Tuesday, November 24, 2009

1 month in the field

It's been a rather strange week in Santa Maria. My companion has some wierd stomach bacteria that stops him from going out. In 3rd ward, one of the missionaries has some head injury that stops him from going out. So for the last week I've been working with Elder Rogers. We have been locking the two sick people up together in our zone leaders appartment while we go out and work. Poor zone leaders. We are eating all of there food, but the sickly elders keep the place spotless. I guess when you have nothing else to do you clean. Even with this set back though the work is progressing. We had a baptism last night. We baptised and confirmed an 8 year old. He is a child of record but still it was cool to be a part of the baptism. We were supposed to have a convert baptism on the 21st but it was pushed back to the 5th of december. Bummer. :( Oh well, I've decided to count it as a November baptism still. We also set 2 more people with a date and will have 2 baptism on December 19th, if all goes as planned. Super excited about that. Don't worry about all the steak and getting fat. I've actually lost about 10 pounds since I left the house almost 2 months ago. Crazy to think I've been gone that long. Cool story of the week. We were headed to our car to drive to a ward correlation when I saw a lady working in her garage. We had parked in front of her house and were a little ways off. Well I got the impression to go and talk to her. As we approached she went through the garage into a door that led to the back yard. Not wanting to ignore the prompting I entered her garage and her back yard. The moment I said "hello, hows your day?" She burst into tears. She was having a horrible day and was ready to just give up. I talked with her a bit and then promised I would be back in about 20 minutes. We still had to go to ward correlation. Luckily ward correlation involved us going on splits with the ward missionaries. So I went to the correlation picked up my new companion for the night and headed back to the ladies house. As we began to talk with her I found out that she was trying to help her father, who was drinking himself to death and it had been a very trying day. She had been praying for God to send help from above, and then we showed up in her back yard. She was super receptive as we taught her about the Restoration. By the end of the lesson she thanked us for bringing such a wonderful spirit into her life and her day. We gave her a book of Mormon and she is reading it and loving it! The work overall is going great. I love it! I love you as well. Take care and I'll write you next week.

Love,
Elder Tingey

Monday, November 23, 2009

Picture of Thomas on his mission


Nov. 2009 while eating at a member's house, Sister Sandy Peterson. The boy in the photo at the left is her son, Chris, then Elder Rodgers (on splits with him) and then Thomas.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Hello from sunny Santa Maria

Nov. 9, 2009

It's been a beautiful and sunny week in Santa Maria. Nights are starting to get cold here though. All the way down to 52 degrees. Brrrr..... ;) Days are getting a little chilly as well. Down to the high 70s. :) So funny story for the week. My companion uses Murry Superior hair Polmade. It's not really hair gel more like hair super glue. So Tuesday he convinced me to try some. So after I got out of the shower I dug my fingers into hair gel from hell and tried to apply it like I would gel, by running my hands through my hair. Well my hands stopped at my bangs. Then I spent the next 15 minutes trying to pull this "hair gel" to the back of my head. I managed to get it half way on my head but that was it. Needless to say my bangs stuck straight out and my hair was frozen in a nice bed head look. When I got out of the bathroom my companion started laughing. Then informed me how your supposed to apply it. Grumble grumble grumble. I informed him that I was going to kill him in his sleep and then got dressed. So the worse part about the story is, I've washed my hair almost 20 times since Tuesday and I still have the stuff in my hair. Morale of the story is: stick to hair gel. Well hope all is well at home. I'll write again next week.

Love,
Elder Tingey

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Happy Halloween

Been an exciting week in Santa Maria. Hope you all had a good Halloween. I know I did. Not to mention the nice extra hour of sleep. The work is going great and the people in Santa Maria are amazing! I've never been so well fed. People here just love feeding us and a few times we come to appointments and they have been barbequeing away waiting for us to come. The other day I ended up eating 3 dinners! The weather is great here. We had kind of a cold spell for a few days where we were in the low 70s. Brrrrr... ;) Good thing I had a jacket. There is no snow in Santa Maria and the sun is shining bright and beautiful every day. I love it here and love the people here. Well I've got to go now, but I'll write next week. Love you all back home! Love, Elder Tingey