July 22, 2016

Bonjour mes amis!!

We get our flight plans today!! Everyone in our district is super excited. It's kind of starting to sink in that we're leaving so soon. We only have about 10 days now before we leave. I'm really nervous about being in France and being able to speak the language well, but I'm also super excited to be there and start working! I really feel like I'm ready to start working and learning even more from the people in France.

We had the coolest opportunity this week to teach a Skype TRC lesson to a member in France. This was one of my favorite activities this week because we got to meet her and her family, and hear about her life. It was so cool to hear her thoughts on the gospel and to hear her bear her testimony. Teaching her was such an great experience because it was one of the few teaching opportunities we had this week that was real, and not just practicing with role-plays. We were really teaching her and helping her to come closer to Christ. I'm so excited to get to France and be able to do that kind of teaching all the time!

The other really amazing thing that happened this week was in Sunday Devotional. A couple of years ago Elder Bednar gave a really amazing devotional entitled Character of Christ that is always available to watch on Sunday evenings when we watch films. It's an incredible talk that explores how the nature of Christ was that He always turned outwards in the moments that the natural man would turn inwards. Even when He was suffering, He always served others with charity. After the film was over, the lights came back on and the organist started playing the closing hymn. The chorister motioned frantically for everyone to stand up. I didn't realize for a moment that we weren't standing for the closing hymn-- we were standing because President Bednar had just walked in! He came to visit us, and for about an hour he answered the questions of people in the audience. It was a really cool and spiritual meeting! I especially loved the way that he talked about developing the character of Christ in our lives. Ultimately, it's not about the way you act- it's about who you are. 

We began teaching the other missionaries in our district this week. Each companionship picks out different characters to be to pretend to be investigators for the other missionaries. It's a really cool experience to be taught the gospel because you get to pick up on other teaching methods that different companionships use to teach principles. We also love teaching the other missionaries because they ask really hard questions, and we really get to be challenged in our knowledge of the language to answer questions. 

We took some pictures last Sunday at the temple. The big one is our branch. 

Can you believe that before we arrived there were only 12 people? Then our big group arrived, and we've had 2 more since then!! Right now, we have 80+ people in our sacrament meeting!! We have 2600 people at the MTC right now, and on Sunday there were 1400 in the choir!! The MTC is getting more crazy every week, and we're still growing throughout the summer! 

We also took some pictures of the sisters in our district in front of the temple, and my companion and I. 

Finally, something funny- Sœur Neistadt has been getting a lot of fruit sent to her, and didn't quite know what to do with it all! So she bought some chocolate bars at the MTC store, melted them in a plastic yogurt cup, and made chocolate covered strawberries!! They were sooo good!!

That's just about everything that I have for this week! It's hard to pick out individual moments when you do the same thing every day, but I love being here and I love missionary work! They ran a really cool article in the local newspaper about me and the two other members from my graduating class, Natalie Packard and Daniel Xu. We're all at the MTC at the same time right now!! http://m.needham.wickedlocal.com/news/20160719/needham-high-school-graduates-to-serve-on-mission-trips 

Anyway, I love you all, and I love getting letters and emails!! You can email me at rogers.rachael@myldsmail.net or through dearelder.com. My unit number is 118 and my departure date is August 1st. You can also send packages for the next week or so to 

Sister Rachael Rogers

Paris France Mission

2005 North 900 East 

Provo UT 84602

Unit 118 8-1

but after next week you would have to send them to France!! Aaaaaahhhh I'm so excited!!!

Je vous aime!!

Sœur Rogers

7-15-2016

Time is so weird here in the MTC!! It simultaneously feels like we just got here, and that we're so close to leaving! We get our flight plans next week!! There is a direct flight that goes from Salt Lake City to Paris, so we'll probably be on that one. That will be really nice to not have a bunch of stops and layovers.

I've been thinking a lot about getting ready to be in France. It's coming up so soon!! I'm really nervous about being able to speak clearly in the language and being able to contribute to lessons, etc, but I'm really excited!! I feel like I've learned so much here and I've been here for so long now that I'm raring to go, but I can't leave yet!! I think this week I learned so much more about how to effectively teach a lesson, instead of just how to say the words. Sr. Neistadt and I have been working on how to ask good questions and prompt a discussion during our lessons. We're practicing listening with more comprehension so that we can better understand how our investigators are progressing. Also, I'm completely enamoured with the French term for investigator- "ami de l'église" which means "friend of the church". So I'm going to use that from now on :)

I've also been learning a lot about true conversion this week. We frequently use the model of a triangle to describe how we help amis to draw closer to God. The missionaries already have a relationship with God. The missionaries then form a relationship with the ami de l'église. The most crucial side of this triangle is the building of a relationship between the ami and God. The most important part of teaching a lesson is leaving the ami with an invitation or commitment. This is so important because true conversion to God, building that third side of the triangle, happens most frequently when the missionaries aren't there. 

We have had some amazing devotionals here at the MTC. We had to do them in chapels all across the MTC campus because they're redoing the floor in the gym. We have 2600 missionaries in the MTC right now, and we're still growing for the summer rush!! So it was a tight squeeze to find rooms for everyone to watch devotional in, but we made it. On Sunday we learned about charity. Charity is so essential in missionary service because our amis will be able to feel the love God has for them through the love of the missionaries. I was reminded that Christ wants all of us to come unto Him, so He is never frustrated with them or their progress. His feelings are not affected by the timing of things because He has all the time in the world! So we need to be happy for the progress our amis make, and love them as best as we can. 

We also got to hear about how we can come to know the Lord through adversity in the Tuesday night devotional. The speaker shared stories of adversity from the New Testament and from Church history. I loved when he shared a quote from an early member of the Church, "We came to know God in our extremeties, and the price we paid to know Him was a privilege to pay." I know that a mission can be a really hard experience at times, but I also know that it can be a huge blessing to be able to experience such closeness to God. 

Okay! Some fun things to finish out. We took some awesome pictures at the temple on Sunday. The first one is our district, and the second one has two of our roommates in it as well. The last one is just the sisters in our district. Then there are some funny ones from this week :)  Sr. Neistadt is from Las Vegas so she had never seen a snail before. We found a bunch of snails outside on the buildings and brought them inside for a "class pet". The first picture is them stuck on the side of the whiteboard. Our teacher was not amused. She made us go bring them outside and Sr. Neistadt was really disappointed. We still check on them everyday. Some of them are in the same place but a couple of them are more adventurous and have moved around. The last picture is one of Frère Taua and a drawing the elders did of him.  He plays football for BYU so we all think he's pretty cool.

Okay, that's about it!! I love you all, and love hearing from you, à plus!!

Love Soeur Rogers

July 8, 2016

Hello all!! The second week at the MTC was a little bit less crazy, but still really busy. Time is tricky here. It seems like last Friday was so recently, yet I have done so much since then!! 

The language is coming along slowly but surely. I have remembered most of what I learned in school about grammar and vocabulary and then some. Several times this week it has seemed like I haven't made a lot of progression in terms of the language, but then I remember that everything I have learned to say in our lessons in terms of the gospel I have learned here. I have learned how to pray, how to bear my testimony, and how to teach someone about any principle in Preach My Gospel. I didn't know how to do any of that before I came here!! So I'm feeling really good about my progression in the language. 

We did another English fast yesterday, and we're doing a third one tomorrow. I feel like I'm getting really good at expressing what I want to say even if I don't have the words for it. It's still really exhausting to speak in French all the time, and frustrating when I forget, but I think it really does help me to constantly think in the language. Soeur Neistadt and I are getting better at communicating and doing our lessons in the language. For more than a week now we have been writing our lesson plans in English and not translating the whole thing, but rather speaking through what we want to say to each other and only having a couple bullet points written down when we go into the lesson. I think it's helping us to better feel the Spirit and follow its direction as to what we should say when answering questions from our investigators and teaching principles. 

Speaking of Soeur Neistadt, she has bronchitis!! She had a dry cough for almost a week before we were able to go to the doctor and get it diagnosed. She has some cough medicine with codine in it to help her sleep, and she seems to be doing better. She's sleeping a lot more peacefully at night and coughing less during the day. We're doing really well as a companionship, and working hard to learn the language. 

We've been learning a lot from our classes and practices this week. Frère Taua has been teaching us a lot more lately. He's a really good teacher! He's so inspiring and real at the same time. I feel like he really knows how hard missionary work can be, but he's still really positive about it, and he has a really great outlook on life. He's still learning English, so he asks us to correct him when he makes mistakes. Some funny ones from this week were saying "inspire, expire" instead of "inhale, exhale" and mispronouncing "investigator" as "instigator". 

We've been practicing contacting and giving a quick message in class recently. Probably the most memorable and helpful activity we've been doing is practicing teaching the PMG lessons (like the Restoration or the Plan of Salvation) in 3 minutes, 1 minute, and then 30 seconds. I love this activity because it's really stretching my ability to communicate quickly and effectively in French, and to think about what the most important and applicable parts of the lesson are. We also did TRC (teaching resource center) for the first time on Wednesday. I loved it so much!! We got to practice teaching a lesson (like you might teach for a Sunday School or home evening lesson) to regular members. Our lessons help to grow their faith and our ability with the language. We were so relaxed to not have to worry about explaining things wrong or saying something that might be confusing that the French was a lot easier. We taught about developing Christlike attributes and how that can help us to progress spiritually. I was so relaxed and confident afterwards!! It was so fun to speak with return missionaries about their experience serving in Paris. We talked to one woman who just got back from serving in France a few years ago, and an old man who served in France nearly 60 years ago!!

I'll finish with some thoughts from our devotionals last week. We had an extra devotional on Saturday for the 4th of July weekend. We had a really cool flag ceremony with missionaries carrying the flags of the countries they were from or were going to serve in. We had a great devotional about how God planned for religious freedom in America. It reminded me of a book I read a few years ago, 7 Tipping Points that Saved the World. We were allowed to stay up late on Saturday night to watch the fireworks from the Stadium of Fire a couple blocks over. That was fun, but it was a mistake! We were all so tired on Sunday morning!! Nevertheless, I learned a lot from devotional on Sunday night. The speakers used a really cool metaphor to compare the gospel to a tree. We also watched a recording of President Holland's talk "Missions are forever" from a few years ago. He talked about how it's so important to be obedient as a missionary, and how we should preach "with great power and authority," and "astonish" the people we teach with our simple and powerful testimonies of the gospel. Elder Marlin K. Jensen spoke at the Tuesday evening devotional and taught about faith. His main message was that faith is a principle of power and action, and the many miracles that faith was able to bring about in the scriptures. 

In general, I'm doing really well here, and learning so much every day!! I wanted to mention for Geoffrey that I tried the pancake on a stick this morning for breakfast. It's a breakfast sausage fried with pancake batter around it like a corndog. It was pretty good, better than I would have expected!! I'm having a ton of fun getting to know the missionaries in my district and zone, and it's always awesome to meet new missionaries in the cafeteria or at choir practice. 

I always love to get emails, letters, packages, whatever!! It's so much fun to hear from people and to write back. You can email me at rogers.rachael@myldsmail.net ordearelder.com. My address for packages is on my blog at soeurrogers.blogspot.com. 

Je vous aime!!

Soeur Rogers

July 1, 2016

Wow!! So much has happened here, I've been dying to write all week so I can tell you everything that's going on! I had to bring my journal to the computer lab so I wouldn't forget anything. 

The MTC is so amazing!! It was really overwhelming the first couple days, but the last couple I've gotten into the swing of the schedule. When I know what I'm doing every day, I'm a lot more comfortable. I love having daily planning at the end of the day, because I feel like I'm more in control of what's going on each day. We have time every day for exercise, meals, class, personal study, companionship study, language study, and teaching lessons. So much happens every day that I'm always happy to go to bed at night. I'm so tired, but it's awesome!! It just means I'm working hard. 

It was a lot more confusing here the first couple days because we had mission president training going on until Sunday afternoon. We had to eat in the gym and we weren't allowed to go into 1M (the main building). It was really exciting though, because Sr. Neistadt had to return her borrowed iPad to the IT desk and we had be escorted there. On the way back, we got to meet Neil L. Anderson! He stopped to say hello to us and shake our hands. He asked about our names, where we were from, and where we were serving. It was such a cool experience :)

The language training has been going really well. The first few days were really overwhelming because I've forgotten a lot of the French I used to know. However, it's been coming back really quickly with all the practicing we do in class. My companion is super amazing because she's really enthusiastic about speaking French all the time, not just in class. We've been practicing growing our vocabulary and our skill at using different tenses by telling stories. I feel like I've told all of my good stories, so if you remember some about me, send them my way!!

We've now taught 5 lessons entirely in French to our investigator, Vai. They've gone so well!! The first couple times we would write out a script in French and we weren't very good at understanding and answering his questions, but by the third lesson we understood about 90% of what he said and were able to respond to his questions without any preparation. We've also been writing our lesson plans entirely in English and then adding the words and phrases we don't know on the side. I think it's helping to better teach by the Spirit to not have a script, but just an idea of what we want to say and what we want him to understand. After we finished teaching Vai (the person as an investigator), we were able to meet him as Frère Taua (as he really is, a member). He's going to be our co-teacher along with Soeur Cook. He told our district that every time we came back to teach him, it seemed like it had been two weeks in between our visits because of how much language and spiritual progression we had made in between. It definitely felt that way to me too.

My branch is super awesome. There are 56 people in it, but 41 of them arrived at the same time as me!! My district is pretty cool too. There are 2 sets of sisters and 3 sets of elders. The other sisters share a room with us, and we usually exercise together in the morning. The elders are all really awesome and hardworking, for the most part. One of the elders is amazing at French- he had 4 years of extensive study in high school and he's read the Book of Mormon in French. We don't know why he isn't in the accelerated program, but we're glad he's there to help us. We all did a "jaûne d'anglais" or an English fast. We spoke in English or franglais all day. It was so hard, but so worth it!!

I wanted to just finish with a couple spiritual things I've been learning. We had the opportunity to watch the Character of Christ by Elder Bednar on Sunday evening. It was such an incredible talk. He talked about how Christ set an example of turning outwards and serving others when the natural man would turn inwards and choose to be selfish. This principle is so applicable to missionaries because the whole purpose of a mission is to serve. If we are constantly worrying about our success, we won't get anywhere. I've been learning a lot lately that the people we teach are the people that God has prepared for us, so we don't need to worry if they're not ready. We just need to be willing to be instruments in the hands of God, and to open our mouths. We got to learn from Mervyn B. Arnold at our Tuesday devotional. He talked a lot about how missionary work is the work of the Lord, so we will be protected and helped by God. It was a really beautiful devotional. 

I was also thinking about how my fast language progression has not been because of my studying alone. The Spirit has definitely been helping me to understand, and learn, and remember the things I've studied. The Holy Ghost really can bring all things to your remembrance, and help you to know the truth all things.

I'm also so grateful for my companion. Soeur Neistadt is so amazing and helpful to me. She's enthusiastic at exactly the right time, and always encourages me to work hard and to struggle with learning the language. Her testimony is so beautiful, and she teaches and testifies so powerfully. I can't remember if I said this already, but she's a convert and her family aren't members. I'm so impressed that she's here and grateful for all that she does to help me to be the best missionary I can be. 

I would love to hear from all of you!! If you want to send me emails, you can do so to rogers.rachael@myldsmail.net. If you want me to get your letter the same day you send it, you can send it to dearelder.com. My unit number is 118. And if you want to send me packages (wink wink nudge nudge, packages are the best) you can send them to 

Sister Rachael Rogers

Paris France Mission

2005 North 900 East 

Provo UT 84602

Unit 118 8-1

June 24, 2016

Good afternoon! My first couple days here have been super crazy and packed, but really amazing too!! 

I missed our first French lesson because my plane was delayed, but we have had our second one now and it went really well! Soeur Cook is our teacher and she speaks only in French throughout the lesson, which is normal for me because that's how they taught in high school. It's hard sometimes because I have to pay really close attention, but ultimately I'm glad for it because I'm learning and remembering much more quickly this way.

We are teaching our first lesson in French this evening!! My companion, Soeur Neistadt, and I have been working hard today to plan out a lesson for our investigator, Vai, and translate it into French. She is super amazing and energetic, and we are already working well together. We compliment each other really well. She is a convert to the church, and joined when she was 13. She is from Las Vegas, her family is Jewish, and she's the only member in her family, but she has a good relationship with them. She has the most amazing testimony!! For the first three weeks, she will be the senior companion, and I will be senior companion the last three weeks. Our district is amazing as well. There are three elder companionships and two sister companionships-- 10 altogether. Most of us have had some French already, so we are working hard to help everyone learn more and to bring the other missionaries up to speed on the language. The other sisters in the district are really sweet and hardworking, and all the elders are hardworking and excited to be here!

We got to meet with our entire zone last night. There are 41 of us that all came into the MTC on Wednesday!! Most of us are serving in Paris or Lyon, but there are a couple missionaries that have been called to New Caledonia, some that have been called to Montreal, and one elder that will be serving in New Hampshire!! We got to hear from President Dowling about missionary work, and were able to hear from Elder and Sister Zwick a little bit too!! They shared their testimonies about the restored gospel and the importance of missionary work. We had a lot of time to chat and get to know the other missionaries in our zone. 

It's been super crazy at the MTC this week because all the mission presidents who are about to leave to go their areas are here doing training. There are a lot of General Authorities around too, so we're not allowed into 1M for the most part, which is the main administration building with the front desk and the cafeteria. We had to go there to see IT yesterday, and were stopped by at least 5 people making sure we weren't trying to sneak in! We must have been very close to President Monson, because he was apparently here yesterday. 

We got to go to the temple this morning, which was pretty cool going in a different place. My companion was an ordinance worker for a little while before she left, so she's a pro. We had some time to pray and feel the Spirit, and take a short break from the craziness of classes and everything. 

I can read and respond to emails on Friday, so if you want to email me you can send it to rogers.rachael@myldsmail.net. OR if you want to send me a letter ondearelder.com, I can read that the day it gets here, and respond on Friday!

Au revoir!!

Soeur Rogers