe the Lord will hear that plea for two years and make that one of the blessings of being the missionary I can become. Good thing is, we will still write and she is still there for me. I could lose the romantic part of our relationship but I would be lost if she wasn't there for me as a best friend. So things are starting to look up. Happiness is a choice and that is a choice I am going to make!

I don't need anything at this moment. However, I will never object in getting something from y'all in the mail :). Thank you for your prayers and support. Love y'all and miss y'all so much!

Elder Tonini

email: August 13, 2012

This was was the most productive week of my mission. We got 21 lessons and 160 OYMs! We smashed our old record. It took soooo much work though... This is the most tired I have been on my whole mission so far. I am excited for a pretty relaxed P-Day. I even think I might get a good workout in this afternoon after we shop.

Besides teaching a lot, we have seen a lot of success. We had our multi-zone conference this week that got me really pumped to keep working hard. We have two people we are getting ready for baptism, Ben and Antoinette. Ben is an older guy, probably in his 40's, that we found tracting. We think he is a little mentally slow so that might be an issue... We are going to have to get the Bishop's view on it and see what he thinks. Antoinette is a 17 year old girl that I have been working with since I got to Beaumont. We finally got her a goal for baptism so we are going to do everything we can to make that goal. We need to approach her dad about being baptized because that was what stopped her last time. There will be a lot of praying and fasting for her.

We did get a less active family back to church this week! Desiree called us, in tears, last Monday and needed us to come over. There were things going on in her home that she could not handle. We went over every night this week to help her through everything. She ended up coming back to church on Sunday and she had such a good time. We will continue to work with her to help her back to full activity.

Elder Larson and I had a really cool experience on Sunday. We spent some time with Tammy and Marry (they came up from Lake Elsinore to visit) and taught our 20th lesson of the week. After that, we went around talking to people to try and find new people to teach. After we finished talking to this lady, this group of people flagged us down and invited us to their party. They were having an after-church party. The church they meet in was next door and I asked to go in and see it. This church was built in the 1800's when Beaumont was a horse town. We actually got to see the 120 year-old-plus bell that still rings and to go out on the roof and see the architecture of the building. It was sooo cool! I will have to print pictures out and send them home. After that, we came and played games with the congregation that was at the party. We played different games and spent almost the whole evening there. I played this one game where we had a contest to see who could hold the most marshmallows in their mouth and say "chubby bunny!". It was sooo funny. I got it on my camera and it was so funny. Next week, I will send it to y'all. After that, we shared Issiah 1:18 with them and taught about repentance. They loved it! The whole time I talked, I saw heads nodding in agreement and even some amens to what I was saying! It was so much fun. It was a great way to end my week.

I love and miss y'all so much! I turn six months this month, a lap finished! I cannot believe that time is flying by this fast. Keep me in your prayers and the people that we are teaching. I love you all and hope to hear from y'all soon!

Elder Tonini

email: July 30, 2012

Isn't going to teach with the missionaries the best? That means sooooo much to them to have you go out with them to teach. Coming from a missionary, I know how much that means to them! I felt that way and not wanting to go out with them but now I really regret not doing it more often! Let me know how that couple does! I love hearing how much success y'all are seeing out there. Tell those Elders to keep the work going!

This week was a very dull week. Our teaching pool has shrunk and we hardly have anyone to teach. And when we do set something up, it falls through. We are supposed to teaching 20 lessons a week and we are only getting seven to ten... However, we are not letting that get us down. We spend a lot of time tracting and talking to people. On Monday, we went to a regional park with Robert and his family to go play disc golf. We spent all day there with them. After that, we went and taught Victor that night the new member lessons. He is making so much progress. He comes over every morning to workout with me. That is helping me so much to get into the habit of getting up on time.

Tuesday was DDM day and that took FOREVER. We didn't start it until almost noon when it was supposed to start at 10 AM. After that, it was another day filled with tracting. We talked to as many people as we could. We did teach Victor again though and we taught him about Preach My Gospel and how he can use it. He is thirsting for knowledge that we can't keep him fed for long!

Wednesday was another day FILLED with tracting. That is what I feel like we do all the time now. We did have a pretty funny experience while we were out knocking doors. We knocked on this one door and this teenage girl came out and we started to talk to her and invited her to hear out the gospel. She wasn't interested and neither was anyone else in the house so we moved on. That house was on the corner of a circle so we went and knocked the rest of those doors. When we got to the opposite side of that house, these two girls come out of the garage and flag us down. They said they wanted to talk to us so, naturally, we went over there to talk to them. Come to find out, the girl that we talked to at that door step wanted Elder Larson's number and thought that he was super hot! Only problem is that 1) we are missionaries and 2) she has so many piercings all over her face, even some in her gums! We told them that we can't date and they responded with "you guys can't even hook up?!" SUPER AWKWARD! They even asked for our number but we didn't give it to them. We did though explain who we are and what we do. It opened my eyes in knowing that I am apparently not attractive! Oh well :). After that, we taught the M**** family again and the kids taught us the Plan of Salvation. They knew it surprisingly well! After that, we taught Victor again. He is such a stud!

On Thursday, we had Richie come over and we taught him about Preach My Gospel. We went over the first lesson with him and started to get him ready to go on a mission. He is only 17 but it doesn't hurt to starting learning the discussions. That is one thing I did right before my mission. Learning the discussions helped SO much to prepare to go into the mission field. After our lesson, we went and ate lunch with Vic at the Sandwich Stoppe again. We went and tracted after lunch and dinner.

Friday was our weekly planning day. We had some lessons set up but AGAIN they all fell through... We did teach a lesson to the family that we were having dinner with so that helped. After that, we walked around and talked to people. We are trying so hard to find new people to teach. I really hope that the Lord is seeing our efforts and will put someone in our path.

On Saturday, we went to the swap meet here in Beaumont. I was AMAZED at how much stuff was there! We OYMed people and I got a few stuff. I lost Jake's knife when I crashed one day... So I needed to get a new one. I got this super sick black knife for super cheap! I also got a new CD case because I needed one pretty bad. I didn't spend that much at all and got some good stuff! All of our lessons that we had planned fell through... All we did was tract. Tracting is becoming a common theme here now!

Sunday was really good. We had a new family talk at Sacrament meeting and they blew me away! The wife is a convert to the church and she used to be Buddhist! She is Vietnamese and her study was incredible. They have such an awesome family. They actually just moved here from Fort Stockton, Texas! We talked a ton about Texas and all the AWESOME things there. I love my mission and California but nothing matches the standard of Texas! One kind of depressing news, Kim and Karen dropped us... They aren't ready to claim a religion right now. That was super discouraging but I cannot let it affect my work. I will keep on trucking and working my guts out. We then went and talked with Robert and his family. We didn't teach but we set something up to teach them this week!

That's all the news from Beaumont! I love the shirt stays, they work awesomely along with the insoles. They work wonders on my feet. My old ones had NO support so walking is now super comfy. Dad, they are shirt stays and not garters! And that room we painted pink was for someone else in the community, not our own apartment! However, we did give our apartment a SUPER good cleaning. It looks amazing now. If I can learn how to stay clean and not be a slob, I will save my future wife SO much grief!

Sure do love y'all! Have a wonderful week and cannot wait to hear from y'all next week!

Elder Tonini