Happy New Year!

Similar to the Pokémon Diamond and Pearl anime, "It's a brand new game in a brand new [year]". New challenges and people to meet abound at every turn, so what bounded into me this week? Well, I'm glad you asked that, because the answer is: A lot. It's been another one of those weeks where everything more or less became a collective blur of work and fatigue, so I'm sure a lot happened but when it comes to specifics I'm a little less sure what to talk about, so I'm just going to sit here and type in the hopes that my thoughts will organize themselves and I can find something of interest to talk about. You may not have guessed this, but biking around all day has the attached blessing of making a person extremely tired. I have no trouble sleeping at night, but the problem comes every morning at 6:30. The alarm is the most evil creature known to mankind, and every day Elder York and I come up with new cunning plans to try and get to the alarm and turn it off without having to move. The force has not been working very well so far, but we still like to give it a try and hope for the best. The idea is that if you can make the annoying noise go away, you can go back to sleep, which is really what we all truly desire I think. That said, somehow every day the alarms plays all the way through at least three times, I get sick of it and get up and turn it off, and then Elder Yorks continues to go off for an extra minute or so until he gets sick of his and then turns it off as well. From there, the couch becomes the most valuable property on the board, and both players engage in Mortal combat over who gets to lay down and nap while the other person makes breakfast. Whoever makes contact with the couch first is usually the winner, but sometimes, if the competitors are tired enough, a surprisingly diverse array of trick moves and combo attacks can be used to remove one's opponent from the desired territory. I'd imagine that any spectators of the daily routine would get a lot of joy out of it, and we've considered selling tickets to raise extra money for food. Ultimately though, one of the two of us naps until breakfast is done. Usually this means an extra 10-15 minutes, but "making cereal" has been used as a cruel way to end the victory nap early. It may soon be outlawed though, because the victim of the shortened nap tends to be rather unhappy the rest of the day, and we are considering calling it a war crime.

Other than that, the real joy this week was getting yelled at for 20 minutes at interviews. This was dumb, and I feel the need to state my case here because I have nothing better to talk about. The new schedule of dinner by ourselves at 4-5pm followed by 5-7 finding and 7-9 appointments with people, wasn't working when it was introduced. At all. We were miserable, nobody wanted to meet with us, and we were just unable to work with our area that way. So, after WEEKS of prayer and fasting, we came to the conclusion that we needed to be working with our area and adjusting to fit local circumstances, so we came up with a plan to work as hard as we can in the way we thought would make the most sense. 4-6pm became finding time, because that's when the most people were outside, followed by 6-7 appointments, if we had them, and then we put dinner from 7-8 and comp study from 8-9. This led to a more positive work attitude, and a lot more success. However, apparently even though we told President that we were doing it and both the district and zone leaders gave us the okay for it, it was sinful the whole time. So during interviews I got yelled at because I'm not doing what I was commanded to do and apparently don't have the faith necessary to work miracles in my area. I thought I was just trying to make it easier for as many people as possible to hear the gospel but I guess putting in extra effort to try and work creatively with a hard area isn't a thing you can do anymore, and if you aren't doing everything exactly as it says to do it you are going to hell. So that was a barrel of laughs and glee let me tell you. I just have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing out here, because every time I try to do something I get yelled at. But if I sit back and do nothing I also get yelled at, and the only difference is that when I try I feel the spirit which kind of makes the yelling a bit more tolerable. So until further notice I'm going to continue to try, even though everybody stopped coming to church and our person with a baptismal date has been avoiding us for the past week.

I do to have the faith. I know it's true. And nobody can tell me I don't. So like it or not I'm going to keep feeding the sheep like I was asked to do in the first place. Maybe one day I'll be able to do it correctly and not get scolded for putting more effort in than I had to. Until then. I still pray and read, and now I do my work according to schedule, and I'm expecting miracles. The first of which already happened. I was at church and there was a stray Pokémon card under a door in the back. It was a Mew. That's not a common thing, so I think it's a sign of good things to come.

Gotta Catch Em All, Gotta Teach Em All

Until Next Week!
-Elder Rogers

Pictures: Elder York and Elder Rogers (texted to mom), The single shoe on the string, The hallelujah boys got a random door set up. I have zero clue why but I had to stop and get a picture of it when I saw it, and, as requested, a picture with me in it.