Elder David Toolson: Rainstorms and Thick Skin #ihatetrials

August 5, 2015
Hey Y'all!

This week has been awesome! We've been out working hard, sweating our faces off.

Tuesday we had district meeting. I had to give a training on Repentance and I think it was probably the best training I've given yet on the mission. I know that it was the Holy Ghost that made it. It's weird because 90% of the time I have no clue what I'm saying but I can feel myself saying something. Anyways, we did a lot of biking after that, and saw Retha. We biked all the way over to the church and ate dinner with Bishop's family that night. It was great! Bishop Nance is probably the most on-top-of-it Bishop I've ever seen. He's great. We had a killer 7-8 mile bike out to this place called Brook Side and saw this little boy Mark. We rode back and knocked doors super late at night and found this lady Michelle, but she won't be home for the next few weeks....

Wednesday was probably the absolute craziest day all week. We rode all over the place and no one was home. We were going to do service for Bro. Willingham but it started raining and thundering on our way over. So we tried waiting it out and sharing a message but it just kept getting worse and worse and it was a crazy bad rainstorm. It actually knocked over this massive tree in front of the neighborhood so we had to take the long way out. It was nuts, I'll attach a picture. We had dinner with them and I tried sauerkraut and cranberry ginger ale for the first time (Sis. Willingham is German). It was pretty good. We went to Book of Mormon class that night. We didn't have much time to prepare, so I kind of left Elder Coy in the dust when it came to time to teach it, whoops. As opposed to me not being able to speak to anyone when I first came out, I've gotten into the really bad habit of "sermonizing" people and just straight preaching to them. It's pretty bad sometimes. I'm working on it though! Also I had the realization that day that missionaries develop a pretty thick skin haha. We stopped and talked to this lady and she got all mad and called us A-holes and we were trying to keep from laughing hysterically until we had put some distance between the two of us. Luckily we succeeded haha.

Thursday I started this new thing in my journal where I pick a hashtag that describes the day. It's pretty sweet. So Thursday was #ihatetrials. It was a long day, with a lot of biking, but we finally caught this investigator who had dropped off the face of the earth since Sunday walking back to her house from the mailbox and stopped her. I'm not sure we would have gotten back in otherwise. Miracles! God's timing is perfect. I mean seriously, what are the chances?

Friday was #ghettoprobs. We had weekly planning that day and saw an investigator who I hadn't seen since the first day I was here. We went out to Archer and tracked in this neighborhood. It was rough and we ended up leaving after twenty minutes. All the little kids were asking us if we were the police or the tax collectors and following us from door to door and these two guys down the street were playing this super loud, super vulgar, rap music and the Spirit was just gone. So we went somewhere a little quieter to finish up.

Saturday was awesome! Me and Elder Coy were both in fantastic moods all day and were just having a grand old time. We went to the YSA Elder's baptism in the morning and it was great. Afterwards, we helped out Sister Aagard set up for her lesson on Sunday at the church. She wanted to make a sealing room out of the stage and it actually turned out awesome. It took almost two hours though. We did some tracking and were just belting it to the chorus between doors. We were singing the entire time. It was weird and something I wouldn't normally do, but it was fun. We totally skipped this one house because it had about seven super mean geese hanging out in the driveway. It was scary.

Yesterday was great because Nancy came to church and the rest of the day was pretty unmentionable. Y'all have a great week! Also, Patrick got baptized this week! I'm really sad I couldn't see it, but he's so awesome, I'm super happy!

▪️Elder Toolson▪️