Farewell To A Great Area, Choctaw And A Great Companion, Elder Rodriguez

Well I'm finally getting transferred from Choctaw! I've been here for 8 1/2 months, so it seems crazy that I'm leaving. After getting the call I really couldn't sleep. These people have been on my mind day and night for months and now I'm leaving them. Elder Rodriguez is an amazing missionary and he's going to take care of everyone. We are meeting with our 3 main investigator families tonight and tomorrow, so hopefully we'll have baptismal dates for them and I'll know when to come back. I'm still freaking out that I'm leaving though. Elder Rodriguez has been so much fun to be with. The other night we were talking about Karate and fighting and all this stuff, so we decided that it was time for a luchador match. He told me to choke him and he would show me some moves how to get out of it, but he's really ticklish, so every time I would get close he would hiss at me and push me away. I couldn't stop laughing. I'm really going to miss this brother.

      Something that one of our leaders challenged us to do was to write down our spiritual experiences every day. It sounded kind of dumb at first, so I didn't do it enough, but we have been doing it every day lately and I am amazed how involved Heavenly Father is in our lives. Most of them aren't amazing experiences with great manifestations, but we constantly have simple promptings and we end up in the right places. I feel like I know Heavenly Father better each day after recognizing these things.
     This week has been a great way to end my time in Choctaw though. We got to have another youth missionary fireside last night and these youth are amazing. They took turns coming to the front and we would have them practice invitations, getting to know people, and making people feel comfortable at church. Then we would talk about it. They would always say really funny things though, so it was a good time. We didn't expect everything to be perfectly serious though because we want these youth to have a lot of fun as they're doing missionary work. They are naturals. A little fine tuning on inviting their friends to do things never hurts though. We had some great spiritual moments as well as we watched a couple messages the church has released and pondered about ways each of us can be better missionaries. I'm excited to hear about what they accomplish.
     Life is so good. I truly have loved these people and I am so sad to leave. Thanks for all your support. HFF!

 

-Elder Hoddy