Sister Rodriguez Mission Adventures in New Caledonia

                                                                      Light the World Campaign Kick off! sorry this is short, My week was good, usual missionary work, with little miracles everyday! found a cool family that i think are RLDS or used to be RLDS and just left their church and are in the middle of searching for another church, they are way cool and we have a lot of hope for them so keep them in your prayers for me! love you, and tell the family how much i miss and love them! ta fille,  soeur rodriguez 

okayyyy what happened this week.....hmm all the weeks keep on mixing together! things have been good, the normal work. last saturday we helped out in the garden of one of our investigators, planted oninons (she has a huge garden she works on it like all day everyday). but it was fun! she was super grateful, and she had some of here family there who are nonmembers and we got to talk to them about the gospel as well! anyway, working in the garden reminded me of the many saturdays spent at home in yard picking rocks, raking leaves or just doing yard work haha. other than that we had zone conference yesterday and monday as well. it was good seeing all the missionaries and seeing president and soeur granger! still getting excited for christmas and working hard! excited about the churchs light the world 25 days of service things! are you guys doing that as well? Soeur Rodriguez

okay, sorry if this email is short and quick, not a lot of time today. and also sorry about last week, everything was closed for the day of the dead so we didnt have anywhere to email. halloween was fun though! we had lots of kids stop by and handed out lots of candy, so that was fun.  As for the new sector, it is really pretty lots of mountains everywhere! it is also really hot! haha sun is starting to burn and my face is starting to get very very red haha i swear i put my sunscreen on every day but still i end up a nice shade of pink by the end of the day. We have been working hard though, trying our best right now to just find new investigators and people that are ready for the gospel! One story, not from this sector but from my last. so that training that soeur Chard and i did for our last zone conference, the one with the rocks and the sand and all that that i said . so before the conference we went in the woods near a lake to find some sand and while we were the...

Hey! All is well over here in koutio! soeur Chard and I are just working a way. Its been starting to get hotter and hotter (this might be gross to say, but i feel like i sweat soooo much, that means i am working hard though, right?) This week soeur Chard and i have been using the ukelele a lot which has been working out pretty well. We played right outside of mcdonalds last saturday near a bus stop, no one really talked to us, some people just stared so we were a little discouraged, not really sure what we were doing, but this morning we went to do our grocery shopping and one of the security gaurd stopped us and said "hey! you guys were the ones playing the music over by mcdonalds the other day right?" and we said "yah...." kind of worried he was going to tell us that we werent allowed to do that or something and then he said " that was really cool, i liked your guy's music" so! playing wasnt for nothing, if nothing else we made that guys day. Then...

 well this week has been really good. It was general conference so all of saturday and pretty much all of sunday we just watched general conference at the chapel! it was so nice to hear the voices of the apostels and to hear from our leaders. I dont think i have ever enjoyed conference so much until i watched it here on the mission. Besides that, this week was filled with a lot of contacting, we have been knocking tons of doors, trying to talk to everyone on the street, and also think of creative new things to do. Soeur Chard and i set up a family history table at the park, and just had people write down why they love their family and then we explained to them how they can know that their family can be together for ever, it was fun and we did have a fair amount of people that came up to us and just had the chance to talk about their family!  the banner "aimez vous votre famille?" means "do you love your family?" in other news, this week is the vacation ...

This first week with S. Chard has been awesome, she is great, and we have very similar work ethics and ways of doing things so it has been really great working together. She is super sweet, and there are a lot of moments where we honestly think we are like the same person. But shes great, we are hoping to work as hard as we can while we are together. We have been trying to come up with some new creative ideas for finding people, so ill let you know how they go this week haha not much more has happened this week, we had zone conference which went well, had all the missionaries together. Since S Chard and I are in leadership we had to give just like a 15 minute training, that i think went pretty well. Remember that lesson in young womens with the rocks, how you have to put in the big rock first and then add in the little stuff after? the good, better, best, kind of concept. We had the big rock as our missionary objectif, to invite others to come unto Christ. I think it went prett...

Bonjouuuuuuuuuur This week was pretty good! Lots of changes and stuff happening, it has been a busy week. Soeur Carbayal and I worked really hard together our last week, and it payed off. One day we were out contacting in a neighborhood where there was literally no one and every house had a gate on it so we couldnt knock on any doors or anything, it was hot and we were tired, we had walked around for a long time not seeing anyone to talk to. So we walked towards the ocean and just looked across the bay for some time, not really knowing what to do this next. then this younger lady came next to us, she was collecting rocks for something (she explained what, but it was in french so i missed that) my companion and i went up to talk to her, and just see if she would be interested in the gospel or the book of mormon, we gave her the book of mormon and asked her if she would read it and she said, definitley, she said that she thought we were a sign sent to her right then in the middle of...

  a picture that S. carbayal caught of me as we were waiting for the bus, pretty much expresses my feelings about talking in french over the phone. its hard enough to understand english on the tiny phone, let a lone french, its a struggle.  

okay this week! hmmmm we are getting toward the end of transfers, so its possible that change will be a coming! but still dont know, we find out friday. First photo is a picture of us at the "tours de magenta" pretty much the high light of our area. Its about 7 or 8 big and kind of sketchy apartment buildings. A lot of the missionaries dont really like the tours, but their not bad. the elevators kind of remind me of tower of terror thoguh, they are all dimmed and, small and its just a metal box with lots of graffitti on it taking us up to a lesson where we are hoping to share the gospel with someone. Soeur Carbayal and i like the tours though, not necessarily because of the buildings but because there are a lot of people there that we like a lot. The other photos are of our two youth investigators, Boris, who has been doing really good (although anytime we commit him to do something, he says hell do it if we make him cookies haha). And the other is Kura. th...

okayyyy, this week has been pretty good. Last p  day we went bowling as a district, and even thougyh for the tahtians it was their first time bowling (apparently they dont have bowling in tahiti) all 3 of the tahitians scored better than us 3 americans haha so that was funny. I had my exchanges with our sister training leader Soeur Chard which was fun, I just spent a day in her district and doing missionary work but with her. She is awesome, she is from utah i believe, but also lived in the east cost as well. we made pizza, at some mcdonalds, knocked on lots of doors, and also played our ukes and sang at the bus stops giving out some books of mormon, it was a good day. sunday night we had a fireside for the young men in our ward, and one of our amis Boris he gave a talk, it was so good! he is super close with a lot of the young men in our ward which is great and listening to him give a talk was way cool. 5 minutes before the fireside though one of the young men leaders ...

for relief society we discussed the talk from last conference about lifting up your eyes and opening your mouth, and coincidentally its been raining all this week so we took picutres of us lifting up our eyes and opening our mouths haha that was the talk from president choi from seattle! i love that talk 

okay this week hmmmmm what happened this week, oh! okay so we have a new investigator, her name is Terese, we found an old fils (or paper that we use to keep track of the lessons that we have taught to people) from 2012, she had already had 3 lessons but it was a long time ago, so we went to knock on the door, and she welcomed us to come back another day, she said that the missionaries had just never come back after the 3 lessons, and that she had seen missionaires on the street mutliple times since then but never talked to them. The first lesser on went well, we taught the restoration of the church, and i asked her if she believed in Christ, and she said, "yes, i saw jesus" my companion and i were kind of taken aback and we said, "oh, wait actually" from there she told her story. between the time she had last seen the missionaires and now, she had been in an accident and was in a coma for a week, she said that during this time she had talked to jesus...

okay this week, hmmmmm well transfers happened, spent most of last week with both my last companion and my new companion in a trio because my first companions new companion wouldnt be coming for a couple of days. haha did that make any sense...any way point is i spent a week in a trio with two tahitian companions! and spent my birthday with them too! since my birthday was p day we emailed, we ate at my favorite sandwhich place, and we went  home and played uno and made donuts it was a pretty solid day. this weekend there was a releif society activity for the stake. it was way cool they had each ward do an island dance as a show for everyone, the dances were way cool. and it reminded me of hawaii and the pcc. Besides that not much else is new, same invesitagators and same less actives that we visit since i am still in the same area, but new companion, so we are figuring things out together and discovering some new places. oh the flower crowns - apparently in tahiti ma...

This week has been pretty interesting, we did a hike called Kuendu beach as a district, it was way fun! since we had two that were finishing their missions this transfer, the tahitian sisters in our district made flower crowns for everybody it was way fun, and that view from the top of the hike was gorgeous, we were sad to say goodbye to Sœur davis and Sœur decady but still happy for them. oh! at the top of the hike i got my headstand ill send a picture! Besides that, there were lots of changes this week, we had transfers on monday! I am going to be staying in ouemo but i have a new companion, Sœur Carbayal, she is from Tahiti, she is really nice and laughs a lot. She actually got to New caledonia at the same time that i did, just 6 weeks ago. Not just that but technically i am training her, haha which is kind of weird but fun haha. the first 12 weeks in the mission field you are trained by another missionary, my 12 weeks got cut short i guess, and will technically be finish...