Last full week in the mission field!

Hey everybody!

So this week was good! We worked pretty hard this week and I was able to avoid being really trunky, so good things happened. Having Elder Oaks, Elder Kacher, and Elder Dunnigan come and teach us was a real treat, and I'm super happy that I got to hear another Apostle right before the end of my mission. One thing about Elder Oaks that really struck me was how humble and willing to learn he is. He's super cool.

My sister, Gabbi just entered the MTC this past Wednesday, so that's super exciting for her! She's totally going to tear it up!

I think I told you last week about the part-member family that the Clarkston Sisters contacted and set up an appointment for us, but we were able to go and try to teach the non-member lady. Problem is, is that her member husband is the biggest talker I have ever seen in my life :) and so he totally took the show and ran with it and sort of taught the Restoration and stuff. But he taught it in such a way that even us life long members had a hard time following him. We couldn't get a word in edgewise. So it wasn't the best lesson ever, but we got a return appointment, so hopefully we'll be able to have better lessons in the future. 

We were also able to finally contact a less-active guy that our Bishop asked us to try to contact, and we were able to have a good talk with him, and he was really open in having us come and teach him and stuff, so that was really exciting as well.

So just so you all know, this is my last full week as a missionary...

Today, we're going to be going to the Auto Show, so I'm pretty stoked about that :)

Anyways, thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

 

 

 

Finally Decent Snow

So I don't have much time to write a very lengthy email, but I'll see what I can do :)

This week was a ton better than last week, so that was a blessing for sure. 

I had more or less my last district meeting this past week. Next week is something different, and then the week after that is interviews, so I'm kind of done with having to prepare district meeting agendas and stuff. I'm kind of bummed about it.

So I pretty much don't want to go home. Like I really want to see my family and all, but I really don't want my mission to end. So I do want to go home, but I really don't at the same time. It's a weird feeling :) So I'm just trying to ignore the fact that I'm going home in 16 days. :P

Something that I'm stoked about is that Elder Oaks is coming to speak to the mission on the 16th, so I get to have an Apostle speak to me right before I go home :) (This is what is replacing district meeting :))

Something cool that happened (you could even call it a miracle) is that the the Clarkston Sisters called us and told us a really interesting experience they had. There was a certain fellow in their area book that was written down as a former investigator or something, so they decided to go try and see him. Turns out that he lives in our area and was already baptized a few years ago. But they didn't know that, and figured since it was in their area book, it was in their area. So they go over, and he tells them that he is already a member in the Grand Blanc Ward (Which was a surprise to them) but what was cool, is that his non-member wife was there, and she expressed interest in learning more about the church, so they talked to her and set up an appointment for us to go and teach her! It's interesting, because we've gone over there several times, and we were never able to meet his wife because she has a crazy work schedule, but the Sisters were able to be there at the right time to talk with her and set up an appointment. I really don't understand how he made it into their area book in the first place, but it all worked out for the best! The Lord works in mysterious ways, I guess.

Anyways, as always, thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

Happy New Year

Wassup folks?

This week... hasn't exactly been my best week ever. It was hard, cold, unmotivating, discouraging, and distracting. I'm trying so hard not to be, but I'm trunked out of my mind right now, and it's pretty much the worst thing ever. It's been excessively hard to motivate myself (and my comp...) to work a dead area knowing that I have so little time left. 

 

But this week has had it's good parts as well.

We were able to really help out the older couple that is in pretty poor physical condition by cleaning out and rearranging a cluttered office into a temporary bedroom so that they will be able to stay more warm (because the heat from their wood burning stove funnels down the hall into that room) and now they're super close to a bathroom, as well as super close to the garage, so now they'll be able to be much more mobile, and the husband won't have to maneuver his way through hardly any stairs on his crutches. They haven't been able to make it to church for quite a few weeks now because of his injury, but they were able to come yesterday because we helped them out with this. At least that's what they said. So that was a cool experience.

The other Elders in my district gave us some excitement last Monday. So most of the way through P-day, the mission office called me asking for these Elders' numbers, because they didn't enter them in, and they weren't answering their phone. The senior Sister at the office seemed kind of worried that they weren't getting back to her or anything, so she asked us to see what we could do to get in contact with them. So to make a long story short, by the end of the night, everyone from the zone leaders to the Sisters in that ward to their ward mission leader got involved before we finally got a hold of them. Turns out, they just forgot to enter their numbers, and they didn't hear or think to check their phone for something like 7 hours.

Pretty dang exciting :P

New Years was good. Pretty uneventful, but still pretty good. At night time we drank some sparkling cider, played a game, and then I went to bed 30 minutes early :)

Yesterday was my last fast Sunday as a missionary, so I took the opportunity to bear my testimony. It was nothing crazy, but I'm glad I did. 

Anyways, thanks for reading.                                             

 

Elder Roderer

Christmas Time in Fenton, Michigan

Hey Everyone!

So I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, because I sure did! :)

So Christmas Eve, we had our mission wide Christmas celebration, where we made lots of wooden cars for kids in like the ghettos of the mission, as well as for whoever we thought would benefit from

them. (We took 3 and gave 2 of them to a less-active single mom with 5 kids under 10, and then I gave 1 to a kid in the ward named Max (The only little kid who has remembered my name)) Then there was a talent show kind of thing, and I played on a borrowed viola, and then we got to have a sweet instruction from President and Sister Gerber about the importance of the symbolism's in the temple, and how we need to make sure that we learn to understand them. It was super cool.

We got to be Christmas Ninjas, Christmas Eve (It's too secret for me to say anything else about it ;P) and I got to Skype with my family Christmas day!! Best present ever. Then we got to spend some time with an older, lonely guy in the Ward, which was actually really cool. He talked the whole time, and we just sat there and listened. But it brightened his Christmas as well as ours, so it turned out to be a really special experience. 

 

 (I made a Ford Flex and a Pontiac Aztek :D)

 

(Our little Christmas Tree)

Otherwise, this week hasn't been the most exciting. Pretty much no one wanted to meet with us, so that was a bit of a bummer (I think mostly because everyone was busy with like family and stuff) but this week should be good. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel with our miles though, so we're going to be doing some biking. But it's okay, because this way, I'll be able to burn off some of the Christmas flab that I've acquired. Woo!

We got to chop wood with a member for an older couple in the Ward that's all injured up. That was a lot of fun, but chopping wet wood for 4 hours with a heavy splitting maul got a little tiring. Totally would do it again though.

We were invited by the bishop to come to a BYD (Bishop's youth discussion, or something like that) on Sunday, and the whole theme was to have the youth ask the current full time missionaries in the ward as well as some recent RM's questions about serving a mission and stuff. It was actually really cool, and I think the youth really enjoyed it. At least enough to turn what should have been a 45 minute discussion into an hour and a half. Good times.

So in case anyone is wondering, I'm not all that trunky, and I'm trying really hard to work hard. So now you know :)

Oh yeah, gas is less than $2 dollars a gallon!!! 0.0

Anyways, thanks for reading! 

~Elder Roderer

New Companion

Hey everybody!

So this week has been pretty good. I got my new/last companion, Elder Fox on Tuesday, so that's been pretty good. Now, if you have paid attention to my letters over the past year or so, and you have a good memory, you'll remember that exactly a year ago, I already did serve with an Elder Fox. Turns out, this Elder Fox is a totally different person, and has no known relation to my previous Elder Fox comp.

 

Elder Fox is a good kid though. He's from St. George, and he's been out for 6 months, so he gets to learn what it's like to kill off a missionary. Not super sure on how much he likes me, but it's whatever. Worst case scenario, we endure each other for 5 more weeks. Speaking of missionaries dying, the first few days  of this week were soooo bad for me. So I feel like I've done well with not being trunky, especially considering that all I've been doing the last couple of transfers is kill off missionaries. But this week, as soon as we got back from transfer meeting, a tidal wave of trunky hit me and carried me out to sea for a solid couple of days. It was rough... I've finally pretty much made it back to the sandy beach of focused missionary work, but the fact that the end my mission is, in reality, actually drawing nigh, was a little shocking. 

My district is doing really well. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do to help them, because they all seem to be doing great, and they won't tell me if they need any help. Although one set of

Sisters asks me questions pretty often, so that's really nice. I appreciate it when they want my help.

The work is about the same as usual. Not a whole lot of change to report there. 

I'm pretty stoked to be able to Skype my family on Christmas! Christmas Eve, the mission is having a mission wide Christmas celebration, so that should be a lot of fun. It'll be a bit of a drive, but totally worth it.

Thanks for reading, and I hope all of you have a very merry Christmas!! Just don't forget the real reason why we celebrate Christmas, and who the First Gift was.

~Elder Roderer

 

 

"Looks like we're not in Detroit anymore Toto"

One Transfer Left!!

Hey Everybody!

So this is the last email that you''ll get from me while I'm with Elder Page. :'( He's going to be headed

back to "Arizion" on Wednesday. I'm pretty sad, but it was a lot of fun while it lasted. Hopefully I don't get a total goober for my last transfer, but it I do, oh well. :) 

So I got a leadership call from President Gerber yesterday. I'm going to be a district leader for my last transfer. But something that's kind of exciting is that they're combining the Grand Blanc and Clarkston districts. So now district meeting won't feel like awkward double dates! Woo! Except that it'll be like a 45 mile drive just for district meeting, I'm pretty stoked about the whole thing.

So the kid that we've been working with a lot in preparation for his mission gave his farewell talk on Sunday and left this morning. It's super exciting that he's off on his mission, but it's a bummer, because it was super cool being able to work with him and help him prepare for his mission a little more. He's pretty well broken in already; we had him teach the law of chastity a couple of times now, so from now on, everything is easy to teach :)

Sacrament meeting was pretty heavy on the missionary side of things. Joey (The kid we were working with) gave his farewell talk, his sister gave a talk, Elder Page gave a talk, I gave a musical number with someone else's viola, and the Sisters gave the opening and closing prayers. I guess there was a high councilman thrown in there to even it out, but it was still a lot of missionary stuff :) I have to say, it was a pretty good meeting!

Anyways, that's all you're getting this week :)

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

Here's the kid we trained :)

 

 

 

 

 

 This is a member that we hang out with almost every p-day with his nephew who is also in the Ward. He is like the only little kid on my mission that actually knows and remembers my name :)

 

 

 

Baptism!

Hey everyone!

So guess what! I baptized someone on Sunday! It wasn't my investigator (It was the Sister's) but it was still awesome! He is a 10 year old who's family is semi less-active. Super cool people though. The kid's mom gave the baptism talk, and it was one of the best talks on baptism that I've heard. This is the first time I've baptized someone on my mission, so it was a really cool experience. I even only had to dunk him once, so that made it even better. :)

In other news, we had a sweet Zone Conference this week where President gave an awesome instruction on repentance. It wasn't to rebuke us or anything, but to help us and those we teach become better, more converted people. Part of what he said was that just because we stop doing the sin, doesn't mean that we repented, it just means that by definition we've stopped doing that sin. But true repentance means more than that.

So one of the less-actives that we've been working with was telling us about an dairy that sells ice-cream, so after teaching him one day, we decided to stop by and try some. Turns out that there was a super cute girl working there that asked us where we were from, so we were able to talk to her about what we do for like 10 minutes and then give her a card with the link for the He Is The Gift video on it. It was like the most success we've had with contacting a random person in a while. We've been doing a lot with the Christmas Initiative (#ShareTheGift) in our finding efforts, and we've been seeing success with it! We've found some sweet potential investigators this week, so that was really exciting! 

The Stake did a cool "One Night in Bethlehem" event at one of the chapels. It was supposed to be a missionary geared event to help people feel the true Spirit of Christmas and also to help people see that we really are Christians. It went on Friday and Saturday night, and between the two nights, something like 1800 people went through the event. Crazy!! It was a really cool event though, and I saw a lot of people from the Clarkston Ward, so that was cool too. 

Anyways, thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer