This week was a massive amount of LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG. It feels like it's been something like a full month since the last time I emailed you, but mostly that's just because a lot happened. I can narrow it down to a few things, but it won't contain everything, so here's the skivvy on this week's important information:

So, the big massive goblet of goobers this week seems to be my head and eyes. So, the fun part is that my eyes are causing the headaches! And guess what else? It's not the norm. After a long and terrible visit to the eye doctor, I learned that I'm far sighted, which means I can see really easily things that are far away, but I suffer when it comes to close up work. Stuff like drawing, writing, reading, or typing cause my eyes to hate me. As if that wasn't bad enough, my left eye sees significantly worse than my right eye, meaning that my right eye is doing a lot of extra work, and my left eye is doing even more extra work to try and keep up with the right eye. This explains why, when I get headaches, they focus their immense power on my left eye-It's because my left eye is literally killing itself so that I can see out of it. The big question is, am I getting glasses? (shivers at the thought) Well, yes and no. See, my left eye, when given a lense that helps it see as good as my right eye, screws my right eye's vision up, because of the differences in power and work that each eye is doing. That means that my vision problem is unfixable. Not even lazer eye surgery will solve it, it won't get any worse, and it won't get any better either, regardless of whether I wear glasses or not. Even so, I forked over a small fortune to get a pair of glasses, because my companion thinks they'll help me. They won't, for the reasons already stated, and I don't want to wear glasses in the first place. They won't correct my vision at all, but the doctor says that when it comes to close up work, like artwork or scripture study, that it would be best to wear them. I added a bonus feature to the glasses when I bought them that should make it easier to work with technology, because as I'm sure you all know, the mission is getting smartphones in December. Anyway, I have a personal hatred and disdain for all things in relation to this particular subject at the moment (the glasses I mean) and the stupid things won't even arrive until mid-December anyway, so please, NEVER speak to me on this subject again. It makes me want to die. Thank you.

Next up, the sacred time of gorging my face with enough turkey to make myself morbidly obese. AKA Thanksgiving. We had two dinners that day, and that's a surprisingly small amount of dinners to have on Thanksgiving, apparently. One of the dinners was with a Tongan family. That was the one that nearly killed me. Not only was there turkey, but stake, ham, chicken, and a whole concourse of other exotic meats and treats such as horse. No, I didn't try the horse, I'm not a savage. Anyway, the problem with eating at a Tongan family get together is that they don't ever let you finish eating. Ever. A notable Tongan phrase I've learned, that is surprisingly accurate, is "Kaike Mate" which basically means, "Eat unto death" That is not a joke. Your plate is empty, you get more food. Being full is literally an offense to their culture. This isn't an enjoyable experience, this is literally eat until you are so full that you never want to eat again-and then get seconds-and then get desert. I got so sick afterword I had to spend the rest of Thanksgiving laying down. Our ward, the Wahiawa 3rd ward, did what is called an Imu for turkey cooking. That's when they dig a big pit in the ground and bury all the food overnight. It's basically like smoking the turkey, but twice as good. It's actually more like you're steaming the turkey, if you want to get more technical about it. Regardless, I ate so much of it that I never want to see an Imu ever again.

Now, that's about half of the crazy things that happened this week, but I'm afraid my time here is too short to write everything.

Long story short, we got two new investigators. And one of those two is basically Reily Kalmar. What the heck am I going to do about that?! HELP!!!

Until next week. -"Kaike Mate"-

Elder Rogers

Elder Rogers, Ashby, Deadman and Orihela

Elder Orihuela

Wahiawa 3rd Ward Imu

Well, Well, Well... How the heck are you guys?! I'm doing OK, still not the best but better than last week at the very least.

This week I got to have the absolute honor and privilege of being able to baptize Tyler Ramos. That was so awesome! But you know me, and you know that I have super powers of awkwardness, so of course it had to have some kind of slip up didn't it? YEAH! OK, so here's what happened. The font in Mililani (AKA at the stake center) has a problem of some kind, probably font cancer (it happens). Anyway, this prevents it from filling as fast as it should, and because all of us Elders have poor visual judgement we figured that there was enough water in the font when the baptism time came. It was only about halfway full and the water was so cold it felt like ice. As I looked on into the crowd I saw Tyler's wife crying, and the spirit filled me, so even though I knew we needed to fill the font more with warm water so poor Tyler didn't get hypothermia along with the holy ghost, I said the prayer, and down he went. His head didn't go under at all you guys. The water was too shallow!! So down he went again. This time his hand didn't go under. The third time he went down, I just sort of left him down in the waters of baptism for 5 seconds just to make sure he was all the way down there, and then up he came, and there was finally the happy hug and stuff, and then the spirit was super strong just like you'd imagine, and it was like super spiritual, except I forgot to bring an extra white shirt with me, so my top half was still soaking, and it showed through my suit, so that was a little bit awkward... But whatever it was cool. Yesterday, I confirmed Tyler Ramos a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It was amazing.  Now you know about that! How fun! WOOOOOOOOO!

So, The next piece of information I feel morally obligated to share with you is the bit concerning my health, because I know you all are probably either worried to the point of causing yourselves to get headaches, or you don't care, but either way here's the update. We're pretty sure the headaches are coming from a mixture of stress, and from the fact that the vision in my left eye isn't as good as the vision in my right eye. I have an appointment being scheduled right now to see an eye doctor this week, just to figure out if my vision is causing the problem, but for now, just to avoid any problems, I've been removed from the driving list. I know hearing that won't do anything to fix the worry, but at worst I'll have to get a contact lens on my left eye but not on my right eye. So I'll basically still look the same unless I decide I want the contact lens to look like a Tokyo Ghoul eye, in which case I'll look absolutely terrifying. But I can't pull off glasses and I know it, and my right eye is fine, so from what we know now it should be an easy fix. When I come home, depending on how the lens or whatever it is works, I might decide to get laser eye surgery so I can have 20/20 vision with science! I've talked to a few Elders about this idea, and in that regard now you're aware. You better be saving for Japan though! Don't worry about mailing the Japanese CD, it's OK. Mail some Hank Smith Talks to Elder Deadman though. Send him a nice package. Because he's awesome and he needs a package. Just 1 though. Don't spoil him. Just enough to let him know you know he's awesome. Thanks much!

Remember: Winners don't do Drugs! Goodbye!

The baptism of Tyler: A happy day in Hawaii

Elder Orihuela, Tyler, and I at the baptism

A baptism picture with Chelsea in it

Elder Deadman doing Sunday night Accounting (He's district leader, and they have to do that stuff.)

   

A very well hidden gecko (Can you find him?)

A few pictures from the GRATITUDE CHALLENGE:

This week has been rough…… Where to even begin…. here... Let's start with the good news, So, the J family. We're still making progress with them. They're going to be moving soon, so on the 28th we're going to be helping them out with some of that kind of stuff. It should be a lot of fun. We were able to commit them to do scripture study, so that's cool.

The other good news is that I got to go on exchanges with Elder Sanchez this week, and I learned a lot about mission work from that whole experience. I got more into the process of working with the members, and you know, other stuff.

Also, TR…..he passed his baptismal interview!!! I know last week I said his baptism was getting moved back. We thought we were going to have to move it, but I sent the email before we knew for sure, and it turns out we had a miracle happen. He's clean, and he loves it!! This Saturday, TR will be baptized at 6:00pm. How cool is that? You'll see the pictures next week. I'm super excited about it.

HERE IS THE BAD NEWS

Toward the end of my time with Elder Campbell, I experienced the worst migraine I've ever had in my life. Ever since then, I've been experiencing violent headaches every single day without fail at some point during the day. Most of the time they aren't bad enough to talk about, and I didn't want to worry any of you with it because I thought it was going to go away, but it hasn't. This week I had one that was bad enough that I wasn't able to work one day. It has been rough because I feel like I am not getting enough done.

Anyway, I only have a picture of a sunset today, and something that the sisters did to our car that we discovered this morning. Yay....

I hope you all have a good week. 

 Why hello! I've got a lot of stuff to talk about this week. Like, whoo boy! You're not gonna believe the amount of stuff! So, I'll skip the intro bit and instead just drop you right on in there like a recyclable into the bin! BOOM!

First off, I want you all to know I'm doing fine, and that somebody else that you probably never thought you'd hear about again is doing more than fine too. Guess what? It's Bro. J and co.! We tried stopping by again last week, and it worked out amazingly! We were able to catch up on them and their life, and I really missed seeing these guys. Apparently, they really missed seeing us too! Bro. Jellins, believe it or not, has been saying his personal prayers again, and when we had our return appointment with them this week, he said he could see a positive change in his life. As in, his exact words were: "I know things have been lining up too perfectly for just coincidence. God is helping me out here." It was quite the surprise return visit, if you can imagine. We committed them to family prayer and to participate in family home evening, and that went really well! Another thing happened during that visit that was awesome, and that was that they were in the midst of playing Super Mario Odyssey when we arrived! I got to see super Mario Odyssey gameplay! You have no idea the amount of desire I have in my heart toward that game. According to Bro. Jellins, it's the best Mario game in recent history. 21 months, and I'll be playing it all the way to Japan! (seriously I'm dying. I wanna play.........) Speaking of gaming, that seems to be the cord that me and Elder Orihuela are striking on together. You see, I made the off-hand comment the other day that he looks very visually similar to Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series, and he lost it. Apparently, he's quite the Uncharted fan, and as luck would have it, so am I! You hear that Zac? My new comp. is Nathan Drake! How cool is that?! Anyway, during the Halloween party me and Elder Smith discovered that there is a version of Apples to Apples that uses stock images instead of words. We played it all night, and it was a total blast! Happy Halloween everyone!

The other day while doing my laundry, I discovered that Pebble has made a new friend. His name is Kip, and he lives inside our pad. In the laundry room. He comes and goes, but him and Pebble are just the best of friends! It was so adorable I just had to snap a picture for you! I have one of him inside near his home, and one of the two gleefully froliking on the window.

This week I went on exchanges with Elder Ashby. It wasn't exactly the best of exchanges though, so in the interest of lifting the spirits of others rather than throwing them down into the very pits of hell itself, I'll just say that exchanges happened and leave it at that.

Although most of, if not all of our investigators are doing alright, there is one of them who is struggling to keep the word of wisdom right now, and unfortunately that person is TR. He's been drinking coffee. (that gosh ***** starbucks pumpkin ****** spice latte) and we unfortunately are once again going to have to move his date back. This time it will go back to December. That means, as you can probably tell, I most likely won't be here for his baptism. That's the big bummer for the week. Also, as a recommendation, Sony Animation just put out a new short film called "the star" or something like that. It's about the nativity scene, but told from the animals perspective. You should really go check it out if you're interested.

That's all for this week! Love you all! Bye!

-Elder Rogers

Kip and Pebble at play

Kip inside chillin' (It was a long day for him and he was very tired.)

My district on Halloween

Me in my Halloween costume (I was king shark)

Me climbing a jungle tree in the rainforest