September
10, 2014
We said
good bye to Elder Rodriquez this evening.
The three of us had tears as we hugged him one last time and put him on
the plane to go home to mom.
Elder
Rodriquez has been feeling like he needed to go home. He had received just a little information
from home that his father (actually step father – but the only father he had
ever known) had left the family. He had
heard his mom was selling sandwiches on the street to survive. He felt the need to go home and help. We had him call his Stake President last week
and his Stake President encouraged him to stay and he would check on his
family. Elder Rodriquez’s family lives
in a small pueblo four hours away from the Stake President.
Elder
Rodriquez had a good week, but the thoughts persisted. He came into the office on Tuesday for another
interview. Keith left him in his office
to call home. When the Elder came out of
the office, he was emotionally distraught.
His father had indeed left home because he had died. He died 2 months ago. His mother can hardly get out of bed, and
needed him home.
Elder
Rodriquez comes from a part member family.
He hopes to be able to bring the rest of his family to our Savior Jesus
Christ. He has gone home to poverty and
a difficult situation. We pray that our
Heavenly Father will give him the strength to live his convictions and help
raise his family to a better life – and we cried.
E. Rodriguez' story is going with me to seminary in the morning. We talked this morning about calamities that come into our lives and our kids have some major ones, but we mostly have a 1st world support system to cushion the blow. Thanks for these "mortality memes". Norm
ReplyDeleteHow can we help him? do you have an address we can write to him? I am a parent of a missionary in your mission and I enjoy reading your blog. We do not speak spanish so if we write a letter to him in english can he have it translated? Let me know.
ReplyDeleteKathleen Lopez
We would be happy to forward letters to him from the mission office. That is very thoughtful of you! I use "English to Spanish" site on the web. I type in word, copy and paste it into this site. It then translates it for me. I then copy and paste it back to a word document. Works pretty well! Thank you for caring and for your missionary!
ReplyDelete