Happy Spring!

Hey everybody!

So this week was super good! It is warming up a bit and the snow is going away, so that is super exciting!

More people are going out and about, so that makes street contacting easier, and that's good, because it's more effective than tracting.

Elder Redd and I sang in church yesterday. I think it went really well. It was awesome though, because we had 4 investigators at church, and 11 less-actives too! It was pretty sweet :) Something not so exciting is that a lot of the really solid members of the Branch are moving this Spring/Summer, so I really hope some new people move in this Summer/Fall.

We had an awesome Zone Conference on Tuesday talking about how we need to serve with all our heart, might, mind, and strength, or the Lord cannot hold us blameless at the last day. It was kind of intense.

Sister Edie has been smoke free for 12 days now! Yeah buddy! She is so stoked to get baptized on April 12th! And we are so stoked to see her finally get baptized! That is the beginning of next transfer, so I really hope that I get to stay one more transfer in Belle Isle, also because she asked me to baptize her, and that would be hard if I'm not there. We'll see though.

We are also teaching a guy that was in the NFL and the CFL in the 80's! His heart was softened an amazing amount because the way we met him was we helped him get his 2wd truck unstuck from the snow, and he had been stuck for over an hour before we came so he was super grateful. It's amazing how much the Spirit softened his heart. He totally loves us, and loved it when we taught him the message of the Restoration of the Gospel. He said he only sees God in what we teach him. He's pretty much the bomb.

Another sweet thing that happened was we had 3 dinner appointments with members this week! In this area, that's awesome!

Thanks for reading!

What up doe?

What up doe?

So this week was pretty good. It snowed a bunch again, but it's already mostly melted off, so that's really nice. 

So Sister Edie had a bit of a heart attack or something this week, so the doctors had to put a stint in her heart. This was actually a blessing in disguise, because it was enough to motivate Sister Edie to stop smoking! This is her 4th day clean of cigarettes! That is such a huge step for her! She is so close to being able to be baptized! I'm so excited! Please pray for her to keep the strength to not smoke!

We got a new Branch Mission Leader this week. Brother Elmer is the new boss. He is really cool, and he and his family have already been great member missionaries, so he should do an awesome job.

We saw a van get eaten by a pothole this week. Like the van was legitimately stuck in a pothole. I would have taken a picture, but the people were still inside, and I don't think they would have appreciated that ;)

Thanks for reading!

Less than 11 months left

Hey everybody!

 

This week went well. We were able to get some good work done, even though Elder Gunter was sick for a few days, so that was a blessing. We are making good progress with Sister Edie! We have started to see her more often just to help her stay focused on her goal of baptism. We also put her on baptismal date for April 12, and that is helping her stay motivated and focused as well.

My back bike tire did something really weird this week. It literally tore along the rim. Beats me why, but it didn't work very well after it did that, so I had to buy a new tire.

Friday morning, a guy from a nearby Ward called us and asked us if we could help him move some stuff from his late parents house that is in the Branch boundaries. We said yes of course, and helped him move some stuff around and move things into a moving truck that was from a veterans association. He was pretty much just donating everything in there to this veterans thing, so he said if there was anything we wanted that we saw, we could have it. So now we have some more weights, a basketball that we're pretty sure is broken (it's flat and we don't have a needle to fill it up with, but we don't think it will hold air anyway). I guess it was a score :)

We found a cool new investigator in a cool way this week! While we were on an exchange with the other Elders, my District Leader and I decided to go try a name on our directory that is literally in the furthest corner of my area, so after finally getting there, we find that the address doesn't exist. So we decided to tract the street. We lock up our bikes at the end, and start knocking, with no success. So after a while, we decided to stop and go do something else. We get back to our bikes and start riding up the street, when a door that was just past where we stopped knocking stuck out at me, so we went and knocked it. The guy that answered let us in as soon as we told him that we have a great message about Christ. We started teaching him the Restoration, and as when we testified to him that this was the true church, he stopped us and asked us what he had to do to join himself with the church! It was really sweet :) His name is Spud or Sput. He said he was named after the Sputnik satellite... Detroit names are pretty different :)

 

Anyways, thanks for reading!

 

Talk to you all next week!

 

~Elder Roderer

 

So in case this interests any of you, I'll tell you this story :) Earlier this week, the shocks on my bike weren't working right, so since I had to change the tire anyway, I decided to take the shocks apart and grease everything up. I did that, and the next ride it felt like I was riding in a caddy (at least on the front). It was so smooth. But we've had to ride through a lot of puddles, so it's starting to not work as well, but it's still tons better than it was before.

Anyways, here's some pictures :)

This Week's Update

Hey everybody!

 

So yeah, I'm doing really well! I am enjoying serving with Elder Gunter, and I am really excited for what is in store and we serve together. We're totally going to tear this place up.

We had Stake Conference this past Saturday and Sunday. It was really good. President Gerber felt like the Elders in this Stake should attend the Leadership meeting along with the Adult session at the Stake Center. It was pretty sweet. The leadership meeting was pretty much a rebuking fest, so it was interesting to be there for that. The Adult session was really good. There were some really good talks given that left an impression on my companion and me. One of the speakers said that while he was on his mission, he made a "covenant" with God that he would do his best, and in return, the Lord would bless him with 6 baptisms that month. It worked for him, so Elder Gunter and I decided to do the same thing, and in return, we would have 3 people come into the waters of baptism this transfer. I'm excited to see how this will turn out.

It snowed again this week! Yay! A member was telling us that the last 100 days have been below freezing or something. Pretty great :)

Elder Gunter's bike broke on the way to church yesterday. Everything in the hub of his back tire just kind of fell apart and fell out. So we have to get that fixed pretty soon :)

One of our investigators-Sister Edie is still being Sister Edie. Although the member family that is super nice and takes her to church every Sunday invited her and us for dinner and a lesson this week. That was super nice of them. But during the lesson Sister Edie fell asleep, so that kind of cut it short, but the members were super understanding and took her home. Gotta love Detroit investigators! :)

 

Talk to you all later!