BEST TWO YEARS

BEST TWO YEARS

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Email sent November 17, 2014: Diggin Trenches, Chopping Trees and Exchanges

So this wasn't too eventful of a week to be honest.  Which is good! Sometimes we need some peace and calm! We ended up doing a lot of service this week and I was on exchanges for most of it with other missionaries. I found out a few weeks ago that I'm now what they call an STL, and no I do not mean Sister Training Leader.... I'm a Spanish Team Leader. Which basically is a sister training leader but with Spanish Missionaries. I basically go on exchanges with the Spanish Elders in Canton who I already see on a daily basis and the Elders of Cumorrah--one is Elder Hansen, one of my good friends in the mission and the other is Elder Wood.

Tuesday we had Zone Meeting with Elder McArthur as my new Zone Leader. It was cool to see how much more powerful of a missionary he has become in the last few months since I was companions with him. Afterwards I went on exchange with Elder Glaittli, the new Canton Spanish Elder who is companions with Elder Auelua. He's a fairly young missionary. He only has about 8 months in the mission and so his skills are still new. He's a good man.  Thursday we ended up digging up a cable for a member in his back yard. He told us that the line had been cut somewhere and so he wanted us to dig it up and find it. We were about 4 feet away from where the cable was, digging only about 6 inches down to find it, when abruptly it cut straight down. We kept digging and digging and digging for about an hour and made a 3 feet deep hole in the freezing ground until we gave up. We later learned on Sunday that the cable was actually fine, but the switch to turn on the lights in the yard was fried....

Friday we did exchanges with the Elders in Cummorah which went well. Elder Wood came with me and we had a good time. We found a new investigator and we have an appointment with him tomorrow. Oh speaking of appointments! So that super cool family we stopped by ended up dropping us hardcore. So we went over the Sunday before to stop in and see how they were doing and her husband was there. Apparently after we left they got into a huge fight and she texted us on Monday saying not to come back. I felt super bad since I was the one who pushed for us to go over on Sunday. But I'll learn and keep going.

Saturday we helped translate at the a church clothing drive they were doing for the battered women's shelter and DFCS. It was cool to go and help people and see them be blessed. Then we went to Cummorah to exchange back just to find them in the middle of doing service and we were there for about 2 hours more. We were about to leave when Elder Wood decided to tackle chopping down an entire tree with a  hack saw.... Let's just say we were there 2 hours more.... total of 4 hours.... Dang. But it was nice to help and we counted our blessings.

This week we've got some good plans and Elder Long and I have like 10 people to follow-up with. We pray we have a good week and I know that you all will as well!

Love you all!
Elder "Rody" Rodabough

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Email sent November 10, 2014: My Futures so Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades

So to start off the week on Monday we climbed Kennesaw Mountain, an old Civil War battlefield just outside of the mission. We got approval and I went with the ZL's. Elder Long had already hiked the mountain and so he went and played football. I drove about 3 companionships and the ZL's came with us as well. It was a pretty normal hike and along the way we found a Hispanic member family that was climbing. I was walking along side them and chatting when I realized that the 10 year old son was hiking with his 2 month old puppy!!!! I was like "Dude what are you doing?!" The poor thing was freezing cold and shivering like crazy so I took off my sweater and wrapped the puppy up in and he just curled unto it and went to sleep hahaha. 

We had a pretty awesome District meeting on Tuesday where we basically just discussed how we want the District meetings to go. I'm honestly getting tired of planning District meetings and not knowing if the members are getting anything so I decided that we would basically plan them together. We ended up just discussing the vision of the District, accountability, trainings, and how we would have fun and learn at the same time. It was pretty legit if I do say so myself.  After the District meeting I went on exchange with Elder Bloomfield in Sandy Plains. We decided to go tracting for the rest of our day since they didn't have any teaching appointments. We were just knocking a neighborhood and following up with people when we started discussing about tracting in general. Mostly about cool experiences and miracles we had seen from it. Basically I was trying to help him see the miracles that the Lord has already given us. I asked him how it had gone in his other area and he explained that he basically just went tracting to kill time and it had never had any success from it. Dang it. So we decided that we were going to put our faith in the Lord hardcore to find someone that we could talk to and have a really good experience with. Right before we were about to leave the neighborhood we found a woman that we were able to share a scripture with, talk about trials in life and how through the Savior we can overcome them, and then she asked where we had services and if everyone was invited. We told her sure and then got her phone number so that they could come by again. PRAYER ANSWERED!

Thursday was probably one of the coolest teaching days I've had on the mission thus far. We went by and taught a long time investigator named Moises, or Moses in English if you had trouble understanding ;) The only thing that has been keeping Moises from getting baptized is that he can't get to church. He can't find a ride and the closest member lives far away. He also is paraplegic on the left half of his body from a fall from a ladder.... So that kind of puts a damper on things... But we started talking about the Holy Ghost and he told us how badly he wants to be baptized so that he can get the Holy Ghost. We promised him that we would be able to find him a ride to church if he would be ready. He said yes and we said a prayer and left. Next we went over to a less active/part-member couple and started talking to the husband. He's known about the church for years and loves everything about, but it he just can't get work off to go to church.  We taught him a little bit and found out that's he's super chill and such a nice guy. He showed us his nice 1983 dodge truck that's mint blue and Elder Long wanted to buy it so bad haha. Later that night after dinner we decided to go out for just one more half hour before we had to go back.  We followed up on a referral from the Atlanta missionaries that border our area and it ended up being a mother and daughter who loved the feeling they had when the Elders were over. The mother doesn't understand a lick of English but she could understand like 1 out of 20 words she said. We taught the premise of the first lesson and the spirit was really strong. We have an appointment today with her so we'll see how it goes!

I'm really enjoying my time here in Cherokee! Things are going well here! I love you all and have a good week!

Elder Rodabough