Week 67 – Good things – Elder Gideon Tonkinson, Washington Everett Mission

Hello!
This week has been all around awesome and exactly what I needed! Last week as you all know I was bien estresado, but now I am feeling a lot better. I have definitely been able to see and feel my Savior’s love through all those around me. Last Monday, I had an exchange with Elder Steck and Elder Halverson which was great. It was much needed and they did a lot of things to help me to just chill out. We still got a lot done and had a meeting, a lesson and some service but in the in between they really helped me. Tuesday was transfers and exactly what I thought was going to happen happened. I am now in Aurora B Spanish down in Seattle. Like my area is downtown Seattle and the area is awesome.

Anyways Tuesday was crazy there was no really a dull moment. So Elder King and I got there at 11:00 and I got my new companion Elder Edwards. More on him for the questions at the end but he is awesome. Anyways so Elder Edwards and Elder Durbano have been companions for the last 3 transfers and Elder Durbano is going to be training for his last two transfers, but his trainee wouldn’t get to the mission office until 7:00, so we got to three pack until then. It was busy, but fun. We did some yard work for a couple hours, headed back to the mission office and had a lesson and then Elder Durbano got his trainee, Elder Mlaker and will be in Sky Valley A in Snohomish. While we were there the Assistants told us to hang around so we could take some luggage from some of the Elders in our zone. It was good and it was nice to be so busy that I didn’t have time to unpack until 10:00 that night.

Wednesday was good; we got to go to Elder MaGoffin’s district council (he used to be my zone leader) and it was fun to see him. Although it was really really weird to walk in the room and people just go, “The ZL’s are here” and like get more quiet. It’s like “come on I’m just a normal missionary.” But I really can’t talk; I thought the same thing until Tuesday because I always just thought highly of the zone leaders. We then had some lessons and numbers to put in for the rest of the night. Nothing too crazy but good and kept us busy again until later. Also holy cow we can get a lot of phone calls sometimes haha. It’s ridiculous.

Thursday was just straight up awesome! We had 7 lessons and were super busy. We also put one of our friends Ramon on date for May 29th which is super exciting. Friday we were pretty busy, and we had some lessons but I would say the biggest thing was ZLC. We finished hammering out our zone plan to help get missionaries not only to increase the amount of work, but also to get missionaries excited about it. So basically we are trying to find 85 new people to teach this month which comes out to a little less than 22 per district. We are going to be doing 4 daily challenges based on the 4 attributes from the Youth Program so physical, spiritual, social (which is where we put finding activities to find new people) and intellectual. Whoever has the most points (every member of the district completing a challenge gets the district a point) at the end of the month will get lunch. I should be really, really good. I’m excited for it. Like really excited. The only bad thing is we are the ones who made the incentive so have to foot the bill for it. We also are going to make a sticker for it that says Northshore Olympics, and we might give them out to all the zone or just those who complete the “burnout” challenges. I’m super excited for this and I hope it turns out well and that the missionaries in the zone enjoy it. So yeah.

Saturday was another good day. We got packages for the zone and delivered them and we had a lesson with our now new friend Beto. Beto is so prepared to receive the gospel and so humble. He accidently went to a nearby church instead of ours to meet, waited there, then texted us and then we finally had the lesson. Most would leave so quickly. He came to church which was great and then we have a lesson with him this coming Saturday. I think we might invite him to be baptized next week. Also on Sunday we had a lesson with Oscar another new friend and Ulisses his cousin another new friend. We asked them if they knew these thing were true if they would join and they said yes and they invited themselves to church. So yeah a lot is happening here and we could be having a lot of baptisms. Another really cool thing was we prayed to make new friends both Saturday and Sunday and in the morning we didn’t have an easy way to find one, but we prayed with faith and were able to get one. It was fantastic. Oh, then last night we visited a member who goes by Papa Cubano who loves missionaries. We taught him English and he gave us a bunch of food to take home. He is such a sweet man and it was great to meet him. So yeah that’s the week.

Questions

Tell us about the transition to new area, where you are – I am the Aurora Branch in the Aurora B area in Seattle/Shoreline. It is phenomenal here.

Living arrangements – Awesome there is a giant window right where we sit for studying and overall the furniture is nice, matches and is quite minimal

New companion – Elder Edwards! He started his mission in Guatemala and came here last year in May. He is a beast though and an absolute spiritual giant and is a super good leader. He also is a very relaxed person which is good because I can be uptight and can’t sit back and relax when need to sometimes.

The area you serve – As I said great we have a lot of potential people for baptism her and we teach a lot of English.

What is something you admire/appreciate about your new companion? – He is really good at explaining things both in English and Spanish. His words are very deliberate.

Are you feeling more peace this week? – Yes. Absolutely it’s what I fasted for what I have been praying for and has come. I have also seen so much help from those around me and it has been incredible. President Auna came over to me at transfers and put his arm around me and said, “Elder Tonkinson you are going to do great as a zone leader, thank you for being a leader” and it made my day. Also one of my new favorite hymns is “Where Can I Turn For Peace” and I have listened to it quite a bit. Also Elder Edwards and I actually get along which is great and we talk and it’s been nice to have a companion who I can talk to.