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. :)