A Lost Companion

Dear everyone,

This past week was good. Our temporary investigator -Bill- from Arizona went back over there yesterday, so that was pretty sad, but Bill is a super solid guy, so I have no doubt that he will continue to progress really well with the missionaries in his home town. He's pretty much ready to get baptized. We went over the baptismal questions with him for out last lesson, and apart from having some word of wisdom issues, he could get baptized this Saturday. I'm pretty sad that we don't get to work with him anymore.

     But someone who I'm excited to work with still is Pamela. She came to an 'I'm a Mormon' devotional, so that was really cool. She was more willing to go to that over church because we said that there's about 250 at church on average, and that's about 5 times what she's accustomed to, so when we told her that this devotional should just have about 50 (At least that's about how many were there last time) she decided to come to that. Turns out, there were more like 150 people there instead. It worked out though. Unfortunately she didn't really connect with any of the speakers, which is weird because there were some sweet talks. (Quick side note. Chris, a recent baptism of the Sister's gave one of the talks there, and he did such a boss job. He didn't have ANY notes except for like a sticky note that he pulled out of his pocket one time to check where a scripture was. Seriously, he did better than most life long members do.) But after, once he was free, we introduced President Gerber to Pamela, and they started talking, and talking, and then we left, and they kept talking for like 30 minutes after! It was awesome, because President is pretty much brilliant with the gospel as well as mechanical stuff, so he did an amazing job answering her questions and relating it to hydraulics and transmissions (Which is what she designs for work) so it was perfect.

      We went on an exchange with the district leader. I stayed with the DL, and Elder Williams went to his area with his companion. It was a lot of fun. We brought a couple of Priests out with us this week to do some missionary work. We brought one of them tracting, and it was funny because we thought it went really well, but the Priest though it was really hard, and I think it kind of freaked him out. He'll get used to it. :) The other Priest, we just took to an appointment with Bill (The investigator that's no longer our investigator) and taught a good lesson, so he thinks missionary work is a piece of cake :)

      Sunday morning was pretty exciting; I lost my companion for about 30 minutes :) So here's the story: Sunday morning, we were on our way out of the apartment when we got a text from Amber. So I stop and reply to her, and sometime during that, my companion rides off, and when I look up, he's gone. I figured he just went around the corner, but he wasn't there either. So I head out of the apartment complex, and I still don't see him. (Turns out that he was down the street like a few hundred yards, but I didn't see him) So I start riding to the persons house that we were going to stop by, and he wasn't there either.We eventually find each other after Elder Williams borrowed someones phone and calls me. We ended up like 3 miles away from each other. It was kind of stressful. But it all worked out :)

So in 2 days I hit my 18 month mark.... So yeah...

Thanks for reading!

~Elder Roderer

Elder Roderer would love to hear from you!!

Elder Patrik Roderer

42215 Carriage Cove Cir.

Bldg. 20 #203

Canton, MI 48187 

Snail Mail

We just got a great letter in mail from Elder Roderer and I wanted to share it with y'all. :)

Heey! :)

So this week has been good. Just been doing missionary work and stuff. We're going to be going out with those 2 RM's tomorrow. That should be cool. After the closing prayer was said in Sacrament Meeting when they both spoke, the RM that mostly talked about mission stories stood up and went to the mic, and said
"So I'm also thinking about eternal marriage, so I expect referrals from all of you. I promise to contact them within 24 hours."
It was sort of funny, but I don't think the Stake President and Area Authority were too impressed.

Daniel gave an awesome talk, though. His was the kind of talk I want to give when the time comes for me to get up there. He talked about the Atonement, and how there are supposed to be times in our lives where we are stretched almost to the point of breaking. I really don't remember much else that he talked about (of course now that I said that, I just thought of some other stuff.) He quoted some of Elder Holland's last G.C. talk. It was very good.


Anyways, P-day is done, so I have to go now.

Another Week :)

Dear everyone,

 

This week was pretty good. I got kicked out of an apartment complex for the first time on my mission. That was really fun.... Not. Funny thing is, we weren't even tracting. We were having a lesson with a referral that requested a Bible. So after getting kicked out of the apartment that didn't have any signs posted except for 'no unauthorized vehicles' by a mega jerk guy on a little golf cart that totally interrupted our lesson and made us leave, we went over to another apartment complex down the street a ways where it is posted private property, no trespassing, no soliciting, and whatever else, but the management is cool with us being in there. We tried the address of a former investigator, and when someone answered the door, the smell of low grade marijuana was OVERPOWERING, like I almost gagged. We don't waste any time asking if so-and-so lives there, which they didn't, so we beat feet out of there. After we walked away, we just stood there taking deep breaths. We pretty much got buzzed just from those couple seconds of being on their doorstep. The sad part is that it was a little kid that answered the door, and living inside that toxic wasteland.

Then a couple of days later, we went tracting first thing in a complex that is really close to our apartment. So the first door we knock on, a lady answers, yells "No Soliciting!" and slams the door. Thing is, as missionaries we actually aren't soliciting, so we didn't think much of it. We get, no joke, three doors down, and a little golf cart drives up. We were thinking "Oh no, not again." So it's the property manager that is in the cart, and she asks us if we are Jehovah's Witnesses, so we said no, and she asks us what church we are from, and we tell her The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and she's like "Oh, the Mormons! How nice!" Then she proceeds to tell us that she knows that we aren't technically soliciting, but the residents take it that way, and she just got a complaint about us (By the first door we knocked on) so she asked us to not come through there anymore :( But she said that we could leave some literature at the front desk, and she would let people come and take it, so that was nice of her.

We're teaching an investigator that is in Michigan for the Summer visiting family with his son, but he lives in Arizona, and he was found and taught by the Elders is his area. So we're meeting with him and have been teaching him while he's here. The only thing that the missionaries in Arizona didn't teach him was tithing and fast offerings. Well, the Area Authority - Elder Dunnigan - signed up to have us over for dinner, so after talking with him a little, we decided to bring Bill (The investigator) along with and just teach him tithing and stuff there. It turned out to be an awesome lesson, and Elder and Sister Dunnigan game some wonderful testimonies of tithing and fasting. Bill was more than willing to commit to obeying that commandment. It was cool, he commented "well, you can't take money with you" so it wasn't a big deal to him at all. He is such a prepared person!

 

We had a lesson with Pamela (The lady we found last week) at the church with our Ward Mission Leader. It went pretty well. She is a very deep and logical thinker (She's a mechanical engineer for a reason) so she had a lot of tougher to answer questions. We asked her to start reading the Book of Mormon last week, and when we had the lesson with her we asked if and how much she was able to read. Most people say "Oh, I skimmed through it" which really means they didn't read, But she was like "Yeah, I was able to read some. I read Moroni." Our jaws just sort of dropped, and we were like "Wait, you read the whole book of Moroni?" She said "Yeah, it wasn't that much." I'm pretty sure that is the most one of my investigators has ever read in a week. It was pretty exciting. We never really got to teach her what we planned. We just answered a few of her questions in Moroni, like infant baptism, the Sacrament, stuff about prayer, and what a broken heart means ('cause he says that you can't get baptized unless you have a broken heart and stuff). It really shouldn't have been as hard to answer those questions as it was, but I think she really appreciated us trying. She really has a desire to know if this is true, and it's great, but it made be feel pretty inadequate after that lesson with my inability to provide very clear explanations. I'm taking my personal studies a little more seriously now, so that's good.

Sunday at church was pretty cool. Two RM's of less than a month gave the talks in Sacrament meeting. The first returned missionary gave a seriously boss talk about the Atonement. It was very inspiring. "The [Spirit] is strong with this one." :) The other RM gave a pretty good talk. It was sort of funny, so he mentions that he was asked to give a talk about a specific talk from the last General Conference, but I don't think he talked about it once. He mostly just shared mission stories. It was still good, but it was interesting to see the difference between the two talks. I guess now I know what to aim for when the time comes :)

 

Thanks for reading!

 

~Elder Roderer

 

 

 

 

Yay for tracting!

Hey everybody! It's me again :)

This last week was good. We were able to have a good, sit-down lesson with Samantha, so that was really sweet. We talked about the Plan of Salvation, and I think she really liked it. 

Tuesday was on the rough side. A lot of stuff fell through, so we spent a lot of time tracting and riding our bikes in the rain. Yes, Michigan has rain storms in July. It's so great! ;) But what's cool is that things started turning around after that! We had interviews with President Gerber on Wednesday, and those were really good, and President Gerber gave me some good tips on how I can stay motivated and keep the "fire" burning. So far, it really has helped. Elder Williams and I have been working very hard lately, and we found one of the coolest people that either of us have worked with thus far. So here's the story on how we found her-

Wednesday night at about 8:15, we were riding around not too far from our apartment trying to figure out where we were going next. We decided that we were going to go finding, but we weren't sure where. So we were stopped on our bikes on the sidewalk, and while figuring out where to go, we would try to talk to any people that would walk by us. So during this, we see a lady that's probably in her 20's that running on the other side of the road. The problem was is that she was dressed in running attire, which isn't a lot... and that's very awkward for a missionary to just walk up to and talk to someone that's dressed like that. (The For the Strength of Youth guidelines are there for a reason. Please follow them.) So we were like "Yeah, we're not talking to her". So she kept running, and we kept standing there until we decided to go tract at an apartment complex that was a little ways down the road. After getting there and deciding where to start, we knock a whole building without anybody even talking to us for more than 3 seconds, so we move on to the next building, and on the first door we knock on, guess who answers? The girl that was running! Well now we kind of have to talk to her because we knocked on her door and stuff, so I start talking about the Book of Mormon, and show her a pass along card with the BoM on it, and then I asked her if she would be interested in learning more, which is something I don't usually do, because more or less everyone will say no, but I asked her anyway. She seemed really uninterested and closed off this whole time, but she looked at the picture of the BoM for like 30 seconds, and we could almost see the Holy Ghost whispering in her ear say "Come on, say yes. You know you want to!" And at the end of the 30 seconds, she looked up and said "Yeah"! So we talked to her about the Restoration and stuff for about 45 minutes on her door step. It was really cool though, because whenever we would ask her a question or something, she would pause for at least 20 seconds, just thinking about her answer, and when after one of us would testify or something, she would turn to the other and ask what their thoughts were on the subject, so we would testify some more! We didn't give her a BoM right then, but set up a time when we could drop one off to her. So we came by on Friday to drop off a Book of Mormon, and she was really excited to get into it and learn for herself! She also has a masters in mechanical engineering and works for Ford, so that made it really easy for me to relate :) 

We also had a great Plan of Salvation lesson with Samantha, and it's been FOREVER since we've been able to have a good sit-down lesson, so that was really nice. 

Amber came to church again, and even brought her boyfriend's mom along! She's awesome!

Did any of you get your free Slurpee on 7-11? Because we sure did! :)

A less-active/part-member family took us to a Mongolian Grill restaurant that was delicious. It was super nice of them to take us there. 

On Saturday the Ward a little picnic, and one of the boys in the Ward got his mission call that morning, so he just brought it and opened it in front of everyone. He got called to the SLC, Utah mission :) Pretty much the same place that his dad went to on his mission. He enters the MTC in September, so we're making sure to bring him to some lessons to help break him in to the teaching aspect of missionary work.

TTYL,

~Elder Roderer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BONUS post: Mission life in pictures

The inscription reads: "At this very location on April 12, 1861 absolutely nothing happened."

Happy late 4th everybody!

Happy late 4th everybody!

This week went well. We had a great lesson with Aaron and Tawny last Tuesday with the ward mission leader. It was really cool, because Aaron and Brother Clawson were able to relate really well with each other. Like Aaron works on giant presses, and Brother Clawson buys them for Ford :) 

We helped out a member family get their kitchen (+ some other things) more squared away before the people come to put int the cabinets and pretty much the whole kitchen. We spent more time there than we should have, and the kitchen isn't even close to being ready. Hopefully they have it finished enough before the people come... today :) 

The 4th of July was pretty boring. We were going to contact at a parade that was happening a few miles from our apartment. We heard that it was going to go from 9:00 to 12:00., so we decided to finish our studies before heading out, so we would be leaving a little after 10:00. We get to the place of the parade at about 10:45, and while we were getting closer, we realized that everyone was walking the opposite direction than we were, but we were headed to where the parade was... So as you can probably guess, we totally missed the whole thing :\

But the next part of the day got better. Our ward mission leader put on a little bbq that we could invite whoever to. We had a couple of less-actives show up, so that was really nice. The Sisters had like 4 investigators and a few less-actives there. I don't understand how they always get more people to everything than us. I mean, it's great, but it's a little frustrating too.

Anyways... After that, because it was Friday, we did our weekly planning, and then tried to proselyte for the rest of the night. We got back in our apartment just in time for all of the fireworks that we couldn't see to start, but at least we got to hear them :)

Saturday, we just tracked the whole day. Morning tracting on the 5th of July isn't super lucrative. Who would have thought ;)

The awesome less-active lady (Amber) that we are working with came to church yesterday!! It was super exciting, because it took her a lot of courage to come, but she came! She really felt the Spirit, and she wants to meet with the bishop and stuff, so I think she is really wanting to get back into the church! She is so cool! Being able to be a part of someone either accepting the gospel for the first time, or accepting again in their lives fills you with true joy and happiness. I can testify of that! 

So yeah, that was pretty much my week!

Thanks for reading :)