Thanksgiving! 11/26/2018

Well Thanksgiving was this week. I had the opportunity to attend an authentic Mexican Thanksgiving dinner. Which turns out is really similar to an American one.

We got a free turkey from Winco this week, so we also had a learning experience. None of the Elders in my house had ever cooked a turkey before, myself included. So we did some research, mainly consisting of emails to our moms, and we cooked a turkey.

This week, President gave us a talk to read from this last General Conference, entitled "The Role of the Book of Mormon in Conversion" by Elder Shayne M. Bowen of the Seventy. He shares an experience of his MTC teacher, who prior to becoming a member, studied the Bible with the sole purpose of bashing missionaries. But then two missionaries knocked on his door, bore a brief testimony of the Book of Mormon, and left. He then read the entire Book of Mormon in the next two days, and was later baptized. I encourage you to read this talk. The Book of Mormon is true! The Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith! The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the true church on the earth today!

Elder Tobler

Report from Tacoma 11/19/2018

This week was super fun! Being in a companionship of four keeps things really interesting. We also live with our Zone Leaders, so six teenage boys living together really keep things fun.  Our latest game is to lock each other in the bathroom by putting a chair in front of the door. The current record is just over a minute. We keep life interesting.

Oftentimes when we tract, we tract in English, because the majority of people that live here, speak English. It makes it a little bit frustrating, because when we find someone that is actually interested, we have to refer them to the English Elders. We also don't get referrals very often, and, if we do, usually it's something weird. I kid you not, we got a referral once that said, 'house smelled like beans.' Or another classic is 'couldn't understand, probably Spanish.' Anywho, this week we actually got a really solid referral from a member of the English ward. We also got dinner out of it too, which was a huge blessing.

We were able to meet with our new referral, as well as the English Member, who also speaks Spanish. The referral and his girlfriend both had a lot of really great questions and we think that they have some really good potential. 

This week, being the week of Thanksgiving, I just would like to share a few things that I am grateful for. I am grateful for my companions. They're awesome. They are always joking and making missionary work fun. I'm grateful for great friends and family back home. I'm grateful for all the support that everyone has given me over the years. During this Thanksgiving season, I challenge you guys to also share something that you're grateful for. 

Elder Tobler

Fun Pics: We caught a frog in front of our house.

Report from Tacoma, Week 2

This past week has been awesome! All the weeks here are awesome. It's gotten super cold, as well has foggy. One morning we woke up and the fog was so dense, you could barely see across the street. It definitely made driving fun that day.

I had my first opportunity to attend a Branch Council meeting this past Sunday. Our Branch President is awesome and he's super excited to have four missionaries. He is from the DR, which makes understanding him a little bit challenging, but it is slowly getting easier and easier. Spanish is coming slowly, but surely. It is funny because we have a Spanish branch, but almost all of the members speak English as well, which takes a little pressure off, but a lot of the members know that none of us speak Spanish very well, so they enjoy speaking very quickly to us and then seeing our faces because we only caught two or three words from the whole sentence.

Anywho, our Branch has been focusing on Alma 5 for a while, and the Branch President regularly calls branch members up to bear their testimony regarding this chapter. In Branch Council this passed Sunday he shared Alma 5:38-39 with us. Those are some really great verses and I would invite you to read them. He then talked about how in God's eyes, there is no gray area. I also read a talk about the four types of missionaries. It talked about how if there was a straight line, between God and Satan, and you were on that line, you are always moving. There is no standstill. You are either progressing towards God, or regressing to Satan. We need to make sure that we are always growing closer to God.

Elder Tobler

Tacoma Week 1

I arrived in Tacoma last Monday! I flew from Mexico City with five other Elders. We met President and Sister Leishman at the airport. In addition to the six elders from Mexico, we arrived with about 18-19 other missionaries from the Provo MTC. 

My companions are Elder Nash, Elder Skousen, and Elder Coons. Elder Coons and I were in the CCM together. We are in the Graham Spanish area, which covers from Spanaway to Eatonville to Ashford if you look on a map. It is ginormous. Most of our work is in Spanaway and surrounding areas.

Elder Nash and I had a neat experience while knocking (on doors) this week. Earlier in the day, we prayed over an area and felt that we needed to knock a certain trailer park. We began knocking a few doors and I mentioned that I just didn't feel super good in the trailer park. I kind of felt that we weren't supposed to be knocking there. We knocked a few more doors, and Elder Nash expressed a similar feeling. We decided that we would knock a different trailer park nearby.

We drove into the other park and immediately we felt better. We knocked a few doors, talked to a few dudes in Spanish, but we were having no luck. We knocked on the next trailer, and we heard a dude yell, "Come in!" So we cracked the door, and talked about how we are missionaries and he invited us in. We talked for about a half hour about faith and repentance. His name was Walter and he talked about how he always just did what he felt he needed to do. He pretty much was following spiritual promptings without even knowing what they were. He said that since we knocked on his door tonight, that he felt that it was God's way of telling him that he needed to listen to us. Unfortunately, this was all in English, so we had to refer him to the English Elders that we live with, but he committed to reading the Book of Mormon right then and there. Talk about Golden. We continued to talk a little after our lesson, and he mentioned that he was an amputee, something we hadn't noticed because he was sitting under a blanket. He was super cool. 

This experience strengthened my testimony of following Spiritual Promptings. The Lord will guide you to those who are ready, but only if you let him!

Elder Tobler