Pfft, more like Hurricane LAME! (up top!)

Ok, before anything else, can we all just take a moment and appreciate how awesome that title pun is? I worked for like, 3 minutes on it. Its the best. Anyway, now that everyone has taken a moment to appreciate how clever I am, let's get on with the week shall we? Because Hoo-boy! What a week it's been, eh?

So, I suppose before anything else I should talk about that whole ordeal with the hurricane this week. I think it was only about 2 or 3 weeks ago that hurricane Hector grazed us, and all the sudden I'm hearing word on the street like, "Oh yeah no worries or anything but there's a category 5 hurricane hitting this week and the news people say it's life threatening." And of course I has to stop and go "Yeah sure OK-WHAT?!" And the rest of the week was spend more or less just prepping for this hurricane. Firstly, I would like to say that some parts of the state did in fact get hit pretty hard. I speak mainly about Big Island, because those poor people are just coming off of a volcano, and now there are literally rivers where their roads used to be. So, I continue to pray for everyone on Maui and Big Island. That said, everybody over here is fine. People were panicking over nothing again. Honestly it was like that whole ballistic missile crisis from before. The storm never came, and here we were making fools of ourselves at Costco and Walmart as we scrambled to buy mass amounts of water. The joys of living on an island eh?

Anyways, this week Elder England wasn't feeling too well, and that mixed with the whole hurricane fiasco made actually doing missionary work a bit difficult. There is one quick story I'd like to share with you though before I end my email this week, and that's a story about Bro. Finau. So on Saturday night, at about 7:00 pm we got a call from him, asking how quickly we could make it over to his house. Of course we wasted no time in making our way over there, and we had two ideas about the situation. Elder England was super optimistic about it and was ready for a miracle, and I based my guess on the last few unexpected visit situations and braced myself to see yet another family fall apart in front of my face, as that seems to be the common theme around here as soon as we start making progress with people.

Turns out, it was a mix of both. We arrived to an unusually bubbly Bro. Finau, and he wasted no time telling what was going on. He had been at a family party, and after being sober since the 4th of July, caved in and drank again. His wife brought up some sort of drama, and I guess things got pretty bad. Bro Finau got to the point where he called up a friend and had the friend take him home, and once at home he got more and more upset about the situation until he couldn't take it anymore. He called up another friend to ask for a ride to the bar, but then stopped. He said he knew he couldn't go to the bar, and that it wasn't the right thing to do. So instead he called us, and honestly he just needed someone to talk to. So we talked to him for a bit while he popped open a drink and chugged it out of the bottle. The smell of alcohol made me a little nauseated, but we stayed for his sake and just talked until Bro Finau had calmed down somewhat. Then he went to bed. He said he would come to church on Sunday, but he was too hungover, which I expected. I just hope things get resolved, and I'm proud of him for choosing to call out to us instead of going to the bar. One of the things he said while we talked was that you had to really want something in order to be able to do it. "If you tell yourself you can't do it, then you'll never be able to do it" and strangely enough that's exactly what I needed to hear.

Other than that, the only thing of interest this week was getting called a new name. Get ready this one's real creative. Here we go: "Mormon Pig"

Yes. Really. I mean of all things at least he chose the one that makes bacon. Because I mean we can all agree bacon is a good thing (unless we're vegetarian or one of those crazy health people that eat turkey bacon instead). I'm pretty sure pigs are sacred in some cultures, so I mean, I'll take it as a compliment. Only trouble is I can't because I'm not allowed to identify as Mormon anymore........

Hopefully Elder England gets better soon. That's all for this week!

また来週!

For the record, I was prepared

*Mom note: Yesterday we were able to attend the homecoming talk of Elder Campbell who was Caden's trainer. It was so fun to meet him and hear him speak.  We are so grateful for all he has done for Caden. 

Well, Guess I'm Not A Mormon Anymore

Man, for whatever reason I had the WORST luck this week. I don't know if I stepped on the wrong crack in the sidewalk or spilled some paint while making calligraphy or something, but seriously I think I had at least one epic fail per day. Anyway though, before I get any further with this email I think I'm going to take a moment to remind you that playing with fire is dangerous. From what I know the fires are a big deal, and they are everywhere. I'm praying for rain to come and put them all out, and you should all be praying for rain too. Be extra careful not to do anything with fires, take care not to cause any fires, and please stay safe from smoke inhalation as best you can. I'm very worried about all my friends and family in Utah, so stay safe out there ok? I'm counting on you! Ok so that aside, this week was a mess on wheels. I suppose though that this is the wrong way to describe it. It's probably better if I say this week I was a mess on legs, I don't have wheels. Why is that? I have no idea! But ladies and gentlemen I present to you: THE EVIDENCE.

CASE #1: THE NOT WAFFLES
I lost the car keys on Monday night. I absolutely could not find them. We had to walk to dinner, which was on the other side of our area by the way, and long story short we ended up over 30 minutes late. That's not even the worst thing! After dinner we had these weird, not waffle things that you can read more about in my journal one day in the future if you're in my direct family. If you aren't, here's the skivvy for you. Play Super Mario Bros. 3 again. In that game, in the first castle, there are these weird glowing waffle things that aren't waffles and will actually kill you if you touch them. Basically those. Long story short my not waffle exploded all over one of my favorite ties. Thank goodness for Tide-To-Go or who knows where we would be. Well, after that whole incident started our week, this next bit here finished it for us:

CASE #2: Our phones glitched out today man. That's why this email is a bit later than planned. See the app that controls our phones pulled an iRobot on us and defected. It actually took away almost everything, but of course I knew an app this evil was bound to go rogue eventually so I kept backups of everything, and ladies and gentlemen it has come in handy! Can't beat me you stupid app! You'll need fists to do that! HAH! Well it caused a great deal of trouble. We did eventually find those stupid car keys by the way. So no need to worry there.

Now you see that's not really the important part of the week either, that's just me being an airhead. No, the important thing is actually a super spiritual moment that legitimately had me in tears this week. So if you recall, last week I mentioned a bloke by the name of Michael. Well, things with him went very downhill very fast. Michael himself is a fantastic young man who I can tell really wants to know the church a bit better than he does now. His family situation is very bad though, and his mom is one of those single parents that chooses to pretend she doesn't have kids. The dad left ages ago, and the mom does enough drugs that she wants nothing to do with her kids for the most part. Luckily for them, their aunt from Australia swung by to give them aid this week, and because we met with Michael recently we got called in to talk to her. It was really a joy because she told us that God was merely a construct of human beings to provide something similar to hope and give us answers to questions that have none. She explained it better than that, but of the many reasons people give me as to why they don't believe in a God, hers was the most well thought out. She didn't say it to be mean to us either, and her help really did a lot of good for the family. For example, she got beds for the kids. They didn't have beds to sleep on, by the way. She also took them all to get doctors check ups, which they needed badly, especially Michael's younger sister who had been walking with a bad limp for months. Through all of this their own mother did nothing at all to take care of them. She doesn't even want to get a job. She just mooches money from relatives, but soon those reserves will dry up, according to Aunt Bonnie from Australia (and fnaf if you get that reference). By the end of it, the amount of help we provided brought Bonnie to tears and she said something that was incredibly interesting. She said: "A few days ago I told you that God didn't exist. But after seeing people like you, who exist just to help people, and who do it full time with no charge, I've seen something. I used to believe that there was no God to pray to, but if I met with a bishop, if I came to your church service and I prayed, I believe with all my heart that there would be a God somewhere to hear my prayer". This is what missionaries live for you guys. There was a lot of tears involved with that sentence, and it meant a great deal to me to hear it. Some of my favorite people in the world are atheists for just this reason. The moment they realise that God's been there the whole time, looking out for them, loving them even when they thought they didn't want to be loved; believing in them when they didn't believe in Him. The light comes on and they know. And it's an amazing thing. Now granted there are some atheists that are jerks, but there are also jerk Mormons. In the end, I see people. Not labels. So I don't really care where you come from. You've got just as much right to be yourself as I do. That's my philosophy, and not to brag, but I'm pretty sure it's God's philosophy too. My message this week is just that. Be nice to each other. Don't judge others. Always give second chances. And be the kind of friend a friend would want to have. As Horton the elephant says: "A person's a person. No matter how small"

Well, that's all for this week of ups and downs, except for the title, which I haven't really explained yet I don't think. So in case you've either been living under a small solid brick of cottage cheese or you just missed the news for whatever reason, it appears that President Nelson is at it again! Always pulling some little tricky trick out of his sleeve. Well, he says we can't call each other Mormons or LDS anymore. Which is unfortunate because the church has two official websites where we send referrals to; one of them is mormon.org and the other is lds.org. We also have a movie called Meet the Mormons. So don't ask me what happened there. Its been causing confusion out here with investigators. I wouldn't really care if it didn't directly affect my job, which it does. It's fine though. If all the prophet ever did was give us news we wanted to hear, I'd be kind of suspicious of him. At the end of the day he is the prophet and I respect his connection to Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father and I trust the man to lead the Savior's church. The church that I work for. I just don't know what on earth the reasoning behind it is, and why we have to change everything over it. That said, while it does bother me a little, I'll be fine. I believe in Christ, so come what may.

また来週

(まだがんばります、僕は)

Hector and the Super Soaker

Now of course, with a week like this there's only one thing everybody is really that interested in. It's a new transfer! "Who's your new companion Elder Rogers? What's your new area? Is it true you're going to go off island?" Well, it is an exciting time, and it would just be absolutely agonizing to have to sit through an entire email just to get to the end, where the transfer news is. That would just be so.... frustrating, you know? A real test of patience. Reading through everything else and eagerly awaiting transfer news just to find it out at the very end. Ha.

This week Hurricane Hector came by the island, sweeping right beneath the isles of Hawaii. Luckily, we didn't get any hurricane force winds out here on Oahu, but we DID get a bucket load of rain. All week. Now me and Elder England are smart and resourceful people who like to keep ourselves in proper working condition, so it should come as no surprise that we haven't used the car all week. The rain poured down, and we walked. Now I've walked in the rain before, with little problem thanks to the rain jacket I was given a few transfers ago. Now, this time, I guess Hurricane Hector pushed his super soaker rain up in our direction exclusively because let me tell you, riding Splash Mountain in the front row is a better way of staying dry than walking around in a hurricane all day. Yes, while the brunt of the storm swept beneath the island to the south, one tiny arm of it went right over Kaneohe, and I'll let the pictures do the talking on that front. We got so soaked that halfway through the day we had to come back to the pad to shower and get changed! And of course those clothes got soaked through as well. I used my fan to dry my socks and pants. The raincoat kept my shirt dry at least though. Thank youuuuu rain jacket!

So of course I told you about 2 new "people" last week and I'm sure you're dying to hear about it, but neither of those 2 came to church this week unfortunately. One of the two people unfortunately moved out to big island and we won't be seeing him anymore, but the other one just chose not to come this week, unfortunately. He didn't move though so I'll tell you that he's the result of the power of member missionary work. A few weeks ago a young man named Moheni brought one of his friends, a boy named Malai, to a young men's activity. Two weeks after that, (last week) Moheni brought Malai to sacrament meeting, where he sat next to me and I was able to get to know him a bit better. We don't know why he didn't come this week, but we will be seeing him later this week so we'll see what's going on. Malai had never been to a Mormon church before, and he seemed very interested. Keep him in your prayers if you would. Well done, you've made it through this test of patience, my transfer news is kind of boring so I had to make something exciting of it this time. Elder England and I are staying in Kaneohe another transfer. Sorry to make you do all this work just to get the answer. Speaking of sacrament meeting by the way, this week we had 2 brand new people come to church! It's a super cool story though. We met them by challenging them to a game of basketball, and we SCHOOLED them. But we weren't able to talk to them after that a whole lot for a while, but we ended up seeing them at a pizza place later in the week, where we talked with them for a long time about why we do what we do and they got super interested. The last time we saw them this week was on Saturday night when we found them at a bus stop. We invited them to church but when they found out it was at 9:00am they said there was no way they'd be up in time to come. I told them that they would both wake up early the next morning and that they wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. If that happened I said it meant that Jesus wanted to tell them something and that they could learn what it was by coming to church. Sure enough, on Sunday morning they both got up at 6:30am and walked to church. Their names are Michael and Makua. And they stayed for all three hours of church. They had no idea how church worked so Elder England and I explained it to them every step of the way. It was very rewarding to finally see all of that walking in the rain pay off.

Now for those of you who just figured you'd skip to the end, too bad. Transfer news isn't here. Be patient people. And as for the rest of you, have a great week, and Aloha!

-Elder Rogers

(Facebook Post)

Recently in my free time I've begun to try my hand at Japanese calligraphy. A friend of mine in the mission field asked me to paint his favorite scripture in the style, so I gave it my best shot. I tried numerous times to bring forward the same feeling as the original verse did, but the end result is still far from perfect.

At first I was a little discouraged by the imperfect result, but as I carefully looked at the words I was filled with the spirit, and I saw the scripture in a new light. For those of you who can't read my handwriting here, the scripture is Alma 26:12, which reads "Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever."

The thing I learned from this experience is that none of us are perfect people. "In comparison to God," as my trainer used to say, "we're not much, but through God we can do all things." The imperfections in this piece are testaments to the fact that we all make mistakes in life. Some things we do well, some things we don't, but nonetheless through faith in God and trust in the Savior, we can do more than we ever thought possible. I'm grateful for what I learned from this, and if any of you would like to see your favorite scripture in Japanese please feel free to share it below.

The scriptures are awesome you guys. Have a good one.

Trust Me, I'm A Professional

So..... Have you ever just had that day when you realize that on Sunday, a day of rest, you've actually ended up working HARDER than every other day of the week, and when you come home all those summer nats have to get swept off of you with a broom because they all got stuck to your body that is actually literally dripping with sweat? Or is that just a me thing. Why do I get the feeling that's just a me thing? Oh. OK. Elder England feels that way too. That's good otherwise this would have been REALLY awkward....

OK, so working on the sabbath aside, a few points of interest this week, first thing: HURRICANE. HECTOR. Yeah apparently a category 3 hurricane is swooshy swooshing itself right for Hawaii. As in, Hawaii the island. I'll be fine. Probably. It's expected to land this Wednesday...I think. From what I know it may cause quote: "heavy rain and winds particularly on the windward side of the big island and the island of Maui". So that's interesting. In case anybody was worried I'm still on Oahu, where I've stayed this entire time, and that means I'm outside of the path of Hector and his temper tantrum. Lucky me. I hope. Also, next thing on the docket is that this week..well it's the final week of the transfer, so I have no idea if I'll stay or go. I've been in K4 for a while now, so it's possible that I could leave, though I hope I don't. In all honesty I'd like to be Elder England's companion for a while longer. If I could be his companion next transfer I'd be the one that finishes him off, but we won't know for sure until Saturday, or, for you guys, next Monday. You know the drill by now. Don't send me things until you have my new address. (If you were going to send things in the first place that is.)

Anyway, with the announcing done for the day, I have 3 major highlights to discuss with you all this morning, which I've put into cute little organized categories because I'm awesome like that, and aside from these three things the only real highlight of the week was getting more rejections. I actually got called a name I'd never been called before this week! That's right, some cracked out street thug dude decided to call me and my companion "professional sh**bags". I can't make this stuff up you guys. I have no idea who or what a sh**bag is, but apparently I'm a professional, so.... Yay me? Anyway, here's some other stuff I couldn't make up if I tried:

First thing of the week involves a dude named Kevin, who you may remember me talking about some time ago. You see, this week we got into Kevin's house again and boy howdy was that an adventure. See Kevin is actually a very interesting guy I found out. The dude LOVES herbal medicines and the like. This week we actually caught him in the middle of the mixing process, so he asked if we could help him out a bit. Being missionaries and therefore being unable to say no to this request, we found ourselves mixing a magical concoction out of Aloe, Ghost Peppers (yeah for real), and a bunch of other random herbs. After we were done squeezing most of the herbs in, Kevin stated that it was time to add the fruit to the mix. As I anxiously wondered what fruit it could possibly be, the most rancid smell I think I've ever experienced performed a violent assault on my nose. I turn around, and lo and behold there's Kevin, holding a jar of brownish pink potato looking things drowning in what looked like pee. Turns out, this is the most "advanced" super food in the world: Noni. (Pronounced 'Noh-Nee' by most, pronounced 'No Need' by me). Apparently this Noni stuff can cure cancer, but it has the side affect of literally tasting like dumpster juice. So what better way to get the healthy out of it than by fermenting it right? Sometimes I really wish I was kidding about these things... So we grab the fermented Noni and we squeeze it by hand to get the juices out of it, and Noni, like a potato, has eyes, so it shoots the putrid smelling juices EVERYWHERE. Everywhere.... And it smells so bad you guys, I don't even know how to describe it. If you thought balut was bad, hoo boy, balut has got NOTHING on Noni. I don't even think it's healthy guys. Anything that tastes that bad cannot be good for you. The smell actually sticks to you as well, and we smelled like Noni for a FULL DAY afterword. It was so bad. But it's gone now so, so yeah. Anyway, Kevin also had us drink samples of this stuff, which was spicy from the GHOST PEPPER HE PUT IN IT, and also tasted of dumpster juice, dirt, and herbs. This folks is why we never ever make green smoothies. They are AWFUL. AWFUL.

Anyway, I've actually run out of time here so I'll summarize the other two big things. First off, Exchanges were a joy on Thursday. I was with an elder named Elder Chiang (pronounced like 'john' but with a 'g' at the end) who is from Taiwan. Not Thailand, Taiwan. (so not where bishop served I guess. I tried to have conversation about it but it backfired so...) anyway the exchange was fun, and also..... Drumroll please.....

We got new investigators!!!!!!!!

AT LONG LAST!

It's great when things finally start working out huh? You wanna know the best part? They BOTH came to church!

Have a great week guys!
また来週!

This is the view from the house of someone we visited this week. They're awesome, but it's a full on HIKE to get where they live (the view is nice though).