"Yonah hike that mountain?"

HEY Y'ALL!!!                                                                                       

 

I had an amazing week! Ha ha ha… You're probably wondering what in the world that subject is saying. Last Monday for P-Day we hiked the tallest mountain in the area, Yonah Mountain. It's hugeee and it was so cool to see the view from the top! We got tons of pictures so I'll make sure I send some! The Southern people try to say, "Do you wanna go hike that mountain?" But, their accent makes it sounds like, "Yonah hike that mountain?" It's hilarious.

YMCA on Yonah Mountain

 This whole week we had to bike a ton because we only get 1500 miles a month in our car and we hit that mark at half way through the month. So basically, Elder Larsen and I are in big trouble. I'm just waiting for a call from the mission office and I'm NOT looking forward to it. But anyway, we've been biking a ton and on Tuesday Elder Larsen ran over a nail! That really did us in! So, we ended up having to walk a lot, use more miles, and eventually, we fixed his tire. We are doing a lot of less active reactivation and some of the less actives we're working with are starting to come back to church! We’ve working with the Hardings, a mother and her daughter, and they have been at church for the last 4 or 5 weeks now. We also have tons of appointments scheduled this week so we're going to be super busy!

Wednesday night we rode our bikes for 30 minutes (pretty much all uphill) to a neighborhood where we were supposed to have an appointment with an investigator. The ride exhausted both Elder Larsen and me because we had to book it there just to get to our appointment on time. We got there right at 7:00, which was when the appointment started, and as we were locking up our bikes we got a text from her that said, "Oh no! I'm so sorry but I forgot I had to go to a birthday party tonight so I'm going to have to cancel. I saw you two riding your bikes and it reminded me that we had an appointment." I seriously couldn't help but laugh when we got that text! Then, later she told us she wasn't even interested in learning more. Oh well… You gotta’ do what you gotta’ do!

On a more positive note, we witnessed some great miracles this week. A few weeks ago I told you about a miracle we had with a less active member, Earl Alexander, and his friend Robin Hood but I'll re-tell it quickly because something else happened this week. Brother Alexander is an older man and he lives about 30 minutes away from church and he is extremely sick so he can't attend church. He introduced us to Robin who accepted to have us teach her a lesson at Alexander’s house. However, the day we were supposed to visit her, she was picking up her nephew from the bus stop and the bus broke down. So, it took an extra hour for her to pick him up and she wasn't able to come to the lesson. Then, this last Thursday Elder Larsen and I drove to her home to visit her and luckily, when we arrived, she was there. While talking with her, we actually learned that Robin is a less active member of the church, not an investigator! She was baptized 8 years ago but hasn't been to church since. She expressed that she really wants to come back and she asked us if she could bring her non-member sister and her sister's family to our appointment at Brother Alexander's this Wednesday night. It was awesome and we have hope for her reactivation!

Last night we tried out a proselyting idea that President Bennion suggested – holding a cottage meeting. So, we arranged to have a cottage meeting at a member's home in Toccoa (which is about 35 minutes away from church). We invited as many less active members as we could (we were limited to 20 people because that's all the members could fit in their home). It turned out that we had 14 people accept our invitation to attend. There were 6 active members, 1 less active woman, 2 recent converts, and a less active family of 5.  And, of course Elder Larsen and I conducted the meeting and the couple whose home we were in joined us. So, there were 18 people total at the meeting. It was amazing! We taught simple principles and watched some good Mormon messages and the Spirit was super strong. We're looking forward to doing it again and hopefully, we’ll get more people to attend! I wish you guys could've been there in the room with all of us.

Well, I gotta’ go do something fun now. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!! Thank you for everything!    Elder Roddy 

                                                    

                                                                     The view from Yonah Mountain