Monday, October 20, 2008

letter from Jon 10-20-08

10-20-08
Hey family, mom and dad and all my loved ones muah!!!!!!!!!!This week has been crazy fast and I got lots to report its so crazy! My companion is preparing me for being senior and its tough, but exciting. I went on an exchange with Elder Packer from California and successfully led 6 lessons and took charge the whole 2 days in Jauja and it got me excited but kind a nervous. Elder Packer only has only been in the field 3 months so I had to talk most of the time. I can switch back and forth from Spanish to English now. I almost want to ask people if they understand cause I still cant believe we just talk for 45 min in Spanish and they understand, but president said in my interview Rogers you are ready for future assignments so I said yeah. I don’t know what will happen this next change but am excited to learn and change. I like the responsibility of leading but still have lots to learn. It is so fun to hear from you all and I’m doing good. I love the mac and cheeses and so does everyone else and the peanut butter. This week I gave a talk in church and was just so proud of our converts they are all active happy and learning. I’m handing out pictures of Jesus and everything like crazy. I talked on service and am just full of love for the families that I now have as my friends in the church and we are best buds they will not stop talking about me and Benites leaving and we are all dreading it, but maybe one day I’ll come back and show you all these families that I know were prepared in this time for us to be instruments to help them .It still rains like crazy and it kinda makes it exciting and intense in the muddy streets.I also bought an Hawaiian punch last week I think it was miracle!!!!!! I’m going to drink it for my b-day it was made like 3 years ago and was sitting on the shelve. I’m so blessed. I was probly the only one that could or wanted to buy it!!!! Fine fellow gift!!One of my favorite things to do is ask families how they were baptized and hear there story they are all miracles and so interesting. The family of my penzinita started with her younger brother and then the elders were pulled for 10 years for terrorism and then her sister was baptized in Lima and 3 years later her oldest son... well Alina my penzinita went to baptism with her daughter and then her daughter was baptized 6 months later and then she said I want to hear what these boys say to convince my kids. Alina took the discussions and was baptized 1 yr later by her first son Michal. Michal is on a mission now and last year Eddy was baptized because of the good example of his brother Michal, and 6 months ago her hermano( brother) Jesus the hardest of all asked Elder Carpio to be baptized because of the blessings of his family that he saw. He was the only one that didn’t want anything to do with church was finally baptized in August wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It took yrs and yrs but now we have eternal family and there all my best buds especially my penzinita. I know it was all meant to be and started with one. We have two investigators brother of Hermana Liztte and 1 other boy and I told them this story. I love you all and if you have questions let me know until next week muah!!!!!!!!! love your son Elder Rogers!!!!hey PS please everyone tell Kylee girl happy happy bday on 25

Thursday, October 16, 2008

10-16-08 letter

10/13/08
Hey fam !!!!!!! How is everyone and life in good ol St. George? It sounds cold! hehe Welcome to my life. I’m doing good and I got the protein packages mom. I started my work-out with my buddy Elder Benites. He loves “The-perfect-pushups” and I hardly get a turn, but we are both feeling better and trying to put some meat on our bones. I feel good and those vitamins are good too. I hope I got normal function and will keep you updated on weight watchers. My companion is doing good too and we just stated the protein so maybe next week I’ll weigh in at 190lbs hehe just kidding . This has been a good week, I’m sorry about the fishing and tennis loss mom and Dad but your still the best parents ever! Clint you know I’d love the dutch oven. That’s awesome Ang is expecting a little curly head and Lish is about ready to pop! I guess I’ll be a uncle again next week! Thanks a million for all the love and support.This week has been good week and I have really felt the spirit and progress in my testimony and also the ward. All of our baptisms are active and its so fun to be best buds with them all. We joke and see the new faces in church every week! Andy is passing the sacrament and Lizzette comes every week with her sister and the Book of Mormon. Carolina loves it all… and Brigham got the priesthood and his temple recommend. I am really happy being apart of all this.So a funny thing happened this week we did a church wide service with over 300 members in Huancayo. Its so fun to think after this life I will see all these people and we will all be there hopefully together in the kingdom…. But camera dudes came and filmed us and said here we have are friends from the U.S. so I talked on camera on Huancayo TV. I asked and made sure that it wasn’t going to church or Utah or the US. I would not like to see my skinny grill in between next conference in some touching story of Peru. Everyone else froze up so I just said hi and told who we are. I said we love to serve and are so happy. I think it was ok Spanish…I hope but it was fun we planted trees in a park. I was in my new favorite jeans yeah!!!!!!! It rains every day so hard your really going to love the videos I filmed. This week was also mission conference and it was so good. I love President but I think he doesn’t want problems cause every time he talks to me he is like; Rogers how are you? Great, that’s good! I’m so happy for you! Your gaining weight it seems. Yeah President, what ever you say and he’s off. But I guess I can take care of myself right? I have for 10 months! yeah!!!!!I love you all
Stay strong We all must go on in this great cause!!!!!!!!!!!Elder Rogers’Muah!

Monday, October 6, 2008

Letter from Jon 10-6-08

Letter from Jon 10-6-08
Hey family and everyone,
Wow.. another great week of conference! I loved every bit and I got to watch all 5 sessions. Conference started out a little rough, we watched through the Internet. This was the first time that I had ever tried to watch on the Internet. The church has really got a nice system. You can watch on the Internet just like TV but you have to have a nice computer which is very rare and hard to find down here in Jauja and I was so excited and prayed to get good computer and for the spirit. I was so excited and we left to go watch at 9:30 to get a computer up and running. Conference started at 11 here but I wanted to listen to the music. To make a long story short the adversary was working pretty dang hard. My companion and I were probably the only two people in Jauja that wanted to watch conference and 5 out of 9 places with computers were closed because there was a big party in central sat and sun. We had to walk the whole town to find one hole-in-the wall computer terminal. After an hour of trying to make it work, we left and went to another hole in the wall Internet shop. Still we could only hear conference we could not watch and it still didn’t work too well. At one point I started to tear up and then just cried in my little cubicle because I was so so so frustrated and it was 11:30 already. I finally got it to work and then for the afternoon session we were able to find a better store to watch the afternoon session from. I loved it and was so thrilled when it started working. You can guess the talks I loved. “God does love me” by Anderson and “Hope” by Uchtdorf. I’ve always loved the subject of hope and I’ve defiantly felt the grief and pain and stuff in my life so far on my mission. I felt the Uchtdorf talk was just for me.I also loved talk by Japanese girl about missionaries. It is cool being a missionary during conference you feel the support when people talk about missionaries, I like it when she says if you have a missionary write him letters of love and support. She knows she was one and she know that letters save you.I loved many talks and took really good notes. I also watched both the sessions Saturday on the computer in English yeah! Sunday we went to the stake center in Huanacayo. We watched the sessions in Spanish by the satellite. The power was out all day Sunday but the stake center had a generator hehe nothing stops us!I loved the stories of respecting wives and girls and marriage, and also the prophets stories. I love when he said the best feeling in this life is receiving a prompting and acting on it and then finding out later it was the fulfillment of someone’s prayer. If there ever is an errand that the Lord needs run I Tom ( jon rog )will run it! Conference was great! In Jauja life is good. We took an investigator Daniel to conference with us Sunday and he has committed to getting baptized this Saturday! He is 18 years old and is a friend of Brigham. We have like 13 boys preparing for missions. I’m so excited! I know when we save one we save many!We also had really good experience this week. Hermana Carolina and her daughter gave us three referrals; a couple of families with 2 children and single mom and her two sons. We taught them all together in Carolina’s house. She is excited to share the gospel know she has it and its amazing. I want to baptize a family so bad I hope her friends will see the happiness this gospel brings and follow the example of Carolina.The work is good and we got 6 close to baptism. All we have to do is get them to go to church.The drug problems are still here we got stopped coming to Huancayo just before church and the Internet. It’s way scary there always looking for someone and always packing the heat! But it’s all good. We got out and walked the rest of way. They know we got nothing but the Book of Mormon .I got 3 packages this week! It was like Christmas! I’ve already got to work on the lasagna in dried package. It should help my weight watcher plan. I also got the whey powder and snacks! Thanks so much! I’m so spoiled even now I love it its like birthday month for me. I got it all mom thanks! Muah! And I love the church movies and so do our investigators. They love Elder Rog and Benites cause we always got something fun to give or watch or play thanks to good a good family. You guys are big in the workI love it when the Prophet told the story of the circus. He said childhood wont wait! I cant wait to party with you when I get back! It’s so true and I had a great childhood and I still think I have a little left hehe!Well today we also rode on a bus and man got on from circus looking for some money and started doing tricks. Everyone was like o boy here we go again. This dude was desperate and I felt bad. He rolled up cigar and stomped on it telling us it wouldn’t break and it did. Then he like chucked it out the window. Then he did a card trick and dropped his cards and we all saw that they were glued together. I was embarrassed for him so I turned and looked out window and prayed for his dignity. It was a harsh crowd. Then he said wait one more trick and if you like it you must pay a sole… He said he would eat new cards and he did …and I was like what, a weirdo. Then he talked for like 3 min and then put his hand in the air and spit the cards all back out perfect but wet!!!!!!!!!!!!! What the happened!!!!!!!! The bus was in awe!! It was all part of his act. We were all taken in. ….wow. I saw him eat them and chew and swallow and talk…….. needless to say I reached for my billfold!Love you allYour son elder rogP.S. My heart was pounding with talk of Eduarado Gavvarett the general authority that told about Peru he was here 4 weeks ago. I shook his hand and talked to him he was taking about my mission in Lima Bayovar, canta rey!
(This is probably the GA that looked like he would speak English but only spoke Spanish when he visited the mission. )

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Letter from Jon 9-29-08

I have a miracle story about a boy named Brigham that left for Lima. He wanted to get baptized and we were so bummed when he left. I went ahead and put him in our plans for the next week. We were just hoping he might show up. Well, we were walking down a street and there he was!!!! He said, “ Lima just didn’t work out.” He decided he wants to stay in Jauja. So, we told him we wanted to start teaching him and baptize him and he said he really wanted us to baptize him. His whole family is members in Lima and he came to Jauja to get a way form it all and to go to school. He also decided to go to church for one year here before going back home. He already has a testimony and we taught him the first discussion after church. We challenged him and he is so ready. He wanted the 2nd lesson and then we taught him the 3rd lesson on Monday. He was baptized Tuesday night after the interview. He asked me to baptize him and I was so honored. He gave his testimony after the baptism and said that he had been waiting for this day his whole life. He now knows the church is true for him self! He was so happy and clean! We will give him the Holy Ghost next Sunday and the priesthood. He says he wants to go on his mission next year after he goes to the temple for first time with the youth of Jauja to baptize for the dead. It is a miracle and I know I’m in the right place and god knows whom he wants in his church. Love, Elder Rogers I’m so excited for conference hehe yeah!