Elder Tanner Rogers: I Use Antlers In All Of My Decorating

Howdy!

I hope that everyone is having a great week! This was a pretty good week! We had a lot of really good lessons, and a lot of our friends are finally opening up to us. The big news from this week is that we found out that Elder Brooks will be leaving for the Cincinnati young single adult ward, and that I will be staying here in Liberty and training Elder Brinton. It was really sad to say goodbye to Elder Brooks, we've become really great friends over these last 8ish weeks we've had together. Luckily he is staying in the same zone and so I will be able to see him pretty frequently which will be nice. We went to Texas Roadhouse together which was really fun. I ate a lot of rolls. Elder Brooks couldn't handle the temptation and ate two of them as well - which made him sick since he can't eat gluten. Nobody can resist Texas Roadhouse rolls haha. On our last day, we decided we would go on our longest run together. We had gone six many times, but he said he thought he was up for seven. When we got back to the apartment we were at 7.1, and he said he felt pretty good so I asked him if he wanted to go to 8. He said sure. When we finished our little loop and got back we were at 8.25. I told him that we were only 1.75 away from 10. He didn't really want to do it but eventually, I got him to do it. It was the farthest I've gone since the MTC. It felt really good, and I didn't have any problems with it, but I decided running on a mission is like eating one Texas Roadhouse roll. Yeah, it tastes really good, but you really want to eat the whole basket, not just one. I'm very grateful Elder Brooks ran with me though. It was so much fun and we made a lot of good memories. (Or at least I did - he said this was his most painful transfer yet haha - he knows he loved it)

The Spanish Facebook page is really successful here, and the page is bringing in more people than the Spanish missionaries can handle, so they gave me someone to teach by myself. Luckily Elder Brooks took four years of Spanish and he was able to help me a ton with that. Now that he is leaving I'm a little nervous about how it will go because my trainee doesn't speak any Spanish so it will be 100% on me. We were asked to give a coaching to the APs this week on companionship study which was a little bit stressful, but it went OK. Apparently, they were coaching another set of elders right after, and they copied our coaching 100% so we must not have done too bad of a job. We also had my first service opportunity this week laying mulch which was pretty fun.

We had some fun bike jobs to do this week, and we saw a pretty cool miracle. One day we had to deliver a bike to some Elders, but the front brake wasn't working. I was trying to fix it, but I stripped the nut I was working with. I was in a hurry and so I was looking for something that would fit in a huge bin of random nuts and bolts. The first couple didn't work, but I looked up and saw a nut sitting there - outside the bin. I decided to try it and it worked perfectly! We were able to fix the bike, and make it to all of our appointments on time!

This is the Lord's work and I know that his hand is in it! I'm so grateful that I get to serve as a missionary! There's nowhere I'd rather be!

Keep Striving!

Elder Rogers