October 31, 2011 {Email}

Before i start anything i would like to wish everyone a Happy Halloween and more importantly my Grandma Bullock a Happy Birthday!!! I love you Grandma!

This week was a crazy one. We had a lot of meetings to go to including a sweet interview we each had with President Shulz. They came around to each apartment to check them and to meet with each of us. So the day before he told us to take the whole day and do a deep cleaning. WOW! I don't think i have been that exhausted in a long time. It did take ALL day too! But our apartment is very clean and it feels a lot better.

Right now we have two really solid investigators. They are both older women and one of them has two little children with her. The reason they are solid is because they are both referrals from members and the members are continually helping them, whether it's going and reading the pamphlet with them when we aren't there or they are helping them come to church. They are both having a great experience learning about the church. I'm so proud of the members for how they are working.

Speaking of working with the members. Yesterday all the missionaries taught the 3rd hour of church in their wards. It was 5th sunday so everyone was in the sacrament hall. It was a great opportunity for us to help them see what they can do as members to get the missionary work going. I pray that they understood and will act upon it. If they do then the Cape Coast 1st ward is going to be strong very soon!

Some good news! Elder Smith told me that Edmond and Judith up in Kumasi have been going to church the past two weeks and will be baptized soon!!! I guess Edmond quit his job and since then he has been going to the church. He is powerful! I'm so happy for their family.

Love,

Elder Rogers

October 24, 2011 {Email}

This week was another good one. We have had a lot of new investigators that seem very interested in the gospel. Almost all of these people are referrals from members! The investigators are always more serious when they have friends who want them to hear the message. We've just been happy that the members are starting to see the joy that comes from doing missionary work. Our bishop's referral walked into church during the sacrament yesterday and bishop had a huge smile on his face when he saw him. The joy that comes when you see someone trying to know if it's true is sweet!

We had a conference this week in which Elder Gavarret from the Seventy came. All 6 of the southern zones came and met in Cape Coast for the event. It was quite an experience to meet a general authority and shake his hand. The part that didn't go so great was trying to understand his accent! Him and his wife are from Uruguay so they had a very strong spanish accent. I don't know if any of the Africans understood much because of it and even us Americans had a hard time picking everything. It was neat to see someone of such great authority from the other side of the world coming to Ghana though!

Our mission is now starting to focus on using the Book of Mormon more effectively in the work. It's something that i think all of us need to work on. Being in Ghana we meet alot of people that cant read very well so we won't focus on the Book of Mormon as we should. In the conference we talked about how no one can be truly converted unless they know the book is true. So we need to do all we can to help our people to know it is true! We still don't know how we will do that with the illiterate but we'll figure it out. Goes to show how important the Book of Mormon is to the world.

Everything else is going great! Except today i had a terribly off day on the court! Every shot was in and out, i couldn't make a shot if my life depended on it. Just gotta put today in the past and prepare for next weeks game. I will do better!

Love,

Elder Rogers

October 17, 2011 {Email}

This week was just as great as the last one. We have a lot of people that we are teaching in our area that are progressing very well. The funny thing is a few of the most serious ones don't live in our area. Since we proselyte in town we meet a lot of people that work here but live somewhere else. We keep teaching them because they are here all day and are rarely at home, but we invite them to attend the church where their house is. It's been fun to be a help to other wards and branches. As for our family we are teaching, we didn't get to have a visit with the entire family since Justice travelled to Accra. What was sweet was the two younger boys came to church on their own will! They are so powerful. In church they sat their extremely reverent during all three hours. I've never seen such smart, polite and well behaved young boys. Now we just need the parents to join them and i'll be the happiest man in the world. Sweet family!

We also went on splits this week with the Abakrampa Elders. I stayed in Abakrampa with Elder Awatey. The place is a VILLAGE!!! Ha it was so much fun, but kind of hard for missionaries that can't speak the Twi. They always have to call a ghanaian to serve there because of it. So the whole day i didn't really understand much of what anyone was saying. The place was awesome though!

Today for P-day we got our sight seeing done! First we went to the Kakum National Park to walk on the ropes up in the trees! It was sooooo scary! And it didn't help that all the other guys knew i was nervous so they would shake it as we walked across haha those jerks. It sucks being afraid of heights, but it was way fun and felt great when i finished the last one. I never thought i would be able to do something as cool as that. We were like 40 meters above the ground walking next to the top of the trees.

Then we went to Hans Cottage! This place is where they have a lot of crocodiles that are somehow tamed so we can walk right out to them. That was intense being so close to a vicious animal and not being attacked ha i kept waiting for it to just snap me in half. It was a way fun p-day!

Everything is going great here in the mission. On Friday we are having a member of the first quorom of the seventy, Elder Gavarett, come visit us. I'm way excited for that!

Elder Rogers

October 10, 2011 {Email}

Well, this week was a sweet week! We have found a new family that i love just like all the other families i have talked about. Their names are Justice and Efua, their children, Victor (17), Stanley (10), and Kelvin (6). They are strong Methodists and live right behind the big Methodist church. We met them through other missionaries that were teaching Victor in our area, so they gave him to us. He has gone to school, but we met his family! They are all very smart and they seem to have enjoyed the message a lot. On Saturday night we had a really cool lesson about Families. Sister Efua really enjoyed it and wants to start trying the things we suggested so that their home can have more happiness. We haven't gotten to far yet into the message, but they know the direction we are going and all say they are willing to learn and find out if it's true. We look forward to teaching them this next week!

The past 3 days Cape Coast hosted a huge Muslim convention right down at the Victoria Park. It was awesome seeing thousands of Muslims walking around and doing their prayers and stuff. Their religion is definitely different but i respect them greatly for their devotion to it. All of them are strong in their faith. We went and walked around it and noticed they were selling Muslim clothing! Ha me and Elder Lawton are looking pretty good in our long Muslim gowns! It was a cool experience.

The work has been moving along nicely. This week was good for us to see some progression in our investigators and we even received two referrals! I'm excited for the next week to come. I also am very depressed about the Yankees losing! But hey, they can't win them all right? Next year baby!! 

Love,

Elder Rogers

October 3, 2011 {Email}

Wasn't this week just one of the greatest weeks? I think when all of you are having a great week i am also having a great week. I'm so glad you got to meet Elder Lehr and Elder Wright. ha that's funny how you recognized Lehr by his tie. Both those guys i was really close with and i miss them a ton. I hope you enjoy all the stuff. And i'm so glad the pictures made it there safely again, we have been so blessed so far with that.

Well, Elder Lawton and I just came back from the mission home saying good bye to all the missionaries that are going. So many people that i have grown to love and just feel like they are my best friends. It's so crazy to see them go and it once again hits me that mission will one day come to an end. They all said it is bitter sweet. ELDER HARRIS came early with Elder Holmes so they could find some last minute souveniers so i got to walk around town with them all day! It was awesome to see him again since it has been like 8 months! He is still the same guy that i loved being around. I was sad to say goodbye to them but i'm sure i will see them again.

Also, transfer news came this week! Elder Lawton and I are staying, sweet! The coolest thing is that Elder Smith is coming to Abura, the other zone in Cape Coast, to be a zone leader! So I will get to see him all the time again and find out what happened to Edmond and Judith! I'm excited to be around him again.

The work is moving right along. We had three more people come to church this week along with Selena again! We found out that Selena has some problems with being married to a man that actually has another wife so we can't baptize her unless she divorces :(. We haven't told her that yet since we've been taking it slow, but we're going to have to let her know soon. It's too bad because she loves the church. We'll see what happens and of course hope for the best. The other three really enjoyed the church and say they will keep coming. It was a good week for us with meeting new people that are interested.

The whole weekend i kept thinking about how sweet it is that a prophet of the Lord was speaking to the rest of the world at the same time we were here. I can't wait to hear or read the messages from General Conference. We should get them next month. I'm way jealous that my family got to go there!

Well, this week is transfers and we have 18 new missionaries coming and i heard one is from St. George so that's cool. We will be busy as usual ha. Have a great week! Go Yankees!

Elder Rogers

Our family ran into Elder Lehr after the Saturday morning session of Conference. Good thing Dad and Kyle were sporting their Ghana ties like Elder Lehr so they could make the connection!

We were lucky enough to meet Elder Wright and got to talk to him for a while and pick up a bunch of stuff that Zack sent home with him.