June 25, 2012 {Email}

In our apartment we now have 6 elders! The Bakaano elders are staying with us now because their apartment is not finished in their area which is right next to us. So we welcome Elder Barnett (England) and Elder Adair (Utah) to our sweet apartment. Last night we celebrated Elder Saili's year mark by burning shirts and eating Chips Ahoy cookies while playing Monopoly Deal. It was tight and the cookies were amazing. Today is Elder Saili's birthday so we had some elders over to make hamburgers with us. It was like an actual McDonald's right in our apartment. SOO good!!! I'm lovin' it. 

Our area is going pretty well right now. We've got some potential serious investigators. The only trick is to get them to church so they can have that spirit and be among the members. We will be switching to 9 o' clock this week so i think that will help us out. I know it will come if we just keep doing what is expected of us.

We visited Millicent (our recent convert) last night and watched The Testaments with her. It was very spiritual and Emmanuel is going to try again to quit his smoking and drinking. He really wants to hold the priesthood! Bishop Essien has been talking to him a lot so hopefully he can get working with the members more and not just us so that they can help him always since we will be leaving one day. And by the way Millicent is WAY pregnant! Emmanuel is way excited because he says it's going to be a boy which is what he has always wanted. So within the next few weeks we will find out! It's crazy because i've been seeing her through the whole process. Man, i guess i have been here a while if i'm going to be able to see the baby come! 

Everything is going well!! Our mission splits on Sunday, pretty crazy to think we will be separated from Kumasi.

I love you all!

Elder Rogers 

June 18, 2012 {Email}

Our area is once again kind of in a tough spot with progressing investigators but we're not too worried about it. We have been working a lot better with our sweet members to get it going. Even though we don't have much progress right now, we are definitely progressing with the members. They seem to be a lot more excited and concerned about the missionary work. If we can get them strong in the work then this area will be strong forever and that's what it's all about. I kind of feel like i am still here because i really know these members and they trust me so i need to be a part of making this push of getting them involved more. 

I had one of those "pay day's" as mom would call it. On Sunday, Victor showed up to church early. We had invited him to come and bless the sacrament. He was definitely nervous but he went for it. He messed up the first time but nailed it the second time. He had just a huge smile on his face when he looked at us and we gave him a thumbs up. That kid is going to do so much in the future. I hope we can get him to serve a mission later on. I love seeing members so happy and strong as they fulfill their duties. Victor is solid. 

Oh, we also did transfers this week. Everything went great! It was pretty cool to see all the new missionaries again. We have 10 new ones, 6 of them have gone to Kumasi. Down here we kept one from Australia, one from England and one from Western Samoa. Elder Saili was stoked to see the Samoan. They all had some big culture shock as we put them on tro-tro's to their new area ha. I remember that first day and how crazy it all was. That will be the last time i see new missionaries come in. Crazy. Have a great week everyone! 

Elder Rogers

May 27, 2012 {Letter}

I am so grateful for this time I've been able to serve a mission.  Looking at where I am now with my testimony, priorities, self-reliance and knowledge compared to before I came is a huge change.  I feel like an entirely different person when it comes to my mindset.  I now KNOW with a surety that this is the true gospel and Church of Jesus Christ.  Because of this I now KNOW the importance of staying active, reading the scriptures, listening to the prophets and sharing this gospel.  We are so blessed to have been born into the Church.  Our test is to stay faithful all the way to the end.  Aren't we lucky to have each other to help us out with that?!  Everything in this gospel is perfect, because it is founded by our Savior.  There are so many times that I just think about Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, President Thomas S. Monson and it all just clicks, it is all true.  Along with getting to KNOW all these things are true, my mission has strengthened me the most in my trust in God.  With Him all things are possible.  The way we are used as instruments in His hands is incredible.  He has led us into so many peoples path's so that we could help them find their way.  It has been so great to be that instrument.  One of the most valuable lessons I've learned here is the power of prayer.  I have so many experiences of my prayers being answered.  I don't dare to do anything big without counseling with Heavenly Father first.  I can't wait to come back and tell you all of the stories.  I want you all to know that yes these 2 years have been hard, but they will be the best 2 years FOR my life.  The things I have learned and experienced I will never forget.  I know I will be crying a river when my time comes to leave this amazing place.  I wish I could just bring you all here and stay here forever.  It's sad, but exciting to come home.  Please don't judge me too quickly when I get back ha I will be a bit weird. ha.  I love you all so much!

FOREVER STRONG

Elder Rogers

June 11, 2012 {Email}

This week was a great one! Everything went perfect with the baptism for Eric and Victor. The coolest thing was seeing Victor's mom, Efua, coming with him to the baptism and to church. Elder Lawton and I were working with her for the entire time i was with him but she couldn't take the step to come to church. She finally did this week! I really feel like Victor can have a big impact on her right now. We'll be sure to follow up on it this week to keep her going. The baptism was huge because we combined with Cape Coast 2nd ward and Mankessim branch. The room was packed tight and everyone was excited and ready to watch baptisms. Of course they are never perfect here in Ghana because the water isn't their best friend but we made it through ha. Elder Baird, a new missionary in Mankessim, got to baptize for his first time on mission so that was neat. It took me back to my first baptism and how excited i was. Baptisms never get old. That is why we are here is to help bring others unto Christ and when it happens, it is so true about how great our joy is. I love it!

A crazy thing happened the other day haha and please, mom, don't worry this doesn't happen often or ever.. But ok! We were walking by the park when we saw our homeless/drunk friend Peter who always says hi and follows us around talking about crazy things for a while. This time he really insisted that we should sit down and talk. We were in a hurry so we just told him sorry, we had to go. He got real upset this time and threatened to kill us and shoot us, which was out of the ordinary. So we started walking faster getting a little bit nervous. When we turned and looked at him we saw him reach into his pouch bag. Both of us were just in shock thinking he was going to pull out a gun.... We started walking really fast.. To our relief he didn't pull out a gun but instead pulled out a bunch of rocks and started throwing them at us! ha it's a good thing he's not a baseball player, but still it was crazy to have someone throw rocks at us. It was intense though, stuff like that never happens here. I actually was way scared for a second. Today we saw Peter again and he was cool and talking to us like normal. I can't imagine what that was like for all those prophets of old who got stoned and even killed. That's my fun story for the week! :)

So transfers.... well i'm going to be crying a lot saying goodbye to everyone here in cape coast. I've spent almost 10 months here and to have to leave these people is not going to be easy. This is my home and i don't want to leave it. It's a good thing i won't have to say goodbye to them for another two months. I'm very happy to continue doing the work here with Elder Saili. We're going to help bring more souls these next two months. I'm stoked!

Well, i hope all of you had and will have another great week! I love you all!

Elder Rogers

Elder Saili and me with Victor

Victor and his family

My recent convert, Alfred from Asuoyeboa! He called me when he was in Cape seeing the castle. He's still strong :)

My old high school classmate Rebecca and me

Rebecca's group took us to lunch

June 4, 2012 {Email}

We had a great week! Zone conference was awesome! We are taking a big focus on how we can better use the members to help us with this work. We need to create a bond between the recent converts and the members and we need to do that during the teaching process. So now we are going to do a better job of planning on how we can use the members to encourage investigators. It's going to be really cool to get this going. Our area is going good! We will baptize Eric and Victor on Saturday. Still working with a lot of others that are having some challenges. It's great though!! I'm way excited for saturday!! So the craziest thing happened yesterday! A group of white people showed up at church to worship with us and one of them happened to be a girl that i went to school with! her name is Rebecca Powell. It was so awesome to meet her again! her and the rest of her group were on some service trip for SUU so they came to church. It was pretty cool to have all of those strong members join us. They were bearing their testimonies in sacrament meeting and everything. I couldn't believe i met someone that i knew back home haha it's crazy. Today they invited us to join their group for lunch which was way good! I was completely nervous to have full on conversations with Americans because my English has changed so much, but they were able to understand us ha as far as i know. But yeah! That's what is going on here. The work goes on. This week is transfer news and will determine where i finish my mission :) i love you all! 

Elder Rogers

May 28, 2012 {Email}

This week has been wet! The rainy season has come and every morning it pours rain! I love the rain but it really puts a damper on the work. The whole town shuts down when the rain comes ha even the library! It's really funny. The other day we literally watched a huge rainstorm creep in from the ocean and make it's way towards us. It was crazy, i will try to attach a picture so you can see. It was just like this huge battle front crawling towards us and we could hear the rain on the rooftops like an elephant stampede ha. Not going to lie it was intimidating. It came and blasted us and then it left. It has really helped to keep the days nice and cool, which i love! To me it's like a cool spring day, but the Ghanaians don't like it at all though. They all put on jackets and hoodies ha.

 

The work is going good! We are still taking time with Ema because we can't seem to get enough time to sit down with him. It's been frustrating but we just gotta have patience and we will get there with him. We are preparing two others for baptism on the 9th of June! I don't know if you remember the family we were teaching a while ago, Justice and Efua? Well anyways we stopped by there to say hi to them the other day and Efua was way excited! She told us that her oldest son, Victor, had returned from school. He just graduated from High School so he will be around for a while. He was the reason we met the family in the first place. He was preparing for baptism, but had to go to boarding school. Now he is back and says he is ready to be baptized!! It was so sweet! Hopefully it will spark his family to gain that desire again. They have kind of lost it because Efua can't seem to stop her Methodist church. We will keep on keeping on with them :) The other person we are preparing is Eric. He is 26 years old and is a sweet guy! He is into all that cultural dancing and stuff. By the looks of him you would never know but he can't speak English. So we've been having translators help us and he is really accepting the message. So on the 9th they will be baptized. We are praying we can get Ema prepared by then too. 

 

Just so you all know we sadly had to kill the scorpion this week... Ha it actually isn't all that dangerous as long as you don't act dumb around it. We played with him a little and then Elder Ametewee had to kill it. Sad day. Mom, i would love to have a pet monkey but yeah some of the monkeys i send you pictures of are pretty vicious. The ones in Kumasi were ok but down here they use them to show to the tourists so the monkeys aren't happy. Maybe i'll find a tame one and take it home with me. But yeah, everything is great!! I love Ghana. Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Rogers

 

May 21, 2012 {Email}

We are working with Ema right now. We are not yet sure if his baptism will be this week or the coming weeks because he has been very busy and we haven't been able to sit down with him for a while. He is still really excited, we just need to get all the preparations done before he enters the water.

One crazy thing that happened this week is one of our roommates is keeping a scorpion as a pet in our apartment. After Stake Conference, the assistants came up and warned us that it had been done by him in previous apartments so we were to look out for it ha. Yeah, that made me real comfortable in the apartment... We ended up just asking him if he had scorpions and he said yes. :/ So we went to his room and inside a box was this black scorpion the size of my hand!! I have been sleeping in the same apartment with a scorpion for 3 weeks! He has to set it free though. He loves scorpions haha crazy guy! I hate those things. He is now considered the Scorpion King.

We are still working with some of our investigators that have run into that brick wall. It's not easy to help them past their challenges, but this work is on the Lord's time not ours. We just have to be patient. When they are ready, they are ready. This work is awesome! I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Elder Rogers

Cape Coast and Abura zone at Stake Conference

Our food! :) hot dogs and rice. With a PB&J on the side.

 

 

Our creepy pet scorpion!

 

May 14, 2012 {Email}

This past week was a busy one. We had zone leader council on Tuesday and then on Friday we went on splits to Moree and Yamoransa, which is always fun. We are gaining another focus in our mission and that is how we can better involve members in our missionary work. Not just in getting referrals but having them stay involved and be a part of the investigators progress so that they can have somebody there to help them when they have questions or concerns. That way they are building their foundation with the members in the ward they will serve in forever and not with the missionaries who will come and go. It's definitely going to take a lot of effort to get them involved and at lessons, bringing them to church and other stuff but it will be worth it. This past week we had Enoch (our ward mission leader/recent convert) come with us to Ema's place. He is learning about the restoration right now and we told Enoch about him before so he could know what we were going to discuss. Enoch bore a powerful testimony afterwards and Ema got way into it because he related to Enoch. We even ended up giving Ema a goal to be baptised on the 26th of this month! Members bring the spirit so much stronger!

Other than that not too much else happened this week... JUST KIDDING! I got to see my amazing family and talk to them for a bit! I love them so much and am so grateful to be a part of their family. Happy Mother's day mom! 

Have a great week!

Elder Rogers

Millicent's family

Saying goodbye to Elder Gibson

New companion Elder Saili

May 7, 2012 {Email}

Everything is just fabulous here in ghana with Elder saili. We have been having so much fun going around and meeting all the members and investigators. It's crazy to be showing ANOTHER companion the area. The members seriously love him. The work will keep going on here in Cape Coast! It was a fun week though doing the transfers and getting to see all the missionaries going there separate ways. Our zone had changes in every companionship except for one, so we got tons of new faces here. Today we had a powerful fufu feast so we could all get to know eachother. We've got a sweet zone! We met with Patrick again! He is improving on his "bad habits" but he is still really busy to be coming to church every week with us. It was great to see him again and to be able to help him out a little bit. We also found out this week that our Bishop has found Emmanuel's record number in Accra so he is officially a member and doesn't need to be baptized. That doesn't mean that we will stop working with him, we have got a sweet chart made up to help him overcome his "bad habit's" too. He is excited about it and ready to try again. It's just a gradual process and he is definitely improving. Elder Saili was so shocked when i introduced him to Emmanuel, "That's him?? He's huge!!" haha. But yeah things are going great! We finally got to see General Conference yesterday which was awesome! I love Elder Holland's talk! Well that's about it.. i can't believe this week is Mother's Day! Happy Mother's day to all you powerful Mother's out there! 

Elder Rogers

May 1, 2012 {Email}

This week was full of Elder Gibson saying goodbye to everyone. It was awesome to see how much they have appreciated all his hard work and love he has put into this area. He will definitely be missed by them and by me. He is a great missionary. So we were pretty busy doing that and trying to see our investigators. The serious investigators were very busy this week so we didn't get to much time with them. Hopefully this week when my new companion gets here we can get things going better with these people.Josephine came to church and we listened to Elder Holland's talk on the Lord of the Vineyard. She loved it. She is really enjoying her time at church. She will be in Accra this week so we have to wait until next week to see her again. Our zone had a powerful week of baptisms, we had 15 total. Our monthly goal was to get 26 and we only had 7 by the end of last week. Miracles do happen though and 5 out of the 7 companionships accomplished their goal left only with a couple that were just a little bit short, including ours. It's really cool to make these goals and have something to target for and then to have something to measure at the end. 22/26 is really good! It makes everyone pretty excited. 

My new companion is coming down from Kumasi today! His name is Elder Saili and he is from America Samoa. If i'm right he is coming up on 10 months in the field soon and was trained by Elder Hair. My apartment will be him and two other of his MT's ha. I hear he is a way sweet guy and he likes to play basketball and stuff. We will have fun. It's possible he could be my last companion. Well, i hope you all had and will have a great week!

Love,

Elder Rogers