Aaron 6/3/13

Hello family!

This week has been a lot less interesting than previous weeks, we did a tonnnnnnn of tracting. Lots and lots and lots of tracting. But you know what they say... the more doors you knock on your mission, the hotter your wife will be ;) haha!

Tuesday we went out and did a lot of tracting for most of the day. That evening though, we had a dinner with one of the members who goes to the OSU singles ward who had become pretty good friends with our recent convert Chris and his returning-to-activity roommate Kiley. They've been going to the singles ward and really enjoying it! The ward has a trip to go to the Washington DC temple at the end of this month, and all three of them are going to be going. It'll be an amazing experience for Chris, especially since he'll only have been baptized for a month! The statistic for converts that do family history and get to do baptisms for the dead within in the first 3-6 months is 80% of them stay active instead of dropping out of activity relatively quickly.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were all spent on our bikes, because we were running short on our miles for the month. We'd drive to the Walmart at the center of town, park our car and then get on our bikes for the rest of the day. Wednesday was definitely getting to summer temperatures, around 88 to 90 degrees, combined with 60+ percent humidity. WAY different than Arizona heat. Twice Elder Cook and I had to run to a CVS Pharmacy or gas station to grab more water/gatorade/yoohoo! (Reminded me of getting yoohoos from Roadrunner with Dad and Nathan growing up!)

We also ran into a guy who buys old hot rods and then rebuilds them. He had a Ford 1934 Ford Sedan Coupe in his garage. He's had it for 30 years, and it is in PERFECT condition! He wasn't interested in the gospel, but he was still an awesome guy. I'll attach a picture of it.

When we were taking pictures of the car though, I set my backpack donw on it's side, and pretty soon Gatorade was pouring out of it!! It turns out hte cap wasn't on very good, so the book of mormon I was carrying, some pamphlets, and my nice compact scriptures were soaked in lemon-lime gatorade :(.

The Book of Mormon and pamphlets were destroyed, and my scriptures are only a little better than that. The bindings are coming off all around the edge, and every single page is warped at least a little bit. Freaking stinks. They're still usable though, so I'll keep using them until they're totally shot. I've basically given up on marking verses in it though.

Luckily I was already annoyed at them. All of the gold writing on the side (The Holy Bible, The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and covenants, The pearl of Great price, and THe church of jesus christ of latter day saints), and my name stamped on the front had worn off withing a month of being in the field. They're just a little black book now. haha!

But after getting a new Book of Mormon and riding to another area, we were able to find a couple of solid investigators, Al and his adult daughter Laura, who were already really interested in the church!

Thursday was filled with more tracting, without any really interesting stories from it. Just a few potential investigators for us to come back and visit.

Friday however was quite an experience. We were out tracting on our bikes again, and stopped at a panda express for dinner, when a Crazy storm came through and soaked our bikes. We just had to wait an extra 10 minutes though, and it was completely cleared up. We then took off pedaling to the far side of town to tak to a couple of potential investigators, who unfortunately weren't home. We got to talking to a lady out walking her dog though, who said there was another storm coming. It was sunny out when we first started talking, with hardly any clouds nearby. Within 10 minutes though a huge storm cloud had come out, and it was stronger than many of the monsoon storms we get in AZ. Within 20 seconds of realizing it would rain soon and saying bye to the lady (who said we could come by and visit her :D) it was pouring and storming like none other. We were sprinting down the street on our bikes to a nearby members house, who got a nice surprise when we knocked on his door dripping wet! We waited for about 20 minutes for the worst of the storm to clear up (by this point it was getting dark too) and after putting the contents of our backpacks into trashbags we headed back out into the rain for the 5-10 minute ride back to the car. We were 100% drenched. Soaked to the bone.

It was awesome :)

The next evening, even though we had our car back, it rained again, but Elder Cook and I decided to finish the street we were on, despite the rain. We got a return appointment out of it :)

And we were dripping wet again talking to people on their porch. :)

Sunday was Elder Cooks Birthday! To celebrate it, The lindaus took us out to lunch on saturday to this place in Granville called Brews. It's got a big bar there, with over 250 beers and over 30 on tap, and the worlds greatest hamburgers!!! We sat in the area right by the kitchen, away from the bar. haha!

The burger I got was a Spicy Green Chili and Goat Cheese Burger, with habenero soaked bacon and habenero mayonaise. It was freaking amazing.

To celebrate Elder Cooks birthday on Sunday we did..... a ton of tracting!! haha. Helping out our future wives. ;)

Sunday Night, he opened up the 2 or 3 dozen gifts he had gotten (most of it food haha) and we had cake with the Lindau's!

The next couple weeks are going to be CRAZY! You should be excited for the next few weeks emails ;)

I Love You All!! Remember-- Read the scriptures, fast and pray, go to church and.. you know the rest :)

-Elder Aaron Toombs