One month out!

My Dear Family,

How is everyone doing? I think about you all and I am so grateful for each of you. It's so great to get your letters and emails and all the other things you send, thank you SOO much! Thanks for the brownies, the district loved them! The Vasquezes also sent me a package. I sent them a thank you, but will you thank them again for me? I've realized that I'm usually pretty bad at answering questions and replying to things you say, so I'm going to not write a sermon, but obviously being here, much of my life is about spiritual learning.


Dad - Seu portugues e muito bem! I'm jealous of your tri-lingualism. I don't know if I ever told you this, but one of the many reasons for which I was excited for my mission was so that I could learn another language. To be honest, I really hoped it was going to spanish. I remember on numerous occasions when I would get to see you use your Spanish to help an old lady in the airport, or a struggling man at the turtle liberation camp. I've always loved Spanish, and always hoped that I would be able to speak Spanish with the person I look up to the most. But, The Lord needs me in a country where they speak portugues, and at first, I was a little less excited than I should have been, but now, I absolutely love portugues. I love it. It's so fun to learn and to study and to speak. I've learned something else about my mission through portuguese. I always wanted to learn a language and be fluent, and I thought that a mission would be a way of accomplishing that. But you know what I've learned here? The Lord isn't teaching me Portugues so that I can be fluent in Portugues. He's teaching me portugues so that I can teach, serve, and bear my testimony to people in Santa Maria. It was a tough realization at first, but I want nothing more now. Sometimes I really feel like the Lord is teaching me the language. Almost as if when I sleep, He's putting vocab into my head, because sometimes I only look at a word once, and I'll remember it when I'm teaching. OR all of a sudden, I'll remember a word from high school spanish and i'll say it, and it turns out to work in Portugues. The language is one of the obvious ways that I am seeing the hand of the Lord in my life. That's too bad about S2S, but good luck on the dirty dash. I can't wait to run with you again!


Mom - Your story about the magazine seller really touched me. You are quite the missionary! Something I'm starting to learn is that sometimes I felt like I would have to convince people that the Gospel is true, but that's not really the case. I teach people about the Gospel, and Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost convinces them.

Mitch - your portugues is also coming along! I'm so excited for you, irmao. You've got a great year coming up for you. Brother, I want you to know that I pray for you every night. (Mom, Dad, Violet, and Ricole, I pray for you too, but I'm speaking to Mitch for a moment :)) Ringold and Workman will be awesome teachers, and they will help make your senior year great, but you have so many other things going for you that will make your life awesome. Brother, I love you so much. I wish we could serve together, I could really use you here. Don't let any of the worries and disappointments that might come your way get you down for too long. I know that's ironic, coming from me, going to you, but the truth is that life's too short. Mom and Dad told me that all the time, I wish I understood it like I'm beginning to. I hope you enjoyed replacing that fence post with Dad. I am 100% honest when I say that I'm jealous. I wish I could have been there. Some of my favorite memories of my whole life were when I was working with Dad.


Do you all remember my lucky-life saver necklace? Well when I was in the Spokane airport, I read in the Miss. Handbook that we're not supposed to wear necklaces, and I didn't want to be disobedient right off the bat, so I took it off and put it in my backpack. And I really really missed it. I started thinking about it more and more and I thought it would be okay to wear it, so I asked my teacher, and he said it was fine. I was so anxious to put it back on again. It's jsut a little necklace. An agate and some leather. But to me it means so much more. To me it means family and love. The truth is, I do cry here sometimes. But I'm never sad. When I think of the people I really care about, the tears come, but the tears are just a symbol of love, a reminder that love is power, love is real. When I feel how strong my love is for all of you, It is a testimony to me that God lives, that Jesus is our Savior, and that there is life after this. How could a feeling as strong as love be felt by anything that wasn't created by an all-powerful, all-loving Heavenly Father. That's one of the first things we tell people when we teach. God is our Loving Heavenly Father. I know that He is. Have faith, and He will lead us through all things.


I love you all so much.


Elder Jonathan Todd Rogers