Elder Andersen

This week was crazy!! All of the missionaries got to travel to the mission headquarters in Tallahassee to attend a meeting that Elder Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve would be holding there! It was quite the trip! Elder Riddle and i along with 8 others traveled together and stayed with the second counselor in our mission presidency, President Aukema. We stayed out in his barn! His barn has an upper room that we all crammed into. It wasn't very big but it was a lot of fun to have a giant sleepover! Thursday was the meeting so we went and got to shake hands with Elder Andersen and then he spoke to us about honesty and faith. It was a very spiritual meeting and honesty is something that everyone needs to apply so it was a very applicable doctrine that was discussed! Our mission president and his wife spoke as well and Sister Smith (President Smith's wife) spoke to us and shared a story that i'd like to share with you guys to let you get a feel for what kind of a guy my mission president is. So they served as a mission president and wife in the Marshall Islands and it sounds like it was rougher than Sierra Leone so they are tough people but one time they had to go to a different island and it required a boat ride so they get on this boat and leave the island headed toward the island they needed to be on. As they are going a tropical storm hits and it sounds like it was a lot like one of the storms in the movie "the other side of heaven." Water in the boat up to the mid-shin, waves bigger than the boat, rain coming at a horizontal direction, dark, cold, etc. Sister Smith being the faithful person she was, went to the back of the boat and started to pray. She was terrified, as i'm sure we all would have been. As she was praying the words of the song "master the tempest is raging" were rolling through her mind. Later she found out that in this same moment that she was praying her husband (President Smith) was standing at the helm of the boat singing at the top of his lungs.... the theme song to Gilligan's Island. Life is grand over here in the FTM! I wish you all a blessed day!
-Elder Rogers

Me and my homies!!! 
These guys were my first two companions...... 
Jorgensen and Milne. 
They are in my top five for sickest companions! 
Best companionship by far... 
there was a reason that it only lasted 2 weeks... 
cuz FSU couldn't handle us!!!!