Dear everyone... drink a cup of water for me, wash a pair of clothes for me, and shower for me... cuz it's been a week since i washed my clothes and the water we have smells really bad and i haven't washed for 3 days... gross right?? This is the life i live. We have a 5,000-liter tank behind our house that a house runs to from way up the mountain and it's hooked to a pipe. so when the dam opens the water fills the pipe and it comes down and fills the tank... if people don't notice that water is flowing; if they do, then they brake your pipe (which is just PVC) and steal your water.. that was a big problem last transfer. This transfer the dam changed their pipe and we need to pay 80,000 le ($20.00) so that they will connect our pipe to the new pipe.... so ya... wata no dae ah. Tomorrow we (our district) will be going down and buying sachets of water... small bags (500 ml) of water that are partially purified and we'll be using them to take a shower.... i don't tell you to scare you cuz we'll be fine... but i tell you this so that maybe you'll understand why its so necessary to save water whenever you can. Please save water... the last thing i want is to come home to a place that is run like this when it comes to water.... but anyways now to the good news!! This week we opened a new branch!!! And not only a new branch but the Allen Town branch that is located right smack dab in the middle of the Allen Town area... my area!! Why is this cool??? Well i'll tell ya... Sunday we had 15 new investigators at church... so that means we now have 21 progressing investigators... and if they continue to come to church... on 22 March we will be baptizing 11 people!!!! WOOOOHOOOOO!!!! Maybe i'll bathe after the baptismal service is over.... i'm starting to feel like success is directly related to your smell... the more ripe you smell the more ripe the fruits of the field are.... Chad..... try it out!! I promise you can't go wrong with it! Just make sure your companion does it together... your one in purpose....BE UNIFIED! Anyways something that i really love about being a missionary is that you're pretty much a big brother to all the little kids... like Wednesday we went to the new road to direct the bus to our house to drop of the new missionaries from Bo and we were standing there and an okada man (motorcycle taxi) yells something to us from behind us and i was like thinking "no don't call me over there i don't need a ride" but i turned around anyways and i heard him yell "she wants to cross the street will you help her?" I follow his outstretched arm to see who he's pointing at and i see the cutest girl i've ever seen here!! She was about 3 feet tall, maybe 5 years old with braided cornrows, standin in her purple and yellow plaid dress school uniform, and a backpack on that was meant for a 15-year-old so it was bouncing off the back of her calves as she walked... sorry Jess... cutest girl i've seen. So we walk her across the street and it wasn't a dirt road with a few cars, this is the new highway were all the shipments come through to go to Makini or Bo and there are a ton of taxis that are on the road. And there is no such thing as slow on this road... so we helped her across no problem. It was way sweet!! Anyways that's all for this week!!! Malloway!
Elder Rogers
one more thing. So here in salone the toilets aren't hooked up to running water so how you flush it is you take a bucket of water and dump it into the toilet to flush the "waste" down the toilet and out into the cement whole in the backyard... so the really crappy(haha get it... crappy! cuz im talking about poop! And you all thought my mission would make me mature;)) thing is that with no water.... you no can flush di toilet....... ohhhh salone:)
Well Transfer 3 has come and gone and i'm in transfer 4 now which means by the end of this transfer i will be 6 months on mission... woooohoooo!! Sometimes it goes so fast and days like today just make me want to stay here! So Elder Barrick and i will be staying in the same apartment in the same area so no changes for us except that we will be receiving two missionaries into our apartment to make it a 6 man apartment and Elder Obeng-Poku will be receiving a brand new missionary so that'll be fun! Not too much goin on around these parts other than the usual walk around, sweat, and teach the coolest people in the world! Oh i do have a new best friend!! He's probably the coolest guy ever and if i wasn't a missionary me and him would just chill all the time! His name is Ibrahim and he lives right across from our compound.. he's a funny guy. He's only 8 years old but man i love that kid! Life here in Africa is the sweetest... it gets better and better every day and honestly if i had an AC i wouldn't have any reason to go home (with the exception of my family of course!) But honestly i wish all you guys lived here and could meet the people i get to meet everyday! My mission is definitely teaching me how to be patient, work hard, and put my clothes away:) That's all for this week!! Love you all!! Malloway!
-Elder Rogers
Chad: Keep goin hard man
Jake: If you don't email me then that means you didn't read this and I'm gonna send you a cobra...
So this week because Elder Nwaokonko is dying next week his recent convert gave him a chicken.... not dead either. So we named it after him, thus being called Henry Jr. So anyways this chicken has been living with us since Saturday night and we fed it rice and gari until this morning when we...... well i'll save the details for myself but we're eating him tonight. So that made this weekend pretty interesting.
So Tuesday i gave the district instruction on Listening. Listening to 3 things specifically... 1-Listening to your companion. 2-Listening to the Holy Ghost. 3-Listening to your investigators. I have it all written down and i'll give for a family home evening in ya know like 20 months or so but all you need to know is that it was one of the sweetest things ever! I love giving instruction because it gives you the opportunity to study so much stuff and to look for the topic that would be best inspired so you get a ton of sweet studying in and you only share small so your knowledge grows so much!! It was so awesome! Almost even... ya know... Amazing!
So Monday we went and played football against the branch and man that was so crazy cuz ya know i'm a white boy and i've never played football in my life and ya that was fun cuz being a missionary you kinda just have to make a fool of yourself sometimes... it makes people love you more. So that's pretty much what i would do... try, fail, and be laughed at. It kinda got a little annoying but whenever they would laugh at me i would just think to myself, "If only you saw what i could do with a lax stick and ball." That seemed to cheer me up!
So my packages finally came! Thank you slaters and everyone who signed my giant paper (uhhhh tanner i couldn't find yours......:)) Anyways i cut my hair and man i feel so much better! But i did it in style first... i have some pictures of the SWEETEST MOHAWK ever that i gave myself... it was so sweet! I wanted to keep it but ya know i don't think people would take me serious with that. Also Grandpa thank you for the money! That's always nice to receive.
So just a few things this week that i wanted to remind you all of..
1-HAPPY VALENTINES DAY
2-HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOMMY!!!!!!(everyone call him)
3-Annika....... YOU ARE STINKING OLD ON MISSION!!! YOU'RE DECAYING WHERE YOU STAND!!
That's all.... SSSso i almost forgot!! Wednesday we were sitting there studying and all of a sudden i see this shadow cross my face and i was like what was that... then i see it come shooting back out the door it came in..... While we were studying a big bird came to check out the apartment... flew in next to my face flipped around in the kitchen and headed back out!! That was pretty eventful!!
So this week was crazy busy and in the past we've only had very few investigators at church but this week we had 9 come!! Oh how happy i was!!!
Anyways that's all from over here... Elder Garcia(Jayden) Has just barely gotten to Africa so now he's joined the club over here... even if he's like 10 countries away from me! Thought you might wanna know!! Love you all so much and enjoy your week!! Malloway!!!
-Elder Rogers
Hello to month number four marker and week 5 of the transfer. This transfer is going by so fast!!! So this upcoming Saturday we have one baptism. His name is Benjamin Turay and he is like one of the coolest guys ever! I sent you guys a letter about his daughter and how sweet she is so let me know when you get it... it should be like in a month or so! Which with the way time is going right now should be no time at all!!
So this week my heart is broken.... Samuel's wife lives in England and Monday night he received a call from her to come to her in England... he left Tuesday morning and tried to call us but we were in our district meeting..... so we found all this out from Benjamin who lives next door. I just want him to come back.. I'm not done with him yet!! But honestly i'm not to worried cuz 1- at some point i will see him again.. maybe not here but i will. and 2- i just get this feeling that i don't need to worry about him. With his story if he ever runs into some missionaries again he's going to join the church.. i just know it. It just sucks cuz i've never met another person here that i've had such a strong connection with... anyways today we are going to go play some soccer against the branch missionaries and our investigators and i bought a ball so i've been practicing small and i'm gettin pretty good so i'll let you know how that goes. This last week we went on exchange and i was in my own area with Elder Obeng-Poku. A super sweet Ghanaian man. It was soo much fun! Other than that there really isn't too much else to say. Tomorrow i'm giving the District Instruction for the district meeting so that should be pretty interesting and fun. Something that i've realized about serving a mission is you get really comfortable being in front of people. Also this week i learned how to cook tomato stew!.... So. Good. When i get home we are going to enjoy!!! This upcoming week i'm learning how to cook potato leaf and cassava leaf so i'm pretty excited for that!! I'm still workin on getting letters out to all of you! OH!! I want you guys to see what i'm learning to speak at the moment so the following sentence is Mendai and i'll let you try to figure it out and i'll tell you what it means- Ngi colah K Gaeywo nya nyaka kaylay aheyama go loogay a gay. Good luck;)
-Kaenahoovay Rogers
