Little Miracles

 

 

Well hello family and friends! I hope all is well back home.This week has been pretty fabulous, I am loving the south even more every day! Spring is here and every time it rains I skip down the street (sidewalks don't exist) and I sing, "I'm singing in the rain! I'm singing in the rain!" Haha its so much fun! I love the mission, it is just the best life to live.

This week we had dinner with some members and they had these giant bunnies, I kid you not they where the biggest bunnies I have ever seen! She spins the fur by hand and then nits whatever she wants! They are so cool! She brought them in and was like, "Sense you can't hold my child you can hold these bunnies." haha it was so funny.

Journal entry #1

Today (Monday) we went to go see a less active, a man walked out the side of his house and we asked if he knew her and he said that she moved away. So of course we offered to teach him. He was pretty resistant at first but we kept being persistent. We eventually gave him a Book of Mormon and you could tell that right as he touched it, his behavior changed, it wasn't a dramatic change but you could tell a difference. He began to ask more questions and wanted to come to our church! This experience really taught me the power of the Book of Mormon and I am so grateful I was able to experience this.

Journal entry #2

Today (Wednesday) we went to see Sis.Stowe (less active) to help her move some furniture out of her house. One of the men working there was her cousin. He was a very nice man, when everyone else left he started asking us questions so we sat down and talked with him and Sis.Stowe for about an hour and a half. He would say "I'm not trying to offend you." or "I don't want to come across as disrespectful." But he still was pretty harsh but we where able to calm him down a little and he wants to learn more! This experience was the coolest ever and I cannot wait to teach him more!

Just a reminder that general conference is THIS WEEK! I am SO excited guys you don't even know! I hope y'all have a great week and know that I sure do love y'all!

Love always

Sister Rodey

   

Transfer Week

Hey y'all! I hope you're having a fantastic week! ps I'm sorry I didn't email on Monday, we had transfers which is where President will send us to a new area in the mission with a new companion, but luckily I am staying here in Martinsville, Virginia with Sister Callister!

So I am going to share a little bit about each of my investigators/recent converts just so y'all can know who I am talking about in future emails:
Josh- he is a 17 year old boy, he has a bit of a learning disability but he is SO Christlike and he has a really rough life but he is an amazing example to me

Lisa- she is 29 and she has extreme anxiety, borderline personally disorder, she is paralyzed is one half of her body the list goes on but to top it off satan works really hard on her with temptations and stuff like that but she is the most faith ever! she is a recent convert so she has been baptized and I love her so much!


Journal entry:  

Monday:

Coolest day ever! This week I promised myself and the Lord that I would be EXACTLY obedient with all of my heart, might, mind and soul! This day, I had some of the best teaching experiences of my whole mission and it was a HUGE testimony builder for me about obedience. Now, of course I still messed up and made mistakes but I knew that the Lord would forgive me and that I would continue to try harder. THEN today as I was reading my letter from my mission President, he stated the following, "Thank you for this letter Sister Rodabough. I feel impressed to share something with you. One of the greatest things you can think about and do on your mission is exact obedience so that you can have a full measure of the spirit. This is a spiritual work and must be guided by the spirit. As you consecrate yourself and turn your heart, might, mind, and strength to this great work, feelings of home and home sickness will fade. As you write home only on preparation day and on no other day (from the missionary handbook), you sustain me, you sustain your companion, you sustain the prophet, you show your love of the Lord. Little things matter. This may seem little but I think you will find that as you focus on the little things the big things go away. By the way, your companion has said nothing of this to me. I just feel impressed to share this with you. I hope it makes sense to you. Exact obedience, heart, might, mind, and strength. Thank you for all you do! Thank you for exercising great faith! John 7:17 2 Kings 6:16Love, Pres. Salisbury" I did not say anything to my mission President about what I was doing that day so this says to me that the Lord knows EXACTLY what we need to hear, who we need to hear it from and when we need to hear it. I know that there is no such thing as 'coincidence'. Everything is in the Lords timing. I know that if we do what we are suppose to do each day! I am a witness of the truth of this church! I KNOW that Jesus Christ is my Savior and if we follow Him, we will be able to be with our families forever and we will be able to live with Heavenly Father again in the Celestial Kingdom.

Scripture of the week: 1 Nephi 17:50
I love everything to do with my mission, the people, the weather, the trees, the baby mountains everything! But I especially love that my mission is hard, it stretches me to my breaking point, but because I am able to receive help from the Lord, I am able to wake up and do it again.

I love you all and thank you so much for all you do for me

Love 

Sister Rodey 

   

Best week ever!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cool experience #1

So this week started off rough. I was feeling super overwhelmed because everything was going to fast and I just couldn't keep up. But later I got a priesthood blessing from bro.Hodnett and it completely relieved all of my burdens and I felt SO much better. The priesthood is such a powerful and sacred gift.

Cool experience #2

I had my first exchanged this week! (an exchange is when you trade companions with the sister training leaders) It was SO much fun! I went with a sister named Sister Schoemig. She is a super cute girl from Utah and she likes the same things as me so we got along great!

I gave a talk on Sunday about the Holy Ghost, it went pretty great although it could have been better. After I gave my talk, bro.Hodnett texted us and said, "Good job on your talks tonight, the

spirit was strong with you my young jedi." I legit laughed so hard!

This week I have missed my friends the most, my friends and I used to do everything together! whether it was watching movies all day or playing scary video games or walking around the park. We where always together and they are sisters and I love and miss them all dearly. Especially McKenna because it was her birthday and I just miss her so much. But I know that this is where I am suppose to be so it makes it a little easier:)

We have been getting dropped a lot. Investigators will just text us and say, "thank you but I am not interested." Honestly I thought being rejected would be 'easy' for me because I learn a lot about it when I was in theater but someone rejecting the gospel is 10X harder. But I know that God will soften their hearts and the missionaries will come when they are ready.

Thank you for you love and support and I hope everyone is doing amazing. I love you and thank you!

Love Sis Rodey

 

Fasting and service!

So my mom wanted me to type out my daily journal entries but I forgot my journal so sorry guys haha.

The mission is great as usual haha. Nothing super exciting happened this week, but on Sunday on of my recent converts had to get a priesthood blessing and I felt the spirit so strong and the blessing wasn't even for me haha.

If any of you are wanting to learn more about our church please read the Book of Mormon but specifically read Moroni chapter 7 and chapter 10 (this will only take you probably 20 minutes!). If you don't have access to the Book of Mormon your lying because you do haha. Go to lds.org and go to scriptures and study, then go to Book of Mormon and read it because you will be blessed:)

I fasted on Sunday and I felt the spirit so strong and my testimony grew because of that, I also payed fast offerings for the first time and while I was filling out the tithing slip I felt the Spirit strong then as well, because of that I now understand how important it is to pay tithing and fast offerings:) Dinner that night was awesome because everything tastes so good after you fast haha.

On Saturday we did service for Sis Hall by helping her set up for her company party and we also did service for the Bishop by helping him set up for his yard sale, so that was way fun! Later that night we had dinner with the Hodnetts! I love that family so stinken much! We had stuffed bell peppers and rice and pie for desert (sorry Chip) but it was way good:)

Unfortunately on Tuesday one of our investigators dropped us. Her name is Judy Tate and she called us that morning and said something like, "This church just isn't for me, I've prayed about it and it just doesn't feel right but you girls are some of the nicest people I have ever meet so thank you so much but I am not interested." Conversations like that are really hard as a missionary because you know their life will be better but they don't understand that.

Sorry for the shorter letter this week but I hope you all have an amazing life. Remember to love Christ and always rely on Him 100% of the time! I love you all so so much! Thank you!

-Sis Rodey

I love the Holy Ghost!

This week was kind of a good and not so good week. We haven't found any new investigators and our appointments keep canceling and people are mean and they hate the gospel. BUT! Let me go into more detail about some way cool experiences I have had.

So we are tracking (which I LOVE) and we knocked on this door (duh:) and this older man opens it. We start doing the whole missionary intro thing and he just starts going so ham on bible bashing us (sister Callister was the one talking the whole time so that was good) he was saying things like, "My Jesus isn't your Jesus." And, "God doesn't love us." He just continued to say things like that and he would try to explain to us how the Godhead works and he said he has been preaching the gospel for 30 years and I really wanted to just yell at him.

Eventually sister Callister said something like, "Contention is not of God, thank you for your time but we must be going." Even while she was saying that he was still talking over her! He was so awful.

After we left I was felling really down and sad and slightly heart broken but sister Callister sang the first like of 'I know that my redeemer lives', I continued to sing the rest of the lyrics in my head and I had the heaviest feeling of comfort I have ever felt in my life. It was SO amazing and it really taught me how strong the Holy Ghost really is. I was/am so grateful I had this experience because it taught me that whenever we go through tough times, the Holy Ghost WILL be there to comfort us. 

Experience #2: ps sorry for the super long email this week haha

We where driving home to go get lunch and we see this short little black lady picking up trash on the side of the road. Sister Callister pulled over and we ran down the hill to catch up to her, she was picking up soda cans so she can sell them to her mom to get money. We wanted to help her and as we where doing so we taught her the restoration haha. Little side note: when we teach the restoration we like to recite JSH: 16-17 its about the first vision. Anyways, when we where reading that part about when Joseph Smith is praying, she began to cry, she said, "I asked that same prayer this morning." And BOOM! The spirit was SO strong! After that she was so excited that the Lord answered her prayers. And I really hope she will start/continue to live the gospel.

As you can see being a missionary is the best thing ever.

In my ward there is this little girl, she is four years old and she has blue eyes and curly brown hair. Her name is Miracle. And I love her SO much! She will always gesture for me to pick her up and it just breaks my heart because we aren't aloud to. Sorry for that random little story but I feel like I have to tell everyone about how amazing she is haha. 

Brother Hodnett was so funny at dinner this week, there was probably 10 people there and right in the middle of dinner, he stood up and said, "Now we will see Sister Rody preform a song from the last musical she was in!" Little did he know I have only been in one musical (Sound of Music) but I was like, "um no thanks." and he was trying so hard for the longest time just to get me to preform. I never did but it was so funny, I love that family so much.

Anyways, thank you so so much for all of your constant love and prayers. I love and miss you all dearly and I will talk to y'all next week.

With all my love

-Sister Rody

Humility at it's finest!

Well hi, I love all of you so much and thank you for all of your prayers and support.

First of all: Slaw is way good and y'all are eating hot dogs wrong. This week I've missed doing all of my fun things but being a missionary is even cooler. 

So last week I talked about how watching my people go through all of these hard things is really hard. Well it still is. But I have learned (thanks mom:) to appreciate my life way more then I ever have. I've gone through a lot up to this point but that doesn't matter. What matters is the person I am now and who my Savior wants me to be.

Brother Hodnett (my ward mission leader, you'll here a lot about him) is my favorite. He likes to name all of the sisters after a Disney character and a lot of you are probably thinking like Cinderella or Snow white. No. This man means business! My companion is tinker bell and I am Sam, who is that you ask? First of all get educated, nah just kidding but she is the reporter chick from cloudy with a chance of meatballs. Look up a picture and you will see how accurate he is. Also HAPPY ALMOST BIRTHDAY KELSEE! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

If any of you are going on missions soon read this scripture: D&C 43: 15-16.

The routine is really good for me because it is always the same and it is always consistent. Today was my day where I cleaned EVERYTHING and organized as well so I feel good haha. We have meal appointments pretty much every night so its super fun to meet people and eat spaghetti lol. Almost every house I've gone to, they always have a dog and it is so much fun. Also Kenna, these people in my ward have like 7 cats and they want to give all of them away so I told them about you (you're welcome).

I love you all so much and I am missing all of you. Please write me letters (Dylan). Thank you again for all of your love and support.

Well hi there:)

I am currently serving in Martinsville Virginia. My companions name is Sister Callister and she is great, she's like a mom to me haha. The weather here is way more sketchy then it is in Utah. It can be 80 degrees one day and -18 degrees and snowing the next day haha. But right now the weather is pretty good (70 degrees).

I love the people here, this is an example of a conversation we have sometimes:

Sister Callister: "Hi! We are missionaries of the church of Jesus Christ of later day saints. Do you know anything about our church?"

Investigator: "Don't y'all have your blue bible? Yeah I've heard of it but not really interested. Would y'all like to come in for some hot dawgs and slaw?"

Sister Callister: "No thank you, but it was nice meeting you!"

Investigator: "It sure was nice to meet y'all, y'all be safe out there now!"

Haha its so much fun, the people are way nice but some of them are kinda sketchy haha. I can't believe I'm serving in the same place as Aubree, its so fun but its hard knowing that I'm so close to her but I still can't see her. I have miss all of my cousins so much, y'all need to send me letters and you can get the address from grandma G.

So the food here is cool, it really just depends on who you are eating with. Last night we had dinner at a ladies house, she is from the Dominican Republic and she is a single mother with two boys and a new baby. She fed us this chicken and rice that was way good.

Its hard for me down here sometimes because 95% of our people we see have really bad health and financial problems and it is so hard to watch them be in so much pain and sadness because I can't help them in that way. Its so hard to watch people you love so much go through that but I know its going to be okay for them because we are there to share with them the most important message in the world.

Hey Jo, you where right about all of the hills and tress haha. Its sad though because the trees don't have leaves on them lol. I love tracing because its a really good way to find and teach. But like I said some people are way sketchy, I went to this one guys house and he was smoking while we where teaching the restoration and there was this LOUD banging noise (I was so scared but we had a member with us btw) and then this other big guy walks in and he like "howr y'all?" haha so funny.

I hope everyone is doing great! I love and miss all y'all so much! Please send me letters and pictures!