Food Storage and Festivities

December 16, 2014

Hey Y'all!

     Another week has gone by in Starke and it's been crazy! Wednesday as ya'll know was transfers and I said goodbye to Elder Lane, who's in Orange Park now. Super sad. I met my new companion Elder Warren who came from White House. He's from Cedar City, Utah and has been out for 6 months. He's pretty cool but way different from Elder Lane. Elder Lane only has three weeks left on his mission and was a lot more relaxed and a tad bit trunky, but Elder Warren is still pretty new in the mission and is very gung-ho about the work. He's our new district leader (his first leadership position and that seems to be going well). Things are certainly different this transfer. Anyways, We got back Wednesday and had dinner with the Watsons (a very old couple in our ward) and had a good time over there. After dinner Bro. Watson looks at us and says, " Do you guys need to go shopping?" and we said, "yeah." Elder Warren did because he's new. And he's just like "Well, follow me!" So he took us through the door into his 2-car garage which is absolutely jam packed full of food storage. They have a garden and have canned green beans, sweet peas, made jelly, and have basically everything you could ever think of. But then he just walks right on by that and leads us into this 2,400 square foot (I think) huge side building dedicated entirely to food storage. He probably had several thousand pounds of grain and flour and stuff and had a ton of cereal, first aid, cans of literally everything, it was crazy. So he gives us two grocery bags and says pick out whatever you want, so I got like 2 things and Elder Warren and I didn't even have to make a trip to Walmart to get him food haha. Our teaching pool has been getting very thin, so we've been knocking a ton of doors all week. We knocked the projects (this mega ghetto neighborhood) and this little black girl, about 6 followed us around the whole time haha. Super funny. We've been knocking a ton of random streets around Starke as well. Finding is becoming very hard. We've run into a ton of people who just told us to come back after Christmas, like 3 weeks away. So yeah we've pretty much been finding all week. Friday and Saturday we spent most of the night working on our float for the Starke Christmas Parade. It turned out super good! I'll have to try and attach a picture or too. The theme was Candyland, but everyone in town mixed a little bit of Jesus into it. the actual parade was at 6:00 on Saturday and our float won 1st place in the youth division! 2nd year in a row! It was tons of fun. Me and Elder Warren walked alongside the float and handed out candy to all the people on the sidewalk. All the youth on the float were yelling and screaming and we gave them candy to throw out. Terrible idea haha. Pretty sure they nailed a couple people in the side of the head... That Parade was super cool, wish y'all could have seen it! Yesterday was a typical Sunday. We teach gospel principles (I forget if I told y'all) and Jerry (our investigator) and Bro Cotton ( a Less Active) both showed up to church so that was pretty great. We spent the afternoon knocking and the night having scripture study at the Barbers which is always a hoot. We all swapped stories about Fast and Testimony meetings gone wrong. I told them about that one time that lady got up back in AZ and was like screaming in Navajo and like weeping haha. Oh man. Anyways hope y'all have a great week! Merry (almost) Christmas!

Elder Toolson

A New Companion and a Gator Head

December 9, 2014

Hey Everyone!

This past week has been crazy and very very busy to say the least. Tuesday we drove to Lake City and had interviews with President Craig and that went pretty well. Wednesday we drove to Lake City again for zone meeting and got some training. We practiced our zone skit for the Mission Christmas Party after zone meeting. We're acting out the hope of God's light for it. It's actually not terrible! After zone meeting we ate at Chick-fil-a in Lake City and bought a gator head at a gas station so that was pretty sweet. Friday one of Elder Lane's old buddies from Fleming Island drove down to Starke and worked with us for the night. It was a blast. We saw Japan that night too and had a super good lesson with them. Yesterday was transfer call (why I'm a day late) and I found out that Elder Lane is getting transferred so I'll meet my new companion Elder Warren tomorrow so I'll let y'all know how that goes... We also said goodbye to Tamra and Katie last night since Elder Lane's leaving and got some pictures with them. That's about it for this week! I got a ton of good pictures this week I'll send them in a separate e-mail!

Elder Toolson

Elder Toolson, Tamra, Elder Lane

Elder Toolson, and Elder Lane

Back Row: Elder Greenlaw, Elder Andersen, Elder Sharp, Elder Walgamott, Elder Lane, Elder Toolson
Front Row: Sister Williams, Sister Whetstone, Sister Atkinson, Sister Hart

     

Thanksgiving and Trade-offs

 December 3, 2014

If I had to pick a theme for this week it'd be trade-offs. I went on four this week! Tuesday I stayed in Starke with Elder Sharp. We taught one our new 'gators, Morgan, who seems decently interested.  We'll have to go back Wednesday.  I went to Lake Butler with Elder Andersen. Thursday was Thanksgiving and one of the few days we weren't on a trade-off. We played turkey bowl over in Lake Butler with their ward in the morning and that was super fun! We traveled back to Starke and went to the Townsends around 5:00 for Thanksgiving. We decided to keep it simple instead of going to like 4 meals and hating life. It was great. The Townsends are hilarious and the food was amazing. They had turkey, ham, some super good stuffing, some green bean casserole, and some butternut squash. So good. Friday I was here in Starke with Elder Crawford (even newer than me in the mission!) while Elder Lane went to the temple down in Orlando. That night, about half an hour after Elder Lane got back we traded again. with the zone leaders for another tradeoff. I was in Starke with Elder Collett. So yeah, tons upon tons of tradeoffs this week. My favorite thing that happened this week was probably Wednesday, on my trade-off in Lake Butler. We went over to the Bishop's house for dinner over there and had some super good enchiladas. Anyway, we got on the topic of spicy foods and Bishop Waters brings up this hot sauce he has that is insanely hot. His wife was super against him getting it out and told us several times that we do not want to try this hot sauce. But he brought it out anyway and of course I'm not going to chicken out. So I put the most ridiculously small drop of hot sauce on there ( I dipped it in the cap) and they were not kidding! My mouth was on fire, for 15 minutes, not even exaggerating. Basically ruined my enchilada, everything tasted like rubber after that. Definetly the hottest thing I've ever had in my life. As far as investigators go right now, Kim moved to Gainesville, so Jerry can start his 4 months of living the gospel! He has an interview on Tuesday which is super exciting. Japan and his wife, Zara seem really interested, we just need to get some lessons going with them and Morgan seems pretty interested too. Things are going pretty good here! Hope y'all had a fantastic Thanksgiving!

Elder Toolson

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...)