New Investigators

November 24, 2014

This week was pretty great! I had trade offs Wednesday with Elder Walgamott (everyone calls him Walgee) and he came here to good old Starke. Thursday we traded back and Elder Lane broke his tooth so we had to take a trip to Jacksonville to get it fixed. Saturday we picked up two new investigators, Japan, and Morgan and have plans to meet with them later on this week! A member from the ward, Sister Beckham called us and her mom fell and broke her hip and was in the hospital so me and Elder Lane went to go give her a blessing. We also saw a less active Brother Chism and he gave me this leather trench coat that makes me look like I'm an 80's detective or something. Pretty dang sweet. Yesterday we saw Kevin again and talked about the nature of the Godhead with him. As far as investigators go, Kim and Jerry are still up in the air so hopefully something happens with them. We haven't seen Katie for about a week now, she's been doing this Mary Kay business which is eating up all of her time. So we've been trying to pick up some new investigators, so hopefully the two we just picked up will be solid! Sorry if this is kinda lame but I haven't written in my journal all week so this like all off of memory... Anyway hope y'all are having an awesome week! Have a good Thanksgiving! 

Elder Toolson

Elder Punker gets his Eyebrows Tweezed.

November 17, 2014

Hey y'all,

     I've had a pretty awesome week this week! Things are going sweet! On P-day we went over to Katie's because Elder Lane had to do some school stuff. Katie's been selling Mary Kay lately and somehow she talked us into letting her pluck our eyebrows. Probably the worst decision of my life. Its looks good, but man it did not feel good. We had our weekly Monday lesson with this guy Kevin who is very very intelligent. I like having discussions with people who actually respond and ask questions. We did some service for the Hirschs Tuesday (trimming, raking and other stuff). We saw this guy Jessie too. Totally drunk at like 2:30 in the afternoon and not friendly haha. I went on a trade off with Elder Greenlaw in Lake Butler this week. We did so much dang service. We weeded, and mulched, and cleared out a garden for this lady Marla, and later that night helped Sister Janine paint for a couple hours. In between we visited some guy in a trailer in the backwoods. He took us on a little walk to this stream and showed us around his property and stuff while we talked. We had our usual service at the Bradford food pantry but it was mega busy because Thanksgiving's coming up. I was bag boy for about 3 hours and helped everyone carry their bags to their car.  We had dinner with Bro Ray and visited Brother Chism. Elder Lane specifically told me to knock quietly because he might be asleep and then he totally let the screen door go and it slammed loud enough to wake up the neighbors and it woke Brother Chism up. I was totally busting up. Friday we went over to the Barbers in the morning because Elder Lane had to register for school and needed a computer. So while we did that I studied a little bit, and played with the kids. Their littlest one, about Brooklyn's age ,always calls me Elder Punker. Yesterday was the Primary Program and those are always a blast haha. What the Primary in this ward lacks in numbers they more than make up for in enthusiasm. One of the kids up there looked mega drunk and kept bumping into Nick(who we visit) and he kept throwing me these "help me" looks haha. We visited Jan, an investigator who goes to Madison Street Baptist(our main competitor in the area) and swapped beliefs for a while. She wants us to come back and discuss heaven and hell more in depth with her but I don't know if she'll listen. She might just want to bash. Who knows. We visited Tamra too and me and Elder Lane were dying laughing because Tamra kept forgetting what she was talking about.  We visited Larry too and talked with him about prayer. We skipped the Barbers last night and saw Katie instead. We asked her at the end to think about the question "I have a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true.  What am I going to do about it?" 

Pretty much my week in a nutshell! If I left out anything you want to know ask away!

Elder Toolson

Baptisms, Blow Guns, and Squirrels

November 10, 2014

Hello Y'all,

Another week has flown by here in Starke! For Dad and I guess all y'all our daily schedule is usually, wake up at 6:30, exercise, shower, eat breakfast and all that good stuff until personal study from 8-9.  Since I'm still in training, companionship study is 2 hours so that's from 9-11 usually. We usually visit people from 11-12 and eat lunch from 12-1. The rest of the day is usually up in the air.  We never eat dinner or do anything at a consistent time after that sooo yeah. Last P-day we saw like everyone at Wal-mart! We saw the sister missionaries, and Jennifer and Grace from the ward there. I bought a blow gun (don't even ask why) and it was probably the best decision I've ever made. During lunch and sometimes dinner we slather some peanut butter on the tree and try and hunt squirrels.  Relax though I haven't killed any. Ummm we went to the food pantry Wednesday instead of Thursday to help them unload some huge shipments they got for the Thanksgiving season. We met a super nice lady there, Brenda, I think.  And at one point she just yelled, "That cinnamon bread is off the chain!" Super funny because she's in like her 70's. Cracked me up! Ohhhhh! We had zone conference in Gainesville and that ate up most of the day from like 8-5. I got to see all the new missionaries that just came in there. It's sweet not being the youngest in the misison anymore. Yesterday was pretty busy. After church Sister Thompson in the ward, had a flat tire out in the parking lot so we fixed that for her. We went over to Katie's for a couple minutes afterward and chatted with her. We visited Brother Cotton that night, a less active in the ward, and told him to make the temple a priority in his life and start coming to church so hopefully he does. We went over to the Barber's for scripture study last night and that's always mega fun! That's pretty much my week in a nutshell. We started teaching this lady Cassandra out in Lawtey but haven't got to sit down with her again since we taught the restoration so hopefully we can do that. Oh! Last night it was super funny because we saw one of our investigators and his girlfriend called us over and he tried running because he was smoking and Elder Lane just yells out, "We caught you in the act!" Cracked me up haha. Kim, a lady we teach is getting baptized on the 21st, so hopefully that'll happen! She seems super solid and loves church! We kind of tag team her and Jerry,who she lives with, with the sisters.We still meet with Katie regularly and talk with her.Those are our big investigators right now. I cant really think of anything else that happened this week so if you got questions about what happened, ask away! 

Elder Toolson

Another Week in Starke

November 3, 2014

Whaddup y'all

    This week was pretty fun with all the Halloween stuff going on! We did service for Brother Beckham out in Keystone Heights and helped him rip some stumps out of the ground for like 3 hours. Me and Elder Lane were covered in charcoal because he tried to burn it previously. That's some dang dirty work! But as reward, he fed us his biscuits N gravy which is like famous around the ward, and for good reason. Soooo good I almost died. Oh and he also showed us his organ that he has and played us a bunch of songs. He's a funny dude. Friday for Halloween we were supposed to be in a member or investigator's house at 6:00 and the Barbers invited us over. We had a little Halloween party at the party barn and went on this hay ride with them. Me and Elder Lane thought it'd be like 10-15 mins. Nope. 3 hours of bone-chilling cold with the wind blowing super bad. It was definitely an awesome experience haha. It was super fun. The way they do trick or treating here is via hay rides.( because it's so country) so we rode around in the back of a truck with everyone shooting silly string and hollering and such. Freaking awesome Halloween. Anyways the day after we had another shindig at the party barn. We had some delicious Boston Butt and left to go do some missionary work. We finally reconnected with Tamra (haven't seen her in 2 weeks and she was supposed to get baptized) and she says she still wants to but wants to make sure she'll come after she gets baptized. Other than that just the same old missionary thing going on!

Love and miss y'all! 

Elder Toolson 

(I asked him what Boston Butt was and he said it was Pork that they smoke overnight.) (And I don't know what the Party Barn is other than a Barn they Party in...)