Thursday, September 11, 2014

Elder Rodriquez

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.

3 comments:

  1. 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

    ReplyDelete
  2. How 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.

    Kathleen Lopez

    ReplyDelete
  3. 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