Elder Noah Toney: Take the gift and be happy

Hello Everyone!

So I suppose I owe some news. We have been incredibly busy. My son and I get along famously, (in the mission, if you are training a new missionary, he is referred to as your son) I really enjoy this companion. We are learning a lot together and working really hard

Random story, yesterday we found some people playing ping pong outside the house, I offered a challenge, if I won they listen to our message. Needless to say, they listened to our message :)

While it is really tiring, I am enjoying immensely what I´m doing. Holy cats batman I am learning so much. It seems that every time I figure I'm doing ok, I find out I'm not! I suppose that isn't a bad lesson to learn.

This weekend we have a wedding planned. I figure that by the end of my mission I´ll be able to just move into that line of work, it seems I do it a lot. Three people will be getting baptized. Yader and Susana, who are getting married, and Adrian, who is a miracle (well all of them are miracles.) We found him on a bus, and he invited us over. Turns out his wife is a member of thirty years, but has been unable to find the church after she moved. She told us that she had been searching for us, and when she saw us on the bus she got very excited. (We knew she had to be a member or crazy cause the only strangers that talk to us are members or people asking for money. Just so you know, if you are American, it means that you are rich here, even if you´re not)

Random thought, in Poás there is a LOT of coffee plants, like you wouldn't believe, there is so much. Its like Indiana, but with coffee instead of corn, I like it!

My first day in the mission

There is a family here that has two sons who are members, but the parents are not. The mom has been an investigator for a while, almost a year, and has a testimony that the church is true. But she has no desire to get married, and in the church, you are unable to get baptized if you are living together but not married. I don´think I have ever wanted to help people so bad. I've been brought to the point of tears (almost) upon begging for help from my knees, and I am motivated time and time again to just keep trying. It hurts an awful lot when you just can´t help someone, it hurts a lot more when you love the someone (or family) so darn much. When you see the solution to all of the strife, contention, and anguish in the home, and you say, "here, here it is, take the gift, be happy" And they refuse. But I know that everything happens in its due time. The pain comes less from my inability to control things and more from the emotional exhaustion of seeing and understanding what failure means.

That isn't to say that I´m depressed or anything, just that I care for them a lot and I believe that its a by product. Truth be told, I am enjoying life a lot, it isn't ever easy, but ay vamos.

Unretractacbly,

Elder Noah M. Toney