HERRO

Hooowwwsss it going everyone???

This week was a reaallll keeper to be honest with you:) The highlight was that Hugo (who has had the missionaries for years) has come to church for the first and second time in his life these past two weeks:) His wife and family are the definition of disciples of Christ and from the first time we met this family, we knew that they would soon be an eternal family. We still haven't gotten him in the baptismal font, BUT ITS COMIN!!! We feel the spirit so so strong when we teach its truly beautiful.

Another great experience was that we went to visit an old investigator to see if they were ready to progress. We came in at an essential time when she truly needed a message of help and support, which 100% the purpose of the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. With all of us in tears from the first prayer, we shared simple scriptures of the book of Mormon and testified of the mercy of Christ and the endless love he has for his children (which we all are) Today in the night time the ZLs will tell us if my comp or I have changes, we are kinda caught 50 50 on if one of us stays or goes. :(

Last night we were blessed to attend a meeting for Young ones preparing for the mission and Elder Alonzo of the seventy came and spoke powerfully of the importance of the conversion. He spoke of the difference between a testimony and the conversion to a gospel principle. I testify that elder Alonzo is a special witness of Jesus Christ and that the importance of the mission is not describable. IF YOU HAVE DOUBTS OFTHE MISSION, simply pray to your heavenly father and ask if it is right if you should go on the mission, if you receive YES, GO!!

Other than that the highlight of my week is that we had the most lessons this week than any other week this change! I love my life here in the mission! It is not the easiest i will admit but it is truly the best time of my life. I love the lord and ask that all of us simply look for the little blessings in life. Like shade! Man i love shade (its pretty hot these days) And seein little bunnies and receiving my Christmas package from my fam!!!! I love all that little stuff hahah have a fantastic week you are all children of god!!! Look for what he truly wants for us, know that he will never leave us alone, he knows us and talks us to us by name. Have a great week errybody

Love, Elder Toolson

Fw: Tys Week of Bigs!

Herro Familia,

First and foremost, BIGGGGG SHOUTOUT TO MY OLDEST SISTER MICHELLE!!!!! I love you so much and your age doesnt matter to me, you will always be you and artsy and alll that good stuff haha! I cant wait for the moment when we can all be home and celebrate these birthdays in person!

Well this week was absolutely amazing! It was an up and down week but a week with no ups or downs means its a dead one. There are definitely no boring days in the mission even if you are stuck inside for the half the week killing the families of animals in your houses. Cockroaches in honduras are BIG! Like WHOOO thats big. So apart from being bored in the house due to the fact that my comp has been sick for the whol week i found days to leave to proselyte with certain people! We had the opportunity to find great new people to teaach and i truly hope they progress.

One of these people we found is named Elmer. He is 37 and lives with his wife and daughter. His dad recently got baptized and it sparked elmer´s attention because his dad has always been a hard head to attend a church, so we were contacting elmer and when we came across and asked if we could enter, he said yes. It seems that the lord has put a number of people in his life to lead to the church and now i hope elder lopez and i can take this advantage to get him ccloser to his heavenly father.

Well thats my week really i hope you all look for an opportunity to share the gospel or listen to the missionaries. Their message is divinge and will help us all live a better life if we listen and act according with the demands and commandments of our fatther. I know that christ lives, that he leads and guides his church and that through a living prophet we receive his guidance and counsel.

Love

Elder Toolson

Sopa de Mondongo and Transfers???

    This week was super duper great!!! Im so excited to be in the mission field when there is SO MUCH to do!! HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK! Sopa de MONDONGO! Yupperdoodles cow intestine;)  and your little missionary son elder ty toolson loved it! I think i am really turning catracho because it was DELECTIBLE! ha ha. Im almost positive that this is my last week in this area but we will figure out tonight! I love this area so much and am super excited to see if i stay or leave!

    This week was full of service and a ton of lessons and baptismal challenges. In the terms of the work me and my comp are working really hard to get the people we have to come to church on their own will. Something that has been working alot for us is challenging the people to be baptized in the first lesson. It helps us know who is truly wiling to change and who isnt. We spent alot of time looking for a few families that have recently gone inactive! We found and visited them all and how extremely powerful lessons with them. We simply expressed our love and the love of our havenly father and important each of us are to him. We talked about the impportance of parenthood and how we have the home for the gospel to be taught!

    I love this work and I know it is the Lords glory! I hope we can all realize the sacred responsibility we all have to love one another especially our family. I know and testify that through the restored priesthood power we can be sealed as families for eternity. I know that after this life i will see my family. I know that if we ware faithful to this glorious gospel we will have joy (2 nefi 2 25) i hope we all look to serve one another this week and always try a little harder to love a little more!

Elder TY Toolson

AND BYU what is wrong with you. They are the biggest up and down team in college football. And LCC that score is miserable. I say more football updates are welcome!

Elder Ty's Letter and a surprise Phone Call

Last Night we received a phone call from a woman in Oakland whose mother is visiting from Honuras!! Woot Woot!:D She wanted to talk with the mother of Elder Toolson. Ty gave her my cell phone# so that she could wish me a HAPPY BIRTHDAY from him personally :) She was baptized in June by Ty and than her husband got baptized by "Toolson" as well! Her husband soooo LOVES "TOOLSON" and she spoke highly of Ty and how he is always happy and serving the people well with his BIG Heart! What a wonderful and emotional call it was. So grateful for her and her joyful way of expressing all the blessings that has come to her and her family because of the gospel in their lives.

The gospel is True and it blesses everyone that lives by its principles. Ty is loving his mission and here's this weeks update:

This week was such a good one! As I hope most all others did this weekend, I watched general conference! It was nice to go to the stake center and watch conference through satellite just like the good ole chula vista days (where i grew up) It was incredible to see our beloved prophet and president Thomas S. Monson. The reverence that the people have for him is truly piercing. When he entered the conference center I simply started to cry and as well as the people all around us. he is the servant of the Lord. This conference was focused on multiple gospel topics but what struck me was the reality of the divine calling of the leaders ofthe church! The twelve and the first presidency ARE called of god. They may be old but as Russell M. Nelson taught "we need not fear." He continued to speak saying that they are not out of touch with todays world, they are aware of the temptations of the world, one leader even said that we need not list them because they are obvious and inevitable! But they are also aware of the light we are to the world. They know our needs just as the Lord does.

 Something that is so necessary in this life is that we recognize our "divine lineage." We are sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, if you doubt that, but have the desire to know, read the scriptures. Read the teachings of the prophets and think of the love in their counsel, en lo cual comes from god. Our heavenly father knows us, even by name, as Henry B. Eyring said with such emotion. Elder Bednar also spoke bastante about the love our heavenly father has for us and that we are hear so that we can recognize, obtain and finally share that exact love! If you did not have a chance to see the conference, please go to gc.lds.org and learn more about what was said and what our heavenly father wants you to hear.

Shout out to my Brother Tucker Strong Toolson for being too dang good looking (am I right hermanas??) but also shout out for having been born a loooonnnnggggg 22 years ago! Man time flies. I Love ya bro! 

Anyways apart from the conference our week was fantastic! We had fantastic baptism of a wonderful woman named Bessy! She lived the life of most Honduran youth and found herself with two babies no husband and a confused line of thought. She thought on her family that constantly were going to church every Sunday and frequently during the week, she simply said in her head 'I want that' She moved in with her aunt (also named bessy) and my comp and I had the opportunity to teach her. She was so quick to understand the gospel principles and gain a testimony of them. When it came time to talk about baptism, she accepted fearlessly and with conviction. When we went by this past week to talk about her and her feelings about baptism, it was asked "do you want to get baptised?" she sat there and then said "I am not getting baptized because i want to get baptized, i simply want to start over, i dont want my sins anymore. I have two children under the age of two and no father. I want MY father in heaven to know that i love him and am ready to change." As you can imagine, my comp and i were simply stunned and smiling. Her baptsim was beautiful and she was very nervous but very, very ready.

I love the gospel and the comfort I receive from ready the scriptures and listening to the voice of the prophet today. I love my family and know we will be together if we are worthy. I hope everyone has a wonderful week and ponders on where you are in life and where you'd like to be. After simply do it. A quote we have in our room says "You learn to be by being and learn to do by doing" many times we feel overwhelmed with the marathon so we dont take a step. Take the step, if you do so with faith our father will heighten our abilities to accomplish whatever we do in righteousness! I love you all!!!

Elder Ty Toolson 

Ty's Week for the Books :)

 Hello Eveybody

This week was just a week for the books!

The best thing was that we had three people accept baptism this week and we are so excited for them. They are truly faithful people that are truly converting themselves to this gospel. This sunday we also had 11 investigators in church! Its always great to see so many unknown faces in the ward!! Something i love about our ward is that everyone is running around talking to everyone who aren't members, even sitting with them so they dont feel uncomfortable its awesome! Something we figured out yesterday is how many inactives their are in our ward, its pretty eye opening! The bummer is that so many of those that don't come as much anymore (inactives) are amazing people that just had one little thing that happened in church and for that one comment, or even glance, they left the church.

It makes me ponder why do we go to church? The truth is, humans are humans. Not everybody is going to have a 24 hour smile and complementing everybody, it would be great!, but its just not like that. We go to church because it is simply true. We go to church to renew our baptismal covenants and to feel the spirit and fill our spiritual canteens for the week. But also in the Book of Moroni it says we go to church to discuss the well being of our souls (moroni 6:5) so if you see somebody thats a little down, talk to them! Here on the earth we have our earthly family and also our family in our heavenly father. I hope we can all try to see eachother as brothers and sisters in the gospel. I love you all and hope we have fantastic weeks!

Oh and with General Conference coming up we all have the opportunity to receive an answer from the Lord. Truly these speakers have been guided by the spirit to speak of things that are meant specifically for us. Please watch conference this weekend! It starts on SATURDAY! Watch all four seessions pleasseeee. I know that President Monson is the prophet of the Lord and is anxious to address us. I love this work and I am so grateful to be a servant in the Lords vineyard!:)

Elder Ty Toolson

Workin to Teach Men to be Men!

Hey errybody!

This week, well like every other missionary in the world says, was another amazing week on the mission, full of blessings and wonderful, hard, beautiful, crazy experiences!! We had lots of great lessons and we are looking for people to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to with open hearts!  

So Tatiana left for la USA last week and this week Catherine (catarin) came back and man its amazing to be around people you have developed such a love for. She was SOOOO Evangelical and man she did not wanna get baptized para NADA but then her dad got baptized and now whaboom! Shes a member. there whole family will be members if we get Ruben (the only son) baptized! We are working really hard to help that guy! A girl we were going to baptize on the 27th backed out and i think its good because she has never ever read the Book of Mormon and so we have some great work to do with her.

Great it is!!! I love this work. To be honest it's really hard and I have never been so tired in my whole life. But I've also never been so Happy. Its the fact that we dont do anything for oursleves other than wash our clothes haha and man there is alsways somtething to wash. I plunge and scrub alot down here. Theres very few washers here so we just wash by hand. This is probably my last change here and I am just trying to work really hard to set up the next missionaries for success. Right now there are few struggles, which is excellent! The only struggle is that men here are really hard to get to come to church! I'm starting to realize is the ratio from females to males I've baptized is pretty lopsided. The bishop is pretty concerned about that because he wants to split the ward and we gotta baptize 9 men in one part to make it an elligible area to have a ward. We are praying to find the chosen but we especially wanna find families where men are prepared as well but man o man mom that is hard!
And cambios were 3 weeks ago! So this Wednesday i will start my fifth week (a transfer is six weeks) its expected that I will leave after this change unless Pres. feels inspired and wants me to stay for 6 months in my first area

Wellll not much to comment on other than this week was really truly another beautiful week in the mission! I hope eveybody at home is staying safe and loving life and taking every opportunity to get to know the scriptures, the gospel and our heavenly father=)

Yayyy im so glad a package is sent to me??? Oooooooyyyyy that is awesome thank you so much! The video of dad going down the water slide after zip lines, repelling and all is HILARIOUS and awesome! I miss dads scream and even uncle greggs estute observations haha. And Im glad you played tennis and I hope you ripped one at grandpa, someones gotta rough him up while im gone haha. Anyways mom HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I truly cannot describe what its like to be away from you for you birthday. Ya know i will have missed three of your birthdays after my mission?? I will have some major gifting and singing and hugging to do!!!! 

Wowow weewowow you guys got a portion of that hurricane!!! Its comforting that I had family a little bit closer to me! That's great that you are practicing your Spanish! I love the effort;) Those pictures are awesome! Love the warm rain photos. Here its just normal. Normal is that it gets light at about 5 but the sun isnt out and then it gets REALLY hot from 10-3 and then it cools down and rains at about 5 or 6 and stops at 9. Its awesome because we know the weather report every day! Its like this for about two more months and then it just gets super from christmas to easter (thats what everybody tells me.) I walk in mud alot but my shoes are doing great im thinking one of em has got at least three more months and the other one about 6:)Depends on how many dogs I gotta kick! :D 

Anyways how was church in Mexico? It looks like the missionaries over there are awesome! Y con saco!! Thats bold, we never wear our suit jackets down here. that. would. be. terrible... drip, drip - drench!

I love you all and Mexico looks pretty darn nice from the photos. Its crazy how i used to think mexico was poor! I gotta start sending pictures of outside the houses in honduras because i want you guys to really get a feel of this place before i leave!

LOVE Oooooddllleesssss and Goooooobbbbbssss!

Elder Ty Toolson