Sister Kennli Rogers Texas Fort Worth & Germany Frankfurt Missions: 2020-12-27

Hey hey hey y'all! Merry Christmas and HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I'm so sorry I didn't get an email out last week...I would make up a good excuse but I just didn't feel like it haha (sorry mom). Anyways, it's gonna be a looooong one cause it's been 2 weeks (I think? Not sure what day it is if I'm being honest)...entschuldigung. If you don't wanna read the whole thing, skip to teaching and the spiritual thing at the end...those are the essentials lol 😂

Frank (or Tiger?)

Sad day, Frank the cat is actually female and her name is Tiger. We still call her Frank cause we decided she liked that better but no one fret, we love her just the same.

Kirby

Alrighty so I have this lil blue stress ball and we named him Kirby cause he looks like the blue Kirby from Super Smash Bros. Anywho he sticks to the ceiling so we periodically hear him fall and then one of us throws him back up. He started sticking for quite a while last week so we timed him and he was up there for 77 HOURS. We were so proud. Kirby and Frank are our main sources of entertainment and joy so as you can tell...We've been in here too long haha.

Quaranternity

Yes I know I know, this email is supposed to be coming from quarantine in Germany but SURPRISE corona attacks again and now Germany closed their borders to anyone coming from England (actually most of Europe did that, what's up with Germany always closing their borders to the countries I'm in??). So what does that mean? We have no clue. All we know is that the German government is reevaluating the borders on January 5th and then based on their decision the church officials are evaluating on the 6th. Needless to say, we're taking bets on when we get out of here and the popular vote is never. Haha just kidding, we'll definitely be here until the 6th but hopefully out of here by the 8th! Just pray that the German government sees missionaries as essential so we'll get to head over there and start preaching the good word auf deutsch!

Christmas 🎄

Merry Christmas y'all!! I hope you all had such an awesome day. Hopefully y'all remembered to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ amidst all the crazy. Honestly, Christmas in quarantine was pretty cool cause we had literally all day to study about Christ and remember what an amazing gift the birth of Christ was. Sooooo I guess you could say we had a pretty lit Christmas thanks to all of our moms and the AMAZING staff here. Each one of us got a legit pearl from the MTC president, President Ostler, and his wife, Sister Ostler. We absolutely love them and are so blessed to have them and their wise leadership. We also got a visit from Santa and got some good ol chocolate. Thankfully we all get along very well so we have a LOT of fun together. Anyways, we did a virtual nativity and it was...interesting haha. Sister Ostler put a ton of work into it and we appreciated it very much, virtual things are just different haha. Alsooooo we got the best Christmas present ever and got some rules lifted!! We can now go outside anytime of the day, however sisters are encouraged to only go out during the daylight. Also we can talk to other companionships as long as it's outside and socially distanced and we're all masked. It's been pretty chilly here so we don't go out very much more than before but it's still nice to have the option! We also got a jogging route which is way cool!! We got to see a little more of England than our little corner haha. We actually got lost for a little bit there so we saw more than we wanted but it was still super nice to get out and about! Anywaysss HUGE thank you to my lovely mom, my sweet friend Nicole, my cute sister Annika and everyone else who worked so hard to make Christmas special for me. Not gonna lie it was hard to be in quarantine knowing my comps in Texas were having a blast, but it was still absolutely amazing because of y'all. Love you!!

Teaching (!!!)

Y'all...we have been CRANKIN out the lessons these last two weeks. Thankfully our families and friends are good sports and have offered to let us practice teaching them. And huge thank you to my bro Tanner who lets us butcher every lesson in German...he's a good sport. (If any of you secretly know German...now would be the time to mention it.) Buuuut here are some miracles from this week: (they won't have their names because all of them are from home and we're not looking to expose anyone haha).

1. We taught a friend who hadn't received their patriarchal blessing yet and really dove into the importance of them. This person mentioned how they had their entire life planned up until this point and we were all like "YOOOOO THATS WHAT PATRIARCHAL BLESSINGS ARE FOR YEET" and the Spirit was like "YEAH WHAT THEY SAID" and our friend was like "um sweet I'll think about it." So I'm not sure if they'll end up getting it, but it was really cool to feel the Spirit testify to all of us the importance of our patriarchal blessings. If you don't have yours, sincerely ask Heavenly Father if now is the time for you to receive it. If you have it already, how often do you read it? I believe they are our own personal piece of advice from Heavenly Father. These patriarchal blessings are one of the few things written down precisely for our individual spirits. I think we should read them at least once a week, no matter how good or bad your life is. They are literally the words from God for you. If you don't know what a patriarchal blessing is, ask me!! Or your local missionaries, I guarantee they'd tell you about them.

2. We taught another friend and had planned to talk about patriarchal blessings as well but the Spirit was all "nah bro" so we taught about temples and receiving our endowments instead. And it was amazing!!! Turns out this friend had been thinking about a mission and about going through the temple!!! It's like the Holy Ghost knows what He's talking about or something (; Anyways, we were talking about the temple and this friend mentioned their discouragement with the long process of repentance in order to enter the temple or serve a mission. Sooooo casually we talked about repentance and the divine gift of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We talked about how Satan works so hard on us to procrastinate our repentance even just a little bit. Sinning is a sorrowful thing but repentance is joyful!! We MUST repent daily, even for the littlest of mistakes. Why? Because practice makes good habits and good habits make perfect. Plus, if you already regularly repent of the little sins, it's tremendously easier when we have a big mistake. Also, no unclean thing can dwell with God. It's not that He's dividing us between clean and unclean because He only loves some of us, He knows an unrepentant sinner would be uncomfortable in His divine presence and He doesn't want to be the cause of our unhappiness. So, He provided a way through His Son, Jesus Christ through which we can be forgiven of our sins and return back home to our loving Heavenly Father.

3. We taught another friend about the importance of the sacrament ordinance and renewing our covenants with God. Many people (including myself haha) have thought that the sacrament renews our baptismal covenants, well during this lesson we all got a spiritual slap in the face and realized the sacrament is for the renewal of all our covenants with Heavenly Father. That includes not only baptism, but the covenant to keep the commandments and remain worthy of the Holy Ghost. Also our temple covenants. Covenants between you, your spouse and your Heavenly Father. Isn't that amazing?? God really thought of everything.

The G-ro-cer-y Store

WE GOT TO LEAVE PRIS- oops I mean THE MTC haha. We went to ASDA (the Walmart of UK) and it was sooooo nice to get out! We got to get some of our favorite foods but UK style #welovebritan aaaannnddd we got to see other people in person besides each other haha. It was so fun though! Half the store was shelves of tea but yanno, not judging.

Life Without Pickeball

This gets it's own section because it's basically a funeral for my pickleball skills and my future career as a pickleballing missionary. They don't do pickleball here or in Germany so we go running every morning instead (yuck).

The Otha Sistas

We have been working with some of the fresh-out-of-the-home-MTC missionaries and showing them the ropes of virtual missionary life. It is actually so fun!! We do some studies, role plays, lessons and plannings with them over zoom and they've all turned out pretty well. Some of them are super discouraged though so send some prayers their way!

Weekly Spiritual Dose

Alrighty so some of the lovely fresh-out-of-the-home-MTC peeps have been breaking not only quarantine rules but also mission rules...neat right? Anyways so President Ostler gave us a lovely devotional about humility and our dedication to obedience and diligence to the Lord. I just wanna end my email with this lil comparison and a couple questions:

"Diligence is the consistent effort to do the Lord's work. Obedience is doing the Lord's work in the way He intended/asked it to be done."

What is "the Lord's work" that He's asked you to do? It could be a calling, your job, a certain relationship, anything.

How do you feel like you've been diligent? And obedient? How could you fine tune your dedication to the Lord's calling?

I love you all! Have a great week!!

Sister Rogers

Pictures:

1. Sister Cannon spending some time with Kirby

2. We played in the rain and took a pic looking like wet dogs

3&4. Christmas morning at the temple

5. Facemasks that look like poo hehe

6&7. Another trip to the temple

8&10. Some pictures of your fav Sister missionary (;