17 months and 20 years old

Hey guys!

This week was good. We weren't able to meet with Aaron and Tawny, because I guess they were just having a down day, and they didn't feel up to a visit. IDK, at least that's what they said. 

Samantha is doing alright. Saturday was her mom's birthday, but she passed away just a few months ago, and she is having a rough time finding employment, so it's been pretty hard for her to work through this right now.. Please keep her in your prayers. 

We were able to meet with Mike this week and have a really good lesson about the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Faith, repentance, baptism, etc.). He asked a lot of really good questions, and showed a real desire to want to know if this is true. It was also cool, because he ran across some anti, as well as opposition from his girl friend, but he came to us asking about the things he's come in contact with instead of turning away from us, so that was really good to see. It's funny, pretty much all of the anti that people hear about the church is total garbage. And a lot of it is just blatant lies too. 

A couple that Elder Williams taught in his last area was baptized on Saturday, so we got to go over to Dearborn to see that happen. And also because Elder Williams was asked to give the talk :) President and Sister Gerber were also there for the baptism. The couple that got baptized is super great though. Like they already have their sights on being sealed in the temple one year from now! It was so cool to see. 

We got transfer calls Sunday morning, and found out that I am not leaving. Neither are any of the missionaries in the Ward. I really did think that I was leaving though. Like I was 95% sure, but turns out I'm staying :) This kills my streak though, because since President Gerber has been my mission President, my average time in an area is two transfers, but now that this one is going to be at least three, my average is broken. Oh well. This place is pretty sweet, so it works out :) I will be getting a new Zone Leader, and the District Leader is getting a new companion, so the district will be getting a couple of new faces. 

We had an interesting experience happen at church yesterday. So about half way through sacrament meeting, we got a text from the Gospel Principles teacher saying that he was out of town and he forgot to tell us that we needed to teach the lesson. We even got to pick the topic! So we chose repentance :) Of course there were like 30 people in the class that day, as well as the Area Authority, so it was a pretty tame group (Yeah, right), but the lesson ended up going really well, and I think we said what we needed to say. I have to say though, it's a good thing we teach this stuff often, or else it might have turned out different :)

Oh yeah, I also turned 20 this past Friday, so that was cool, I guess. My companion was very nice and took the DL, his companion, and me to Chilies for lunch, so that was pretty sweet. I also got a couple of packages from my family full of goodies, so that was also sweet. Literally, and figuratively. :)

Lets see.. I didn't spend any money on my bike this week, so that was nice. And I went on an exchange with the DL's companion in their area. That was pretty fun. 

So yeah, that was pretty much my week! Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

They finally gave us another mode of transportation this week! 

Who's Turning 20?????

Hey Everybody!

So last Monday night, we had an awesome lesson with Aaron and Tawny (Our most solid investigator couple). Really, The whole experience and situation with Aaron and Tawny is such a miracle!

Aaron and Tawny are a young couple that are engaged. Aaron had a really bad accident at work while trying to troubleshoot a three story tall press (The ones that stamp out car panels) for Tesla. He was on the top of the press, when for whatever reason, he fell off, and busted a Lot of stuff in his body. It's amazing that he is even alive. The first time we met them, we just stood near the doorway and talked to them a little, and they said we could come back and teach them more. For whatever reason, it was a fair amount of time before we were able to have our first lesson, but we were able to teach a really cool Restoration lesson to them. We found out at our last lesson, that when Elder Steinagel and I first tracted into them, they had moved into their apartment seriously 3 days before. Also, the fact that tracting in that apartment complex was my idea, and that I was willing and happy to do it, is proof that the Lord used my weaknesses for His timing and purposes. It was about two weeks before this lesson when we were able to meet with them last. The reason for that was that the week that we missed, things kept coming up, and they had to keep canceling, so we finally rescheduled for yesterday (Monday). They told us that they were actually really sad that things didn't work out for that week, but what is awesome is that we also learned that they read a little in the Book of Mormon together every night since we gave it to them, which was two weeks before! I have never had an investigator do that! We taught a really cool Plan of Salvation lesson, and while we stayed there longer than we should have, it was a really good lesson, and they asked some really good questions. For instance, Aaron asked what we needed to do to repent. Like if we need to go to a pastor, or if we could just do it by ourselves. They are pretty much awesome :)

My new Ward Mission Leader is stinking awesome! If there is anyone who could make this Ward an amazing, mission-focused unit, it's him. I'm super excited to be able to be a part of helping with the work in the Plymouth Ward. I don't know if you remember, but a couple of months ago, there was a couple that got married and baptized the same day in this Ward, and I wanted to give a little update on them. They are doing SO awesome! Chris got a calling being a Priest quorum adviser, and he helped with the lesson this past Sunday, and he did amazing. He also is connecting really well with the young men. It is so cool to see how there are such awesome and prepared people out there that are willing to accept the gospel.

So here's something that pretty weird. I'm turning 20 years old this week. (The 27th) Crazy!

You know how I just spent like an arm and a leg on new front suspension for my bike? Yeah, well turns out that the brand new shocks were faulty right out of the box, so the bike shop called up the company that makes them, and got a new, new shock put in for me for free :) The guys at the shop are really cool people.

Unfortunately, none of our investigators were able to make it to church this Sunday, but we did have one really cool less-active guy come, so that was nice.

We got to do some hope improvement for some people this week :) A really sweet family in the Ward moved to another house that is still in the Ward boundaries, but they kind of went to town with remodeling it, so everything is pretty torn up around the kitchen. So we spent a couple of hours this week helping sand and rip out carpet. It was pretty fun! 

Speaking of service, I got to help a less-active re-attach the rear suspension on his 90's Fox Body Mustang :) That was sooo awesome to be able to turn a wrench and play around with a car again.

Thanks for reading! :)

-Elder Roderer

We had stopped to take a call, and these little ducklings just came right up to us and just sat there chillin. The mother duck didn't seem as keen about us though :)




Elder Roderer would love to hear from you!!

Elder Patrik Roderer

42215 Carriage Cove Cir.

Bldg. 20 #203

Canton, MI 48187

Bike Repairs!

Hey Everybody!

Happy Father's day to any and all fathers that are reading this :)

Like pretty much always, this week was good! On Monday, we had dinner with one of the families in the Ward, and while we were there, the father asked if we would be able to help him with something the next day. As missionaries, we are always happy to do service for people, and also just for the fact that we are missionaries, and we can't really say no to anyone if the need our help, we said 

"Of course we'd be happy to help you!" So he next day, we get picked up, and we find out that we are going to be helping him build a tree fort for his grandson. Sweet! We were pretty excited about that, so we happily spent a few hours with him putting together an idea that was floating around in his mind. We never used any plans, we just went by the seat of our pants, and by the time we left, it was pretty much awesome! :) It wasn't done, but it was legit anyway.

We were able to have a really good lesson with a less-active lady named Amber that moved back into the Ward boundaries, and referred herself on mormon.org because she is really wanting to get back into the church, especially because she has a 2 year old son, and she really wants him to be raised in the church, and she totally still knows that the church is true, which is awesome. We brought along one of the members of the Ward that is going to be leaving on his mission this month, so we've been trying to get stuff set up to bring him along with us so he could get a little more of some mission experience before he leaves. We taught about the Plan of Salvation, and we asked him before hand if he would teach about the Spirit World. When the time came, he did, and it was awesome! He taught it so well! He's totally going to be a bomb missionary. Amber wasn't able to make it to church yesterday because she had already planned to spend a few hours with her dad-which were right during the hours of church, but she is really motivated to come this week!

One of the Less-Active guys that we are working with (The one that was part of the coolest experience of my mission) kind of went through a melt down with people in his life, and was ready to do some overly drastic things (Like move out of the country) but after visiting with him for like 2 hours, he went down to wanting to move out West, and then to trying to patch relationships here. A couple of hours after we left, he texted us and told us that things got smoothed over, and that things should be working out a lot better now. Another thing that we stressed with him, is that he need to give 100% to the gospel, and everything will work out. He took that to heart, and he is planning on doing that from now on! 

I had to get my bike fixed this week...again. It ran me about $180 dollars. I realized that I am now comfortably over $1000 into my bike. It's pretty sad. I've owned 4 cars, and none of them (At least up front) have cost as much as my mission bike. Hopefully this fix will give it another good amount of life. We'll see. I just got the front shocks changed, because the old ones were moving back and forth, instead of just up and down... Not the safest thing in the world, and I don't want another broken finger from a bike accident on my mission.. :) But the weird thing is, now I want to get a sweet $1000+ dollar mountain bike when I go home.. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but fortunately, I still have lots of time to not worry about it :)

Anyways, that about sums up my week :)

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

Here's a picture part way through building the tree fort :)

 

 

 

Elder Patrik Roderer

42215 Carriage Cove Cir.

Bldg. 20 #203

Canton, MI 48187

Another from the Brother

Hey everybody!

So this week was pretty good! Elder Williams has been sick like the whole week (That's not what made it good though.. I don't rejoice when my companions get sick) but he is getting better now, so that's good. 

We had a really cool Zone Conference this week, and we learned some good stuff that will help with the effectiveness in certain aspects of the work. It's interesting, you'd think that after a while, Zone Conferences and stuff would become repetitive, but they figure out a way to bring new things to the table every time! It's probably helps that my mission president is a total boss :)

We've been blessed to have added some really cool people to work with (Both investigators and LA's) the past couple of weeks. They show some amazing promise, so I am really excited to work with them! 

We also got a new Ward Mission Leader on Sunday since the current/old one is moving this week. It's sad, because he was really cool, and he was an insane car buff, but the new WML is super cool as well, and he works for Ford, so it's okay :)

We've been going to Young Mens instead of Elders quorum the past couple of weeks. It has actually been really good! It feels like we are more useful trying to help out the YM instead of chilling in EQ all of third hour. Like yesterday, all of the YM were combined, and they talked about reasons to go on a mission. We were like "Hey! We can help with that". So we were able to testify our guts out about how FLIPPING AWESOME it is to go on a mission. I don't know about the YM, but I sure felt the Spirit.

BTW, if you want to see an AWESOME video about the scriptures, check this one out. Actually, even if you don't want to, you should still watch it. It's that good. (We watched it in Gospel Principles yesterday)

We also did service this week for one of our less-actives by painting her deck with this paint stuff that

had the constancy of mud, so it took some work getting it on. It was supposed to take about 2-3 hours, but it actually took 2-3 times that :) It was pretty fun though. I was wearing shorts while working, and I was kneeling down for most of that time, so I got a pretty weird sunburn...

 Please add these people to your prayers:

Aaron & Tonnie, Amber, and Mike. 

Thanks :)

 Anyways, thanks for reading! :)

                                         Elder Roderer had a study buddy the other day. :)

Another Letter from Elder Roderer

Hey everyone!

So sad story. You know how last week I said that I got the recording of Elder Holland's talk? Yeah, well the mission told us to delete any recordings that we have of that... They said we are not allowed to do unauthorized recordings, so that pretty much stinks. I guess it makes sense though.

But a funny story is that my companion ate it on his bike this week :) He thought it was really funny too, so I'm not just being rude by saying that. Seeing him get smooshed into the ground was pretty comical :)

This week we got a pretty awesome media referral. This guy named Mike requested a Book of

Mormon, and after stopping by his apartment and him not being there, we gave him a call and he said that he is super busy, but if it would be okay if he could give us a call when he had some free time. We thought "Oh great. We'll see if he ever calls us back". But low and behold, on Friday, he gives us a call, so we stopped by and taught him the Restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon. It was pretty awesome lesson, and he had obviously already studied up on the church, because when we told him that Joseph translated the BoM by the power of God, he pipes up "Yeah, with the seer stones, right?". We thought, "How on earth do you know that?!", but he is super open to learning more, and even willing to ask his boss for a Sunday off work to come to church! 

We also had Stake Conference this week. It was super good. Every single talk in the Adult Session was about hastening the work, and most of the talks in the Sunday session were about that as well. But it was really good how they went about giving the members ideas on how they can hasten the work in their own way. Hopefully it helps get the people more excited about the work. 

Anyways, talk to you all later!

 

 ​                         When you get caught in a rain storm, you have to do drastic things :)

Elder Holland

Hey everybody!

So seeing Elder Holland was pretty much the coolest experience ever. He is such a boss! It was really interesting though, because after shaking all of our hands, he was talking about how much he loves us, and how underneath the tough exterior, he is really just a soft marshmallow with missionaries. And not 10 minutes later, he was almost yelling at us. But it was totally full of love. It was funny though, he didn't raise his voice because he was telling us to be more obedient (because he didn't. He actually said that he felt that we didn't need to be talked to about obedience), he was telling us other stuff. He actually talked a lot about our purpose as missionaries (The purpose in the front of PMG. Pretty much what the 4th article of faith says.). He said he has never done that with missionaries, but he felt like he needed to do that for us... IDK. It was SUPER awesome though. The Spirit was sooo strong there! It was pretty much a mission changing experience. And several missionaries recorded it, so now it's on my mp3 player, so now I can listen to it whenever needed :)

Our mission does what's called an I'm Mormon devotional where 2 recent converts speak about their conversion story. It's super effective to bring investigators and less-actives to them. But for this past one, the Assistants called me up and asked if I could do a musical number. So with a total of probably 5-10 minutes of practice, and with my old Zone Leader playing the ukulele, me and 5 other Elders sang I'm Trying to be Like Jesus. It actually turned out really well! 

So a random little fact: Even though I'm turning 20 in a month, I have been younger than every single one of my 12 companions my whole mission, and there have only been a handful of missionaries in all of my districts that have actually been younger than me. Pretty funny :)

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

Thanks for reading!

 

 

So the Sisters being Sisters, they colored some peanuts things for the district. It was pretty funny.