My First Two Baptisms!

Alison with Elder Mata and me

 September 29, 2014

How is it going everybody?

          So this week has been so crazy, we have been working crazy hard and something super awesome happened, I got my first baptism!!! It was such a cool experience!  The 

 

picture is of a girl named Alison and she is 8 years old and her mom is a member but her dad isn´t so we taught her the lessons. We had that baptismal service at 12:30 right after church, and she was baptized by the other companionship in our area because we had a baptismal service together (they had a baptism also) and it was a lot easier for one of them to do it.

          The older girl is Tatiana and she is 14 years old and she is super awesome. We have been teaching her for around a month and her mother is a member and her dad is not a member. For her, we had the baptismal service at 3 o clock on Sunday and her uncle baptized her and he was baptized like only 4 months or so ago. Super awesome experience I am so glad we could share the message of the restored gospel with her.

         So next week is General Conference!!!! I'm so excited for that; it is going to be so awesome. I am pretty positive that I get to watch it in English, so that is really exciting. It is so awesome that we have a prophet and apostles in these latter days.  It is so important to me. It is so important that we do because if we didn´t, we would be totally lost.

       Last thing:  I got to try cow stomach and it was pretty gross, I am not going to lie. It is basically like the fat part of a steak like the really chewy part and that is all you are eating.

      So I hope you all have a great week and next week my p day is on Tuesday, so I won’t write until Tuesday next week.

Sincerely,

 Elder Rogers

Families on Motorcycles and Baptisms on the Way

Me and Elder Mata

September 21, 2014

Hello, 

       So this week went by so fast I couldn't believe it. I felt like it wasn't that long ago that I was writing, ha ha. Anyways, so this week is awesome! We got some firm investigators and probably will be having some baptisms next week!!!!!! 

 
      One thing really cool about Uruguay is that everybody drives motorcycles. Hardly anybody has a car; everybody just has a motorcycle.  It blew my mind how many people you can fit on a small motorcycle. I have seen a family of 5 on one: there were 2 adults and 3 younger kids. I can't believe how people just put their 5 year-old kid on the back of one and it is just normal, like they are not even scared of them falling off or anything.

      So my Spanish is coming along. I felt like I have learned more this week than I have any other week on my mission, so that is good, but I still have a lot to learn. I think it’s funny that in so many of my conversations I have the person I am talking to thinks that I understand everything and I just keep smiling and nodding my head, ha ha.    

      I am starting to be pretty familiar with the area now, I didn't realize how long it takes to get used to an area. Here they have street names and that can be really difficult sometimes because it takes us a while to try to find the name of the street and where they live, but that is okay. 

      Have a great week!!!!!

Sincerely,

Elder Rogers

All the missionaries living in our house

 

Some awesome pancakes that I made

2nd Week in Uruguay

This is me holding a machete


September 15, 2014

         So this week has been really fun.  We have been trying to get a lot more teenagers going to church. The missionarys before me started doing mutual. It's really cool, but the problem is that there are like no girls going so me and Elder Mata have been trying to get more of the girls to go. 

         So for Mutual last week we played ping pong and down here in South America ping pong is really big.  A lot of people play it. I didn't realize how much mutual can help people go to church, or just less-actives to go back to church. We actually have two kids named Julian and Lucas; they are 9 and 11. Their Uncle is the guy who is with us when we do mutual and they aren't members.  We have started to teach them and they are super cool. Most of the kids that go to mutual are 12 to 18, but since their uncle helps us we are happy to let them come, they have already been to church twice!!!

          The weather down here has actually not been that great, ha ha, It has rained for almost a week straight and it can be really cold sometimes. But it blows my mind how when it is cold no one is outside and for instance this week they canceled mutual because it was raining, I thought that was so weird because in the states that would never happen. But here a lot of people drive motorcycles or walk, so it makes sense.

         I hope you all have a great week.

Sincerely, 

Elder Rogers

 

This is my campanion Elder Mata

Uruguay Is Awesome!

September 8, 2014

            Uruguay is really awesome! The members are too.  We get fed almost every day for lunch and it blows my mind how most of the people that feed us are inactive. But we are trying to work on that, haha.

            So in my room there is me and Elder Mata and the zone leaders also live in our room. Their names are Elder Lacey and Elder Contrerras (I think that is how you spell it), Elder Lacey is from New Mexico and is going to play football at BYU.  I think he is a wide receiver. Elder Conrtrerras is from Chile.

            My Spanish has been going along so so (haha).  It is a lot harder than I thought to learn a language, but I am gradually learning. The people here speak a lot different than in Argentina.  They seem to change subjects all of the time so it is really hard to follow what they are saying because they don’t stay on the same subject.  But I am starting to get used to it.

            I have this pretty cool story.  So one day me and Elder Mata were walking home from an open church (an open church it is usually on a Saturday and all nonmembers can go inside and look around and the missionaries are there to talk about the areas of the church).  It was pretty far away.  When we were walking we saw this crazy lightning storm. It was insane, I kid you not. There was lightning going every 30 seconds just everywhere and me and Elder Mata looked and it was approaching our area, so we started speed walking and trying to get to our area. There is lightning coming down all around us, everywhere. The thunder was shaking the ground.  It was so cool, but so scary. But we arrived safely in our apartment so I thought that was pretty cool.

            Have a great day!!!!

Sincerely,

Elder Rogers

I’m Here in Uruguay!

September 1, 2014

Proverbs 25:25

            I made it to Uruguay safely, ha ha I cannot believe that I am actually here; it is super cool.

            So I am in the city Melo it is pretty decent sized not too big and not too small.  The people here are really nice. Melo is like 5 to 6 hours away from the capital, Montevideo, so I am kind of out in the boonies ha ha. But I like it a lot. I am near the Brazilian border.  It is super awesome. Most of the people that live here have lived here their whole lives.

            The food here is good.  For lunch I think I have had noodles and meat or soup with noodles and meat almost every day. But I like it, so I am good with it.  But there is one thing that I have a problem with here—they don´t eat dinner!!!!  I thought that was crazy, but they will only have like a really small meal or just a snack. But the lunches are big, so that definitely helps.

            The weather here is good.  When I first got here in the night I thought I was going to freeze to death, ha ha.  But now it is starting to warm up. The afternoons are really nice, but the nights can be pretty chilly.

            My new companion is Elder Malta; he is from Orem, Utah but his parents are from Mexico, so when we got put together I thought that he didn´t know any English and I was kind of freaking out a bit. But he speaks perfect English and Spanish. He told me before the mission that he was already fluent in Spanish.

            In my mission, we don´t have cars or bikes—we walk, ha ha, I like it though.  It is really good exercise. I never realized how much missionaries here walk.  We walk a lot, everywhere and our area is pretty decent-sized.

            Well I hope you guys all had a good summer and for all those of you who are going to school right now, good luck.

Sincerely,

Elder Rogers