Monday, September 29, 2014

I Love This Place

September 30, 2014

9/23/14
P-day!!! Finally. It was sooooo nice to relax for a day. We did all of our public stuff in the morning.  We shopped, hit up the post office, and went to the library to e-mail. We came back and I slipped on my p-day clothes the second I got through that door. I had Mac and cheese for lunch and cleaned the kitchen/did dishes, organized all my crap, started laundry and took an AMAZING nap on my new pillow (I've been sleeping on my blanket)!! We woke up and went to dinner with Bro Ray who is a super smart dude and is super funny. He lives up in White House but still makes the drive to visit us. Elder Lane said he's had dinner with Bro Ray probably 3-4 times in all of his different areas. We had Laredo's Mexican and then an ice cream cone at a place next door. We came back and Katie called us and we talked to her for like an hour. She has sooo many questions about the gospel and it's awesome. She's been reading the BOM, the gospel principles book, Mormon.org, and lds.org. It's awesome. We Facebooked at the church and called it a day. Things I studied that are super cool: "Be Ye Clean"-Pres. Hinckley April 1996 conference., and Safety For The Soul by Jeffrey R. Holland from Conference 2010 I think.

Wednesday 
Today was sooo freaking fun. We went to lunch with Katie at Arby's and brought an sd card to give her so she could download gospel library on her phone. Elder Lane freakin drops the card down the crack of the seat so we're trying to reach it for like 10 minutes and Katie is like almost crying she's laughing so hard. Anyways. We went and Facebooked at the church til 3 and went to go visit Tamra. We taught her the gospel of Jesus Christ. She's seems super excited for her baptism on the 12th! After Tamra we came back ate dinner and we're going to visit Katie but she kept postponing, so Elder Lane's just like, let's get in the car and she'll probably text us. So we drive and drive and she never could make it so we went to our appt. with Larry. He told us that he's been having a rough time lately, and we just talked to him about that for a while, so definitely keeping him in my prayers. We headed back and hit the sack after that


Thursday
We had lunch with Katie again today. McDonald's this time. She loves the gospel library app, especially the gospel principles book and said she has a ton of questions for us but she left it at a friends house so we chatted and talked about why African Americans couldn't have the priesthood for a while which was cool because Elder Golden actually talked about it during zone conference. We had to leave at 1 to do our weekly service at the food pantry til 3. I helped all the people brings their bags and stuff too their car. Every single car without fail smelled like cigarettes haha. It was pretty funny. 3 things I've learned about Florida so far. 1. Everyone loves Jesus. Half the town is comprised of different churches and the other half is restaurants and things people visit regularly. 2. Pretty much everyone backs the Gators or the Seminoles. A ton of restaurants have things like "Go Gators!" Or "We support the Gators!" And 3. Everyone and I mean everyone drinks sweet tea or smokes cigarettes. I've gotten so used to the smell already it's crazy.  I love this place. Anyways back to what we did. After the food pantry we came back, showered and headed to the church to Facebook. We came back and made hamburger helper and jambalaya for dinner. We were going to visit a bunch of potential converts but we ended up visiting some people from Elder Lane's 1st area Interlachen which shares a border with our area. So we talked to Sister Murray and Brother Travis and caught up with them. And then we headed back. I guess I didn't really elaborate on Elder Lane in my first letter did I? He's awesome. We have the same birthday and are pretty much homies for life after like a week. He's sarcastic and punches me and we joke around a ton. So much fun! I think I'm settling in to missionary work. Oh and he's from Blackfoot, Idaho and he's been out 20 months so I'm most likely his last companion.

Friday
We were going to meet with Jerry at 11 this morning but he cancelled so we moved up lunch and did a super long weekly planning session. We went to the church and Facebooked. When I say "we" Facebooked it really means Elder Lane Facebooked. We go to the church for wifi and he proselytes on Facebook. Don't ask me how, I don't get trained for about another 4 weeks. During that hour I usually do stuff I can only do in wifi (read emails, look at different Mormon messages and bible videos and download them for later). To be honest I really forget what happened after that... We met with Katie. We basically meet with her every day and it's awesome. She's super chill and we can goof off around her.

Saturday
We went out to visit Jerry around 11 but he was at the laundromat. We visited Katie and her family at her grandpas funeral and found she still had issues with her car. We left and Facebooked until she was ready and then we went over to help her. We thought it would only take a couple hours but it ended up taking almost all day. Elder Lane changed out the thermostat which was in like the weirdest place ever. I don't know junk about cars so Elder Lane kinda took the reins while I chatted with Katie and kept her kids entertained. Kinda sucks that it took so much time but it was nice to help out Katie. We ate at Arby's and tried to go see Tamra at her work but she was gone running errands.

Sunday
 We got up and went to church. It was awesome today because 5 investigators showed up so that was pretty sweet. Katie and her kids, Tamra, Kim and Jerry, and Mark. The speakers in sacrament talked about service and it was the sisters turn to teach gospel principles and they taught about faith and acting on it. In priesthood we watched Elder Holland's talk "Safety for the Soul" which I love and have read about 50 times before. I think it caught Jerry's attention. It was cool. We came home and had lunch and we went to drop in to see Katie at the park but of course we do live in Florida where it rains pretty much all the time. So had to go to her house and talked for a bit. We showed her a little video about being a mom by Jeffrey R. Holland. We  came back and had personal study which was freaking sweet.  Y'all should read the talk "Two Principles for any Economy" by Uchtdorf. Super good. We ate dinner and felt like we should go see Larry so we did. He's still struggling a little so he talked to us about that and we talked to him about Adam and Eve and the fall because he had heard some different theory's on it so we showed him the book of Moses so hopefully he'll read that. Then we went over to the Barber's for weekly scripture study with them. Me and Elder Lane always jam out to Sons of Provo in the car and he's singing it as I type. The things you think are cool when your a missionary...

(Note: These are answers to some of our questions)

We can read emails anytime but can only write on P-day. We have the most awesome ward ever but everyone is so busy running their farms and other such that we don't really get meals that often so I've come too love hamburger helper, Mac and Cheese, and Ramen. Me and Elder Lane kind of do our own thing around meal time but share leftovers sometimes. We don't really knock on doors too much here. Elder Lane said they'd knocked every door in Starke already. We get a good mix of town/country and visit people in both. We pretty much just work on our own and we do get to watch Gen. Conf. this weekend and hopefully bring investigators to it! Miss you and love you!

Elder Toolson

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