Buncha Billy Hillies

WHAT A BUSY WEEK. Can you be out of breath from finishing a week? Because that's how I feel.

So we ran into Juan while we were seeking with fe near his house, and he tried using a word that I taught him in English: Hillbillies.

"You know...up here...all of us are a bunch of billy hillies."

I love that guy.

Then Tuesday was a crazy day in Idyllwild...we legit did a home visit at 9:30 in the morning. That was a first for sure.

Wednesday we had the best lesson we have ever had with Juan!! He is now on date for July 1st! He told us he felt dumb when he went to church with the Sisters before us because he couldn't sing the hymns so he wanted us to practice with him...so we spent THIRTY MINUTES of him reading the hymn, then I would read the hymn so we could follow along, and then we would sing a couple of verses for him.....we were willing to do whatever it would take to get him to church and HE DIDN'T COME 💔. But the other thirty minutes were super powerful and the Spirit was super strong!

That same day we also did a home visit, our first Facebook lesson EVER and it was with Hector, and a less active visit. FOUR LESSONS IN ONE DAY. Which is really actually a normal thing but not for Anza. We are lucky if we get one lesson a day here...

Thursday we did our food group service and pony service AND weekly planning so that shot the whole day.

We had interviews and exchanges on Friday. So, it's looking like a 50/50 chance that I am staying or going for my last transfer. One hermana is leaving and none are coming in....so he will either have to take me down or make a trio. But if he takes me out then there is a domino effect and he will have to change a lot of other things. So, transfers are a mystery once again. I know and have faith that the Lord will let me finish my mission where he needs me the most.

Saturday we had zero set appointments besides a home visit late that night so we just walked for three hours and talked to 3 people.

Mother's Day was SO GOOD. We spent it with the Merc*** Family. We do FHE/home visit with them every week becaue they don't have kids and we temporarily don't have parents. So it was nice to spend time with our "mom". Calling home was so good! You know, I told myself I wasn't allowed to freak out about going home until Mother's Day. I freaked out a little after knowing my itinerary but now my freak out day is pushed to July 4th and now I will go back to being in denial.

OH AND HECTOR CAME TO CHURCH. I was so happy!!! He is progressing!

Whew. I think that's it. I love y'all and thanks for your prayers and support!

Hermana Tonini

P.S. we got roses from the branch even though we aren't mothers? #win

Adventure Time

Shall we start with yesterday?

We woke up on a beautiful Sunday morning to find our truck has a flat tire. So we had to get up and get our truck to the little bitty car place here in Anza at 8:30 to get our tire patched up. But before we could do that, we accidentally locked ourselves out of our trailer. And the keys to the house also have the keys to the truck. And it was 34 degrees. Luckily, we went to the main office and the guy was there and was able to lend us the spare! What a guy. But we got to see snow and hail this morning, so that was fun!!! Who woulda thought you'd see that in SoCal?

We were able to find four new investigators this week which was a miracle!!! One of them is a part member family, and he speaks Spanish!! We left him and his less-active wife an invitation to read in the Book of Mormon together, so we are excited to see where things go!!!!

Also, we were seeking with faith in Idyllwild when we contacted this lady who was getting firewood from off her porch. We talked for a little bit, asked if we could share a message with her and she kindly declined. Well, my companion asked if we could at least leave her something she could read and she said yes! So she said she would meet us out on her front door. Well, when we got there, I opened the Book of Mormon - I already had in my hands Moroni 10 - and was giving a little introduction and about to start reading the verses when she stopped me by asking, "Do y'all want to come inside? If you're going to read, come on inside because it's cold out there." We were then able to teach her the Restoration! We went from a "No thanks" to giving her the opportunity to know the restored gospel....all because of the Book of Mormon! This is why we are asked to utilize it in EVERY teaching opportunity, because there is power in the Book of Mormon!

I love the Book of Mormon with all of my heart. It is not only the key to the conversion of those I teach but to mine as well. I knew the Book of Mormon was true before I came out here, but I didn't gain a love for it until I became a missionary. I love the Lord and I love this work.

Hermana Tonini

P.S. Our sweet Gypsie Peterson is heading out to Washington for her mission this week! Also, where the heck is the time going?

Voy a regresar...OTRA VEZ

Holy moly this week flew by. And I don't have much to say, so sorry!

So we do a TON of service here in MoVal and we had the opportunity to pick up a million and five American Flags at the Riverside National Cemetery after Memorial Day. Plus, when I was up in Riverside one day this week we threw away old food at Feeding America which was disgusting but fun to be with the missionaries up there.

Then at MFAM, or March Field Air Force Museum, I got to work on building these metal fort thingies. Like legit I was drilling in sheets of metal. They have a couple of these metal covers and missionaries have built all of them!  So there's some pics from some of the service we did this week. Sister Palmer, my half comp, has a ton of pics from this week so I will send them later once she gets them to me. I actually spent half of the week with Sister Palmer because there were THREE exchanges this week. Having a five-week transfer is rough because your STL comp has more exchanges to cram in each week. Like, we had one Wednesday, Thursday was MLC so I was with Palmer for half of the day, and then we had back-to-back Friday and Saturday. AKA I didn't see my companion at all this week.

OH ALSO, here is a picture of Hermana Hernandez Sanchez and I wearing each other's black dresses. Isn't she so cutie?

So, as a mission we are still sharing the Prince of Peace video, and a comment that was made after the video was, "It's incredible how he performed so many miracles and that they haven't stopped. We still see His miracles today, in our own personal lives." Isn't that so true? Well, yesterday we had a little miracle. We role played in the morning, and it was supposed to role play to invite to church. Well, I accidentally goofed and invited Hermana to be baptized instead. Well, while we were doing a little seeking with the little time we had left in the day, a man let us teach him for fifteen minutes, and the lesson went EXACTLY like the role play. Like his concerns were the exact same as Hermana's fake concerns in the role play. So not only was it a miracle that we found a new investigator at the last second possible of the week, but we were prepared! I know without a doubt that if we are prepared then we WILL see miracles in our every day lives, especially here on the mission.

Also, I got a call from Hermana Chandler this week saying that they had a lesson with our investigator Ruben. They were going to change the date of his baptism because there wasn't enough time to teach everything by his date because we could only get in like once a week maybe twice. You want to know what he said? NO. He refused to change his date!!!!! He said he would do whatever it takes to get baptized the 11th. I legit cried when I heard this. And his interview was yesterday and he was found worthy!!!! So Ruben is getting baptized this Sunday and I get to go back for it! I have such an overwhelming love for him, and my joy cannot be described. This work is so rewarding and I just can't get over it. So stay tuned until next week for pictures!

Also, here is the picture of us after Jacki's baptism with her cute little mini quincenera dress.

Love y'all.

Hermana Tonini

Fourth Floor Last Door

HELLO LOVES!

So, a ton of stuff happened this week, but I just want to write about one single story that blew me away.

So, this story starts before I even left for Mexico. About eight weeks ago, a man saw Sister Harris and Sister Bradshaw in Walmart and talked to them. Just a nice casual conversation.

Fast-forward to this past Friday. Hermana Chandler and I were walking down a sort of busy street when a man stopped his car in the middle of the street trying to say something to us. He pulled over and then reversed back so he could talk to us. We ran across the street and he looked at me and asked if I was the missionary from Idaho that he had talked to in Walmart. Me: uh....no. But he was talking about how much he loves the missionaries, so we got his info and drove away with all of his kids in the car. Since he spoke English, we had to send it over to the Little Lake Sisters which kind of bummed me out. He stopped driving in the MIDDLE OF THE STREET  to talk to us, and we couldn't even teach him.

That night I had my first exchange, so I went with Sister Nai, who is from Australia and is the coolest human being I have ever met in my life, to her apartment with her trio. Can you guess which trio it was? The Little Lake Sisters.

So, as Sister Nai and I were out doing your typical missionary stuff Saturday evening, we finally got to our time to go contact Emmanuel. I was so excited, because I was actually going to have a chance to teach this family!! However, once we got to the address we realized it was a HUGE apartment complex...and we had no apartment number. We had two options: a. go to the next backup in our agenda b. go knock on random doors

So we looked at each other. Sis Nai: "My trio has been PRAYING for a family to teach, and I know Heavenly Father follows through on His promises." Me: "There is something special about this family and I want to find them." So, I said a prayer. I prayed knowing that we WOULD find this family.

We started with the front-facing apartments, and the first one we knocked on was a woman who said she didn't know an Emmanuel or an African American family, but that that inside and around the corner were some African American families and maybe we could look there. We went inside and there was a huge square plaza with a ton of apartments. We spent the next HOUR just going door to door knocking...looking for this family. And no one had ever seen this family before!! However, during this whole process we got two contacts, so I said to Sister Nai, "There is a reason we are out here knocking on these doors. Even if we don't find this family tonight, we were meant to knock on those two doors." And Sister Nai kept going on and on about how she was going to knock on every single door in that complex until she found this family. Even if it took a week.

So we finished that one section of that complex, and it was already 8:00 pm, which was the time we were supposed to be back at the Little Lake apt to get ready for exchanging back. However, we decided we were going to finish the last few front-facing apartments, where we started. So we went to the apartment right next to the woman who told us to go check more inside at those apartments. The one we skipped over. And I said, "How funny would it be if we wasted an hour searching when the family lived in the next apartment over?" And Hermana Nai was like, "I feel like this is it..." And the door opened and it was Immanuel's son who was sitting in the passenger seat the day before!!!
I have never smiled so hard in my life. He probably thought I was insane. I even said, "We have been searching for an hour for your family!!!!!!!!" We got his dad's number and as soon as the door closed I just cried. And maybe fist pumped. And then cried some more. We found a family WITHOUT AN APT NUMBER.  

What does this mean?

That woman didn't even know a large African American family (like legit the dad has an African accent) was living right next door to her. She didn't have to point us in the wrong direction to look for this family. But she did, and there was a reason. There were more people who needed our message. Heavenly Father wanted to see how badly we wanted this family and how hard we were willing to work to find them. I feel like His question for us is always: "How hard are you willing to work for it?" We wanted it. We wanted it bad. It was also a test of patience. We had to knock on doors for an hour to see if we had enough patience to know that our prayers are answered on His time, not ours. Heavenly Father always answers our prayers if we don't sit around expecting. We pray fervently, and then go out and do. He always follows through though, and I have a testimony of this.

He doesn't answer our prayers with the second door, he makes us work and grow until we finally open the last door of the night. then at that moment we can marvel at the love that Heavenly Father has for each of us individually and how personally he knows us. He loves His children and has a plan for each of us. I know it.

Love,
Hermana Tonini