Texas Roadhouse

This week was a good week for studies. Elder Riddle got super sick this week so we were inside Friday through Sunday... i studied. I set a goal to finish the standard works by the end of this year so i go started and i read from 2 Nephi to Alma chapter 5. I'm starting to feel a little burnt out but once i hit those war chapters i'll be all good! Something i noticed as i was reading is simply that the wicked don't acknowledge the Lord and the righteous acknowledge His hand in all things. So that's how you can tell if you are wicked or righteous... if you notice the hand of the Lord or if you just blow it off as a personal success or a "coincidence". 
Thursday was the highlight of the week for sure! We went down to the stake center in Mobile for some interviews with President Smith. It's always super nice and uplifting to go down and sit with President and talk to him about anything. I got some really good advice from him on how to improve my life and improve as a missionary. After the interview President and Sister Smith took Elder Riddle and i out to eat at Texas Roadhouse and that was way awesome to get to go with them to dinner and just spend some time with them... It was probably the best Thursday i've ever had on my mission.  Anyways that's all for this week!
-Elder Rogers

Priceless emails from Africa

Ryan and I each received an email from Braxton's last companion in Sierra Leone, Elder Shadrack Kwame Appiah.
They are so kind and humble, we wanted to share them.

Dear Father,
Am grateful to write to you at this time, let me introduce myself small am Elder Appiah serving in Nigeria Calabar Mission. I serve with Elder Rogers at Sierra Leone, and it was very grate to be with him i like his courage and his desire. So Father hope all is going on well with you and the family there my greetings to them all take care thank you. 

Sweet Mother,

Am grateful to write to you, hope all is well with you there am doing good on mission, this is Elder Appiah at Nigeria Calabar Mission, serve at Sierra Leone first but at this time am reassign at this place, it going on well with me hear and although is not the same, i just took your mail from Elder Rogers, my last and formal companion in Sierra Leone because of the love he showed me than you for sending him on mission to have met him. Thank you hope to hear from you.

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!!!!

Hey everyone

Hey everyone this week was super busy with doing planning and goin all over the stake on exchanges with other missionaries... Did tons a knockin, preachin, and teachin! Got to speak in church on charity and service and i got to talk a ton about SaLone! Anyways that's about all for this week! It's really short cuz we're really busy which is a good thing!!!
-Elder Rogers

Since Braxton's emails are so short and uninformative, I'll update you on what I know.  He has been a zone leader since his transfer to this area, which might explain the lack of detail in his emails and he and his companion always being really busy.  I asked him how his zone is doing.  His response: "Everything here is going great!  The zone is doing super well and we've had 3 baptisms this year so far which is good.  It's been cold lately, but it's all good!  I've missed the cold weather so much!"

A cop car in our area.... in the black community.

The worst day of my life!
When I asked him for an explanation his response was:
"hahahah uhhhhhhhh.......well,
there was a missionary in our district
that need to get a colonoscopy,
so in order to build unity with him
 (<--- excuse to do something journal worthy/stupid)
 we went through the cleansing process with him."

We received this picture via text from someone who had fed Braxton and his companion lunch.
We LOVE these random texts!

just walkin, talkin, and teachin

Wassup wassup! I'm doing great out here in Atmore with Elder Riddle. We've been going around seeing a lot of the member and trying to find who will be open to having us visit them. The work in Atmore is tough but we are working hard and doing our best to keep a positive attitude. We've been going on a lot of exchanges with missionaries throughout the stake of Mobile, Alabama so we've been really busy. We still have a great time and love the members out here. There really wasn't that much different this week than any other week.... just walkin, talkin, and teachin. Love you all and hope that you had a great week!!!
-Elder Rogers

Beef Jerky + Powerade = Christmas Eve Dinner‏

Wassup everyone? Everything is goin great! There really isn't that much to say this week. For Christmas Eve we drove all day delivering packages to the members in our zone. It took all day and for dinner we ate really crappy and gross beef jerky because McD's apparently closes out here for Christmas Eve... Other than that, Skyping for the first time was quite the experience and it was super awesome to see everyone! We had a lot of appointments with members this week to try and get to know them the best we can. One of them is Brother Allan Sizemore and he lives in an assisted living home next to our apartment complex so we went over to see him and what you do when you go over there is you sit down and play checkers with him and talk... and it was really fun! And frustrating! We couldn't beat him! I was having flashbacks of trying to beat Grandpa Rogers at checkers and how i could never even get close cuz he was too good... same concept. But we'll get him next week!!!! Anyways i think that's about it! A big Thank you to everyone who sent me a gift! I will do my best to write a letter to you but just give me a few weeks! Love you guys!
-Elder Rogers

Sweet Home Alabama‏

Well everyone I've finally done it. I've been transferred to somewhere that is not the main city of the mission... and where I'm at is not a city at all. This is a town. I went from the city of Tallahassee, which is the furthest east in our mission, to the town of Atmore, Alabama, which is almost as far west as you can get in our mission. It's a 5-hour drive and it felt like it. Anyways I'm in Atmore, Alabama. This is a small town... really small. My new companion is Elder Riddle. And it is the craziest thing that we never met before our missions. He's best friends with a lot of my friends from Junior High and he graduated in 2013 from Northridge. He's from Layton. We are almost the exact same person. We have the same likes and dislikes... we're so alike that it's a little weird sometimes. We both just got put together in this area so that means we are whitewashing which is a term that is used if you are taking over an area and you are both brand new to that area. We are having so much fun! We haven't had a dull moment yet and we are killin it out here in this small town. Saturday we attended a baptism in our building. You could fit the whole building into the cultural hall of the stake center back home and that isn't an exaggeration. Sunday night we had our Branch Christmas party/dinner. It was really pretty fun and it was great for Elder Riddle and i to be able to meet all the members... all 45 of them.... and introduce ourselves. It's kinda nice to not have a giant ward cuz you can meet everyone and get to know everyone really well. Funny story for the week... So Sunday morning at about 3 a.m. i wake up cuz i drank a ton of water and have to use the restroom.. well I'm in a new apartment and I've been in it for about four days at this point and its setup is similar to the one i came from except for when you're in my room the bathroom is outside of the room and there are two walk-in closets instead of one walk-in closet and the other door is the bathroom (that's how it was in Tally). So i get up and we had previously put bedsheets over the windows so that it would be really dark in our room and its so dark that your eyes don't adjust to the amount of light coming in cuz there is no light in the room... not a single ray. So i get out of bed and its dark and I'm disoriented so i head to the door that i think will lead me to the bathroom.... and i walk in and feel the walls for the light and i can't feel it and all i can feel is clothes which was super confusing but i still felt around and so i thought maybe there is another door in here that leads me to the bathroom so I'm feeling around for a knob and i can't find one and i can feel that the back wall is maybe 3 feet from me and i was so frustrated cuz i had to go BAD and i can't find the stupid door to get out of the room so I'm panicking as well (keep in mind that its 3 in the flippin morning). So anyways i am just so annoyed and frustrated cuz i can't find the way out and I'm trapped in my room... so i go lay back in bed and that's when i realize that i had gotten up and walked to the wrong wall and i had walked into my walk-in closet looking for a way to the bathroom... so i got back up and went to the bathroom no problem... so that's it... i stood in my closet for 5 minutes or longer trying not to wet my pants.. moral of the story.. there is such thing as "too dark." Well if that wasn't funny then sorry... that's how it is round these parts uh Alabama... gots ta laugh at the dumb stuffs. I want you all to know that this Christmas i have learned so much and my testimony has changed so much. I have felt a deeper gratitude for our Savior and what he went through for us. He is our Gift and he brought us The Ultimate Gift. Love you guys! Merry Christmas!
-Elder Rogers
New Address-
710 E. Laurel St. #206
Atmore, AL. 36502