We having more fun than you can imagine

Greeting from the state of the 1994 National Champions. TENNESSEE!

There are a lot of vol fans around here. They are almost as good as byu fans. Many flags out side homes most cars have a T on their car. They have a lil rivalry here. The mixture of Kentucky. (they say Can-Tuck-E) fans makes it a lil fun. Dont know much about whats going on, or if sports are even being played. I think College Ball starts in a couple months...

The Days here are actually pretty nice (not just saying that jaja) The weather is not to bad and i dont mind the humidity anymore... It still suck to ride bikes but i can suck it out.

We were trackting a few weeks ago and found a lady who just moved in and was looking for a church. Really nice. We tried coming back several times. She seems interested but her husband got upset, Just saying its not a good time, maybe he'll soften up. He has told us twice to come over on a certain day and then ended up not being there. (figures).

The main man when i got here David (may have mentioned this last letter) is doing terrible. He has been smoking a pack+ a day, we got him from 5 packs to 1 cig. We have not been teaching him for two weeks now. We just gotta be his friend and it will all work out.

The branch president (60 people in this branch) is a way nice dude. He is pretty young. Maybe 30. He has us over for dinner, we usually go out to eat, once a week. Its real cool. Tennessee is still america but ive tried out some new things. I went to cracker barrel for the first time. (3x now) its pretty good. Kinda weird that i never been cause tyler works there. but ey. Also i went to Texas roadhouse. Never been there before and heard it was way expensive. It wasnt bad. we went before five so they had good specials. The food (we all got chicken?) was way good.. hmmm. also i tried shrimp. Just taste like seafood food. Ya know. Not to bad.

The best people ever (yet) in ten are The Fisher Family. Lance and Llisa are way nice (see past letters) He has come so far. He bore his testimony in sunday school and its comming along good. He knows more than i do in a lot of fields. He can memorize scriptures like crazy. (well he was a preacher for 8 years) but he knows that god has been walking him up the latter. Leading him to the truth.

Its cool i never knew how much our church knows. The simple truths have been unseen from others. They are so happy (everyone) when they find out what we really have and who we really are.

Friday we ran into a man, John Burleson. He is 88 (in two weeks) and his wife just died after 65 years of marriage. He doesnt know that he can see her again. We talked to him real long time. He is lonely. Wife passed in july. We get along good. Hopefully we can show him and excite him.

A man in the branch brother Luis Roman, 70 has been a member for a year and now he is so happy. He is learning quick. He helps us out every once in a while with the spanish. its going good. hopefully we continue to work hard. (lady we taught tuesday said we speak like children, word by word, were getting better). Joe Carr also has been learning the bom with us.

Three days a week we work out with Johnny Howard. (you dont care the names but i might want them for future reference) He is 68. He got divorced years ago but still has a good life. Member for 4/5 years. He has been working out all his life. At one point he could bench 450+ lbs. Dang. Still he is almost 70 and he lifts 200 now. I remember working out at AF with Nafe and Cody (shout out to them in canada and Virginia) and i could barley do 80. (jaja) they got me good, and grew me into the man i am today. Johnny has been pushing us just as hard, well harder. His workouts are tough. We have only benched twice but saturday i benched 160 and it was pretty easy; well not easy but i didnt struggle. so thats nice. I have strech marks on my biceps. jaja. chiste. Hopefully the working out is what cause me to gain 20lbs here and not all my eating.

With love equal to timon and pumba, i bid adeu.

Elder Toomey.

P.S. i realized yesterday the people here still speak with a terrible accent. I can just understand it now. hahaaaa. bye now

Its been a while

Hello to all friends and fam.

The mission life has been picking up here in the Tennessee. We are working hard and slowly they are coming into his hands; Riding bikes isnt much fun. The gears on my bike are a lil whacked but i survive. Yesterday we rode around for two hours to different houses whom we had appointments and blanked out. Its really frustrating how much we do and they seem to fall through a lot. (shout out to Dianne and here facebook pic its "a lot" not "alot" you never say "alittle", helped me) so yeah. Its going.

Its amazing to see how God places people in our hands at the right times. We tracked around a neighborhood and only three people answered in 25 houses. The last one being a 16 year old kid. He did not fully understand our church and after we answered a few questions He said he would check out the Book of Mormon (his aunt, a member, gave him) And we got another appointment. So couple days later we went back to these people. His mom answered the door and freaked out on us. Saying a lot of crap like Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet and the bible and book of mormon contradict eachother. So we talked to here for 10 minutes and she calmed down, and invited us to come back to teach her and her son. Said didnt know how much she could learn but her son could choose how he wanted. Hopefully that turns out good.

The best family we have ever is Lance and Llisa. They are so nice. He said on our appointment wednesday that he has received the revelation and that the church, book of Mormon and all is true. He wants to be baptised asap. Just one thing. He wants to go in with his family. Llisa has been raised differently, like she didnt feel comfortable siting in on the lessons, cuz she's a girl? But we are getting her. Them women are important. (1 cor 11:11) we aint nothin with out the great daughters of god, especially our mommas. They pretty cool most of the time.

The language has come along good. (Not so much Spanish but the Southern) They have a whole new vocabulary with Youins, Yall, ralph and more things. Its pretty different than Utah. One kid we were talking about said you have two choices after high school smoke pot or move out of Tennessee. Everyone smokes ciggys out here also. They one of a kind, really nice folks is what we got.

Well thats all from here. I will be writing some hand written letters so keep your eye out.


Hasta ver,

Elder Toomey

---
Obvio yo quiro cartas.

613 Reeves St - Apt 1
Lenior City, TN 37771 

Knoxville Zone Picture

Picture from our zone.

hace frio!

hollar from tenn. This week has been looong. Not to many exciting things have happened around here. Its been pretty slow.
Last Pday we played basketball at this park. It was so hot. The 1on1 game to 5 took half an hour. haha. Originally we had planned for David (our Investigator) to get baptized saturday but he keeps relapsing on smoking. He said he was down to 1 ciggarett a day. We cleaned off his porch (covered with dirt & buds from last 5 years) It looks really nice. He is a cool dude but a little mixed up. He is so happy when we come over to chat with him. (a chatter box) there is never an awkward silence with him.

Lance (former pastor) is doing so well. He has real the entire standard works. He came to church last week so thats going good. I hope we can get him and his wife a baptism date when we see him next.

 

As far as the spanish. Its fine. We still get about finding 3 or so spanish people at the door and teach 5/6 entire lessons in spanish a week. Yesterday i taught Gospel Principals Class (sunday school) in spanish. It was pretty cool. An unactive lady we're trying to bring back to the church. (stay in church kids). So yea id say spanish is my favorite thing about the mission so far. Its quite cool to be able to communicate with people you thought were speaking gibberish just a few months ago.

im so tired every minute. Its exhausting. but the wrk must continue. Now with nothing more to say i will rant of in spanish.

ay caramba. los dias son grande. no me gusta andar a bicicleta, esta rompado, :(. pues siempre tengo sueno. Estamos trabajando muy duro pero hay mas cosas hacer. vamos a encontrar investigator nuevos, quizas 5 esta semana. supongo. no voy a jugar a balencesto porque. Tengo fiebre. no bueno. tengo que yacer y relajar mas. no mas energia. hasta la semana proxima. somos el de reys. eldereys. he of king. hijo de dios.

amor y paz.
Elder Toomey.

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Aloha

Saludos de Tennessee!

Hola amigos, como estan. todo esta bien aqui. mi companero y yo andar bien. hoy ejerciermos con un miembo se llama johnny. el tiene 62 anos, pero puede trabajar muy duro. estaba divertido. ejercemos tres dias por semana. estoy animado porque vamos a jugar a balencesto despues de la biblioteca. encestare ochena puntas. jaja. pues no pueden entender castellano. voy a terminar en ingles.

Its been a great week. The Work is going wonderful. We do so much study and so much work. Its exhausting. I like trackting although its hard for the first couple houses. Once you find someone that has interest you get a little more faith and you really get in a groove. My favorite people to talk to when trackting is spanish people. Yesterday we were biking on this walking path to talk with a member, who missed church, and i talked to 4/5 spanish families and gave them pass along cards for the free Christ video. The seemed to understand me fine. I still cant spit out sentence after sentence but its getting there.

We also teach a lesson in spanish a day normally. Right now we have two spanish investigators one Jose and another Talia. Also a meeting with another on Thursday. So we will see how it goes. I need to pop the bubble and talk to everyone but slowly its comming. I guess i just have an attachment to English, its so easy to walk up to someone and speak spanish.

My companion (been out 14 months) says i understand the people better than he does. jaja. neither of us get everything but the point gets understood. The last lesson we taught was really good in unity. Twice they asked us to repeat what we said maybe twice. But they seemed to like just talking to someone that knew their language.

Time really has been flying. The hard work has been paying off. There isnt much time for trackting because we have so many investigators. Which is nice, unless they fall through, or you get two of them mixed up, long story. 

Our branch had a fellowship picnic. There was a bunch of free food and stuff, a lot of fun. We invited maybe 15/20 people to go and half seemed to really like free food, but only one showed up. Its David (sab4) He has really progressed. Yesterday he went the entire day without a cigarette. The first time in over 30 years. He says buy next weekend he will be done. I hope. He is such a great guy and his testimony, although small is strong.
 
I've learned so much and have so many more experiences ahead of my life. Back to work, but first imma ball.

Until next time,

Its Elder Toomey!

613 Reeves St apt #1
Lenoir City, TN 37771

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Day 3 in Argentina.... pause NOT!

So we were suppose to leave on monday for argentina but the visas did not come/ and we aint find out until friday night. so now we are getting reassigned tomorrow (26/4/12) We have a big white board filled with guesses to which state we are all going to. i even heard some are headed to chile because supposedly you dont need a visa to be there. who knows. Since we didnt leave we still had class but our teacher thought we left or somethin so for the last two days we didnt have a teacher... jajaja.  ahhhhh. :)

Other exciting stuff here in the MTC. Clark House left to Japan. He will do well. We talked much and my entire district made friends with him. Which reminds me i have to find out how Jay is doing.
On Sunday we did the Cereal Tower Challenge. Its a huge tower of cereal in the lunch room. we chose Froot Loops. We ate over 100 bowls all together. I had like 22ish. it hurt so bad. Our mouths were all cut up because of the froot loops and they started to bleed. ja. but we finished the tower with only 6 1/2 people. it was nice. i say six and a half because one member of our district ate two plates of normal food first than a couple bowls. and my companion hates fun (ask anyone) so he didnt join in) we are quite opposite. i am over crazy and he is "guys thats not funny, we should eat dinner in ten minutes to get 30 extra minutes of study time" kind of person. But we learn alot from eachother and our hears are loosly knit together (mosiah 4:18ish)

AND Yesterday.... We got to hear from our FIFTH (5) Apostle. Elder Nelson. He did a very sweet talk. but i find it interesting how simple this gospel really is. like how jesus taught. real simple. Which goes to what Bishop Riggs use to say to me how the mission would be a "vacation" because we only have to work 14 hour days. and before i worked 90 a week sometimes and up to 19 straight. im never tired at night but it takes alot of energy to continue to study the scriptures and this language thingy. spanish is hard. i finally can talk in past future conditional and all the other conjigations so once i learn a few more words ill be a native. also practice practice practice because then we can talk faster with out having to think and translate into spanish. it will come. were working hard. stay up to date.

Love all yall

Elder Toomey

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4-ish more days in Sprit Prison (MTC)

Hola Familia!!!

They threw me through the ceiling. jaja. its a square white thingy ceiling and my shoulders went through. lo fue comica. I have the best district ever. We get along real nice. and have plans to frio after our mish.

The lastest new on my life is VISA. We are suppost to leave on monday to argentina. (a 20+ hour travel day) but because we dont have visas we can either stay here for a couple weeks or get shipped out to stateside. Last night i had a dream i got shipped out to West Virginia (shoutout to J-Riddle) (did kyler messanger get his call?) but we wont find out until friday. Others that dont have their visas are headed to conneticut. I dont know. anywhere right now is good. i feel ready to go out and mess up spanish. My spaish is bueno. i feel like i can talk about anything with the vocab i have. i dont know all the words but i can find my way around. i can teach any lesson in spanish and have a few scriptures to share and a couple memorized. two or three for each of the first four lessonsish.

My companion does not life fun. We are opposite of eachother. i am a extreamist and he is dull. its a good medium.
My companions of our room are E. Whetten and E.Draper. Whetten looks like the devil, he's from NM but a pretty chill dude. acton (orem) is crazy like me.

OHHHHH!
I gave a talk in sacrament last week. it was about faith in jesus christ. I owned. and talked about the relation between the 2k strippling warriors and us. We both have to preapare early in the morning. Have very long days. Have difficult work, in a land we are unfamilliar with. We do things we have never done before. The have hard battles, they get scrapped up, but in the end God does not let a single one fall. They doubt not. Ive never talked to a girl. ive never talked to a stranger about chruch. ive never had a full on conversation in spanish. Now i have to go out and do all three with out fear. with out doubt. without limits. Romans 8:31 If God is for us, who can be against?

Be of happiness.

Elder Toomey.

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