I Done Been Yeeted // Frank (:

 Hey y'all!! This one is gonna be long cause it's 2 weeks AND the craziest 2 weeks of my mission so far...so um sorry about the novel haha. 

Miracles 

So every day at 1:50 my zone kneels down and prays for the mission to find the 150 people that week (that adds to 2 new people per companionship). Anyways so we've been inviting our members to do it with us everyday and they have been LOVING it and we've seen so many cool things come of it. We were at dinner with the funniest family ever (the Rees's) and we told them about this new tactic to finding that we're trying out and they gave us FOUR referrals!! It was so crazy. The Phoenix family also gave us 3 referrals so that's cool. We have the BEST ward ever. 

Second miracle: this might not seem like a huge miracle to y'all but it really was to me. I LOVE Texas and I was having a really hard time wanting to come to Germany because I loved it so much. Anyways, for my last week my comps were so nice and took me to all the good food places in Texas. Now...Costa Vida isn't specific to Texas but it's my absolute favorite place to eat. So we went to Costa for my last time until I get home and a member paid for our meal!! She had no idea that it meant so much to me but it was a small miracle for me. 

Third miracle: the weather was just perfect to do one last car wash before I left!! It was way fun and we met some awesome people!! 

Leaving Texas 😭

WOW this was honestly harder than leaving my family cause I knew I probably wouldn't see some of these amazing missionaries ever again. It was so difficult to leave. I tried my hardest to stay but I'm in England now so it didn't work 😂 anyways, we had permission to watch a Christmas movie last week so we watched the polar express on Sunday night as a zone and then we kinda just hungout and took pictures with everyone leaving/going home. It was so much fun!! Also my zone is just straight Champs and played pickleball one last time in the cold cause I wanted to. They're the best. After the movie all the sisters came to our apartment for an approved sleep over!! It was such a blast...I love them all so much and I miss them even more!! But we did a fun mini gift exchange and laughed A LOT. Anyways, Sisters Brady and Hollingsworth dropped me off at the mission home early on Monday morning and it was so NOT a blast. It was so hard to leave them!! Especially Sister Brady, she has changed me as a missionary and a member of this church for the rest of my life. She is amazing and we had so much fun together, it was really hard to leave her but this is where I'm supposed to be and she's changing lives in Texas. I miss all of the missionaris there but I'm excited to meet new ones!!

Traveling (Bleh)

So I flew to Chicago alone, then met up with about 8 other sisters and then we all flew to Dublin and then to Manchester. It was about a day and a half of flying...do not recommend haha. Anyways, I made it to England! It's cold and raining alllll the time but whatevs we're in our room all day anyways haha. 

England 

Honestly the first day I was here I was just mad I wasn't in Texas. I had absolutely no desire to go to Germany at all. Thankfully I was blessed with some awesome companions and finally started to see language study paying off. Although the food is more bland than the air, I've really enjoyed it here so far. (No joke we've almost used all of our salt and pepper haha...its day 4). The people who run the MTC are super duper cool and have put together a mini 12 days of Christmas as well as a Christmas devotional so it doesn't feel too much like prison haha. The quarantine here is STRICT...like freaking STRICT. There's three of us in a room (I'm with Sisters Cannon and Winder, they're so awesome. We've been laughing since we got in here no joke). This is a what our schedule looks like:

6:30 wake up & daily plan

7:00 work out

7:30 get ready/breakfast

8:00 personal study 

9:00 comp study

10:00 language study

11:00-11:30 outside time 

11:30 lunch 

12:00 language study 

4:00-4:30 outside time 

4:30-5:30 coloring or something to keep us sane 

5:30 dinner 

6-9 devotionals or more language study 

We kinda just study like...all the time haha. We've found fun in it though! We talk in British accents literally any time we're not speaking German. We also leave stuff on our neighbors door step (there's 4 rooms with other sisters in our hallway) and run away. It doesn't sound like anything exciting but it's as exciting as covid-safe fun can be so don't judge 😂 with those sisters we've started a game where we hide a passalong card during our outside time and then they have to find it and resend it during theirs. It's pretty exciting lemme tell ya. 

Frank

Our main source of sanity is Frank, the MTC cat. Were not actually sure where he came from or if he's owned by one of the facilitators here but he's pretty dang cute and we have a blast with him. We have tuna here so some of the sisters feed him in the morning and we feed him at night. It's kinda like we have split custody of this random cat haha. But there's always a dish of legit cat food out there so he's gotta be someone's cat. Either way he's adorable and our outside time usually consists of us feeding him and then him following us around. 

Germany 

So the borders are closing again, pray that they don't close them early so we can all get over there!! Buuuut I'm on day 4 of 14 in quarantine so also pray that goes fast haha. 

Weekly Spiritual Dose 

This one's gonna be short and sweet cause this email is really long (oops) buuuut I wanted to focus on the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Have y'all watched the video The Christ Child?? It's AMAZING!! It was released by this church but don't stress, there's nothing voodoo that will make you convert. It's just a video focused completely on the birth of Christ, sort of like a nativity video. Go watch it!!! I promise it will put His birth in a different perspective for you. 

Anyways, I love you all!! My prep days are on Fridays now by the way, so y'all should have time to read my emails (; jk jk, I hope y'all have a great week!!

Sister Rogers

Pictures (there's a lot hehe) 

1. Me & my cute comps 

2. Sister Hulme & I 

3&4. Sister Brady & I

5. The cute sistas 

6. Elder Mennear & I

7&8. The zone 

9. Elder Guajardo & I 

More pictures...#sorrynotsorry 

1. Canes cute Christmas cups 

2. Exchanges with Hermana Miller 

3. Bdubs with the old zone 

4. Me with my gift from the elders & elder Longson in wearing his Superman watch and elder Murhula wearing his Black Panther watch 

5. Me and the sistas at the car wash

6. Elder Hudson & his cute earrings 

7&8. The sisters' sleepover 

9. Me & Hna Miller

10. Me & Sister Bowen (love her so much)

11. At the airport with President & Sister Chapman 

12-13. Us at the Bowens 

14. Us with the Woolfords after they made that awesome video for us!!

15. Frank and I having a moment 

16. Us and Frank 

17. Rumikub keeps us sane

18. Sister Cannon & I when we hid the pass-along card 

Transfers Be Crazy

 Hey hey hey what's up?? This week was legit psycho so buckle in. 

#LIGHTTHEWORLD 

Y'all this campaign is amazing!! I hope you have all had the chance to follow the prompts, they're amazing!! We've had so much fun doing them with our zone. One way we've found is helpful to remember to do the prompt is we wrote it on our paper Christmas countdown chain. So each day we take a chain off, the prompt for that day is on it. It's kinda fun to start off our day with that!! Also, it's a really natural way to practice the second great commandment of loving and serving those around us. It makes you feel so good when you serve others!! Y'all should do it ((: #thisisanad 

Service 

We did a ton of service this week!! We went to community link TWICE and taught a little to one of the other volunteers. He had a couple questions about our faith so we chatted with him a little. He was super nice!! There prolly won't be another convo about our church though cause he really loves being a Baptist haha dang it. But either way we made a new friend!! Anyways, on Saturday we had a cool service opportunity to go clean up this huge park. It was actually a blast and we got a lot done!! Some of our elders talked with a nonmember during the service and got his contact info so hopefully that turns into something!! Service really is such an awesome way to make relationships... #lighttheworld (; 

Transfers 

Okay President Chapman is pretty crazy when he transfers people. Like he's sending me all the way to Germany...crazy guy. Lol for reals though I leave next Monday!! I have no idea when my flight is or anything but I'm excited! I'll be in the England MTC for 2 weeks on STRICT quarantine, then head off to Germany to quarantine for another 2 weeks...it will be a blast (not lol). BUT I'm so excited to get to my original assignment!! It's kind of crazy that when I get out of quarantine I'll only have a little over a year left. Time flies!! Anyways, I'm pretty excited about Germany. It's terrifying and a month of quarantine is going to be long, but I'm so excited. I am going to miss Texas a LOT though. I have learned so much here and still feel like there's so much to learn, but God knows what's best and who I was called for so I'll go when He asks me to. I just hope the missionaries and the members are as cool as the ones here!! I'm going to miss them so much!!

Teaching

Alright...teaching is rough when no one answers. But we've been working with our members a lot this week and have a ton of lessons set up! We're excited to get to know them a little bit better. They are all so sweet though, when we posted on the relief society page that I would be leaving, we immediately had a dinner for every single night this week!! I'm so grateful for the opportunity I've had to meet these awesome Texan people. Anyways...

Sergio: So he still hasn't talked to his wife about the lessons he's been taking so our lessons are really inconsistent since he's still only calling us on his way home from work. But, we are going to offer him the self-reliance classes and see how he likes those. He's just so promising that we don't want to lose him!! 

Nelly: She's basically ghosted us by now...we still reach out to her but we never get contact back. 

Courtney: She's new!! She's a nonmember in a part member family in our ward and has agreed to a lesson with us this week!! We are super super excited. She's very sweet and seems genuine when it comes to meeting with us. We're so excited!

Judith: She is also new! She's another nonmember in our area who is freaking hilarious. She's going through a LOT right now and doesn't want to handle lessons, so we've just been calling and praying with her so hopefully, that turns into something. We try to slide in some lessons whenever we can, we just don't want her to feel like that's the only reason we offered to pray with her. 

Robin: Robin is so awesome, we love her so much. She is also going through a LOT right now, but we can't really help her because she moved to Colorado...? We're trying to find out where in Colorado so we can pass her to the missionaries in her area but she has yet to answer us back...so that's awkward haha. 

Our mission has really been grinding on finding people though!! We found 84 people last week. It was awesome to see all the prayers and hard work pay off and actually find people!! It's awesome y'all. If you'd like to join us, we get on our knees and pray every day at 1:50 to find 150 people total in our mission. Not only to find them but to have at least one lesson with them. It's really cool to see the miracles that come from it. Our Zone Leaders were at a member lunch yesterday when their alarm went off to pray and invited the members to pray with them and after the meal, the member's daughter gave them a referral!! How crazy is that??

Weekly Spiritual Dose

This week I was reminded of the importance of sincere prayer. One of the District Leaders in our zone held a training about prayer and it was really awesome. Here are some cool things he talked about:

1. Close your eyes and imagine Heavenly Father in front of you

2. Fold your arms and bow your head to pay respect to Him

3. Address him by name out of love and respect for what He's done for you.

4. Tell Him about your day. Tell Him anything you want to. 

5. Tell Him your goals for the next day. Ask His opinion on them and listen for the Spirit to guide you in making your goals. 

6. Ask for His help with your goals and anything else you need His help with. 

7. Close in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ because our Heavenly Father asked us to. 

I really love how much thought our District Leader puts into his prayers. And after trying this out I've felt much closer to my Father in Heaven when I pray. I encourage you all to do it!! 

Also um...just reminding you to do #LightTheWorld ((: if you don't know what it is, you can find it on lighttheworld.org, or search the hashtag on social media and it should come up. Anyways, I love you all so much!! Have a great week!! (:

Sister Rogers

Pictures:

1. Zone Chick-fil-A 

2. Us and our cute Christmas masks 

3. Us and Elder Draper before he left ):

4. Me and some rando Elders sunglasses 

5&6. Us sporting our cute after-service outfit where we forgot most of our outfits lol 

7. Us at the cute Christmas lights by our church! 

Member Meals...duh duh duhhhh

Hello my friends. What. Is. Up. ??? I'm sure you're wondering what the title is about...that story is coming later. 

Service

We had a lot of fun service this week. First we went and helped tape an entire house to paint it. We're hopefully helping paint this week but it was actually a blast. Some members in our ward are flipping this house so we're helping with all the work that they can't do because covid forced them to downsize their employees #WeWorkForFree. It was actually such a blast though. Our whole district came and helped and we got a LOT done. And the best part is that we might get to go take it all off and see how it looks! Honestly I can't wait to clean the whole thing cause it was NASTY when we got there. Anyways, our second service was moving someone into their house. They came all the way from California!! They had a really bad experience with members of our church before so we were hoping to mend that and I think we did a pretty good job!! They fed us and invited us back to help move their furniture around so that's awesome!

Germany

Alright, I'm not going (not right now at least). But the word is I'll be outta Texas by the end of the year! There are 7 missionaries in my mission leaving next week for Germany and I am so excited for them!! If I'm going to be honest, I know Germany will be amazing but I'm dreading having to leave Texas! We just started getting good relationships with our members and really picking up our feet in the work. I'm gonna miss this place!! Our ward is awesome and my companions are amazing! Plus everyone going to Germany right now has to quarantine for 4 weeks total...um I'd rather not haha. BUT I will go wherever I'm called whenever I'm called to go. 

Member Meals...

Okay. I absolutely LOVE member meals. Most of them at least lol. But we had this crazy member meal this week that I've gotta tell y'all about. So. We show up and all is fine and they're like "hand us your plates and we'll dish you up!" so we do and all that comes back is a lil scoop of fried rice. Like the rice was delicious but we were STARVING. We all had like 3 servings of rice haha. Anyways we finished our gourmet meal and they ask if we want dessert. And we were still hungry so we all jumped at that and THE DESSERT WAS A WHEAT ROLL. Sooo that was cool. We eat our whole wheat, whole grain, hormone-free roll and by then it was time to give our spiritual thought. Well...it was going great and then it was interrupted by all these freaking crazy stories from the members. They were telling us like deep. dark. secrets. Things we really didn't need to know. But whatever we quickly wrap up our thought and get ready to go but #TexasTalkers so we were standing in the doorway for 30 minutes and their 2 boys (ages 3 and 5) are playing with their stuffed animals on the floor. BUT they decided it'd be funny to lift up our dresses and look under them!!!!! AND THE MEMBER DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!?!?! So we tell them to stop doing that and all of a sudden the mom is spanking the child so hard and then picks him up by his EAR until he's on his feet. Needless to say...we sped walked right outta there haha. Moral of the story though, feed your missionaries!! But feed them a reasonable meal and have sensible conversations. They will thank you haha. 

Teaching!!!

Bubba: Sadly...Bubba's mom asked us to never come back so that was really sad. But we're feeling pretty confident that a different missionary will be able to teach him in a better way because we never really found that flow with him. 

Sergio: Okay Sergio is prime but he still hasn't told his wife that he's taking the lessons...so that's really unfortunate for our teaching schedule. He also had a TON of questions about the difference between Muhammad and Joseph Smith but none of us really knew a ton about Muhammad. So if you have any insight with that just let me know!! Anyways, we're basically just working on getting a consistent teaching schedule with him because he LOVES what we teach. 

Jared: Alright so Jared was the miracle find when we went dog walking. He didn't answer us back for like...a week haha but he finally responded yesterday!! We were all speaking in church so we tried to use that as a motivator to get him to church, but he was at work again! Hopefully we can get a visit with him this week though! 

Nelly: Nelly is freaking awesome, but we struggle so much to get a lesson in! She seems really excited to talk until the day of...and she wasn't working when we went to chipotle so sadly we just had to eat there haha. She's so cute though. We're really hoping one of the young women in our ward will be able to bring her to a youth activity sometime soon!

Hoih Pi: We finally got in contact with the missionaries closest to him!! They are planning to meet this week so I'm just hoping it actually works out. He is so awesome and so sweet. He loves to chat so that's good for us haha. 

Robert: Alrighty so we got the clearance to knock on people's doors if they have no other form of contact. So we tried that out this week!! Robert was in our area book but had no contact information so we accidentally fell upon his doorstep and knocked on his door haha. He was so receptive!! Hopefully we can get a lesson in with him this week. We got his number but he's going out of town for Thanksgiving so we'll just have to catch him after. 

Weekly Spiritual Dose

My mission had the amazing opportunity of having Elder Teh of the seventy come and speak to us 3 days in a row!! He is amazing! Also the most adorable guy I've ever seen haha. But he had a different invitation for us each day and it was BOMB. I learned so much from him. The one that really stuck out to me and I want to share with you is about repentance. If you don't understand repentance...ask the missionaries because they would love to explain it to you. Anyways, he referenced Sister Michelle D. Craig's talk called "Eyes to See." (y'all should go read that because it's also bomb). He asked us the same questions that she asks in that talk. First, is there something I'm doing that I should stop doing? and second, is there something I'm not doing that I should start doing? He encouraged us to prayerfully write up a list of things these questions prompt us to fix in our lives. Along with this invitation was a third question "do you have favorite sins?" He phrased it really great buuuut basically he asked us if we had any sins that we put on the back burner and justify them or procrastinate our repentance. He then invited us (this is super hype and I promise if you do it, you will become more like Christ and be able to repent) to kneel down and pray right then about which sins are our favorite sins and when we think of it, to apologize for it and never do it again. It is time to repent!! Stop holding onto your favorite sins and become like Christ!! 

I love you all so much!! I hope you had an amazing week and I will talk to y'all next week!!

Sister Rogers

Pictures:

1 & 2-  Me and my adorable comps 

3. Us, our ZL's AP's and MATT'S at Torchy's (yum)  

4. Me and my comps at the Texas cowboys stadium  

5. Sister Brady and I bein cute 

6. Me bein cute 

7. Me realizing I stepped in a ladybug while bein cute :( 

8. Me on a large baseball by the Texas Rangers stadium! 

9. Me and my comps bein cute at Torchy's 

10. Me and Sister Bristoll twinning!!

11. Sister Brady...?

12. Us on p-day celebrating Elder Cutright's birthday!

13. Us with the Pheonix family!!

14. The Sisters celebrating Hermana Rueda 13 months  

Make Yer Plans and Ya Hear God Laughin'

 Hello y'all!! Pay attention because (drum roll) THIS WAS A MIRACLE WEEEEEEEK!!!

Transfers (For Reals This Time)

We really did have transfers this week on Wednesday...and Sister Lotu is officially out of the Fort Worth North zone /: We are missing her a lot a lot a lot buuuuut it's okay, she's doing amazing things in the Hurst Tongan wards! It was super fun to see everyone from other zones though, we had some good laughs and I got to catch up with some of the missionaries I flew in with! We also got a replacement into our trio! Her name is Sister Hollingsworth and she's been out for almost 6 months! She is super sweet and passionate about the work so we're excited to see how she'll contribute to our zone! 

German Study (yikes lol)

Okay so Sister Brady and I have been grinding out all the German studies this week. My transfer goal is to be better at making it a priority and she has been so awesome at helping me out with that! She plays a character named Shantell who doesn't know any German but I still speak German to her...? We put on google translate speech-to-text and I speak in German to the phone and she speaks English back to me...unless it's the word "nein" because that's her only and favorite German word haha. But it's actually been super super helpful!! Plus it's a freaking blast. Google translate doesn't always pick up every word I say so the sentences are super funky. Hopefully it will pay off when I get to Germany!! Speaking of which, Frankfurt, Germany (my mission) just got 7 new missionaries on Thursday! So I'm not sure what that means...plus I've heard Germany is closing down again because of COVID, so we'll just have to wait and see. Moral of the story is I don't know anything haha. Your guess is as good as mine!!

Car Wash

We had another car wash on Saturday! The weather here has been super nice lately so we've been able to do more outside service which is awesome! Soooo at our car washes we talk with everyone and give them pass along cards with our number on the back. We've actually had quite a bit of success with this! This last car wash was freaking bomb! We got so many appointments it was crazy. One lady we met was so insistent on giving us something for our service so her and her family are feeding our entire zone this week! She also wants us to repaint her house and to help them move stuff around since they just moved to Texas! Service is officially my favorite. 

Teaching!!

Nelly: We are STILL struggling to get a lesson with her. When we call her, she'll chat with us but it's really hard to get the gospel into those convos. Also, we're trying to track her down when she's working (at Chipotle) but we're extremely broke and have limited miles...so we haven't yet. Maybe that's a sign saying don't stalk people at work??? No clue haha. 

Bubba: We had an in person lesson with Bubba on Tuesday!! We absolutely loved meeting him in person. He has a very sweet personality and some awesome goals. The only thing holding him back from completely understanding what we teach him is that he can't read. We're going to try and get him to listen to the Book of Mormon, but we will see how that goes. Also...he believes in giants? Soooo maybe the Plan of Salvation would be a good lesson haha. He's very unique and has a short attention span so we're getting creative for our next lesson this week. 

Sergio: We had another lesson with Sergio!!! It was totally out of the blue so we didn't really have anything prepared but I think we did pretty good on the fly! He had a TON of questions about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. He was wondering why Joseph Smith was different than Muhammad, so we had a little discussion about the priesthood and the power of it. We also talked about the power of prayer and he told us he STOPPED praying...soooo then we talked about the importance of consistency in our faith. I think it went really well, he even wanted to call the next night! We had another lesson so we rescheduled but hopefully he's been trying out the praying thing!!

Robert: Robert is a newbie and a member referral! We had our first lesson with him last week and I wonder if there will be very many more...he doesn't like a lot of things about our church that are kind of important. Like um the Book of Mormon and temples and Joseph Smith haha. He also is lowkey a Bible basher sooo that's tragic. But we're definitely going to keep working with him. He is really nice! Just sort of less nice when we talk about religion haha!

MIRACLE 

SOOOOO we have these amazing members in our ward that are from ireland. They are freaking hilarious! They let us walk their dogs for service and we work with them a lot for referrals which is super awesome. So we went and walked their dogs on Saturday night and we had made a HUGE effort at being super obedient that day. Like up right at 6:30, only unlocking our phones when we have a purpose for it, things like that. So far it didn't seem like it was paying off at all to be so obedient. Wellllll we're walking these dogs and we run into some of their neighbors! There was a 23 year old named Jared and two younger girls around 12 years old. Sooo we ran into them and the girls wanted to pet the dogs so we stopped and chatted for a while. He was SUPER awesome! Very friendly and outgoing. We were trying to squeeze the gospel in there at some point but it just didn't feel natural. So we said goodbye and kept walking and a little bit down the road Sister Brady was like "GUYS I had the thought to invite him to church tomorrow but I didn't!!" so we were kinda bummed that we didn't take that chance. But the Lord was like just hold on a minute. So we turned around to take the dogs home and we ran into Jared again!!! The dog I was walking wiggled out of his collar so I went and grabbed him which gave my comps more time to talk with him. Well it turns out he is super interested and wants to come to church! He offered his number and everything. Even though he worked yesterday so he couldn't make it, we are hoping to get a lesson in this week!! It was SUPER cool. 

Weekly Spiritual Dose 

This is definitely more directed at missionaries, but I hope you can all feel the same spirit from it that I feel when I read it. 

The alarm bell rings at 6:30, I stumble to my feet

I grab my companions bedding and pull off his sheets

A groan fills the room, is it already time to arise?

It seems like just a second ago, I was able to shut my eyes

The morning activities follow with study, prayer and such

When it’s time to leave the apartment, you feel you haven’t accomplished much

“We have a super day planned,”

My comp. says with a grin

I lowly utter a faithless breath,

“Yeah, if anyone lets us in.”

With the word of God and my faithful Schwinn, we ride off in the street

Prepared to face another day of humidity and heat

It’s 9:30 in the evening, the day is almost through

My companion and I are riding home not accomplishing what we thought to do

We ride up to the mailbox, hoping to receive a lot

Only to look inside and hear my echo reverberate “air box”

We go up to our apartment, the day is now complete

The only thing to show for our work is a case of blistery feet

It’s past 10:30 p.m. My companion is fast asleep

Silence engulfs me all about and I begin to weep

In the midst of sadness, I kneel down to pray

I need to talk to father, but I’m not sure what to say

“Oh, Father” I begin, “What happened to us today?

I thought we’d teach somebody, but everyone was away

My hands, my aching hands- worn, hurt and beat;

If our area was any smaller, we’d have knocked the doors on every street”

“Why on missions are the days so much alike?

The only difference about today was the flat tire on my bike

Will you send some cooler weather? The heat is killing me

I sweat so bad, it gets in my eyes, it’s very hard to see”

“Why do I have to wear a helmet, isn’t your protection enough?

People always laugh at me, and call me stupid stuff

Please send us investigators so I may give them what they lack

I want to give them Book of Mormons, the weight of them hurts my back”

“And what about my family, They don’t have much to say

I’m sick of not hearing from home day after day after day

Oh Father, Why am I here am I just wasting time?

Sometimes I just want to go home, I’m sorry but that’s on my mind”

“My companion, Heavenly Father, what are you giving me?”

The way he rides his bicycle, I don’t think he can see

Now you have it, I can’t go on, I don’t know what to do

That, my Father in Heaven, is the prayer I have for you”

My prayer now finished, I stand up, then jump right into bed

I need my rest for tomorrow, we have another long day ahead

Sleep starts to overtake me, I seem to drift away

Then it seems a vision takes me to another time in another day

I’m standing alone on the hill, The view is very nice

A man walks towards me and says, “My name is Jesus Christ”

Tears of joy well up inside, I fall down to His feet

“Arise,” He states, “Follow me to the shade. You and I need to speak”

My attention’s towards my Savior, total and complete

He says, “Your mission is similar of what happened to me

I understand how you feel, I know what you’re going through

In fact, it would be fair to say I’ve felt the same as you”

“I even know how you felt when no one listened to you

At times I felt not quite sure what else that I could do

I know you don’t like to ride a bicycle, for you a car would be sweet

Just remember the donkey I rode wasn’t equipped with 21 speeds”

“I understand you don’t like sweating, in fact it’s something you hate

I remember when I sweat blood from every pore, oh the agony was great!

I see you don’t like your companion, you’d rather have someone else

I once had a companion named Judas who sold my life for wealth”

“It’s hard to wear a helmet and have people make fun of you

Much like when they put thorns on my head and called me King of the Jews

So you feel burdened down by the weight of your pack

I recall how heavy the cross was when they slammed it on my back”

“Your hands hurt from tracting and knocking on doors all day

I guess when they pounded nails into mine, I ached in a similar way

It’s hard not to hear from home when your family’s not there to see

I lost communication on the cross and cried, “Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

“We have a lot in common, but there’s a difference between us you see

I endured to the end and finished my mission, so follow and do like me”

He embraced me with His arms and His light filled me with His love

With tears in my eyes I watched as He ascended back to the Father above

I stood with awe and wonder when a beep rang in my head

Listening I heard the alarm, then realized I was in my bed

My companion let out a groan, “it’s 6:30 already, no way!”

I sat up and said, “Come on, I’ll even carry your scriptures today!”

No matter what we go through,

When we feel we can’t take more

Just stop and think about Jesus Christ,

He’s been there before!

By Elder Troy Whittle

Texas Houston Mission

I love you all!!

Sister Rogers

Germany Frankfurt Mission

Kirche Jesu Christi

Texas Fort Worth Mission

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints 

Pictures: 

1. Sister Lotu and I at transfers ): 

2. Our new and LIT district 

3&4. Car wash 

5&6. Hermana Miller and I enjoying our post-service treat 

7. Sister Hollingsworth, Sister Brady, and I with our Andy's!