AMAZING

Hello! This week Gloria got baptized!!! She was smiling so big the whole day and she seriously has the most beautiful smile I've ever seen. Such a genuine person and truly a Kingdom builder! Of course it wouldn't be a baptism if SOMETHING didn't go wrong, so here's what happened: we got to the church early to set everything up, fill the font, print the program, yadda yadda yadda. We got everything done just in time! Gloria showed up and she wasn't late so that was awesome. She changed, we took pictures, then we sat down waiting for the baptism service to start. We were pretty pleased that everything was going so smoothly! Well we're still sitting there wondering why it hasn't started yet when we look around and see that Brother Cobabe (the one baptizing her) isn't changed yet. We find out it was because he didn't bring his white pants and none of the pants there fit him. We were like "We'll call the DeRoussels and see if they have any pants you can borrow!" Okay, the DeRoussel family is literally my favorite family. They are the greatest people I've ever met. We do our laundry at their house every week cause they don't want us to have to pay for it, they feed us dinner all the time, and we hang out with their kids a lot on P days, so they're just the best. The mom answers and tells us that they're not home but we can run over there and grab Calebs pants in their room. So we book it out of there in our car cause they live pretty close to the church. They also gave us a key to their house hahah so we run inside, grab the pants, run back, possibly may or may not have gotten an 'aggressive driving' from our little friend TiWi (the box inside our car that watches how fast we drive) and run inside the church PRAYING that these pants fit! And they did!!! So he got dressed, the program went well and the baptism was great! We were in the bathroom after Gloria got out of the water and we asked her how it went. She looked at us and goes "it was AMAZING"  I felt the Spirit so strong when she said that! Cause it really was amazing!

I also found out two people in Hamilton have gotten baptized the past month! Two people that I taught when I was there are now baptized. It made me really really happy to find out that they were able to overcome their obstacles and follow Christ by being baptized.

 

Also this week we got transfer calls and found out that Sister Park will be leaving! She's going to Syracuse (super jealous, I wanna serve in the Cuse so bad) and Sister DeGoyler will be joining me in Saratoga! Sister DeGoyler served in Manchester right before I got there so it'll be fun to be able to talk about Vermont with her! I've heard incredible things about her and I know she's an amazing missionary so I'm super excited to learn more from her!

 

I've been thinking a lot this week on how this life (especially as a missionary) is to help us grow, stretch, and learn. So we can become what God needs us to be. We listened to a devotional by Hank Smith this week on putting the armor of God on and how that sometimes makes us uncomfortable. There's a reason that it's ARMOR, not sweats or something comfortable. It takes effort. He said something that really stuck out to me: "God doesn't care how comfortable we are" I loved that! It's so true. It doesn't matter if we're comfortable, we need to constantly be changing to become more like Christ and that means being pushed outside our comfort zones a lot of the time. One more thing he said that I loved is "I'd rather sit at home without friends than without the Holy Ghost" It made me think a lot about where our priorities are and how blessed we are to have the Holy Ghost with us. If that means giving up worldly things, then so be it. I definitely know I'd rather have the Holy Ghost with me than any worldly possession, whether it be a movie, friends, music, etc. My challenge this week is for you to ponder about what you're putting before the Holy Ghost! And cut that out of your life so you can have the Holy Ghost with you more! I promise it will bless your life more than anything else you could possibly think of! 

Have a great week and love you all! 

xoxo

Sister Rodriguez

P.S.

"where did you hear that?" 

"Google. Well, Wikipedia, so it must be true"

"we want to play a game but it needs to be gospel related"

"how about duck, duck, goose. but instead: Jesus, Jesus, Christ" 

hahaha we were like "nooooo, that's bad!!!!" 

Pictures: 

1-3. Tennis, Red Robin, Wal Mart, Target, and Humpty Dumpty with Ethan

4-6 Gloria's baptism!!!

The Butlers!

One of the office couples, Elder Lee, came to inspect our apartment last week and totally roasted me for being a Utah fan.  so when we sent him our gas receipts for our car this month, we decorated it completely with the Utes and this is the text he sent us

Our boy Gio came to church this week!

District pics :)