Sister Stephani Rodriguez: HOI

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

Sister Miner and I literally spent all morning working on our Christmas Card so you should be pretty excited, we definitely are :) haha

This week was a little bit of a struggle but that's okay! I'm back in my area and it feels so good!

Since we haven't been here for a while we haven't been able to see people consistently so setting up appointments has been a bit of a struggle.

Also the Aumicks (part member family) dropped us the second day that Sis Miner was here. I literally cried for a solid 15 minutes. Hahaha people's agency sucks sometimes. They were so solid and Emily was preparing for baptism at the end of this month but the parents decided they love the people but they're not going to join and don't want to take lessons anymore. It honestly hurt really bad to read that text, but they'll get baptized one day, I know it!

And one more struggle: we are now a car share area! So the elders take the car half the week and we take it the other half. So for 3 days we don't have a car. In the middle of winter. In Upstate New York. Yeah... it's been kind of hard to have a positive attitude about that but Sister Miner and I are having so much fun and laughing all day everyday so she is definitely my saving grace!

But okay okay I have some good things too!!! On Saturday we made Christmas cookies with my FAV family the Torrences!! It was so much fun. Then on Sunday Brittany came to church!!! She is preparing for baptism next week and is progressing so well. I just love her so much. Then she came with her roommate to the branch Christmas party which was great! We also had a snowball fight with the Torrence fam and with some other branch members while we were helping a member move. Haha it was so much fun!

Sunday night we saw Jennifer (who also came to the party) and one of her aides was there, Flo, who loved church when they came last time. We read a chapter from the Book of Mormon and Flo took a copy for herself and said she'd read the chapters we assigned to Jen with her! So awesome. So we were able to pick her up as a new investigator and I'm excited to see where things go with her.

Okay also I have to end with some funny stories:

Sister Miner and I CANNOT stop laughing. This week my head has not been on straight and I keep mixing up my words. For example:

The elders called us and I answered by trying to say "hello" "hi" and "hey" all at the same time, so it came out as "HOI" hahahaha and no one has been able to let me live that one down hahaha

Also I was explaining a Christmas sweater that I saw to Sister Miner and I said "It said 'so tacky I tinkle' I MEAN TWINKLE" Hahahaha we couldn't stop laughing.

But our favorite funny story from this week happened on Sister Miners first night in Painted Post. We saw an investigator who is always drinking whenever we go over. We were trying to show her the Light the World initiative when her fiancé came in (also drinking) and was like "I have a fun fact for you"

her: "no, we're trying to watch this"

him: "Rudolph was a female"

her: "no he wasn't, leave us alone."
him: "yes, Rudolph was female!! Only female reindeer have antlers in the winter, look it up"
her: "you're a Jehova's Witness, you don't know anything"
him: "look it up!"

her: "Fine! Sorry ladies, one second...*looks it up*.... he's right..."

him: JUMPS off the couch and ran all over the house yelling "THAT'S RIGHT. RUDOLPH WAS FEMALE"

Sister Miner and I were literally CRYING it was the funniest thing of my life. So, there ya go. Rudolph was female. MERRY CHRISTMAS!! :)

xoxo

Sister Rodriguez

1-4 Sneak Peek/Behind the scenes of our Christmas Card

JENKINS and Gavito at transfers. Such bros

We were walking out of an apartment building when I saw this. It honestly was placed there for me to see. It brightened my day so much and was a good little reminder.