Sister Stephani Rodriguez: Chinese phone

I honestly can't remember too much of what happened this week!

One of my favorite parts about teaching is when the student just GETS it! When there's a concept they're having a hard time with so you both work together and you see the light in their eyes when they make a connection and they really understand. This week we were on exchange teaching an investigator the Plan of Salvation and it was just not making sense to her. We backed up a couple points and she pointed to the Spirit World and made some connections and truly GOT it! She was like "Ohhhh! That makes so much sense!" it was awesome. Later that night we met with a potential named Chandler. She's someone Sister Park and I had OYM'd in the elders area after a meal appointment. We got her number and had been in contact and she told us she just moved to Saratoga and is all settled in! So we met with her and taught her the Restoration. I am so so excited about her. She's in her early 20's and just so sweet. After the lesson she was like "I remember the day we met it was so grey and dark and rainy and I was just having the worst day and you two came up and talked to me and right when you did, the clouds parted and the sun came out and shined right on you two and it was like basically God sending me two angels!" Ahhh it was so cool! I KNOW God puts people in our path for a specific reason. She is really excited to come to church and learn more!

On Thursday afternoon we went to the Mabes house and did some service, a while back a tree fell on their house so they're now redoing the siding on it and they had us help hahahaha it was the weirdest service, but still fun!

Later that day we had interviews with President Rogers and he said Sis DG and I are most likely getting split up! I'll probs be leaving but I'm not sure where I'll be going! It's happy/sad. I love this area so so much but change is always good. So we'll see what happens! One thing that the mission has helped me with is to have faith and trust in my leaders. I pray every transfer that whatever God's will is for me, He'll make it known to and inspire my leaders. It's definitely helped me see God is aware of me and my leaders are divinely inspired.

Some other highlights of the week: We had 3 investigators at church! Whoo! (we've really had a hard time with that this transfer) we picked up 7 new AWESOME investigators, and we placed (properly) 23 copies of the Book of Mormon! God is good and this IS His work!!

One last story, on Saturday night we had like noooo plans. Our whole night was open and it was a little rough. It was really dark and no one was really receptive to us when we were tracting. We had a few people in mind that we wanted to try and all night I was just praying for a miracle or a tender mercy to happen. I was also definitely complaining in my head bc that night I did not want to be out walking around in the cold, I'll admit it. But we went to this guys house, he's a former that we had briefly met before that said we could come back. So Saturday night we tried him and his wife let us in! We sat with him and his wife and their daughter and taught them an incredible Restoration lesson! I felt the Spirit so so so strong and we know they did too. Their other daughter is currently living in Hawaii married to a Mormon and her kids are being raised Mormon! We definitely know they're going to get baptized eventually, we'll just see about when. They're Catholic so have a hard time with the great apostasy and Joseph Smith. They asked us some different questions on proof or evidence and we were like "BOOM. THE BOOK OF MORMON" and told them how that really is the evidence that we can hold in our hands and study out for ourselves to know if this message is true. It's something I've done and I can absolutely say that I know Jesus is the Christ, He did restore His church through the Prophet Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon is true. But of course this is something we can each learn for ourselves! If you haven't read from the BoM today, go do it! I

love it!

xoxo

Sister Rodriguez

P.S. we met this guy and he told us he hasn't had good experiences with Mormons and we asked why and he said "I went to the BYU campus and someone told me I was the whore of all the earth" and DG just laughed!! Hahahaha it was so awkward and yet so funny.

Also randomly this week our phone turned the language to Chinese!!!! So we couldn't understand anything!!! We texted the elders for help but they said it came up in Chinese hahahhaa so they had to call and walk us through how to change it back to English ahhaha it was so so so funny

pics:

1. Gloria left for Mississippi this week. I'm going to miss her and Orion so so much! They are the sweetest and she has the most pure testimony. It's kind of cool because we both got to Saratoga around the same time and are leaving around the same time (possibly) so it definitely built my testimony that God put us together here at this time for a divine reason.