Email sent on September 29, 2014: Well We Jumped Our Car 9 Times This Week...oh and a Baptism!!!!

Well family it's been a pretty long week if I do say so myself. The week started off normal and we went around doing some good work. Last week we received a call from the brother of an active member telling us that he would like to be baptized and we were freaking out. So we taught him a lesson this week and it went really good. His name is Jorge and to be honest we're not so sure about his intentions for being baptized since his first question was if he had to be a member to marry a member since there's a woman in the branch he's checking out.... But he also has a lot of questions about God and the Savior so we think he's legit.
 

Then on Friday I had the chance to go on an exchange with Elder Angilau! He graduated from Bingham with me and  we've served around each other mulitple times and now he's my Zone Leader. Guys, he's such a wonderful man. He's so humble, calm and has just a wonderfully pure heart. We updated each other about those from Bingham that we still write and everyone seems to be doing good. The funniest part was at night when we were going around to meet some members that Elder Angilau doesn't know and we stopped in on this sister in a wheelchair. There wasn't a male present so we couldn't stay, but as we were leaving I had a strong prompting to offer a prayer with her, but ignored the feeling. It didn't go away so I mentioned it to Elder Angilau when we were at the bottom of the drive way. He said he'd had the same feeling and then trying to be funny and over dramatic intentionally he tossed the keys in the air and kicked the air at the same time. But unintentionally, he ended up kicking the keys into a huge hedgerow and out of sight. We then spent the next 20 minutes looking for the keys and laughing since it was so funny. We eventually had to swallow our pride and ask the member whose house we had just left, for a flashlight. We found the keys and offered a prayer, the member laughing the whole time.

When we got back from exchange, that's when the problems started happening..... While I was with Elder Angilau in his area, Elder Auelua, Elder Long, and Elder Angilau's companion, Elder Denton, were busy jumping the car 3 times in the space of 2 hours.... For the rest of the Saturday we ended up having to jump the car whenever we turned it off. We traded with the Zone Leader's last week for their huge mini-van so we can have more room for Elder Auelua and to haul around some Elders that live near us. Apparently there's a faulty battery or alternator and we can't be seen by the dealership until Tuesday.  Oh well. Life goes on.

We did have a wonderful experience Saturday! We had the baptism of Charlie Meyers! He and his mother have been investigating ever since Charlie went to scout camp with the branch. He's 12 and is such a cool kid! He's in a robotics club at his high school and takes advanced math. He remembers everything he's taught and has strong friends in the branch. There was another baptism going on at the same time which we didn't know about so we ended up using the font first. When Charlie got baptized I guess somehow the drain got unplugged and was draining before the next baptism. We were about 20 minutes ahead of the other service so Elder Long and I figured we should just turn on the water and it should fill up a little bit more and then turn it off right when the others went into the font. We went about our merry way and sat in the rest of Charlie's service, but as I was sitting there I was super nervous about the font overfilling. I just shrugged it off and told myself to calm down. I then had a huge prompting to go check on the font. I got up and ran into the bathroom where the controls to the font are and heard people saying, "Where are the controls? The water is about to overflow!" hahahah The water was about to come over the top step and into the bathroom and so I ran past everyone and turned it off. haha Thanks Spirit, you always help me out.

That's about it for my week guys! I love you all so much! have a good week!

Elder Rodabough

Elder Rodabough and Elder Long 

Eder Auelua, Elder Rodabough and Elder Long

Elder Auelua, Elder Hanson, Charlie, Elder Long and Elder Rodabough at Charlie's Baptism

Email sent September 22, 2014: Cherokee Area and A Good Transfer Week

Dear Family,

 

A good transfer week if I do say so myself. Elder Long, Elder Auelua and I had a good week together and the work here in Cherokee is everything that I dreamed it would be. Thanks to Elder Long who for the past two transfers just tracted and tracted to find people to teach we have lots of investigators and lots of people close to baptism. Elder Auelua and I are shocked and excited! 

On Saturday in the Branch, which half of the members speak English anyways, we had El Dia de Naciones! This is The Day of Nations Party that we had in Roswell last year when I was still being trained. It was a lot smaller this year since the English wards were not invited to participate due to the small size of the branch.  Despite that it was still a night full of latin food, music, and humor. The Latinos have a pretty weird sense of  humor if I do say so myself. My favorite skit was this young married couple from Peru who had this box "machine" that if you tossed something in it would return doubled in size. Really the husband was just sitting inside the box throwing the stuff back out. The wife threw some children's pants, some dimes which turned into a dollar bill and a candy bar. The last thing she threw was a baby doll for some reason. This made the machine stop working and it fell over and the brother jumped out wearing a diaper and pacifier and ran around the room. It was pretty funny actually.

Then on Sunday we had our investigators at church. There's a mother and son pair that are Americans and don't speak a lick of Spanish, but want to attend the branch more than the ward since they feel more welcome and the son has friends there. They're received all the lessons and her son has a date for this Saturday, but she has some doubts still. She says she wants to learn more but we think there's something else. Either way she learned a heck of a lot during the Gospel Principles class on Sunday. She was the only person that attended, and so Elder Auelua and I translated for her. The teacher gets up to teach and I ask, "What chapter are we in?" to which he responds, "I don't really follow the book to a T.  I basically teach what I think the class needs to hear." I responded with, "Ok... so what are we going to learn about?" "The Great Apostasy" he replied, and man did he teach the Great Apostasy.  He went into the historical background, the organizational side of it about how the Church of Christ was formed and our investigator is coming from being a Roman Catholic. So after class, she had a lot of questions. She seemed very content and wants to learn more. 

That was basically our week! I love you guys so much! Have a wonderful week and Pray on!

Elder Rodabough the second

Email sent September 15, 2014: It is Great to be Back!

Just a quick note:  Bryce was home in South Jordan from August 7, 2014-September 10, 2014 to have surgery on his jaw.  This is his first email after returning to his mission.

Hello Everyone,

Well family it's been quite the interesting week if I do say so myself.

So on Wednesday on my flight to Georgia there were like 20 other brand new missionaries. When I say brand new I don't mean, MTC trained, but like heading to the MTC brand new. The majority of them were going to the England MTC and were just so filled with nervous excitement. I sat next to one on the flight out. He sat on my right and a woman who wasn't a member sat on my left. So my thoughts are, "Sweet, I have 3 1/2 hours to drag out this contact and do all that I want. I can be casual." Nope--every time I was trying to tie a conversation into the Gospel, the little missionary sitting next to me would perk up and add in. He was doing his best which I was super proud of, but he just sort of killed it at times hahaha. He's going to be a good missionary though, he has such a pure heart.

When I landed in Georgia the Residori's picked me up and we went to an early dinner and then we drove back to the Mission Home since President Bennion wanted to "Debrief" me about the MTC and what went down there. He also had me over for dinner with Sister Bennion. We had a great conversation and then he took me over to the Assistants apartment where I was when there was a glorious reuniting of Elder Coleman and Elder Smith. Love those guys. Then from Thursday-Sunday I was shipped out to Peachtree Corners South English speaking to fill in for Elder Court who was needed in the office for technical support. So I was with Elder Bowers, who's currently being trained by Elder Court. He's the nicest guy ever!! He's like a gentle giant since he's like 6'2 and 300 lbs. It was fun to watch him ride a bike because he's surprisingly fast for a big guy.  The area is the same as my first area, so I was able to go and see Vivi!!!!!! She's grown up so much and I started to cry when I saw her and sorry Dad but I was a little bit disobedient since I gave her the biggest hug ever! She's grown up so much and still attends church on a regular basis. It really did my heart good to see her. It made me feel like a good missionary :)

Sunday and today I've been with the Assistants. Yesterday for dinner we went to a members house called the Dennises. They are famous in the mission for a food challenge they offer called "THE LAW" which consists of two huge plates of Haitian food, a bowl of fruit, a slice of carrot cake, and 10 snickers ice cream bars--that's just to complete the law. The competitive part of the law is how many snickers ice cream bars you can eat after you get past 10. The record for the most ice cream bars is 24, including the 10. Elder Auelua is the record keeper. He's a huge Hawaiian boy that Elder Galvez trained before he trained me. I am not ever going to try to challenge that at all.  I would most definitely throw up!  Then we were in the mission office until 2am getting the logistics for transfers figured out. I just read in the Book of Mormon or wrote letters. 

Luckily President Bennion allows the assistants to sleep in the Monday after transfer calls, so we actually slept in till 10am hahaha we didn't intend to go that long, but it just sort of happened.  We then made all the transfer calls and it was funny since typically the new assistant makes the transfer calls. Elder Smith and Elder Coleman wanted the calls to go faster so they had me make calls so now there's a rumor going around the mission that I'm the new assistant. Oh wait, I haven't told you where I'm going....

I'm off to Cherokee Spanish! It's in the Kennesaw Ward area and is the only Spanish area in the Marietta Zone. I'm going to be in a trio with Elder Auelua and Elder Long. Auelua and I are on special assignment to see if a second area can be opened in the zone to accommodate the high number of Spanish missionaries. If there is we'll open the area in next transfer. Everyone says that there is a good number of Spanish people in the Northern part of the zone so we will most likely go up there. They just don't want another Winder Spanish area where there's no Hispanics and they eventually have to close down the area. 

That's basically it for me! Tomorrow we pick up the new missionaries and then Wednesday I'm off to Cherokee! I love all of you so much!

Elder Rodabough