Birthday dinner surprise!

From letter to mom:

Texas Roadhouse was so good! We had quite an awesome experience there too haha. So we go in and we hand pick 2 of their biggest steaks fresh cut, 2 20 oz bone-in rib eyes, so they got those cooking haha then we ordered a appetizer sampler, 2 cokes, and some cherry grenadine (to mix in the cokes, it's delicious) then we both got our steaks "smothered" which means covered in saute'd mushrooms and onions and then I got fries and fresh veggies on the side and Elder Collie got a cup of chili and a salad on the side. So much food! We took a bunch home with us haha. The waitress brought us the check, $70, perfect! So I gave her the gift certificate and she was like "did you not look at the check?" and I'm thinking oh jeez we went over or something haha, but I look down at the very bottom and it says "Balance Due: $00.00" a less active member saw us walk in and told her to add our bill to his! We went up and said thanks and everything but he really didn't want to talk to us haha I guess he wanted it to stay secret. But man how cool is that?! I told Elder Collie I feel bad for the guy now though because he's probably thinking we were buying missionary budget 5-10 dollar meals and he's about to get a $70 check haha, hopefully that didn't take him back too much haha, I would have not spent nearly as much if I knew he was paying haha. This area rocks!

Pictures from Quantico and Colonial Heights!

Elder Gronning and Elder Collie with new member Brittany Rowan!

Elder Gronning with the best family ever! The Giacomini Family



Elder Gronning and Elder Skinner with brand new member-Thomas!



Another good week in good old green VA!

Things are great here in beautiful VA! But when aren't they? haha. We had quite a full week of all sorts of sweet missionary work. We had lots of great lessons with a number of the people we are teaching and found 5 more to start teaching as well. Part of the new people we've started teaching was a family of four who is as solid as solid gets! They are a woman named Sherry and her 3 kids. She is going through a very very rough time right now. Her husband abandoned the 4 of them this past April and took everything with him, including their money. I guess he has had a rough life as well and just really snapped one day. So she was left alone with her 3 kids ages 9 and twins age 7 and halfway through full time schooling to become a nurse. So things were bad. Then one day she had a young man knock on her door selling trash services (out here everyone has to pay individual companies for trash pick up instead of the state) he asked her about her previous trash service and why it was cancelled and she said that her husband had cancelled it and he's since left. Well I guess the guy could sense that she was in quite a bit of distress about the whole thing, even though she says that she is very good at hiding her emotions, he said "I don't usually do this because I'm at work, but can I pray with you and share something that might help?" She isn't a very religious person but she said that would be fine, so he started teaching her bits and pieces about the Gospel. Well she immediately felt the spirit, which was something she's never felt before so she was kinda freaking out haha. She was expecting it to go away but as long as this young man (who it ends up was a member of the church from Utah out here doing summer sales) was teaching her she just felt it super strong. Before he left he gave her our number, but she got too busy and never called. A week layer though she was at her mom's house and the same young man knocked on the door and she felt the spirit again! So this time she knew she needed to get a hold of us haha. Well our entire first lesson with her she was just in tears of joy the entire time, she loved it! We came back later in the week to help her change all the locks on her house with a member from the ward and while the member and I changed  the locks Elder Collie taught her pretty much everything about the gospel haha, all the commandments and everything, she committed right there to stop drinking alcohol, tea, and coffee and to give up smoking and has been doing fantastic on it ever since haha. She came to church, cried all throughout sacrament meeting, and has decided that her and her kids want to get baptized on August 24th. So solid!!! We are coming back this week with the relief society president, who is now really good friends with them, and are going to teach her and the kids all together. The Lord is awesome! He really is preparing everyday to receive the gospel, all we have to do is open our mouths and share it! So that was a sweet experience for sure.
We also had a baptism this Saturday that was super spiritual as well. A young woman named Brittany Rowan who got baptized. If I can find someone else's camera cord to use I will send a picture from it haha. So needless to say I love this area! My companion is awesome, roommates are awesome, the ward is sweet, and the work is excellent! What a great place to finish my mission :) Well sorry this one ended up a bit long, just a cool experience I needed to share! I hope you all have a had a great week as well! The Gospel is true! I love and miss you all lots and I will talk to you next week!

Happy Birthday Elder Gronning!

Fishing on Pday 7/22/13

Hello from the Country!!

Well here I am in my new area! Chesterfield VA. Probably the last area I'll serve in haha. It is the polar opposite of every area I've served in so far though and it is awesome! i went from being on the northern border of our mission to the southern haha. It is very rural, so nice to be out of the city! It's huge compared to Quantico and man is it beautiful. I'll be taking lots of pictures this week. My ward here is called the Swift Creek Ward and I'm in the Swift Creek A area. There's two sets of missoinaries serving in our ward, an A and a B. B is on bike and we have a car. Another cool thing about the area is we have a house! It's not a members home or anything, just a house for the 4 of us, so sweet! I guess that's pretty common here in the Richmond mission, they say it saves us a ton of money as a mission. I'll also be taking lots of pictures of that haha. My new companion is Elder Collie from Eldorodo Hills CA. We get along great. He is been out 6 months and is the boldest missionary I've ever met haha. He invites literally everybody to be baptized as soon as he meets them and has no problem testifying when people don't agree with us, he is a great missionary. He played football for BYU for awhile before his mission and football runs in the family from what he tells me haha, so much that his brother plays for the Colts in the NFL. He's a really cool guy though and him and I are having a great time.
Our area is on fire with people to teach as well! we have quite a bit of people we are teaching at the moment 10 of which are currently have agreed to be baptized on various weekends in the next month or two. 4 of which we have committed to a date with since I got here Thursday haha. Definitely not from anything I did though, don't take that as me being arrogant or anything haha, it just shows how quick the work is progressing! The people are so much more humble here! It rocks! This will be an awesome place to serve for my last 3 months. Our roommates are awesome as well, we have Elder Francis (from salt Lake) and Elder Adams (from Lehi, he is brand new to the mission field).
My birthday went great too! Thank you to everyone who sent me cards, emails, and packages this past week! You made it a great birthday for me away from home. We didn't do a ton of celebrating because no one really had a heads up haha but Elder Collie somehow secretly got Elder Francis and Elder Adams to go buy me a card and Oreos and had the 3 of them sign it and surprised me by singing happy birthday all of a sudden while we were planning that night haha. It was an awesome surprise. So needless to say it has been an awesome week! Lots of change, but change is good.You can't grow without change haha.
We've had a great start to our P-day so far too, we woke up at 5:15 this morning and went fishing with one of our investigators on the river, it was sweet! We didn't catch a ton though haha I caught our only fish and it was like a 3 oz sun fish haha. Well I hope you all have had a great week as well! I will be sending a second email with a few pictures from my new area but I will have more next week! I love and miss you all!
Also my new address is:

Elder Cody Gronning
3803 Brevard Ct.
Colonial Heights, VA 23834

Funny story from Elder Skinner's 7/15 email

Elder Skinner is Elder Gronning's companion and shared a funny story in his email to his family this week. I thought it would be good to share on Elder Gronning's blog.
"Elder Gronning and I arrived at the church at 5:00 to fill the font. We cleaned it out first and started the water. We realized that we left our cameras out in the car so we went out to get them and when we were at the car I asked if we had the keys to the church.... nope. We frantically walked around checking each door and each window and no luck. All fonts have a drain... Well ours is broken and the water is on full blast. So we called around and found someone with keys to come and unlock the church so we could keep the font room from overflowing... Took 30 minutes before they arrived and when they did we ran through the church and burst into the font room and the water was above the glass!!!!! Ok not really. It was up to the carpet! So we ran in and shut off the water and closed the drain and all was well. The baptism went great and Thomas bore his testimony afterwords and it was so powerful."