Esoragoto (絵空事)

Aloha everyone! This week started out as yet another hot and humid onslaught of terrible heat stroke, but that heat stroke turned out to be a heat stroke of luck instead! You'll be happy to hear that last week, our key indicators were the highest they've been since I got to this zone, and of course, spirits were high! Elder Durrant put a lot of work in to make sure this week went as smoothly as possible! That's when Mr Golden Sun shined down on us and the rest of Kaneohe yet again. My gosh I've never sweat so much in my life! But it was worth it. We didn't bring our raincoats with us one day because of the blistering heat of the day, but we did walk by a few pools and I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty tempted to "fall in". But in this case I'm glad I didn't. As we were about a mile out from home on foot, all the sudden the heat decided to turn into a rain storm. Yup! So I actually did get to cool off after all. I was pretty happy, because personally I've always loved the rain. Elder Durrant was less amused. Thanks to the rain though, we were able to discover a nice little greenhouse frog the next day! I decided to name the little guy Froakie, any of you Pokémon trainers out there should get that little reference. That day we walked out in the rain a lot, but as the pictures can probably tell you, we were smart about it and wore our rain coats this time. Walking around on rainy days is one of my favorite things as a missionary, oddly enough. We walked all the way to our dinner that day, which was with a family called the Killpack family. I'm not joking about that last name and how it's spelled... But anyway, they're going to be moving in July to somewhere near Salt Lake City, Utah but they'll only be there for a short time. So mom, if you'd like to meet someone I've taught a lesson to, now you know they'll be in your area for a while. They're there in between military stationing, and they're actually headed to Italy next! (hear that, Anziano Anderson? You just came from there!) But the kids ended up talking with me about Pokémon stuff because of Elder Durrant's name. In case you didn't know, there is actually a Pokémon named "Durrant". Pretty cool huh? Elder Durrant never really got into Pokémon, but my knowledge of Pokémon has come in handy in every place I've served so far! The Christly family in Wahiawa had kids that loved Pokémon, the Hurst family in Kalaeloa had kids that love Pokémon, the Smith's in Palehua had kids that lived Pokémon, and now the Killpacks make Kaneohe no exception to the Pokémon rule! The kids now call me "Elder Pokémon". At least they did at dinner and after dinner anyway. XD

We got the chance to do service at Pearl Harbor again, but this time we were there when a battleship previously stationed in between Japan and Korea returned to Hawaii from sea! (or so we were told) The ship came into the harbor right behind us, and we had a good view, so Elder Durrant and I got a great picture. If you look in the background you'll see tugboats next to a larger boat, and that larger boat is an active duty battleship that is fully armed! How cool is that! The tugboats job is to help slow the boat and tug at it so it can't crash into the harbor. That's what I think anyway, we never found out for sure. Our job this time was swabbing the deck, also known as sweeping and mopping the mighty mo.  It was great! But then, visiting Pearl Harbor is always great. I love seeing the battleships floating on the water, it reminds me of grandpa, as well as everyone who serves for our country in the military. My respect for military families just keeps going up and up the longer I stay out here. Kaneohe is near the marine base, which isn't in my area unfortunately, but that means I see military men and women often enough. Great people. One of the people we're working with right now is a marine. His name is Tony Finau, and he learned English from reading the Book of Mormon! Somewhere along the line he went inactive, but we're working hard to bring him back! He's an excellent man and I can feel God's love for him when we visit. Brittany still hasn't made it to church yet for work reasons, but we will continue to try! Keep praying guys!

That's all for us this time! Stay tuned folks!

Look closely and you'll see the little frog hopping up my jacket

Pictures from our P-day hike last week

His Truth is [Sweating] On!

At long last the summer sun has graced us in the land of constant overcast! The clouds have finally gone away but it seems the humidity is here to stay! And that combined with church clothes can only mean one thing....

Thats right! Sweating off the pounds like champs! Elder Durrant and I are trying to walk a bit more so we can talk to more people on the street, but we picked the absolute worst time to try and start doing that apparently, because now it's blazing hot and you wouldn't believe how crazy tired we get walking around in said blazing heat. Luckily for us though, the summer sun isn't the only thing heating up... The work is also blazing forth! And it shows! We've been getting to visit a ton of new people and if that wasn't enough, we've also been making progress with someone! Finally! Here's how we got that to happen-

We've been working with an investigator who isn't progressing, and we've been over there enough times that he's open and trusting with us at this point, and I care about the guy, so I was wondering to myself what to do to help him out, and then I discovered something interesting. I asked him whether or not he knew God loved him. He said 'yes' of course, but it was the kind of yes that means 'this is what you want me to say so I'll say it' instead of 'this is how I truly feel'. So I followed up with another question, and asked him how he knew. He stated that he knew God was real because God created him. Good answer, but then we asked his brother, a convert preparing for a mission, who told of a happy feeling of conformation he felt. When we again asked if he knew God was real, we asked if he had felt that feeling. He said simply, and honestly, 'no.'

From there the lesson progressed at a surprising pace, and if my hunch is correct we'll be seeing him at church this week, which will be a miracle in my book. It was interesting to see the difference from before to after. Once we addressed the underlying issue, all of the other commitments were made a lot easier. If course he wasn't coming to church before, there was no reason for him to! He didn't truly know God existed, so there was no reason for him to sacrifice his time for something he didn't believe. But now he seems intent on learning for himself, and I believe that will make all the difference for him. I'll keep you all updated on how it goes, but trust me even though it sounds depressing to you he hasn't really cared about the lessons up until now and he finally started to want to learn more, so now it's officially time to celebrate, because all our hard work in the hot summer sun is officially paying off!

Of course there's a lot more to our week than heat waves, dropping buckets of sweat, and progression, but those are the more interesting things from the week. Yesterday was Father's Day, so... Happy Father's Day dad! Love ya!

I've been spending a lot of my free time at the end of the day lately working on comics and what have you, but with the summer sun beating down, and no AC, we do our best to keep from being inside whenever possible. Elder Durrant has been practicing his uke skills, and he's really sounding great!

Other than that, I wish you all a fantastic summertime vacation! Stay cool you guys! And I'll try not to sweat too much in these church clothes! We'll survive the heat though. It's just a bit gross to be all sweaty teaching lessons in grimy church clothes. But hey! It's Hawaii! It's Kaneohe! And it's gorgeous weather for a good swim if you're anybody but us!

Have a good week everybody!
-Elder Rogers

Pictures from our temple trip last week

Holy 19th Birthday, Batman!

Hello!

Well, as you may have noticed my birthday has now -officially- come and gone. And first things first I think I should give thanks where thanks is due. A HUGE vote of gratitude goes out to everyone who sent me a card or gift package, especially my mom and Elder Durrant's mom. You guys are all so thoughtful and it was very nice to receive all your kind words and packages. 

Wow! It's already been 11 months. 13 more months and I'll be home! That's crazy to think about! Honestly it doesn't feel like it's been a year already. To be honest I think that has to do mostly with the weather. My internal clock is very confused by the constantly perfect summer skies and the radiant glow of longer daylight hours, and by extension, longer proselyting time. In all honesty the time we spend working isn't supposed to change depending on how long the sun is up, but I've noticed that people tend to stay up and happy when the sun is up, so at the very least it makes preaching the gospel a lot easier. 

There's a lot to cover this week, and of course today would be temple trip day, so I'm getting a shorter P day anyway. Because of that, I may have to cut this email a bit short so I can get stuff done, but still keep you updated.

So! News! First off! Health stuff! Oh good....

So, after a very cool priesthood blessing from President Bekker, my eyes have been HEALING, believe it or not. In fact, the doctor said he had nothing but good news to report! And so of course, because I'm never allowed to be completely free of health struggles it seems, my back has been absolutely killing me, to the point where I'm visiting a chiropractor on Thursday of this very week. Talk about being out of the frying pan and into the fire, am I right? When I told the mission nurse the details of my symptoms she wanted me to do an MRI, but I wasn't comfortable doing that because number 1: Apparently it costs like a bazillion bucks and I already feel bad for spending the insurance money on my eye appointments.Number 2: MRI sounds really, really scary, and I am a wimp. The chiropractor is the cheaper option and I figure at the least he'll be able to tell me if it's a big problem or not.

More News! Investigators!

This week we finally managed to get back into contact with the Howells. The Howells, for those who don't remember, are a super gaming couple with two cats. Originally the plan was to visit these two every Saturday when they aren't doing W.O.W. raids, but Bro. Howell has been off at military training, and Sis. Howell had a recent death in the extended family, so it's been a few weeks since we saw them last. It was great to catch up with them. They were actually in the middle of prepping for E3, which is a massive gaming event that I watch every year-accept for this year. And next year.... And I... really... wanna.... watch it.... but I won't... because I'm a good..... missionary.... argh. My birthday made up for it though. Thanks again for making that a big day for me everyone! Anyway, we got to the root of some of their fears about the church, and this will be insanely useful for teaching them down the road, plus it was just good to see them again after all this time. SO that's them. We also were able to meet a super cool less active member named Tony Finau. He's a soldier for the marine corps, and that was super cool! I miss working with military families, and as his wife is now an investigator, we'll be working closely with him as time goes on. Meeting him came at just the right time, so it was a very cool experience.

I have to go to the store now.  Have a great week everyone.  Aloha.

Bat signal over Kaneohe (Must be for my birthday)

Eye appointment

A Pretty Dandy Week

Aloooooooha! It's another fantastical magical week in the Kaneohe 4th ward! Before we begin! Grandma Anderson and Mom guessed the title reference! It was the movie 'What About Bob?' but I would have also accepted 'Baby Steps' the anime. Congratulations to the smart winners! And of course it's June, the wonderful birthday month! And this week I have to say happy birthday to my mom! You're the best there is, and I hope your birthday this Saturday is absolutely wonderful! But with that out of the way, let us begin with the weekly run down!

Our week started off extremely slowly. Nothing was happening at all, despite our very best efforts. No one was home, and they didn't want to listen to us, and finally, as I was getting discouraged, Sunday happened. Sunday was fantastic! We were finally able to see Brittany again! She's doing much better, but her situation at work is still a mess. We committed her to have family home evenings with her son Trenton, and then we shared our testimonies of how family prayer and family time together has blessed our lives, it was a wonderful lesson.

I also would like to share something I learned from stake conference- the most important thing to do when raising kids is give them a positive self image. But the 2nd most important thing to do is to never outsource their education to those whose job it is to teach them. It is the job of every parent to teach the gospel inside the home as well as at church, and I'm very grateful to my family for always staying true to that principle. I have learned so much about the nature of the gospel from them and I love them very much. We also met a new family to teach named the Williams family. They love camping and fishing, so maybe all those years of scouting knowledge will come in handy. I'll keep you updated on them!

Until next week everyone!
じゃ、ね!

This picture shows the vog that is reaching Oahu due to the volcano on the big island