ET Phone Home

 Hello From Liberty Township Ohio!

Wow, what a crazy week this has been. I got a phone call from President Ensign Tuesday morning that I would be leaving Lawrenceburg Thursday morning and coming to Liberty Township in Ohio because a different Elder was able to return to his original assignment in Argentina. I was pretty stressed to get that call, but everything is going pretty well here. I am the district leader, and Elder Brooks and I are the biking coordinators for the mission. We don't do much with the bikes though because most of the mission has cars now. Our area is much more financially stable than Lawrenceburg, and so the work has been struggling a bit, but I am excited to come and try to make a difference here.  

Something cool about the Liberty area is that we are in a car share, which means that we only have a car every other week at most, and so we get to bike around a lot.  It is lots of fun! Our area is pretty small, but we sometimes have to bike for 45 minutes or so to get to our appointments. That's not a problem except we get a little sweaty. Biking in the summer probably would make us super gross at meetings. I feel like we're kinda gross and it's February.

My new companion is Elder Brooks. He's from Gilbert Arizona and was originally assigned to the Tokyo North mission. He seems pretty cool. He can speak pretty good Spanish as well as Japanese so that's been fun. He also ran in high school so we have gone on a couple of runs together! I miss my other companions, but I am excited to work with Elder Brooks!

Transfers are in a week so we'll see how many things get shaken up when President calls on Saturday night. 

Have a great week! Keep striving everybody!

Elder Rogers

Me by a cool restaurant in Lawrenceburg

Me walking with my buddy Elder Boren

Me and Elder Boren by the Ohio River

Me and Elder Wilson by the Ohio River

The Lawrenceburg district (I like Elder Wilsons face in this one)

The three of us downtown

The three of us when the APs came to pick me up

 In my new apartment with the APs on the left, me, Elder Brooks, and Elder Skinner (who was leaving for Argentina). This is right after me and one of the APs went on a run together - hence the shorts

Guys In Ties Snow Removal

 Hello!

We got quite a bit of snow this week, and are supposed to get 16 inches of snow tonight, which will be exciting! I'm happy because shoveling snow is the one service thing that we can do, so we did a lot of shoveling snow. Interesting that when we put ads on the page offering eternal happiness nobody responds but when we offer free snow removal everyone is interested... It was really fun though. None of my companions are used to driving in the snow, but I'm not the designated driver, so I've become quite the backseat driver. On the first day when it snowed the car in front of us stopped so then we tried to stop but we just started sliding. In order to avoid getting in a wreck Elder Boren cranked the wheel and we went up over the curb and through someone's yard. We almost hit a tree but we didn't. Since then we go really slow, and I wince and give suggestions a lot but we've been alright.   

We had zone conference this week and that was really fun. They got us Jersey Mikes for lunch afterward which was amazing! We had to clean our car before, but it was dumping snow. We found a carwash anyway and tried to clean it but all the water just froze onto the car. It was fun though, and we got to clean out the inside so it was worth it. 

I ran 5 miles on Friday and 6 miles on Saturday which kinda made my companions mad because they were cold but it was fun. I wish I could just run more but that's ok - serving as a missionary is worth it. 

Also, our shower drain was clogged and draino wasn't doing the trick, so I stuck my hand in there and pulled out a 2-foot long hair glob. It was gross but our shower works now. 🤷‍♂️

I love serving here in Lawrenceburg! It is such a great place to be and the members are so nice! It is amazing to see the miracles that God works in our lives when we put forth the effort to follow Him and keep His commandments! I know He lives! I know this is His work and that His hand is in it!

Keep Striving Everybody

Elder Rogers

Me in the snow

Zone Conference (We're on the far right)

Me eating pizza at Strong's 

A picture Elder Wilson took of Elder Boren when we were walking out to exercise in the morning.

 Us in the snow

Elder Boren and Elder Wilson at Acapulco's

Me at Acapulco's 

Masks Are Just Hammoks For Your Face

 Howdy,

This week was pretty crazy for sure! Before this week I thought Facebook finding was dumb, I would never do it I would just make phone calls. However, we had a training on Facebook finding and so I decided to give it a go. I joined the local running group and asked everyone for good places to run and then kept talking and eventually I was able to start teaching one of them! He's so cool! He used to be on the swat team and now he's a firefighter. He also really likes running. Facebook finding is very stressful because you have to talk to them for a while and develop a relationship before bringing up the gospel or they will just ghost you (sometimes they still will). It is hard because after talking back and forth for a while you are pals and it's really sad if they say they don't want to talk to you anymore, but if they say yes it's the most amazing thing of all time. 

I'm so glad I'm a missionary and not a parent because I watched a parent pick their child's poop up off the floor with a paper towel this week and it was gross.

Sunday night the STL's sent a message to the zone saying that the mission was only 15 people short of a mission record for people found in the week, and we had 3 hours to try and break the record. In the next 3 hours, our district found 19 people (we found 2 of those for a total of 4 last week). It was such an awesome experience! We raised the mission record for people found in a week from 146 to 197! I think it's cool how much urgency can increase results. Now we just have to find out how to urgently find all the time...

Today we went to Perfect North - the local "ski resort" to look around. It is very small compared to Utah. We counted and it took people about 27 seconds to get from the top of the hill to the bottom. It made me wish I had done more skiing at home though because it looked fun. 

Overall a great week! I'm so grateful to be a missionary for God's true church on the earth! Have an awesome week! Stay warm! (A member told us we will be -25 to -40 degrees next week 🥶)

Keep Striving!

Elder Rogers

Us downtown

A Duck Wedding

Elder Boren by the wooden toilet seat (He thinks it's funny it's wooden)

Elder Wilson with food

Us at Perfect North Today

Us at the Tanner's Creek Bridge

Get Your Hair Out Of My Bread

 Howdy,

I had a great week out here in Lawrenceburg! Probably the most fun thing we did this week was teach lessons in Spanish. I was able to teach three lessons in Spanish this week, which was really fun. We had a Spanish speaker in our ward come to one of them. Teaching in Spanish is really fun. I can understand most of what happens but I am really bad at speaking so that's something I need to keep working on before I get to go to a Spanish area. We are giving our Spanish friend Jose to the Spanish Elders this week which is kinda sad, but I know they can help him better and he will love the Spanish branch. This week I found a Spanish speaker whose profile says he lives in Greendale. Turns out he actually lives in Mexico, but he keeps talking to me so hopefully, I can eventually refer him to the Elders down in Guerrero.

We had a lot of snow this week. It was kinda fun. They canceled church yesterday because we had an inch. That was a bummer because some of our friends don't like virtual so they just didn't watch but they would have come in person. The stairs to get up to our apartment are also way slippery so Elder Boren fell a couple times and scraped himself up. It was pretty fun running weather. I was able to get in 5.4 miles at a 5:23 pace on Friday so I was happy about that. 

The last exciting thing is that one of our friends finally got permission from his dad to get baptized! We are very excited and trying to get him ready. We have seen so many miracles here, and I am so grateful to be a part of the Lord's work! Being a missionary in Lawrenceburg is so awesome!

Have a great week!

Keep Striving Everybody!

Elder Rogers 

Elder Boren's snowman

Elder Wilson with a dustpan

My amazing snow angel - you can't really tell from the picture but it was really good

Us downtown

Us about to join a zoom call - my companions didn't know I was taking that

Elder Boren on the stairs