January 8, 2014
Warm, cold, warm, cold, freezing, insanely cold.
The subject has pretty much been the past couple of weeks as
far as weather. There's a saying in Ohio, "If you don't like the weather
here, just wait 5 minutes and it will change." It's way too true. Monday it
got down to -11, and Saturday will be back up in the 50s. Whaaa??
So going back to 2 Mondays ago, December 30! It was P-day of
course, and we had fun playing dodgeball/basketball as usual. Afterwards we had
a quick dinner, and then headed out to Pataskala, Ohio, out near the edge of
our area, to visit the Dills family. The Dills are less-active, and have been struggling
with family issues for a while now. Their story is actually really sad,
especially because all the problems have come from within the family. It's
amazing to see the difference that not having a solid foundation built in the
gospel, and lack of action from parents, can allow the adversary to rip
families apart. I'm super grateful for my family (especially you Mom ;)) being
so solid and immovable in the gospel!! But after months of trying we've finally
gotten to visit with the Dills pretty frequently, and have begun teaching their
daughters the lessons, and more about the Gospel. The older daughter, Cierra,
15, has been questioning a lot about the church, so we've been able to answer
all of her questions, and I feel to help her on her way to begin building her
own testimony. She's begun coming to Young Women’s on Wednesday nights,
and always comes to church when her father does. The younger daughter, Falen,
is 9 or 10, and we've been teaching her and getting her ready to be baptized.
However, she wants her Dad to baptize her, and he can't do that for a while.
While at the lesson, they all asked for blessings, so it was an awesome
experience to be able to do that, and especially to feel the love that Heavenly
Father has for each of them!! Afterwards, we got a call from the sisters who
needed blessings, since a pretty bad creeping crud has been coming around, and
around, and around. haha.
The next day was New Years Eve, and a large portion of the
day was spent doing service for the Milhoans, couple and family that we've been
doing lots of service for. They're the parents and family of our Meal
Coordinator, Sister Scott. They have had us over on thanksgiving, the week
before Christmas, and a couple other times for dinner. Elder Jardine and I
moved a couple cords of split wood for them, which took 4 or 5 hours, and then
we had dinner and played a couple games for New Years Eve, before we had to
leave to make it in for curfew.
New Years Day we had district meeting, and afterwards we
went over the the Zone Leaders Area for a 24 hours exchange, which was awesome.
That was when the weather started to go from warm to cold with lots of snow, so
we froze our tails of tracting for a lot of the time. Yayyyyyyyyy tracting. ;)
One of the Zone Leaders, Elder Ose...something. I can't
spell his name. He's going home in two days, and it was awesome to see that he
was working hard until the very end, unlike many of the missionaries who trunk
out a month or two ahead of time. That was an awesome example for me, and is
something I want to emulate another year from now.
Thursday the 2nd was filled with tons and tons of snow,
doubled with tons and tons of wind. It was pretty ridiculous on the roads,
since we ended up having to drive over 90 miles that day, coming back from the
exchange and to get to the appointments around the far edges of our area. We
visited with Bro. Dills again, and just talked with him about the Gospel of
Jesus Christ (as found in PMG) and how he can continue to apply it more into
his life. He's been a member his whole life, and has an incredible
understanding of the doctrine, scriptures, and has a solid testimony. But he's
fallen back into old habits that keep him from being active and worthy, and
it's really hard to see. It all comes back to us eventually, and if we can
"Just Do It," or not. After visiting with Bro dills, we went to the
Watts house for dinner. The Watts are awesome, and bro Watts isn't a member,
but is pretty much a dry Mormon. He comes to church every week! Their son Ross,
who recently returned from his mission in Texas, was back visiting from BYU, so
we got a couple referrals from him. He'll be a Ward Mission Leader/Bishop or
more one day haha.
We almost died on the way home afterwards thanks to the
crazy snow drifts across the roads, but we made it in once piece!
On Friday our hot water heater stopped working! they said
they could get us a new one by Monday, so we just had to live with that
for a few days. We'd go shower at the other Elders Apartment to keep from
either stinking up the whole complex or from freezing our gonads off haha!
We ate at our Ward Mission Leaders house for dinner, and he told us a lot
more stories. We've really struggled with Bro Styer, due to some serious
personality clashes and such, but I've really grown to love and respect
him.
Saturday was filled with lots more service, which was extra
awesome. The Elder Breshears and Elder Dotson came with Elder Jardine and I to
the Milhoans again, to help them prepare their barns and such for the super
cold weather that was coming. We cleaned out all the horse stalls, stacked a
bunch of logs, boarded up windows, moved a bunch of haybales, put a snowplow on
a tractor (I cannot confirm nor deny driving/operating said tractor), and got a
stall ready to fill with Sister Scotts chickens. We had to wait for a little
while after everything was done for sister Scott to get there, so we could
follow her to her house to catch her chickens and move them back to the
Milhoans barn (about 5 miles away), so we ended up doing a snowball fight for
about 45 minutes haha. It was pretty dang fun :). They also made us some
delicious Olive Garden-style Chicken& Gnocchi soup, which is
delicious!!!!!! I'll need to remember to bring my camera later today to send
y'all some pictures.
We caught all the chickens, moved them into the barn, and
then helped with some last second things with putting blankets on all their
horses. I wish we could ride as missionaries! I'm pretty sure missionaries in
the early church could ride horses! ;)
Sunday was way different, since church changed from 1pm
to 9am. We didn't get to shower until after church, and then we ended up having
to do some paperwork for the mission. Bla. That evening we had dinner at the
Williams, the AWESOME family who let us skype at their house, and by then it
was about 45 degrees and had started raining and got really windy. We visited
the Dills again, since they didn't make it to church, and by the time we got
out it had cooled off dramatically. OH YEAH! Bro Slack actually came to church
too! He's the guy who is insanely good at guitar, and his guitar is super nice
too! for example of how good he is, we told him a couple songs he didn't know,
he looked them up on YouTube, and by the time the song was halfway over he was
playing along!! And the second time through he'd play it nearly perfect!! I
want to be able to play guitar by ear like that. Anyways, he doesn't come to
church for whatever reason, but he told us that if we found his name in the
bible (Ithel) that he'd come to church. And since we found it, he stayed true
to his word! In the words of the Ward Mission Leader, "Nobody misses out
on the significance of the miracle that you elders got 'Buck' Slack to
church." It was pretty exciting for me haha.
Monday was super cold, and getting colder as the day
went on. It started at 1 degree, and slowly went down to -6 when the sun went
down. We visited Brother Slack Monday evening, and realized that we
forgot our gas card in the apartment, and were running nearly on fumes. He was
kind enough to let us use the gas he had in a couple gas cans in his shed, so
we went out to grab those, but the lock was frozen stuck. It was about -11 now,
with 25-30 mph wind. So we found a screwdriver and just dismantled the lock on
the shed to get in. We went to the car, and put in the gas, and by that time I couldn't
feel my hands from the cold. It wouldn't have been that bad, if I had realized
that the lid on the gas can wasn't on all the way and was pouring -11 degree
gasoline on my bare hands. I do not recommend doing that. Fingers don't move
very well when they're starting to freeze. haha! :)
So it's been a pretty good week! Tomorrow is transfer day,
and pretty soon here we'll be getting transfer calls. I'll end up coming back
to the library to let you know if I’m staying or going. I've been here for 6
months now, so it's my guess (hope?) that I'll go, but "I'll go where you
want me to go." :)
Love you all!!
Elder Toombs
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