Welcome Home

     My family was so happy to see me.  They greeted me with signs and hugs.  Then we went to dinner at Texas Rodehouse.  My parents had a plaque made for me with a funny picture in to.  We changed it out latter, but I had a great laugh when I saw it.

Weekly email 12

     Hey everybody sorry this email is late. So basically this week was just a normal week nothing too special. But all the missionaries who are leaving got together and talked with the mission president and his wife and it was really good. We got a lot of advice about life after the mission and stuff like that. Then we all went to the temple which was fantastic and afterwards we went to the cafeteria and had prime rib. It was pretty darn good! 

    The only other cool thing was I burned a tie. So with missionaries there's a tradition where you burn certain clothing items after certain amounts of time. So I burned a tie because it was falling apart. And that was about it, I'm gonna be home this Wednesday so this is the last email. I love you all and thanks so much for listening to my mission story!

-Elder Rogers 

Weekly Email 11

Hey everyone! 

     So this week was fairly uneventful. We just did the regular missionary work and didn't really get any new people who want to be taught about our church but that's okay. 

     The best part of this week was conference. They made a big change in the church, which most of you are familiar with, that instead of three hours of church on Sunday it is two. But they said that because we've always emphasized teaching more of the Gospel in the home but we weren't super good about that. So it's not shortening the time of church for the sake of more time at home. It's so there's more time at home for Gospel study with the family which I think is super cool. 

     But other than that nothing really happened. We got news that Elder Holland (for those who don't know he's an apostle in our church or a guy that's high up in the church that gives really good spiritual talks) is going to be coming to the Mission and having a conference with us. I get to shake his hand!!! (Probably) I'm super excited! 

      Other than that it's just the news that I go home in like 9 days so that's pretty exciting. 

Well I sure love you all and hope everything is going well with you!

-Elder Rogers 

     Oh and also we had Greenie Graduation, which is essentially when all the new missionaries (me) go meet with the mission president and show that we know the first three lessons and can teach them on our own. So that wasn't stressful at all (sarcasm). But it went really good and then I got a certificate saying I'm a "master teacher" which I am not. But it was nice we got a good lunch afterwards too. 

     Also here's the very few pictures we got this week. The first is Greenie Graduation and the second is from exchanges with Elder Debrine.

Weekly email 10

     Hey everybody! We're getting pretty close to the end of my mission but don't worry I'm still gonna be working hard every day until I go home. 

     This week was crazy and not a ton happened. 

So basically last Monday was just a regular day but we had a great dinner. We went to this Asian buffet and it was awesome, but about halfway through the dinner my companion noticed that my neck was getting kind of red. So I went to the bathroom to check it out and I was covered in hives. Now mind you this is super weird because I'm not allergic to any foods, just penicillin, which I hope wasn't sprinkled on the food. But we "rushed" back to the apartment and I got some benadryl in me. We called up the mission nurse and she said to go to the ER but by the time we got there the hives were gone so we just went home. BUT the next morning I woke up with way more hives than before so we went to the ER and they gave me a steroid shot in a sensitive area (I'll let you guess where) and said that I should see an allergist, they also said I should have an epipen but those are expensive and I wasn't having any breathing problems so I think I'll be fine without it. But then we went home and I slept. And every single day this week I have woken up covered in hives and with a pretty high fever so I'd just take some benadryl and go to bed all day. 

     But then Saturday came, and we had a baptism that we had scheduled for that night so we were gonna go even if it killed me. But this whole week I didn't do anything to prepare for the baptism (I'm new to this so I don't know what all requirements there are) but my super veteran companion forgot everything too. But luckily God is good and literally everything fell into place last minute and worked out fine. We got all the necessary forms and approval and people where they all needed to be and it was great. I've taught this family since like the first week I got here and it was amazing to see them make the decision to be baptized and join the church. It was super touching to see them all do it together as a family and see how close they were. 

     But yeah I'm still sick but it's just a fever now and I'm pretty sure it's going away anyway. That's about it for this week. Sorry no pictures of the adventures.

But I sure love you all!

-Elder Rogers