Good Things Are Happening

Well, Hello there everyone!!                                                                         

It was another great week in Canton! I want to start off by saying, “Happy Birthday to the most amazing woman in the world, my angel mother! Happy Birthday, Mom!” There's a quote I heard this week by Elder Boyd K. Packer that says, "There are few things more powerful than the prayers of a righteous mother" and I definitely know that's true because I feel Mom's prayers every day! And of course, everyone else's as well!

Elder Roderick with Toombs Smith,
a 72 year-old recent convert who
received the Priesthood on Sunday. 

It was such a crazy good week! The only bad thing that happened was that Elder Johnson had to get emergency transferred to a branch that's right above us, so now it's just my man, Elder Detmer, and me. We saw such amazing miracles this week. We found lots of new people to teach and those that we have been teaching are progressing really well. Right now Julius is looking really good to be baptized on the 27th! He has nearly quit his addiction to smoking and his desire to stop seems to be getting stronger and stronger. Yesterday, to help them out we gave blessings to him and his wife, Joyce. Joyce is now on date to be baptized as well on the 11th of July. We just have to figure out her work situation because she gets off work right as sacrament meeting ends. So, her baptism date might get pushed back but we're going to work with her as much as we can.

We had another cool miracle with a former investigator named Derek. For the last couple weeks he has come to church, but he hasn't wanted to have any lessons. So, yesterday when Derek came to church, and I grabbed a member of our ward and we pulled Derek into another room to have a lesson with him. It turns out the member with me had visited Derek at his house 6 months ago with other Elders. During our lesson the Spirit was super strong, and the member said, "Derek, when I met you 6 months ago you had a few barriers about getting baptized. It seems like they've been broken down. What is your barrier now?" To which Derek replied, "Well, I don't really have any anymore. Over the winter everything kind of soaked in and I believe it all to be true. I'm ready to do it as soon as possible." So we put him on date to be baptized on the 18th of July! It was so awesome!

One night during the week we were about to head home a little early because we hadn't had dinner yet, so we stopped by the grocery store to get some spaghetti sauce. On the way out, I saw a Hispanic woman right in front of the store driving a taxi and some people were getting in the back of her car. The Spirit said to me, "Give her a card." But, in my head I made a bunch of excuses why I shouldn't: She was working. Her windows were rolled up. People were getting in the car to go somewhere. So, I kept walking. Then, as we were walking by the car, she rolled down the car window, and said, "Hey guys! What church do you go to?" So we walked up to her and told her where we were from. As we talked to her, we learned her name was Sister Dionisio. We learned she was a less-active member of the church and that she just moved here from New Mexico with her husband and 4 little kids. So we quickly got her phone number, and later in the week we had a lesson with the whole family! They are the sweetest people! They couldn't come to church this week because of her job, but she said they’d be coming this upcoming Sunday. I learned to never ignore a prompting of the Spirit and it was amazing how the Lord led us right to a family of 6 who is ready to come back into the fold.

Along those same lines, I'll share one more little miracle we saw this week. On Friday night we had about 30 minutes left in the night and we were driving out of a neighborhood when we saw a lady working in her yard. Elder Detmer felt like we should go talk to her. So, we pulled over, and walked over to the house but she had already walked inside. We knocked on the door, and met another lady living in the house but she wasn't interested. So, we knocked about 5 more doors, and found nothing. We were confused why the Spirit had told us to get out of the car. We started walking down the street, and Elder Detmer just started praying out loud for the Lord to deliver someone into our hands. At first, it was kind of just a prayer of desperation, but it got more serious toward the end. It took me a second to even process that he was actually saying a prayer out loud while walking down the street. But, by the time he finished I was into it and said, "Well, Amen!" I kid you not, the NEXT DOOR we met a 22-year-old kid who was baptized 6 years ago in California. He was going to serve a mission but then he decided to take another path in life instead. He told us that he used to go out with the missionaries all the time and he's a really nice guy. Now he's living with his fiancé here in Georgia and we had a really good conversation with him. We were able to testify to him of Heavenly Father's love and how He is watching out for him by sending us to his door. He isn't on our records so we would have never found him unless we knocked on his door. It was so awesome. You can't make that stuff up! I'm so grateful to be a missionary because of experiences like that, and I'm grateful that my companion had the faith to pray for help from the Lord.

So, good things are happening! If people would just stop telling me how many days I had left on my mission, I would be even better! I love you guys! Thanks for everything you do for me! I'll talk to you next week.

Elder Roderick