EVERY.SINGLE.INVESTIGATOR.IN A WEEK‏

Hey y'all,
    Elder Rogers comin' at ya for another week of Missionary fun.  So
this week definitely had its ups and downs.  Purba Choro, one of the
other elders in the apartment transferred.  But he became District
Leader in his new area!  So that was an up and down. The new guy is
named Elder Mützelberg and he came from Australia.  I have an Auzzie
in my apartment, how cool is that!  He does lots of accents too, just
for fun.  When he teaches English class the Japanese people can't
understand him at all.  I think that's hilarious.  He doesn't.  But
really, it's hilarious.
    We did 10 drive-bys this week.  We took a nice card we made and
dropped it off to investigators and members who have helped us out.
    We've been making friends with all the old people at the park we
go to in the mornings to exercise at.  They do the old people radio
workouts which is basically where they just move around to see if they
still can.  :)  There's a 10-yr-old kid who comes to play soccer with
us every morning and do workouts with us.  He's pretty cool.
    So, on to the downside of this week.  ALL of our investigators
decided they don't want to meet with us anymore.  ALL OF THEM!  How
does that even happen?!  Ok, not really all of them.  But our most
interested one is going to New Jersey for a month for reasons.  So
she's still interested but everyone else was like, "yeah, I don't
really want to be Mormon." Or, "I don't think I'm quite ready to
change."  :/  Well then...  We did talk one guy out of it though which
brings me to my next point....
    The UPside of this week.  We talked a guy out of giving up on the
church!  He came in and said, "I have absolutely no interest in this
religion."  And I do not remember what we said.  All I remember doing
was testifying about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.  I remember
telling him how important this gospel is to me personally.  In the end
he admitted he hadn't been reading the Book of Mormon and that was
probably why he felt that way and he agreed to start reading it again!
He also had newfound interest and wants to continue meeting with us!
Can you say, 'divine help'?  How about, 'Spirit power'?  That was
definitely not me.  There was no way I could've talked this guy out of
anything. I'm just a kid in nice clothes talking about a guy with a
gold book who saw an angel.  But I'm so glad it's not just me trying
to help these people, I've got someone much better than me on my team,
and when He wants something to happen, He can make it happen.
    We also made a package for one of our friends who just left for
the MTC a couple weeks ago and is now in the field in Nagoya.  We put
tons of junk food and letters from us in a big box (graciously donated
to him through me by my family).  I stuffed it into my backpack as
much as it would fit and then biked it up to their house.  Oh yeah, I
can ride my bike with no handlebars!  It's not that big a deal.  I
just saw all the other Elders doing it and I had never tried it so I
was like, "I wanna do that!"  And now I can do it better than them.
Sidebar over.  So we pulled up to their house and waited In the light
rain to give them the package.  Sadly no one was home.  Buuuut, a nice
(Chinese?) lady saw us and we talked to her and she pulled out a huge
thing of cookies that she gave to us!  It was awesome!  She just
literally magicked it out of nowhere.  So I gratefully accepted this
kind act of black magic and stuffed it in my coat because there was no
room in my backpack.  After that we biked back in the now much more
heavy rain while I didn't touch the handlebars because I was too busy
trying not to let the cookies slip out.
    We rode a train up to a referral who never showed up :( but on
the way back I talked to a guy wearing Grand Canyon pants and he has
interest in the church!  He also lives like 2 minutes away from it.
So we invited him to church and activities and we'll see what happens.
    Last night while we were at tutoring we had some interesting
things brought to our attention.  For example, does anyone know what a
Kappa is?  Google it: Japanese Kappa.  It's a humanoid,
froggy-skinned, turtle shelled, monk haircut...thing.  Just look it
up.  You'll see what I mean.  Apparently a city near here claims to
have lots of them.  They're like Bigfoot for Japan or something.
    Oh yeah, we started a kendo night!  That's bamboo sword fighting
by the way.  Super excited for that.  It starts up this Tuesday and
hopefully a lot of people come.  We're trying to get the youth
together more often to have fun in the church and to bring their
friends.  And what young man is not interested in sword fighting,
right?
    We have a ton of lessons set up for this week so we're going to
be slammed for the most part.  I like that personally.  Sitting around
is boring and it's cold outside.  If we have actual lessons we get to
be inside.  Also, we got to call President Nagano a couple nights ago
which was pretty cool.
    Well I love you guys, take care and be good people.  That's all folks.

Elder Rogers

"Look Mom!  I can make a hat out of a bandana now."

"Put a Choro's last day"

"Daigo gave us some awesome bandanas"

"Big Totoro fan"

Cat hat and crutches man‏

Hello everybody,
This week has been awesome.  I'm going to keep this one short because
we're going to be going places today with the other Elders in my
apartment one last time before they transfer.  We had a
spirit-fire-filled lesson with one of our investigators again with the
Kimuras and it was awesome!  Sister Kimura speaks with the tongue of
angels I tell you.  Every time she explains something to our
investigators they understand and act on what they learn!  Anyway, our
investigator is progressing.  We did New Missionary Follow Up training
this week so I got to see President Nagano again.  That's always fun.
I also got to see all my friends from the MTC and they're all doing
really well.  We went on splits with our District leader and I got to
talk to a guy who loves reading the Book of Mormon.  He says he'll
read the whole thing!  So, Cat hat and crutches man.  On our way to an
appointment we got lost, about 30 feet away from their house.  That
actually happens a lot in Japan because Japanese people don't mark
their houses.  So we're sitting there lost and a guy cruises on by
real slow on his bike.  He's having a little trouble and we're trying
to figure out why as he gets closer.  When he passes us he's carrying
like 8 crutches and he's wearing a blue cat hat.  It's like those
binis from Korea.  It was so weird.  He looked like he had just robbed
a hospital or something.  Anyway we taught a couple more lessons, they
were awesome.  I'm a a missionary, it's awesome.  The usual.  We went
to an activity Bishop invited us to and he made us clean up...the
food.  That was really awesome.  We have a guy who comes to our
tutoring program (and has been for the past 30 years) he always likes
the missionaries but never takes lessons.  Well, UNTIL NOW!  My
companion slipped from American history to Book of Mormon history with
him last night and now the guy wants to learn more.  My companion
taught him a lot about the Lamanites and Book of Mormon things.  I was
busy teaching the kinjin kendo kid English.  But we're going to get
him reading the Book of Mormon!  (The guy who's been talking to
missionaries for 30 years). That's about it, today we're going to a
temple/shrine and getting tabehodai (all you can eat) Indo curry.  I'm
excited.
Elder Rogers

"My whole district. Also, check out my new haircut."

STRAIGHT WOOF AND OPIPI!!!‏

For all the missionaries who came here with me, this email should answer some soul questions such as: what does straight woof mean?  how well known is Opipi?  do all Nigerians really do the handshake?  Be prepared.

     So this week was pretty awesome everybody.

     We've gotten 3 awesome referrals and it is really fun trying to teach them.  I'll explain the "try" part in a second.  On Sunday we met with one of our referrals and she set up a time when we could meet her husband(nonmember).  She wants us to teach them and convert the husband so he can baptize his son who is turning 8 soon.  No pressure.  I think it's an awesome opportunity to see a really cool miracle.  The only problem is, she lives outside our area.  Like waaaay out of our area.  Outside of the area next to us almost.  So that presents a little struggle of getting special permission to go there and biking really hard and fast.  We'll sort it out soon, probably.

     We met our new investigator on Monday and he is really interested in family history.  Yay!  He drew his family tree back to samurai times from memory!  I have it at home but I didn't take a picture.  It's quite impressive actually because he knows stories about each and every one of the people on that tree.  Another thing to mention about him is that he doesn't speak English.  No surprise there, but he doesn't speak Japanese either.  That was a fun little thing we weren't told. He speaks Spanish and literally only 3 words in Japanese.  No joke, mom, dad, and friend.  So it was a struggle to say the least.  I actually understood most of what he was saying though!  Gift of tongues!  I even understood when he was talking about his pet snails!  But that's beside the point, I understood enough to talk to him in the most broken 2nd grade Spanish/Japanese/English mash-up ever heard.  And he understood me!  Craziness.  I really like going over and talking to him even though I have to really work for the Spanish.  A lot of our lessons have involved Spanish recently.  Huh, weird.  They should've put that on my call.

     We went to splits with the zone leaders in Urawa and it was awesome!  We met a lot of really prepared people and it was so much fun talking to them.  Now, on to the part everyone's been waiting for: I learned what straight woof means.  Straight woof - a phrase to be used at times of extreme displeasure.  For example, if someone farts really bad you would say it was straight woof.  This phrase comes from Home Alone when the kid sees a picture of his brother's girlfriend.  He calls her, "woof."   Now you know.  I also met a Nigerian guy while on splits.  His name is Amo.  I asked him where he was from and when he said Nigeria I did the handshake.  It worked!  He instantly friend requested me and we were best buds after that.  Note to all missionaries:  If you see a black guy try to do the handshake and see what happens.

     On Wednesday we met with our Spanish speaking friend again and committed him to read the Book of Mormon with his family and participate in Family Home Evening.  That was awesome.  Then we taught Eikaiwa that night and I taught e advanced class.  It was really fun and I talked to them about American and Japanese culture a little bit.  They are so good at English!  Excuse me, they all speak English so well.

     On Thursday I accidentally set up 2 appointments overlapping so we went on member splits, which actually turned out to be a really good thing.  We found a new investigator and he's pretty golden.  I went and visited one of our previous investigators and she has committed to reading the Book of Mormon, praying, and coming to church for the first hour!  After that we taught a mogi lesson to the Hirai Kazoku(family) and it went really well.  They are the ones who gave us the bottle that got the cap cut off 1minute away from our apartment.  Sad day.  I was covered in soda and so was my bike and so was the road, but we didn't get to drink any of it.  I told the other elders that the soda didn't make it all the way back and they thought I drank it until I showed them the nonsense of the cut cap.

     We didn't do much on Friday but I did get my package and the other elders helped me enjoy it.  (I told them I needed help eating all of it, the other elders aren't picking on me.)  At ping pong and music night I brought my ocarina and played some sweet music...for about 30 seconds.  The little kid that always comes wanted to play ping pong with me so I did that for a while instead.  It was really fun and I think he likes me a little more now.  I can understand him now!  It just happened all of the sudden.  He started talking, and I started talking back!  And we both understood!  

     On Saturday we did some mogis and a real lesson.  All were really good.  One of our less active's has been pulling away from us a little bit but we roped him back in with this last lesson.  He's starting g to keep commitments again and he may come to church soon.  We'll see.  We also met the Furugawa family and I love them!  They have an 8yr old girl, a 5yr old boy, and another 2yr old boy.  They are very energetic and love to play.  They kept playing with their Ultraman action figures and playing with us.  They were so cool!  They had Miyazaki movie posters on the wall that were so natsukashii(nostalgic).  They had Totoro, Kiki's delivery service, and Castle in the sky.  I don't remember anything about the movies but I remember I liked them.  So that was something that helped me bond with the kids.  I also showed them my picture book of me and my family.  They played 'where's Rogers Choro' the whole time I was showing them.  I'm also in a magazine apparently!  They pulled out a magazine and flipped through it and it had my face in it!  I was like, "ゆめいですか？" (Am I famous?). And they told me, sort of.  I will take it!

     All in all, this week has been really good for me, just meeting and bonding with new people is so great.  It's also cool to go visit other missionaries and do splits with them.  Other areas of Japan are pretty cool.  Alright, I've committed a few people this week to do good things and they're Japanese and have no Christian background, so you all should be able to start doing this or continue doing this pretty easily.  I want everyone who reads this email to start reading the Book of Mormon everyday.  You don't have to dedicate a full hour to it or anything or read a whole chapter everyday, but just read a little everyday.  As you read it, you'll feel better throughout the day, your problems won't seem as bad, you'll be able to see the good all around you.  I promise that taking the time to read the Book of Mormon for even just 5 minutes everyday will bring blessings.  No matter how busy you feel I promise there are at least 5 minutes everyone can spend coming closer to their Savior.  Also, if you already do this, great.  If you don't do this, Start!  Everyone should participate in some kind of Family Home Evening each week.  We should all teach our families to love each other and live the way God wants us to.  If you do, you're families will grow closer to each other and to God.  So just do it.  :)

     I love you all.  Be good people and do what's right.

Elder Rogers

We went to the zoo (pet store)

 

"Some members gave us a huge bottle of our favorite drink to take home.  It was in a bag on my handlebars and nicked my spokes and this happened.  It squirted soda everywhere!"

"Some more packages (Gratefully received by the whole apartment)"

I'm a scary American

皆さん(everybody) おはようございます(good morning)
    This week has been 素晴らしい(awesome).  We've had lots of good stuff
going on.  Our investigators are progressing.  We taught some good
lessons throughout the week and the message was received very well.
They want to keep learning more and everyone seems to really like us.
Like, they go over the top for us sometimes.  Everyone feeds us and
Nishiyama-San made us a ton of food at her shop.  I didn't think I
could finish all of it because she kept bringing more out!  But I did
it.  I ate all of it.  And it was delicious.
    This week we did a lot of 同席s (member present lessons) and they
were a HUGE help.  They explained things so well and became good
friends with our investigators.  It's really good when the
investigators testify about how the gospel has helped them because the
spirit is so strong, most of them are converts themselves.  The
members are really good here at just about everything.  If we need a
模擬 もぎ (role play lesson) the members will help us.  If we need them to
come teach a lesson with us they'll do it.  If we need food, the
relief society is who to ask!  They are so on top of it.  We asked
them for cereal, rice, and bread, and they did not waste any time.
Our food basket was the fullest it's ever been yesterday!  The members
are just really nice people here.
    Specifically, 大石兄弟(Brother Big Rock) is always helping us out.
高井兄弟(Brother Tall/High) meets with us every week and sometimes more
often than that.  He gives good feedback and helps us improve a lot.
The 木村s (it has a tree in it but I don't know what it means) help us
out too and want to meet and help more!  The Naganos even came up from
Tokyo to do a lesson with us on Friday!  My Mission President came and
helped me with one of my lessons!  It was probably the worst one of
the day, naturally, but he said it was good anyway.
    We've had some days this week where we just go from one
appointment to the next the whole day and during one of the
appointments we get fed so we don't have to take time off for lunch.
Our days have been becoming increasingly packed with lessons and
meeting new people who we hope to start teaching soon.  That's a good
thing.  We have a few more people we want to meet with this week and
see how interested they are and start teaching them.  We also got 3
referrals from one member after a particularly good role play lesson!
    I'm excited.  This area has improved so much since I first got
here.  Everything seems to just be going uphill.  We also are going to
try to start teaching a guy who has talked to missionaries for 30
years!  And he still hasn't been baptized!  That means he's totally
ready by now and teaching him should be a breeze.
    On Sunday we watched our area plan video and it was SO japanesey.
It was like straight anime and it was hilarious.  It was spiritual
too, don't worry, but it was so un-American.  Everybody should try to
look it up, it'll give you a good laugh.  Maybe less if you don't
understand Japanese but it was funny to me.  It's the Asia North area
plan JP final (1).  Or something like that.
    Oh yeah, I'm a scary American.  So whenever we go visit this one
less active we go by an elementary school.  And a lot of the time when
we come back from our appointments there the kids are getting out of
school.  So when they see us with our white skin and pointy noses they
scream, "Amerika!  Aaaaaa!" and run around in little circles with
their hands in the air.  Some of them actually want to talk to us but
mostly we get the Godzilla reaction.  It's pretty funny.  Sometimes I
feel like messing with them but I feel like that may be pushing it.
Also, when we just walk around places sometimes kids will say,
"Gaijin" which means foreigner, and we'll respond in Japanese that yes
we came from America and start talking to them.  This almost always
makes them laugh that they thought we couldn't speak Japanese but we
can.  They're like, 'why do these white kids sort of speak Japanese?'
It's always fun.
Love you guys,
Rogers 長老


"Nishiyama-San always gives us food!"

"Squid lemon candy"

"Self-intro in Japanese"

"Nishiyama-San always gives us food!"

"The relief society gave us this"

"A picture of me for my momma"

Still Teaching

So this week was pretty cool too.
     We went to District Meeting and I gave a training during that.  It
actually went really well and I think everyone enjoyed it and learned
from it.  We did a lot of mogi lessons with members and we're getting
better at teaching.  We've started meeting with a less active and he
is a delight.  I love this guy.  He knows so much about the church and
he speaks English!  We always have good discussions with him and he is
visibly reactivating.  We invited him to ping pong and he's interested
in that.  He also has a few friends that go to our church so that's
good.  We had them invited him to a karaoke activity and I think he
liked it.  We also invited him to come to church with us and his wife
too.  They are very promising and I'm really glad we met them.
People have been feeding us a lot lately even when it's not mealtime.
They just give us food at random times in the day and they without
fail give us mugicha every time.  I don't actually mind it but a lot
of people say it tastes like dirt water.  It does but whatever.  I
just make sure that whatever they put in front of me gets eaten.  Then
they assume that I'm starving and will bring me more and more until
they run out.  I just sit there and politely eat all their food like a
typical American.
     We met a sister who just got back from a trip to China and she's this
close to baptism. (Pretend you can see me holding me fingers close
together). I'm excited for her.  We're going to meet with her a lot
and make sure she's ready.
     All's good here in Sakado B, Saitama West, Tokyo, Japan Mission.
We're doing good and having fun along the way.  I really love the
people here, they're so nice.  I love all of you guys, stay safe.
I'll write again next week.
Elder Rogers


"Monkey Bread from one of the Sisters in the Ward."

Japan is really Chill:)

Hey 皆 (everybody)
    This week has been interesting.  We have been calling a lot of
people lately and talking to literally everyone on the street.  Nobody
gets past us.  Sadly, a lot of people don't seem to care that I'M
OFFERING THEM SALVATION.  Whatever, they have their agency.  There has
been some good stuff happening lately though.  We called one lady and
she told me the usual, "I'm busy right now and pretty much forvever"
but I wasn't having that this time, someone was going to hear the
gospel from me.  So I asked her if I called her back if she would talk
to me then.  She said she would and when I called her again we set up
an appointment to meet on Saturday.  I'll talk more about her later,
but for now on with the rest of the week.
    So we had a zone conference and I got to see lots of other
missionaries.  Moore 長老 (Elder) was there and I got to talk to him for
like 3 minutes!  It was cool.  We learned about how to be better
missionaries but I won't spoil it for you guys.  If you want to know,
the answers are in PMG and the scriptures. ;)  So we've been doing a
lot of もぎs (role plays) lately and they're really fun. We learn how to
better teach each time.  We also taught 英会話 (English class) and that
was great.  I did a self-Introduction but in English this time.  It
was weird.  My name is apparently hard to pronounce so one lady kept
calling me, no lie, Elder Gorgeous.  Not because of my looks but she
just thought that was actually my name.  I told her I was flattered
but that wasn't actually my name.
    We had splits on Thursday with the 川越 (Kawagoe) Elders A and it
was a lot of fun.  I went with my District Leader Elder Turley and he
got to experience a day in the life of ロジャズ長老 (me).  His bike busted
about 5 minutes in and we had to go get it fixed twice.  We asked an
old man for directions to the bike store and tried to teach him a
little about the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He then proceeded to preach
to us the gospel of the Olympic Bike Store.  This went on for about 20
minutes longer than it should have, is taking small steps away from
him the whole time and him following.  Eventually we escaped and got
Turley 長老's bike fixed.  After that we ate dinner and went bike
でんどうing (proselyting).  We talked to everyone and gave out a ton of
flyers and a モルモン書 (Book of Mormon).  It was a tough day but a really
good one.
    On Friday my どうりょう (companion), Elder Lewis, got really sick and
Nagano 姉妹 (sister Nagano) banished us to the apartment.  Before that
we did manage to meet with a lady who was interested in the
discussions and even fed me for free!  Seriously, every time we go
visit older ladies they always feed me specifically for free.  It's
awesome because I'm always hungry.  More importantly though she's
interested!  Yes!  Score for the せんきょうし (missionary)!  While we were
stuck in the apartment we took a nap.  I slept for about two hours and
Lewis 長老 slept until dinner.  I did get to clean up the apartment in
that time and set up my study desk so it was time well used.
    On Saturday we had the もちつき(Mochi making activity) at the church
from 9-1.  That was a lot of fun.  A lot of people came and of course
they fed me.  Someone did give me なっと though.  It's not actually as
bad as everyone says really.  I'm not saying it's my favorite by any
means but it isn't the devil's food either.  After that we had another
もぎ and it went not so bad.
    Now, the moment you may have been waiting for, "what happened
with that lady you called?" I'm glad you asked.  We set up to meet at
the church on Saturday night after she got off from work.  She was
late.  By 3 minutes.  Then 4.  Then 7.  We were just wondering after
about 11ish whether she was coming or not when BOOM!  In she walks and
we just start talking.  She has interest and has met with missionaries
before.  She wants to meet with us more and we had a great どうせき(member
present lesson) with her.  We are looking forward to meeting with her
again and teaching her more.  We're also getting her a Spanish モルモン書
because that's her native language.  I'm excited.
    On Sunday we had ワード大会(ward conference) and it was really cool.
We got pamphlets with the coming unto Christ triangle on it and we
talked about that a lot.  Our bishop talked to us too.  The one who
doesn't actually speak 日本語(Japanese) in Japan.  It was cool because he
showed us a poster for Tomorrowland and talked to us about it.  He
said that this place was great but we could do better.  He then
proceeded to tell us about Zionland and how we needed to start
building it now.  I liked it.  That night we did tutoring for a few
people and the aforementioned bishop gave us a ton of candy.
    Yesterday we visited 高橋姉妹(Sister Takahashi) and 町井兄弟(Brother
Machii) came with us.  町井兄弟 is the man by the way.  He is always there
for us and I love him.  He walked like 3 miles through the snow for
us!  And he's old!  Oh yeah, it snowed here.  Like a lot.  People
drive crazy in the snow so it was pretty あぶたい(dangerous) for us.  No
not that dangerous Mom.  I'm still safe.  It was interesting because
my bike really just doesn't do snow.  So I just did my very best to
not fall off.  I was not 100% successful despite my best efforts but I
was not injured and that dent in the truck will probably pop right
out.  Just kidding.  You can guess which part ;).  We met with a
couple last night.  They're the 森島ふふ (Morishima couple) and they're
きょうかいいん(church members).  We taught them a lesson and showed them a
video, Earthly Father Heavenly Father.  Turns out he's the guy who did
the Japanese voiceover for that video!  Of all the people in Japan!
It was super cool.
    Then we come to today.  Today was supposed to be a temple P-day
but I decided to get sick last night for some reason and sleep in
until 10:30.  Yeah.  :/  So that's that.  Anyway, we took the
opportunity to clean the apartment up a lot and it looks fantastic.
It's never looked this good.  We also got a ton of groceries and
precariously brought them back on our bikes on the icy roads.  Totally
worth it.  Tonight we have a baptism for きみこ姉妹(Sister Kimiko). She's a
79ish year old lady and she's super funny and nice.  I'm actually
going there, right now.  Love all of you guys, I'll send another
letter soon.

"Kimiko's Bapism"

"The Mochitsuki"

"Another view of my area"

"It's snowing"

"My desk and pictures from my family"

"Splits in Yanasegawa.  Turley Choro by himself.  Me and Lee Choro."

I FINALLY made it to Japan!‏

So, minasan (everybody),
     My first week as a missionary has been pretty interesting so far.  To
explain all the unusualness I have to go back to right after I left
the MTC.  We all got up at zero-dark-30, that's 2:30am for you
non-military folks back at home, and piled on a bus.  This bus took us
to a train and we were on that for about an hour.  Naturally the
people right next to us were super excited, I mean who wouldn't be, we
escaped the MTC!  We were set loose on the world to baptize everyone
we saw.  Anyway, they were singing White 'n' Nerdy and show tunes,
really loud.  After what seemed more like 3hrs than 1 we made it to
the airport where we immediately got split up.  This was somewhat
scary for me because for the past 9ish weeks I've had not 1 but 2
doryos.  It was a little weird being by myself.  Anyway we ate a
healthy breakfast of Cafe Rio while we waited for our flight, which
was delayed an hour. Sasuga United.  Anyway because our flight was
late by an hour we were gonna have to book it to our next flight.
So we slept on the plane but when we touched down in San Fran it was
go time.  We were on the opposite side of a seemingly never-ending
airport.  It was probably about a mile plus a little.  Anyway, we get
off the plane, grab our bags, Beckstrand Choro starts talking to a guy
on a Segway, we don't know why at the time but apparently Segway guy
is Mormon and wants to help us and will take us to our gate.  Sweet!
So Segway guy takes off and we start chasing him.  People move out of
the way of a speeding segway but were less eager to move for us.  So
we're some random well dressed group of airport runners chasing down a
guy on a segway and we're trying not to run over anybody, which is
hard when you have your bags too.  Luckily, we made it to our gate
pretty quickly with no injuries to any of us or any member of an
outside party so no charges were pressed.  However, only after making
it to our gate, sprinting the whole way in our best sunday clothes
while carrying our bags, do we discover that our plane had left 2
MINUTES before we'd even arrived.  So we sat our little group down and
started teaching everybody around us because we thought, "hey, if
we're stuck here for a little while, we might as well do what we came
here to do"  So we actually found like 6 or 7 people to talk to!  I
didn't actually teach anyone.  I watched the luggage mountain.
While I was standing there with my bright and shiny nametag on, no
less that 4 Chinese people came up to me asking me where their gates
were.  Now, I don't speak Chinese, and I don't work at the airport.  2
big problems.  They didn't seem to pick up on either and were
persistent that I had the answers.  I just took their tickets and then
pointed towards their gates.  It was weird.  After we'd been dendouing
for a while the other elders got us a hotel.  We all rushed out to get
ourselves in a shuttle and on our way to food....when disaster struck.
Aoyama Shimai needed her bag.  It took them 2.5 HOURS to get 1 bag!
we dondoued then too.  Hipps Choro got a book written and signed by a
lady he talked to.  He's not allowed to read it for 2 years, but he
has it.  We also met a bishop that served in Japan like 20 years ago.
It was pretty fun I guess.  Then we stood out in the rain while we
waited for our shuttle.  The guy who drove it spoke, guess what,
Chinese.  That was interesting too.  We did make it to our hotel
though.  Against all odds.  But, because our trip hadn't been
interesting enough, they'd lost our reservations.  So we had a weird
phone call with the church asking if we were at the right hotel.  We
were!  And they let us stay!  Thank goodness.
     We walked down to a gas station Wendy's for dinner and didn't even
get any weird looks.  12 well dressed teenagers walk in speaking
Japanese to each other, no one bats an eye.  Anyway it was delicious
and we slept like rocks that night.  The next day we showed up 3hrs
early to make sure we didn't miss our flight.  We made it.  Hipps
Choro had his birthday somewhere over the International Date Line, but
since we were all split up we didn't get to sing to him.  Zannen.  We
landed in Tokyo safely and quickly got our bags and met President
Nagano.  Everything was smooth sailing with him.
     We had 2 vans for all of us and our bags so we packed one with bags
and one with people.  There were only 3 seats in one van, enough for
the companionship that was driving and one other person.  Can you
guess who that person was?  I'll give you a hint, they didn't speak
english.  It was me.  I got to ride with 2 Japanese elders for an hour
and a half.  It actually was super fun.  I can sort of speak Japanese!
We sang some hymns and talked about our hobbies etc.  I liked it.
Then we made it to the Mission home, had an awesome dinner, and went
to bed.  The next morning we played a crazy version of dodgeball
(elders only by the way) which was waaaay fun.  After that we had
breakfast and then training all day.  We went streeting for a little
bit and I loved that.  We talked to a lot of people.  After that I met
my companion, Elder Lewis.  He's super cool.  He's a Texas state
wrestling Champ and a semi-pro fighter.  That's why Nagano Kaicho put
us together.  I am very grateful for that.
    We get along really well and we're going to teach a LOT of people
this week.  He also helped me get a bike.  Funny story, we were trying
to make it to this awesome bike shop that we had no idea how to get
to.  So I tried to talk to this one guy on the street, and he walked
us ALL THE WAY TO THE STORE!  It took like 30 minutes too!  We just
talked to him about everything we knew how to the whole way.  We got
his phone number and we're going to try to meet him again for lunch.
We also talked to a lot of people on the trains and gave out a decent
amount of BoMs.  It's been fun and super busy so far.  Oh yeah, I
introduced myself in church yesterday.  I think it went well, they
laughed at all the right times.  I told them I was super new, straight
out of the MTC.  I'm what's called a Bean-chan.  I told them I was
here to help even if I couldn't understand their Japanese.  I also
told them that since I just got here from America I was tired.  I
wasn't really but I needed an excuse for my Japanese and I thought it
would make them laugh.  It did.  Elder Rogers for the win!  We talked
to a lot of people at church and I don't remember very many of the
names.  When I said Dad was a Marine they made a joke that I thought
was super off-limits in Japan but I guess it works like black jokes
and Mexican jokes.  They said that if anybody messed with me that Dad
would fly a plane over here and drop another bomb.  Wow!  Some of the
people here are definitely old enough to have lived during that time
but I guess it's ok if a Japanese guy says it.
     It's been a little weird riding around on my super sick bike in a
suit but I kind of like it.  It's probably for my own good that I'm
eating differently than at the MTC.  There I got to eat 4 all you can
eat buffets a day.  But it was bulking season, and now there's just
more of me to love.  I'm living the broke missionary life now,
surviving on rations (just kidding Momma, I have plenty of food) but
it'll be good for me.  I'm not stuffing my face constantly and sitting
around all day, I'm eating regular amounts of food and biking and
walking places.  So I'll probably look like Bruce Lee again in no
time, right?  Anyway, it's been great so far and I love it.  Thanks
for tuning in this week, I'll try to send some pictures soon.  I love
you guys.
Elder Rogers

"Us in Ito Kyodai's van"

"The restaurant Ito Kyodai took us to when Lewis Choro got strep"

"The 12 missionaries from the MTC"

"Our district building"

"My doryo"

"My super awesome bike"

"Dinner with Honda Kyodai"

"Gifts from Oldham Choro on my 1st P-day"