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

Happy Thanksgiving

Hey everybody!

This week was pretty good! The campaign of getting members to trust us more is moving along quite well, so that's pretty encouraging. 

We've still been doing a lot of work with a kid in the Ward that enters the MTC the day Elder Page goes home, and that's been really cool. He's been coming to district meeting, and we've been taking him tracting and to less-actives and stuff. What's probably been the coolest part though, is seeing how much he's grown in this little bit of time. He was really shy at first and wouldn't say a word, but now he's giving these really profound comments during lessons and stuff. It's sweet to see.

The 'ol investigator pool is still pretty dry, but we have faith that it will change soon.

Last week I said that I would be doing a musical number in sacrament meeting yesterday with somebody's viola, but it ended up not working out for this week, but I should be playing in a couple more Sundays. The reason it didn't happen was that the lady that was supposed to accompany me had to go out of town because her mother fell and hurt herself, so she left to spend time with her.

Thanksgiving was good! We had quite a few people invite us like the day before, so we didn't go hungry or anything. We were actually not supposed to go to more than one Thanksgiving dinner, but we got permission to go to a lunch and a dinner with instructions to not spend very long at either. So an older couple in the ward invited us over for a Thanksgiving lunch at like 2:00, and somebody else invited us over a dinner at 5:00. Long story short, we didn't start eating at the first one until 4:00, and then had to book it over to our other appointment. The older couple have been experiencing some health issues and injuries, so they were moving slower than usual. We tried to help as best we could, but it still took a while. It was still very nice of both groups of people to have us over.

One of our less-actives, Richard, is doing awesome! We've been having some amazing breakthrough lessons with him. He's been reading the scriptures trying to deepen his relationship with Christ, and he even came to church on Sunday! We saw him on Friday, and he committed to come to church (Which is big) so we were really looking out for him right before church, and we had a little scare when his wife and daughter walked in without him. But to our much rejoicing, he walked in a few minutes later!

So yeah, that's about it :)

Anyways, thanks for reading! Hope you all have a great week!

~Elder Roderer

 

 

 

 

 

We saw a pretty cool tractor pulling car the other day, so we stopped to take a picture.

 

 

 

When deer hunting season rolls around, it's a pretty big thing here in Michigan. :)

 

 

On the Brink

This week was good. It sure seems like we are on the brink of seeing amazing things in this area, because the adversary is working hard to try to discourage us. We still don't have any investigators, but our less-active success is doing well!

So we now know for sure that most of the Ward doesn't like Elders very much. From what we are gathering, it's because they didn't like the last several sets of Elders. But that is changing! As we have

been able to go to the few dinner appointments we've had with members, we are able to help them realize that we are hard working and that they can trust us. We were at the home of the previous WML, and the wife was very open and honest with her thoughts about some of the previous missionaries. But she really liked us, and at the end of the appointment, she gave us a referral for a part member! She said that she has been waiting for a while to give this referral, but she didn't trust any of the previous year's missionaries enough to give it to them. We're pretty sure that she is telling some of the other people in the Ward about us too, because some of the members that have never even said hi to us before, now are inviting us over for dinner! 

We were at a dinner appointment the other night (Mostly because we have been working a lot with a kid in the family that is leaving on his mission in a couple of weeks, so his family likes us) so going on a hunch using my mad observation skills (and seeing that they had violins and cellos hanging up in various parts of the living room,) I asked them if they had a Viola floating around in their house. Turns out, they did. So we busted it out, and I got to play on a Viola again! The dad actually turned out to be the ward chorister, and through a series of events, I volunteered to do a musical number next Sunday. Hopefully this will help with member-missionary trust as well.

So Elder Page's 21st birthday was on Saturday, so I bought him a Lego Boba Fett watch. He only got one piece of mail for his birthday, and it was a hospital bill for almost $3000 dollars. :) 

We got like 4-5 inches of snow this past week, so driving was a lot of fun. ;) We had to go to the church for something during the peak of snowfall, and the parking lot wasn't plowed, so we took that...opportunity...to learn how the Fusion handles in snow when the e-brake is applied ;D But now the snow is all gone, so the fun is over... for now.

Anyways, that's about it for this week.

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

 Stunt kite flying. :)

Week 2 in Grand Blanc!

Hey guys!

So this week was good! We did a lot of finding, and found no one, but it's okay, because we know that great blessings are just around the corner.

There's a kid in the Ward that's leaving for his mission soon, so we've been working with him a bit, and this week we took him tracting with us for an hour or so. No one was interested, and at the end he asked us "Are you always this successful?" The answer was "Usually." :) But it was a good experience for him, and we all had a good time, so it was good.

While we didn't find anyone, we did get some great less-active work done, and we even figured out the reason why one of the members isn't coming to church, so we'll be able to help him out and it'll be great! :) We also found a less-active that was really friendly that has a 1965 mustang that makes over 800hp, so that's pretty exciting too ;)

So we're kind of picking up clues that most of the Ward doesn't trust Elders very much. One clue was after church when we were looking at the dinner calender, and saw that the Sister missionaries have a member meal lined up almost every day for the rest of the month, and we have.... one. 

We're not like bitter or anything, because dinner appointments are a privilege, not a right, but it was still a little frustrating. Hopefully we'll be able to restore any lost trust.

We stopped by a member's house one night just to get to know them better (And they said we could stop by whenever) and they let us in and we start talking a bit. Then the father told us to follow him because he wanted to show us his plane. We were thinking he was talking about an RC plane or something, so we follow him out to his garage where he opens a door into another room, and we were pretty shocked to see an actual plane! The guy has a stinking hanger built into his house! I guess it makes sense, because they live right off of a tiny air strip, but it was still quite the shock. But it was sweet!

So yeah, that's about all I have time to write about. 

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

 

 

 Proof of the plane.

  

 And a view from someones back yard. Like I said, I'm in the sticks! :)

New Area!

Hey everybody!

So I got transferred to the Grand Blanc Ward! It's pretty much the sticks. The Ward boundary is something like 400 square miles. It's great :) I actually got transferred to the area above Clarkston, so I didn't move very far. 

My new companion is also from AZ, so that's cool I suppose :) But he's a cool guy. He's been out one transfer longer than me, so I'll be killing off another missionary in 5 weeks. It's making it a little tough to not get trunky, but I'm doing pretty good at keeping trunky thoughts at bay. Lets pray that it stays that way.

Elder Page is a cool guy though. He's like 6'5" and 300 lbs, so it's a pretty tall companionship. He's also super witty, so it's been a lot of fun working with him. And boy have we been working! Since we're both going home soon, we both want to end our respective missions with a bang, so we've been working really hard and trying to get this area out of the hole that it's been in. It's been great!

Preach My Gospel says that when a missionary works, he (or she) is happy, and it's true!!

Anyways,

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

 

 

If you want to send me a letta, my address is

2501 Hogan Cir.

Fenton, MI 48430

Here's a sign proving that I'm in the sticks. :)

 

 

Transfer News!

Hey everybody!

Sorry for not writing a mass email last week. We had mountain biking to do, and not a whole lot of time to do it in :)

Welp, Elder Ryder is going home on Wednesday because he's done with his mission, so obviously he's not staying in the area, but as it turns out, neither am I! I'm getting moved for my last two transfers. I pretty much knew it was coming though. So the area is being "white washed" but not shut down which is cool. I thought it would be one of the 20 or so areas getting shut down in the next 3 months (Just from not as many missionaries coming in as there are going home) but I guess not! 

I'm sad to leave the Clarkston Ward, because it's just a sweet Ward, but I know that getting moved again and stuff is for the best. 3 out of the 4 missionaries in the Clarkston Ward are actually leaving, so there's quite a lot of change happening. The Ward Mission Leader isn't very happy about it :) But for our last P-day in the area, we went bowling with the district (which includes us and the sisters) and asked the ZL's plus another to area come, so we had a good old time today. I did pretty terrible, but it was still fun :)

For all who may care, we found out for sure that Elder Ryder and I were the oldest missionaries in the mission. At this point, we're at 45 months of missionary service. Good stuff! It'll be interesting to see who I get next, and how we'll stack up in the experience bracket. 

We helped a old member in the Ward put a tarp over his big old pontoon boat to prepare it for winter. It sounds like a simple, straightforward procedure, and it probably should have been, but it took like 2 hours to do. The tarp was also like 40 feet long. I don't know if you have ever tried to open and work with a 40 foot tarp in windy conditions, but it's very exciting.

For Halloween, we pretty much did nothing out of the ordinary. We just tracted in some light sleet/snow, and then went in at 7:00 per the mission's orders. It was pretty fun :) 

So yeah, I'll let you know where my new area is at next Monday!

Thanks for reading!

 

The District.

 

 

After some mountain bikin.

 

 

Happy Halloween from Elder Roderer

That's my district after the Ward Halloween party. Plus a random little girl from the Ward. The Sisters made the tomb stone for Elder Ryder.

Hey!

Hello everybody!

So this week was less exciting than the last, but that's okay I guess.

Elder Ryder and I went biking again last Monday, and we actually finished the A trail, so that was really nice :) We only had to stop like 5 times to catch our breath, and Elder Ryder only threw up a little bit :) We're totally doing it again today. 

We taught Kyle a couple of times this week. It's kind of slow going, but he is retaining stuff, it's just that you have to help spark his memory. He's a great kid though.

I texted John Sunday morning to see if we would be able to see him at church, and he replied and said no, and that he is not going to attend church anymore, even though he's been to church all of one time, and that was like 5 months ago. When I asked him why, he didn't reply, so we don't have a clue as to what his problem is.

We went on an exchange with the Zone Leaders this week. It was pretty fun. The ZL that I exchanged with actually is from the town next door to me, and we knew each other back when we were like 12 years old. :) During the exchange, we tracted into a "non-practicing" wiccan. That was pretty interesting. After the exchange, we went to Zone Meeting, and got to learn from some other missionaries. Good times!

We help someone in the Ward that's adding an addition to his home, and so we went and threw up a couple of walls on the inside. I was feeling pretty accomplished :)

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

Flat Tires, Flat Biceps, and Answers that Fell Flat

Hey Everybody!

So this week was pretty fun! 

Last Monday, Elder Ryder and I went to a super snazzy mountain bike trail that we ran across a while ago, and we had a pretty great time on it. There are 4 different trails/loops (A-D) and to get to B-D, you had to ride on A, but since the A trail just by itself is 4 miles long, we decided to just stick with that one. Also because on the trail descriptions, the A trail seemed like the easiest one while C and D both said "VERY TECHNICAL!!!" The B trail seemed pretty doable, but would have added 6 miles to our trip, so we chose not to do that one either. 

So we park our Jeep at a member's house that lived sort of near by (About 2 miles) and just rode to the trail trail head, because at the parking lot for the trail, it said that you needed a recreational passport, and we definitely don't have that, and we didn't want to get a fine, so we just avoided that parking lot altogether. So we start riding on the trail, and we're just having a grand old time zipping along the foresty path, until about half way through, when Elder Ryder gets a flat tire.... and we didn't bring any equipment to fix the tube... Smart, I know.

But long story short, we power walk his bike 4 miles back to the Jeep in about an hour, zip back to the apartment, shower, change, and zip over to a member's house to teach a Family Home Evening lesson. It was pretty great :)

Our investigator John, owns and teaches a Crossfit Gym, and he would always invite us to come over sometime to work out. Lately, he's been a little tough to get in touch with, so on Saturday morning, we had about an hour with nothing to do before a memorial service that was happening at 11 that we were going to attend, we decided took him up on his offer. It was a productive visit. We stopped by his gym when we figured he would be there, and sure enough, he was. It was really good to touch bases with him again, so hopefully we'll be able to start meeting with him more consistently again. 

The work out though, was nuts. He started us off with a warm up that was really more like a legit work out, and then he had us do a 10 minute work out that was really more like torture. So total, we exercised for maybe 20 minutes, but the next day, dang near every muscle in my body was sore, and it hurt to move pretty much anything. And today, it hurts like fire to reach my arms up like at all. It was great though. I'm totally going to do crossfit when I go home. I could get swole in like a week. ;)

We had interviews with President Gerber last Friday. It was pretty great because they showed us the new Meet the Mormons film. While I missed like a third of it because I was in my interview, it was still sweet. Everybody go watch it, because if nothing else, it's a great feel good movie, and it'll warm your heart. The interview was good too, BTW. :)

We taught seminary Thursday morning because one of the teachers asked us to come in and teach. The task we were given was to teach about the responsibilities and duties of different Priesthood quorums as mostly outlined in D&C 20:38-67. We hadn't the foggiest idea how to teach that you teenagers at 6:00am in the morning and keep them engaged, so we went with the idea that Sister Belknap (The seminary teacher) gave us, which was to turn it into a Jeopardy game. It ended up taking a lot longer to prepare than we had anticipated. We stayed up preparing the night before until about 2:30am, and then woke up at 5:00am to get to the class that started at 6:00am. It was pretty rough. It felt like I was back in college. But we get there, and we decided to start off our lesson (Which we planned on being about 20 minutes long) with a nice little discussion on why the Priesthood is important and good stuff like that. I guess we forgot that we were talking to teenagers at 6:00am in the morning, because nobody said a word, so our intro took all of about 20 seconds. So after that, we go into our game of Jeopardy that we spent hours preparing the night before. When we were coming up with the questions, we were worried that we were asking too easy of questions, but as it turned out, that was not the case. These kids didn't know anything! They just sat there arguing and complaining with each other about how stupid their answer was that they threw out. Even if they would say the right answer, nobody else would agree, and they would complain about how dumb that answer was, even though they couldn't come up with anything better. And it's not like they had to go off of memory either. They had their scriptures, and we told them in what verses in Section 20 to look at for the answers, but they still would get it wrong. Like one girl read a verse to us that I guess in her mind answered the question, even though it definitely didn't, so I kindly told her that she was wrong, and then the girl next to her turns to her and says with this offended/prissy voice "Ugh, you read the verse to him!" Like she was so put off that this girl could read "the verse" to me, and that I would still have the audacity to tell her she wasn't right. It was pretty stressful. Oh, and also just for kicks and giggles, we threw in a question that had nothing at all to do with the Priesthood, because we though it would be funny. The question was "What wood was Noah's ark made out of?" We thought for sure that at least one of the kids would know that, but instead, a couple of the responses we got were "Painted wood" and "There are different kinds of wood?" Ironically, the girl that said that gave more right answers than anybody else in the class. 

We ended up only getting through about half of the questions before seminary had to end (We went way over our time on accident) so we finished, and spent the rest of the day exhausted and ashamed about our disaster of a lesson. But we found out a few days later that the class is sometimes like that, so it really wasn't our fault that things went to pot. At least that's what we're telling ourselves. I overheard the seminary teachers talking to each other saying stuff like "Our [seminary] kids don't know anything!" so I don't think it was just us.

We were able to finally teach Kyle this past week, so that was really nice. We're learning that we are going to have to take it really slow and teach really simply with him. But that's totally okay!

So Elder Ryder and I were talking the other day, and we realized that we are most likely the oldest companionship (Minus trios) in the mission! As far as mission "experience," we are at 43 months combined.

Anyways,

Thanks for reading my giant letter! :)

~Elder Roderer

I got turned into a mummy with toilet paper when we were at a member's house for FHE (Because we were teaching the lesson) so that was pretty great :)

Who Thought Conference was Awesome?

This guy did!

Hey everybody!

So I hope all of you had a chance to watch/listen to General Conference, because it was super great! Like always, there was something for everyone. One of my favorite talks was given by Elder Ballard, talking about how we need to stay on "The old ship, Zion."

The only showing of investigators for us was Kyle, who came to the Priesthood session. But he enjoyed it, so that's good!

It seems like Summer is pretty much over, at least in this part of the woods. It's getting kind of chilly. :/

One of our investigators, John, totally stood us up for our appointment, which isn't uncommon, but it was frustrating, because we even got a member to come with us, and he wasn't even there. It's really frustrating, because this guy is super cool and he knows that the gospel is something he needs in his life, but he's not doing such a great job at acting on that knowledge. So please keep him in your prayers for us.

Random, but kind of funny. We learned last week that one of the members in the Ward is an Advanced, Master Gardener. I don't even know what that means, but it sounds fun :)

I don't have much time, because Elder Ryder and I are going to go hit up a mountain biking soon, and we don't want to run out of time mid way through the trail, so this email is pretty much done :)

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

Motivated by fear, motivated by love

Hey Everybody,

This week was pretty cool. A nice highlight was that we had a mission meeting from 10:00-4:00 on 

Friday with Elder Craig A. Cardon of the 1st (I think?) quorum of the seventy. It was pretty cool, because at the beginning of the meeting, they asked us to think of a couple of questions that we wanted answered by the end of meeting, and both of mine were answered really well! My questions were how can I be a more consecrated missionary, and how can I work better with members. It makes sense that the first one got answered, it being a missionary meeting and all, but then Elder Cardon spent like 2 hours on how to better work with members, and how to make sure we are not a burden but a tool for the members to use. It was pretty cool :)

We had two investigators and one less-active come to church on Sunday, so that was really cool.

Last Sunday's Sacrament meeting was pretty fun. I forgot to talk about this last week, but the Priests who were blessing it got it wrong like 8 or 9 times :) Like all three of them tried a few times, and they were all getting it wrong :) Almost each time, they just replaced the word "That" with "And."

So we're trying to work with a recently reactivated member's, non-member brother. He's about our age, and he comes to church, but he does have some Autistic tendencies, so he can appear to be a little obnoxious at church at times. But I always sit next to him and try to keep him calm and quiet. I've finally figured out how to do that (Just rub his back a bit) and it's been going a lot better. Yesterday, I did the same thing, and after Priesthood was done and we were putting up chairs, the EQ president told me as he was walking by "You're incredible!" And you know, that made me feel really, really good. It was interesting to feel the difference between motivation from fear, and motivation from love. It's not very often when a member just out of the blue tells me something like that, but it felt great. So my commitment to you all is to try to find something the the missionaries in your unit do well, and just give them a sincere, genuine complement. I promise that doing so will help the missionaries feel happier and more motivated. :)

Thanks for reading! 

 E. Roderer is third row, furthest right

"This was a picture of half the Michigan Detroit Mission taken during our recent mission tour with Elder Cardon of the First Quorum of the Seventy." 

Transfer News Inside!!

Hey everybody!

 (Elder Ryder with the snail)

So here's the transfer news! Nothing in my district is changing. So now you know. 

Naw, it's cool. This means I get to kill off Elder Ryder. I've never done that before, so it'll be an interesting experience :) 

So this morning was pretty funny. We do laundry at the same place as the Sisters, and today they accidentally washed their phone with their clothes :) So for the next few days, they are going to be without really any communication.

We finally has a lesson with John this past week. He understands that he needs to get back into the groove with meeting with us regularly and coming to church, and he want's to, so please pray the he'll be able to do that.

We dropped Brian this week. He wasn't showing a hint of commitment, and told us that he wasn't going to come to church anymore because he felt uncomfortable last time. Doesn't make sense, because everyone was really nice to him. Hopefully someday he'll shape up.

This week, we were able to get in contact with a few less actives that we have been asked to try to work with, so that was nice. Hopefully, we'll be able to help them get their priorities in order. Like church ;)

Anyways, that's about it. 

Thanks for reading!

Snails

​Hey everybody!

So this week was another one of those kinds of week where not a whole lot seemed to happen. But there's still some stuff to talk about. :)

Most interesting to note, is that my sister, Gabbi got her mission call this past week! She's going to Frankfurt, Germany, which is awesome!! But she reports to the MTC on January 14th which to me is a lot less awesome. Reason why I say that is because I get home January 28th. Oh well. I'll figure out a way to see her :)

So about what's happening in Michigan.

I'm pretty sure I've gotten fatter than any other time on my mission, so that's pretty lame. Portion control. It's a killer.

So our Ward Mission Leader sometimes talks about when he went on his mission, and how he really wanted to go to Russia, because it had just been opened, and teach the gospel to people who had never heard it before. But he ended up going to Argentina, which isn't exactly new to having missionaries around. He talks however, about trying to find the "Russia" of his areas, so places that probably haven't hardly ever seen missionaries before. We would be more than happy to do that, but the problem with doing that, is we have limited miles, and those out of the way "Russia" type areas, are usually very out of the way. But we had the opportunity to make it out to a more remote area a couple of times. The only person who was willing to talk to us was a Jehovah's Witness, so he wasn't exactly open to learning a whole lot. But it's okay, because we are trying :)

I saw a 2015 F-150 this week, so that was exciting (At least for me:)) I of course took a picture of it, and really weirded out some people that were standing outside their car a little ways left of the truck. I think I embarrassed my Elder Ryder :) Our WML actually designed the grill for the truck, so I thought that was pretty cool too. 

We stopped by an investigator, and he ended up not being home, but we did find a snail, so we were cheered up a bit :)

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

A dream, a golden investigator, and a knight from the 1400s.

Hey everybody!

This week was pretty good. I feel like I grew quite a bit during the week. Like toward the beginning

of the week, I really wasn't feeling very motivated and stuff, but as the week went on, I felt more and more motivated and I also gained a greater resolve to finish my mission strong. I think part of that came from a dream that I had. I had a dream Tuesday or Wednesday night that I finished my mission and went home (Like I was not a missionary anymore, which I've never had a dream about before) but it was really weird because it felt like I had just kind of coasted through through the rest of my mission instead of finishing strong, and if was not a good feeling! I felt full of regret, and I felt like I wasn't sure if my sacrifice was acceptable to the Lord. It was a terrible feeling, and it gave me the kick in the pants that I've been wanting. So we were able to finish this week stronger than usual, and that felt really good. I really hope that I can keep this attitude for the rest of my mission.

District meeting went well. It was quite a bit easier to plan and prepare for than last weeks, and I felt like my instruction went a lot better too. It's kind of cool; the nature of the task hasn't changed, but my ability to accomplish it well has. I think the Lord has been helping a lot with it too.

The area is going pretty well. We were finally able to get in contact with our investigator John (That I hadn't met before just last week) so that was a miracle. He is still solid, but he's just going through some tough times.

We found a new investigator tracting. She is a 19 year old girl that was super golden, but her dad is mega mean and hates us, so we're not allowed to teach her anymore. It's super lame. But I'll tell you the story of how we found her anyway :)

So we were tracting Friday evening, and as we were walking up a driveway, this crazy rain storm hit. Fortunately, the porch for that house was covered, so we stayed dry when we knocked. So the 19 year old girl comes to the door, and we're like "Hey, we're missionaries..." and she was like "Oh! Jesus! Tell me all about it!" We were sort of taken aback that someone was so excited to see us and hear our message, so we start talking to her about the Restoration, and she's super interested, so we pull up a chair or her porch (because she was the only one home) and teach her a full blown Restoration lesson! She was super engaged the whole time, and asked a bunch of awesome questions, and was all excited to learn more and come to church and stuff!... But right as we were able to leave, her very angry dad comes home, and asks what we're doing, and Tyler (The girl) tell him that we're teaching her about Jesus. Then he asks us where we're from, and she tells him that we're Latter-Day Saints. I guess that was the wrong answer, because he yells at us to "Get off my stoop!" and all sorts of stuff. He was a jerk. So we leave, and as we're walking away, we hear him say to his daughter "Is this why you didn't answer your phone?! A tree could have fallen on the house!!" I guess it was pretty windy, but I don't see how not answering her phone might have caused a tree to fall on the house. That's probably not what he meant, but whatever. We were smart enough to get Tyler's number before then, so we texted her last night to see if we could still meet with her, and she said that we couldn't, because her dad was really creeped out, but that she would love to come to church sometime. So it's pretty depressing that we can't teach her anymore, but it is what it is. We tried our best, and that's all we could do.

 

Here's another story from tracting. We were knocking on doors Saturday evening, and we had just finished a street, and were walking back to the Jeep, when the guy in a car calls us over and is like "For you, what day is the Sabbath?" And we were like "Uhh, Sunday.." So he proceeds to tell us why the "True Sabbath" is on Sunday. Turns out, he is a "Messianic Jew" (At least that's what he claimed) which I've never heard of before, but his doctrine was pretty different. He was saying that he still follows the "Old ways" so he doesn't eat pork and stuff, but then he's trying to convince us that living a riotous life that's full of sin is okay. The way he talked was super funny too. It felt like I was talking to a drunk knight from the 1400's. He even said himself that he was "Just a drunken fool sitting in a 1998 Missan Naxima".... For sure one of the craziest people I've even met on my mission :) 

So we do service at a senior center a couple of times a week (We just package food for a Meals on Wheels program, and do stuff like that) and one of the ladies that works there just loves the missionaries, because they have been coming by and helping for like 14 years, so she'll just give us food from the center. Like she has given us two racks of ribs, something like 10 lbs of chicken, and this week, she ordered this box of 48 gluten free hot pocket equivalents, and just gave it to me! She is a super nice lady!

Brian came to church on Sunday, so that was cool. And a recently reactivated member brought her non-member husband and brother too, so hopefully we'll be able to start teaching them too!

Anyways, that's about it for this week :)

Thanks for reading!

Happy Labor Day!

Hey everybody!

So really not that much new happened this week. We picked up a couple of former investigators, and I had my first district meeting as a district leader. It went pretty well, but it was a relief when it was done. But once you're done with one, then you have to start thinking about the next one. What fun! :)

Here's something that's pretty funny. There is an older member in the Ward named George Hemingway who is an outdoor buff :) .....At least it was funny to me!

 So Labor day was like the most boring day of my mission. Okay, not really, but probably the most boring holiday. Absolutely no one invited us over, so we just did our normal p-day things, and then sat in our apartment for the rest of our p-day. Oh well :)

Thanks for reading this super tiny update :)

~Elder Roderer

So something I've started to notice is that Michigan is kind of funny sometimes. Like some of the

stuff they do doesn't make a whole lot of sense... Like this speed limit sign for example.

 

Clarkston Ward!

Week two in the Clarkston Ward! My updated verdict on the area is actually pretty much the same. Most people here are really quite nice, but just knocking on their door isn't the best way to get people to listen. Too bad that's almost all we have to do all day :) Naw, it's cool. We actually got a referral from a member in Oregon for his friend that he was buddies with since like the 60's. But they both got deployed to Vietnam and lost contact.. until this past week. Friday, to be exact. So they got to talking, and the member invited his friend to read and learn more about the Book of Mormon. He said yes, and we got the referral that day. We stopped by the next day with a Book of Mormon, and this guys was just blown away that we were getting to him so quickly. He was like "You guys are better than next day air with Amazon!" It was pretty funny. He's super nice, and we'll be following up with him sometime. 

We had an investigator come to church! Woo! His name in Brian, and Elder Ryder and his previous comp taught him a couple of times. He was out of town for the first week and a bit that I've been here, but we invited him to church, and he came and really enjoyed it! It's funny,

Oh yeah, something I forgot to mention last week is that Elder Gerald N. Lund was at the Clarkston last Sunday! I had no idea it was him until Bishop told us, so I went and talked to him for a couple of minutes. We didn't know this either, but apparently, Elder Lund is the WML's father in law. Of course, we found this out after Elder Lund left, and not even by our Ward Mission Leader. He's not really the kind of guy to tote that around though. Speaking of my WML, his name is Brother Belliston, and he is just great. He is very involved with the work, and is in contact with us frequently to check up on how things are going, and if there's anything he can do to help. 

So yeah, thanks for reading!

 (Note from Gabbi: This has nothing to do with his post, but I wanted to add a picture, and I just love these. This was at the party following his farewell talk. l-r Gabbi, Elder Roderer, Sister Redd)

 l-r Elder Adamson, Sister Redd, Elder Roderer.

New Address and Pictures

Drop Elder Roderer a note!! :)

 

 

Elder Patrik Roderer

11010 Highland Rd. Apt #12

White Lake, MI 48386

 

 

 This poor guy just built a barn at the wrong spot :/

 Elder Roderer and the mission Jeep in White Lake, MI

 Elder Roderer, Elder Williams, Samantha

Here's a picture of Samantha and her kids :)

 Just taking a stroll down memory lane with my comp :)

Elder Roderer is the new DL

Hey everybody!

This week was pretty eventful. So like I said last week, I got the call that I was being transferred and being a district leader somewhere. Well, like all of Monday, it rained insanely hard, and pretty much flooded part of the mission. Where I was at in Plymouth, we got about 5 inches of rain, so you can imagine how that would flood any parts of last that was a bit lower. So at any rate, in consequence of all that happening, transfer meeting got canceled "until further notice" which turned out to be the next day. 

But anyways, I did get transferred, and I am now in the Clarkston Ward. It's a pretty cool Ward, the people seem to be really nice too. My new companion is Elder Ryder from Glendale, AZ and he's been out for 21 months. He was actually Elder Williams' MTC companion, so that's kind of funny. And we were in the same district while I was in Warren too. He's a pretty cool guy :)

So I am the district leader in my new area. I'll be honest, it's a pretty lame district. It's us and the set of Sisters in the Ward, so not many (Like zero, because as an Elder, you can't really be friends with Sisters) fellow missionaries to bond with. Oh well. At least I don't have to bother with exchanges ;) But what's been nice is that I haven't had to lead a district meeting yet, because it got canceled last week when transfer meeting ended up on that day, and this week is Specialized Training :) 

This area is cool though. The people just as a general population seem to be really nice. Like with tracting, everyone has been pretty polite and stuff! Even when we went to this super rich area, everyone was way nice. 

One interesting thing about the Water here in White Lake. It's like full of rust. So our shower and sink and toilet all look like they're rusty. It also smells pretty strange too. It's okay though, it works :)

Oh, I'm also in a car again after about 10 months! :) Actually, I'm not in a car, I'm in a Jeep Compass. Don't know how this area scored that, but there are for sure no complaints here :)

Anyways, I'll tell you more about the area and stuff next week.

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

Here's the parking lot of a mega church that is down the street a bit from the Plymouth apartment. it doesn't look that deep from the edge, but if you try to ride like 5 more feet from the curb, your feet are going under water.

 

 

Elder Roderer is getting transferred!

Hey everyone!

This week was good. The Sister missionaries in the Ward had another baptism, so that's super sweet! They are an older couple that was referred my one of the members a while ago.

We found a couple of new investigators, so that was really cool. One of them is a Black girl that is around our age, but we're pretty sure she is "interested" because she's got a thing for either one or both of us soo... The other investigator is the lady that came to

church last week out of the blue. We were able to meet with and teach her last week,

and she was really interested in what we were saying, and was asking some great questions, and was really excited to get a copy of the Book of Mormon. Pamela didn't meet with us this week. She texted us and said that "Meeting with you guys takes time and patience, neither of which I seem to have this week." So we actually did not invite her to the baptism. Thinking about it, we should have anyway. Repentance is real I guess. 

So yeah, I'm getting transferred on Tuesday. I'm kind of sad, but it was bound to happen at

 some point. No idea where I'm going, but President Gerber called me on Sunday and asked (Like I have a choice) me to be the district leader in my new area. I guess it'll be a growing experience. President told me that as a leader, my area should be the best in the district, but that there will be a set of Sisters that will give me a run for my money. Pray for me please!

                                                  (My old district)

We saw the new Mustang GT350 in testing camo, so that was super cool. And we also had dinner with a few Ford employees, so I got to talk cars and ask questions, so that was sweet :) One of the members pretty much decided that the new F-150 would be aluminum. I actually saw and talked to him and the family at the Auto Show while I was in Belle Isle, so that was fun to realize the other day :)

 Anyways, I'll talk to you all next week and let you know where I ended up :)

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

 Some duckies that we found while we were out exercising in the morning, so we fed them.