Happy 4th!!

Hey Everybody,

Happy 4th of July, even though it passed. The libraries were closed yesterday so we had a little more time to do P-Day stuff. It was a fairly hot day as well. Yesterday morning we were able to attend a ward breakfast in a members spacious back yard. Over half the people there were not members so we were able to talk to a couple. We played a lot of sports with the other elders in the zone. We played basketball, speed ball, and indoor soccer. The members fed us good too. For dinner we had hamburgers, hot dogs, stake, ribs, chicken, and other stuff. They also had other family visiting them as well. Today we have a stake wide ward missionary training that we have to go to. President Mendenhall, the Stake President, Elder Eldregde and I, and others will be giving training's. We have been preparing for a while now and hope it goes well. Tomorrow is another Zone Meeting and I'll be giving some input there too. 

This is the last week of the transfer and many missionaries are calling it "P-Week". But Elder Eldredge and I decided we will finish strong. I do have feelings about next transfer. I think my time as a Zone Leader will have expired and I will either be a district leader again or train. I honestly would love to train next transfer; it was so much fun training Elder Folau. The Fort Collins Temple is in the Fort Collins mission but there are a couple of stakes in the northern part of the mission that will be in that Temple District. Westminster is one of those and the youth in that stake will be participating in the youth cultural celebration. The Temple will be dedicated at the end of October, right after I get home. The Lawhons turned out to be less golden than we thought. We spoke to Jeremy a couple days ago and he told us that his wife is stubborn and is a strong catholic. She doesn't really want to read the Book of Mormon but she will be nice and listen to us. We have an appointment this Wednesday and we will see where that goes. So far no members have invited anybody to dinner. Every time we call to confirm a diner appointment and ask them they seem to take it as an offense. There are not a whole lot of members these days that will do missionary work.  

We did a lot of service this past week for non members. About a month ago we were street contacting/tracting and we talked to a guy and he said he would move out in a month. We gave him our number and told him we would love to help and he actually called us. We spent about 2 hours at his house and he bought us pizza. We also helped move a non member couple that used to investigate the church. Their daughter got murdered within the past year and the husband became supper depressed and feels like God told him to divorce his wife. The wife is a strong woman but she is going through very hard times and she is just not happy. She has been very grateful for our service and she will be moving out today. We had MLC on Friday and that was fun as always. This Friday we will have another MLC but it will be shorter.  

Love,

            ElderRodriguez

Teaching and Finding

Hey everybody!

Its already week 5 in the Transfer. Glad to hear you all are doing well. Its been pretty hard to find people to teach in this area of Colorado. The Member referrals didn't turn out that well. They wouldn't answer their door. We did a ton of tracting and street contacting and taught a couple lessons. But they were those Lesson 1 only people and didn't go anywhere. It has been pretty hot here too. I am so thankful we have a car to drive. It not only hastens the work, but it gives air conditioning. 

We found one lady named Sherree. She has a daughter who has a really good friend who is on a mission. She knows little about the church and we offered her some service in her backyard. She happily accepted and we pulled out a lot of weeds for her and trimmed her bush. We are planning to go back and do some more so we will see what happens. We set up an appointment with a part member family named the Lawhons. Jeremy Lawhon is the father and he has been less active ever since he entered adulthood. His wife is a catholic but is somewhat open minded to our message. We taught them the restoration and watched the 20 min video about Joseph Smith on Saturday. She was a little intrigued and wants to read from the Book of Mormon. Jeremy says he wants to get active again but he is trying to get his kids baptized in our church and at the same time his wife is trying to get them baptized in the Catholic Church. We have a return appointment on Wednesday at 8pm and a member of the Bishopric will come with us. 

We had District meeting this week and our district came up with a vision to get more members to give us referrals. We will be asking the members to invite a nonmember to every diner appointment we have and Elder Eldredge and I will be taking a 5th Sunday lesson in July. The stake President, Mission President, all ward missionaries and ward mission leaders, and full time missionaries in the stake will have a meeting to attend on July 5th. The meeting is designed to train ward missionaries on their duty and how we can hasten the work in the Arapahoe stake. President Mendanhall asked Elder Eldredge and I to give training's at the meeting, so it will be interesting. Yesterday was Elder Eldredge's Birthday so the member that we live with gave us $50 to go out. We went to Chillis and had some good steaks. This Friday is MLC's again and the week after that will be another MLC but this one will focus on the Fort Collins Temple Dedication and Open House. A member of the Temple Dedication Committee will come down to Broomfield to teach the missionaries how to use this in our approaches. 

As of right now, no instructions have been given to us about the 4th of July. We normally have to go inside right after dinner on a holiday, but we will probably talk about it at MLC. The 4th of July is on a P-Day this year so that will be interesting. Hope you all are enjoying your summer despite the heat.

Love,

            Elder Rodriguez

Biking

Hey Everybody,

Another week has gone by and the transfer is already half over. I guess I'll be on the plane ride home soon. Elder Eldredge and I did a ton of finding this week but sadly we didn't find a whole lot of people. Everybody is just so wealthy and prideful they won’t even take a card from us. I went on exchanges with another set of elders on Saturday and I biked for the first time in a while. It was so hot and we were so thirsty but fortunately we ran into a couple of nice people that gave us water. I don't remember it being this hot in Colorado last summer.

We had Zone Meeting on Wednesday and that went well. I had to give a training because I'm a zone leader and I went to MLC. But after a while, giving training's gets kinda boring.  Elder Eldredge and I had to report to the stake president on the missionary work in the stake. His name is President Todd and he is not like the normal Stake President. He is very animated and direct. He threw down on how badly the missionary work is going and how the members aren't willing to do it. He is right because not a whole lot of members actually do missionary work in this stake. The members have given us a few referrals in the past couple of days so we will see what comes of that this week. Until next time.

Love,

            Elder Rodriguez

Dropping Spree :(

Hey Everybody,

Happy Monday again. Zone Conference was pretty fun as well as car judging. The week went pretty well too. We have been on a dropping spree for awhile now. The people in our teaching pool are not willing to progress. On Saturday we taught a less active couple that struggle with reading the scriptures. Actually just the wife does. I invited her to read the scriptures everyday but she wasn't going to have it. She felt we didn't know enough and that she was on a different level of spirituality. We found a couple of new investigators but they don't seem all that promising. They both said they will be at church yesterday but neither of them were. But Elder Eldredge and I are planning to do a ton of finding this week. Boulder is in our mission now, and from what the missionaries serving there now say, it is pretty cool. The zone goes into the mountains a little, or a lot, not sure.

Sundays are always crazy for us. We cover two wards but they both start at the same time. Whatever investigators attend sacrament meeting, that is the ward we will go to. But we attend two missionary correlation meetings, a ward counsel, and report to two ward mission leaders. At least it keeps us busy and on our feet.

This week is Zone Meeting and the High counselor for Missionary Work will be attending as well. He will also be providing us with pizza. One of the wards will be having a BBQ Picnic at a park. So we will try to get our investigators and less actives there. Other than that, nothing else will be happening. Just the normal week again. I am certainly enjoying the warmth but not the heat. We live with two guys in a town home and we don't have air conditioning. They are both Polynesian and one of them is Less Active. But the active one's name is Tyrone. He is married and has children but they live in Utah. He is living in Colorado for work and visits his family every 3 weeks or so. I miss you all! Until next time.

Love,

            Elder Rodriguez

New Transfers

Hey Everybody,

Another Monday is here and almost over. P-days fly by so fast. This week was super crazy. Tuesday before transfers Elder Conlin and I saw so many people to teach and take pictures with. Wednesday was transfer day and we spent a lot of time getting missionaries luggage and bikes to the zones they needed to be in. And needing to be with a companion 24/7 makes things more complicated. But it was fun seeing my friends and catching up with them. My new companion, Elder Eldredge, is awesome. He is from Georgia and I think we will have fun together this transfer. Friday was MLC up at the mission office. We normally do it at another building but since we got Boulder it became the new central building for the mission. I think that's why they changed it. Arapahoe is actually a county so I am covering a lot of Aurora. Coming back from MLC we were able to stop for dinner at Cafe Rio in one of my past areas in Denver/Aurora. It was so awesome and weird to be in an area I served in again. We call it being area trunky. 

Arapahoe is a VERY wealthy part of Aurora which makes the work harder due to the pride of the people. It's very hard tracting and street contacting. However, we have been working really hard the past couple of days and found a couple of promising people. Last night we were tracting and we knocked on a door that opened up. It was a man named Marv who answered and he looked as if he was very not interested in our message. Remarkably he let us in to do a quick survey. After the survey we asked if we could share one of the lessons and he accepted as well. He has a daughter that pasted away 3 weeks ago and wasn't doing well. We shared the plan of salvation and he was very open to it all. You can tell that the spirit was working on him. He said we could come back in 30 days and he will pray and read about the things we taught him. Hopefully he does that.

Sunday was pretty busy too. We cover 2 wards now so we went to sacrament meeting for one where the bishop asked me to bear my testimony then we took off to the other ward for the last 2 hours. Zone Conference is tomorrow and Wednesday so Elder Elderdge and I will be judging cars tomorrow. Then Wednesday will be our turn for Zone Conference. We will have a busy week. President Mendenhall is famous for transferring missionaries at their last transfer. I've seen him do it to so many missionaries and it might happen to me. So I'm not sure if this will be my last area. The wards I cover are awesome. We get fed in one a lot but the other not so much. Probably because one is a lot smaller than the other. Arapahoe Zone is very small. There are only 12 missionaries serving here and they're all elders. But it is pretty cool down here, it is a lot like Parker.

Summer is definitely here as well. It has been pretty hot lately averaging in the 80's. That's probably nothing compared to Whittier though. Tomorrow we will have to go to Downtown Denver to get a light on our truck fixed. I love Downtown so much. That's why I take pictures of it all the time and I would love to serve there if I have the chance. I hope you all have a great week!

Love,

            Elder Rodriguez

Mission run!

Hey Everyone!

Transfers are tomorrow and I will be getting transferred to Arapahoe CO. I will still be a Zone Leader so I will have another opportunity to serve the missionaries in the zone. By the time I go home I will have served in just about every zone in the mission except for couple. My new companion will be Elder Eldredge. I'm not sure where is from but I served with him when I was in Denver and he is an awesome guy. I have been greatly blessed with awesome companions for some time now. I will definitely miss Elder Conlin a lot. We got along so well and accomplished many things together. He is staying in Westminster and will be getting another companion.

The mission expanded and we got 2 new stakes from the other missions. We got Boulder stake from the Ft. Collins mission and the Parker South Stake from the Colorado Springs mission. However, we aren't getting a whole lot of new missionaries. So there will be many missionaries covering 2 wards at a time. I will be doing that in Arapahoe. 

I got my stitches out last Monday and my scar seems to be healing properly. I absolutely loved serving in Westminster. I will miss the ward members and the people we worked with. Two less actives got the Priesthood on Sunday and I ordained one of them to the office of Elder. There are two investigators that we are working with that will probably get baptized sometime in the near future, I can feel it. Suerina and her daughter Antionette. She is really sad that I am leaving but if she gets baptized I might go back to attend. 

Yesterday was the Mission 5k run. All the missionaries in the mission came up to Westminster for a 5k run. We all had to run/walk by zones. It wasn't a competition but in the minds of the missionaries it was. It was a blast seeing all my friends and missionaries I worked with. After that all the elders in our zone had a bbq and played football on our last P-Day of the transfer. It was a really fun day. Until next time,

Love,

            Elder Rodriguez

Service

Hey Everybody,

This week was a crazy one for Elder Conlin and l. Last Monday was fun; we played basketball with a couple of the other elders. Elder Brinkerhoff, a former companion, and I ran into each other and collided eyes. He was unharmed but his hard rock skull gave me a cut right above my left eye. It was bleeding pretty bad and the mission nurse told us to go to urgent care and get it stitched up. I only got 3 stitches and I will get them out later today. First time ever getting stitches. 

We are finding new people to teach every week. We have an investigator named Suerina that we've been teaching for months and we taught her daughter this week as well. Her name is Antionette and she is 15. We took them on a church tour with a member from the Young Womens presidency. She is pretty interested in coming to young womens so we will see how that goes. We taught the Restoration to a man name Seth this week. He is from Ghana and doesn't speak English very well but he understands a lot, much more than most of the people we teach. He is very interested in Jesus Christ coming to the Americas and we committed him to read the first 3 chapters of the Book of Mormon. Hopefully he will progress in the coming weeks.

We are also teaching a less active named Phil. Phil was baptized many years ago but because of his hard heart he got his name removed. He then got rebaptized in 2009 and has been semi active ever since. He has done a pretty good job coming to church. On average he goes 3 times a month. But he will be getting the Aaronic Priesthood this Sunday. He is also really excited to get his Patriarchal blessing. Bill Hockstad is another less active that missionaries have been teaching for a long time. A couple months ago he got the Aaronic Priesthood and this Sunday he will get the Melchezidek Priesthood. He is an awesome guy and he asked me to ordain him. 

On Thursday we did service at a place called Life Care. It is an assisted living facility and since Elder Conlin is new, they made him watch a training video and take a test in order to be a volunteer. I did the whole process a couple months ago. They are a lot more serious than any of the other places I have done service at on my mission so it felt a little weird. It's a fun place to do service at though. Stella is doing a lot better now. She moved in with a friend across the street from her old home and she is waiting to get new housing. She will know by June 8th.

The weather is pretty nice now; 70s and 80s. Transfers are going to be on June 1st, it's a Wednesday. I will probably get transfered; I've never been in an area for 6 months and I've already been here for 4 1/2. There will be some changes in the mission boundaries probably starting next transfer. I heard we will be getting Broomfield which was previously in the Fort Collins mission. People say we will be getting Boulder as well, but nobody knows yet except the higher ups. Until next time,

Love,

            Elder Rodriguez