August 29, 2016 Rennes

Salut tout le monde! I hope everyone had a fabulous week and is ready for school to start up again! We certainly are- summer vacation makes missionary work harder. Amis and members are on vacation or will be going on vacation, people we talk to on the streets often don't live here, and the buses run much less frequently in the summer. Not to mention the heat! It was unusually hot this week in Rennes- sometimes up to 35-36 C (95-97 F). On the bus was the worst because there's zero air flow and a bunch of other hot sweaty people around you. Not fun. Mais ça va- it's getting cooler already! I'm definitely getting ready for fall, but I'm not so sure about Sœur Liard. We went out last night and I thought it was perfectly gorgeous, and the first thing she said was "Il fait froid!" Yup, she is definitely Tahitian :)

And now it's time for the household failure of the week! This week's broken appliance was (drumroll please) ... the fan in our bedroom! About 3am a couple nights ago it made a loud CLUNK and died. The couple was on vacation for their 50th anniversary so we slept with the window open for a couple nights and got a new fan when they came back. Pas grave- certainly the least troublesome break we've had in the last few weeks. For the stories about the chaudière, the sink, and the bathroom door, please see weeks 1, 2, and 3 respectively :)

We have really seen some amazing progress with our amis recently. We taught one of our amis, Birenam, the Restoration. Before the lesson she was definitely interested in learning more, but she had some doubts thar God could really hear her and respond to her prayers. After sharing the story of Joseph Smith, I felt impressed to wait and allow time for her to ponder rather than immediately sharing my testimony. She then said (in French of course) something along the lines of "God really does hear and answer our prayers!" She is so intelligent and has a lot of potential for spiritual progression. We also taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Soroya this week. She definitely felt the Spirit throughout, and you could tell that it was totally logical for her. Although she hasn't yet solidly committed to baptism, she's still thinking about it, and we discuss it with her every time we visit. When we taught this week, she definitely had the eternal perspective in mind whenever she commented. She talks and asks questions as if she's already committed, and she knows the baptismal date we have proposed for her. It's sad, though, because now that school is starting up again, she's moving to Angers to go to university! Her family lives here so she'll probably be back most weekends to go to church here, but the sisters in Angers will take over teaching her lessons and preparing her for baptism. We're going to miss her so much!

Another cool experience I had this week started in personal study early in the week. I studied hope to share as a spiritual thought with the members, but it turned out that sharing it at mangez-vous appointments wasn't the primary purpose of studying that.

The scripture I found was Moroni 7:40-42
40 And again, my beloved brethren, I would speak unto you concerning hope. How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope?
41 And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise.
42 Wherefore, if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope.

I had an opportunity to speak with a young mother at the beginning of relief society. She had been having a hard time for no particular reason, and was searching for some comfort. The elders had given her a blessing of comfort, and I was able to share with her the things I had experienced and studied myself. She told me that my words had helped her. I think that conversation was a miracle for both of us- for her, to receive comfort, and for me, to see that I had been prepared for that moment. I was prepared in my ability with the language, to really be able to share with her my feelings and experiences in a way where language was not a barrier. I was prepared by the trials that I have had personally, times when I was sad for no particular reason and times when I have had to turn to my Heavenly Father for help. And I was also prepared by the things I had studied, to know that although we can have hope in things of this world, we can have a better and surer hope in the power of the Atonement.

So in general, all is good here in Rennes! The language is coming faster than I could have ever believed. It's still difficult, there's no getting around that, but I can usually follow most of a conversation, and even more when people speak slightly more slowly. Teaching lessons and contacting are definitely getting easier, and I have less fear that I'm not going to understand what they say. I was even able to translate a conversation at church yesterday! It's still strange to me how much American culture is here- there are a lot of English speakers at church, the songs we hear on the radio, on the bus and in stores are mostly in English, and there are so many people who try to speak English with us when they find out we're American!

I love you all! Thanks so much for all your support and love, I love getting letters and emails from home. À bientôt, je vous aime!

Love, Sœur Rogers

August 22, 2016 Rennes

Hello all! Things are starting to slow down and be a bit more normal this week. My understanding of French is still nowhere near perfect, but especially my comprehension skills are growing by leaps and bounds! Luckily I was not called upon to translate at church this week, so I got to practice a lot then. There's not quite as much to say in this email, so just a few quick thoughts.

I've talked a little bit before about the ward here, but I'm still impressed by how strong and kind the members here are. I love having dinners and lunches with the members because we get to know them so much better than just at church! All the members are really involved with the missionaries, and they are so good at inviting us over, participating in lessons, etc. The ward here is really multicultural as well- a lot of people speak both English and French, at various levels of fluency for both, as well as a bunch of other languages. This week we got to visit with the families Granal (French and English), Ranier (French and English), and Taie (French and Tahitian), as well as with Mami Simone (Cambodian and French). They are all so loving and amazing! I love this ward.

We are also having some good progress with our amis. We are meeting new people to teach all the time, and the people we've been teaching for a little while keep coming back! We've especially seen progress this week with a young African woman named Soroya. She has been searching for her path for a while now, and is definitely feeling the Spirit with us. She hasn't yet committed to be baptized, but she is keeping her commitments to read the scriptures and pray, and she came to church yesterday! That was definitely a miracle. It's really hard to get our amis to come to church- they are usually pretty busy, they generally don't have cars, and buses to the chapel come about once every hour on Sundays. But we keep hoping!

We keep having new adventures with our apartment! This week it wasn't the chaudière that was the problem (we have a new one now), it was the door to the bathroom. In France the "bathroom" is generally divided into two rooms, the "toilet" with the actual toilet and the "salle de bains", with a sink, bathtub, washing machine, etc. The door to our salle de bains has been broken for a while now, at least since before Sr. Liard got here in April. The latch isn't connected to the handle, and the handle is actually off the door. What we have at this point is a piece of duct tape placed over the latch to keep the door from closing and latching. Normally you can pull on the piece of tape to push the latch in enough to open the door. Well, you can probably guess what happened next- the piece of tape broke, and Sr. George got stuck in there! We tried all sorts of methods to try to jimmy it open, and then called the senior couple. They had no clue either. Eventually we tried to break it open by chiseling out the wood by the door, but we had no proper tools for that. This was all quite a while after bedtime, and eventually a neighbor came and yelled at us so we stopped the banging. We managed to pass some pillows and blankets to Sr. George through the next window, and she slept in there that night! The next morning Sr. VanAuker was able to figure out how to pop open the latch, and we got her out in time for them to catch their train to Brest for exchanges! Definitely a miracle that we were able to get her out in good time, and although we were all really tired the next day, we managed to still all work hard the next day.

Today we had the AMAZING opportunity to go and tour Mount St. Michel. It is the most gorgeous abbey, all built on a rock on the edge of the ocean. It's definitely a tourist trap, but I don't even care, it's so beautiful! With the kind of visa we have, and because it's a national monument, we were able to go and visit the abbey for free! We only had to pay for the bus there and back. I took so many pictures- I LOVE cool old places like that! Best part? We got to wear pants! Hooray for pants!

Wow! I think that's about it for this week! As always, I love hearing from home- stories, pictures, etc. are such wonderful blessings. Thanks so much for all your support- love you all! Gros bisous!

Sœur Rogers

8-15-2016 Rennes

Hello all!

Another crazy exciting week in the mission field! I can't believe that tomorrow marks 2 weeks that I've been in France! Everything is still pretty new and crazy, but taking it one day at a time definitely helps. We have had so many adventures this week, I hardly know where to begin! First thing to report is that our chaudière is fixed! We have hot water again, hallelujah! We're actually going to get a new chaudière because this one has broken so many times, so hopefully we won't have that problem again.

We had exchanges with our STL's, Soeur Simpson and Sœur Jones, in Brest. It was so awesome! I loved being by the ocean again. I got to go out contacting with them and find out how each person does things slightly differently. Sœur Simpson and I visited a recent convert named Aisha the first night and got to visit with her family. She had invited us, the elders, and the senior couple. It was a party! She had also invited a non-member friend to come to dinner, so we shared with her a message about the Book of Mormon, gave one to her, and invited her to begin reading it.
I also had a really cool experience contacting with Sœur Jones. We were able to speak to several really cool people and hear about miracles they had experienced in their lives. Definitely my favorite person that we met was a young woman named Blondie. She was so kind, open and honest about her faith in God. We shared with her the Joseph Smith story and a scripture from the Book of Mormon. I then had a really distinct impression that I needed to give her a Book of Mormon, and she accepted it and said she would start reading! The Spirit was definitely there when we were talking with her. We had a really positive experience, and Sœur Jones was able to fix a rendez-vous with her!

But the sisters in Brest aren't the only people with rendez-vous this week! We had two meetings this week with people we met while contacting. We scheduled them an hour and a half apart, but our first ami was way late. My first real lessons with amis, and they came at the same time! It actually turned out just fine. One of our amis is this amazing African woman named Soroya. She has been looking for the true church for a while- you might say she's a "golden investigator". She's a little bit hesitant because she's investigated so many different churches, but we have high hopes for her. The other investigator we taught this week is named Joanna. She is actually Polish, and speaks better English than French, so we usually teach her in English. So it actually worked out just fine to teach two lessons at the same time- Sœur Liard taught Soroya in French, and I taught Joanna in English! Joanna is so amazing. She is really in tune with the Spirit and very open to learning new things. She really wants to be a better mother for her 3 year old son. I taught just a simple lesson about how we want to help her come unto Christ, gave her a Book of Mormon in Polish, and invited her to be baptized. She thought about it for a little while, then said yes! We don't have a solid date yet because she's not sure when she'll have the time, but we're praying that she'll keep that commitment. 

We had the opportunity to go to Joy's house on Saturday to teach a lesson and have some lunch. We got to try fou fou! It was... really interesting. Only one of the elders managed to finish the whole plate. Sœur George promised me that we'll try to get some better fou fou soon. I really hope it's very different from what we had. Regardless, we all had a good time. 

The French is still progressing quickly, although of course not as quickly as I would like. I'll tell you, though- the gift of tongues is real! I'm nowhere near perfect, but I'm making less mistakes and talking more quickly when I speak, and I'm starting to understand a lot more when people are speaking, especially if it's not super quickly. It's nowhere near perfect, however. I had the rather terrifying experience of trying to translate in church yesterday! I was interpreting for one of the daughters of the American family in Young Women's yesterday. Luckily it was a very small class, so when I got lost, the teacher would stop and re-explain or say it in English. It was kinda crazy, but I was at least able to communicate the ideas to the girl. Fun fact: this family is from New Hampshire! They were in the Nashua stake before they moved to France. 

Last thing, I wanted to quickly share 2 scriptures I have loved this week. The first is in D&C 50:26 "He that is ordained of God and sent forth, the same is appointed to be the greatest, notwithstanding he is the least and the servant of all." This scripture has really helped me out this week because I know that I still have a lot of things to improve and a lot of progress to make. Nevertheless, I have been ordained of God, and He will help me to reach my full potential. 

The second scripture I want to share I have adapted a little to fit the situation. "If you love me, write me a letter." (John 14:15). I love hearing from everyone! My email hasn't changed, so if you have the time, I'd love to hear from you. That's about it for this week, love you all and have a fabulous week!

- Sœur Rogers

August 8, 2016 Rennes

Wow! So much has happened this week, it's going to take forever to tell it all! It's been a crazy ride so far, and it doesn't look like it's going to slow down anytime soon!

For the last couple days at the MTC, there's nothing much to report. We took some super cute pictures and said goodbye to the Lyon folks, then headed off to the airport around noon. It was a rough time trying to get 27 new missionaries all together and organized,  but we managed. 

We had a while in the airport before the flight, but it didn't take long to get around to all the missionaries that Elder Bednar was on our flight!!! We all shook his hand and said hi as we passed by first class. So. Cool.

The first day in Paris was crazy exhausting. We went to the chapel in Paris instead of the mission home because there were so many of us. In between interviews with President Babin, we all went contacting for the first time. I got to go with Sœur Romney, which was way awesome because I knew her before the mission. I found out later that the first person who takes you contacting is called your "dad". Contacting in that part of Paris is really difficult because there are so many tourists and people who are really busy or really not interested in talking to you. The Paris chapel is right across the street from Le Centre Pompidou so we just meandered on over to Notre Dame and took some pictures :)

The sisters all slept in a hotel while the elders slept in the mission home. It was the cutest little place, with the perfect amount of space for 2 people in each room. The next day we went to Consecration Hill. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera so I couldn't take a picture of the beautiful view of Paris. We had a chance to write in our journals a little bit and then went back to the chapel to meet our trainers!

This is my trainer, Sœur Liard. She's training me in Rennes! According to missionary talk, that makes her my "mom" and Rennes my "blueville" because new missionaries are called "blues". She's Tahitian, and she speaks about the same amount of English as I do French, but we make it work. Most of the time we speak in French, especially outside the apartment and while we're doing missionary things in the apartment- studying, planning, things like that. For my sanity and for her to practice, we try to speak in English the rest of the time we're in the apartment.

There are two other sœurs in the apartment, Sœur George and Soeur VanAuker. 

They are so cute! Because this is the first transfer with two sets of sœurs in the apartment (last transfer it was just Sœur VanAuker and Soeur Liard) they have all the old amis and Soeur Liard and I have, like, 2. That means we have to do lots of contacting, because we have lots of time and no amis :(

We certainly have had a lot of adventures in this apartment. The hot water heater has been off and on broken since April. We haven't had hot water since a while before I got here, so we either take cold showers or Tahitian showers, with a pot of boiling water and a bowl to mix together hot and cold water. Luckily the senior couple let us come in shifts Friday and Saturday to shower and wash our hair for Sunday. The repairman came Friday morning for the third time to try to fix it and ultimately concluded that it cannot be fixed. We have to contact the landlord to try to get a new one. Unfortunately, in the process of testing out the water to see if it was getting hot, he filled the (clogged) sink with water. SO we hauled buckets of nasty water from the kitchen and dumped them in the tub, and then took apart the plumbing with some help from the senior couple. It was so nasty, but we managed to get it fixed.

Next item on the repair list is to have the elders come over and help us put the beds together in the second bedroom. Right now we're sleeping on mattresses on the floor. Not ideal, but not terrible. So, ça va. Life goes on.

Rennes is the coolest town. It's largely a university town, so it's a lot like Cambridge. There are a lot of students, a lot of immigrants, a lot of old fancy buildings, and practically everyone takes the bus. We live pretty near the center of town, and we take the bus everywhere. There's one metro line that we've taken a couple times. I think it must be relatively new, because it's way cleaner than you would expect for a metro line. The ward is relatively big here, about 130 people in the little chapel. However, that covers nearly the entire city of Rennes. There really aren't many members of the church here in France. There's construction going on at the chapel right now to expand it and make more space for the ward to grow.

The members are really kind and welcoming. We've already had a couple dinner and lunch appointments with the members in the ward. Because meals here take longer as a cultural thing, we are allowed to take an hour and a half instead of just an hour for dinner and lunch appointments. We ate with a couple members this week, and we have a couple more next week. I had the opportunity to meet the ward a lot yesterday at church. They were all so cool! I think I'm getting better at doing the bises with people. It was a little weird for me to do with people I had literally just met, but really it's only slightly more intimate than a handshake. I got the opportunity to introduce myself at church last week because it was fast and testimony meeting. It was a little tricky to understand the teachers in the other meetings, but I was at least able to follow along which scripture or general conference talk they were reading. The other two sisters with us were doing translation the whole time. There are actually a lot of English speakers in the ward! A lot of the members are native French speakers but speak English well, and one of the bishopric members is from Utah and moved to Rennes with his family about 3 years ago. Their whole family is totally bilingual. There is another American family with 8 kids who just moved here a month ago! They are all learning French as well. So I'm not the only one who's lost sometimes :)

And finally, I have already had my first baptism! That right, I'm starting off this mission strong!! Of course, it was actually the other sœurs who taught her, but I got to meet her a little and be in the pictures ;) Her name is Joy, and she is so cool. Because she's still learning French, they did the service and everything in English. Her mom came to the baptism as well, and we got to meet her a little bit. She came to church yesterday as well for Joy to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Joy bore her testimony as well, and it was so cool to hear from her. Her mom was definitely touched by Joy's decision and testimony, and the other sisters are going to meet with her on Saturday to teach her!

This is all of us at the baptism- Sœur George, Sœur VanAuker, Joy, Sœur Liard, and me. Joy is wearing the dress her mom made for her to be baptized in. She is so beautiful! We spent P-day with her today. We had some awesome kebabs, took some fun pictures, and did a little bit of shopping.

Okay, I think I've finally covered everything! Wow, it seems like forever ago that I was sending emails at the MTC! My email address is still the same for sending emails to me- rogers.rachael@myldsmail.net. For this transfer and until I change areas, you can also send me letters at

Sœur Rachael Rogers
2 Rue Moliére
35700 Rennes France

but if you want to send a package it's probably better to send it to the mission home,

Sœur Rachael Rogers
131 Boulevard Cannot
78110 Le Vésinet France

Je vous aime tous! À bientôt!
Sœur Rogers

July 29

Wow!! It seems kind impossible, but I've been here for more than 5 weeks now, and I leave to go to France on Monday!! It kind of hit me this morning that I'm actually going to be in France in just a couple days!!! I'm super nervous in terms of people being patient with me learning the language, but I'm really excited to be really immersed in the language and to hear people speaking French all day!! It's going to be exhausting, but it's absolutely going to be worth it. We got really lucky in terms of our flight plans- we only have to take one flight that goes directly from Salt Lake City to Charles de Gaulle. I'm hoping to study and sleep a lot on the plane so I can hit the ground running when I get there. Wish me luck-- here we go!! 

Even though we're leaving soon, there's still a ton going on here at the MTC!! Everyone in our district has become super close friends, and we love messing around and coming up with funny stuff to do. Sr. Neistadt has a bouncy ball that we had been playing with for a while, so on Tuesday we used it to play baseball in the hallway ;) 

We also took this super adorable picture at the temple last week. I'm going to miss them all so much!

There's only one other companionship going to Paris with Sr. Neistadt and I- the rest are all going to Lyon.​ This last photo is of Sr. Neistadt and Sr. Ashton.

They switched clothes and name tags and took a funny picture. I'm going to miss these girls so much!!!

We had such a busy week this week!! On Wednesday we got to host the new missionaries coming in to the MTC. We were in charge of getting them checked in, getting their supplies, and finding their residences and classrooms. I got to host 3 new sister missionaries and find out all about them. The crazy thing was that the first sister I hosted was Sister Dunn, whom I had actually met before!! She worked in Professor O'Neil's lab, so I talked to her for about 10 minutes in March when Dad came out to give his lecture!! It was kinda crazy to make that connection. I loved the opportunity to host, even though it was nearly 100 degrees out!! We had only about 500 new missionaries coming in this week. I say only because we're apparently getting 800 next week! I'm glad I'm going to miss that disaster!! The cafeteria is so crazy at mealtimes already. Luckily the new MTC buildings are coming along pretty quickly.

We had In-Field Orientation all day yesterday. It was kind of crazy because there were so many people there and so much material to get through, but they split it up a lot with break-out sessions so it didn't get too boring. I definitely learned a lot more about how to work with the local members and get to know them so that they want to participate in lessons and invite their friends to have lessons with the missionaries. It was really cool to have that experience and vision of what the mission field is actually going to be like. 

We also got a new teacher this week!! Super randomly too, because it's our last week here, but we Soeur Waldron so much already!! She's super funny and loves all our little quirks and jokes, but she's also a really amazing teacher. She has a very clear accent that's easy to understand. We've been doing a lot of grammar the last couple classes with her and she's very good at explaining why you do certain things and coming up with good ways for us to practice. I've learned so much with her! She also taught us some funny French expressions:
Pète un coup- fart a little (Calm down)
Je pète le feu- I am farting fire (I'm super excited)
Pète ça à moi- fart that to me (Pass that to me)

So, a little immature, but still pretty funny  I'll finish with some spiritual things from this week. Sr. Neistadt and I had the opportunity to teach Relief Society this week. It was so nice because we got to teach in English! Pretty different from most of our teaching opportunities here. For part of the lesson, we shared this metaphor that I really love. There's this form of Japanese art called kintsukuroi, which means "to repair with gold".

The whole idea of this art form is that rather than trying to repair the piece with glue and making it look like it was never broken, you repair the piece with gold or silver laquer. The purpose of this is to understand that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. I think this is kind of like how the Atonement works in our lives. Rather than trying to hide or cover up our flaws or mistakes, the Atonement fills in our cracks and makes us stronger and more beautiful than before. We also shared Ether 12:27 "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them." I love that scripture. I definitely have a lot of weaknesses that I can improve, and knowing that this gospel can help me to become better every day brings me so much joy. We had some really awesome comments from the other sisters, and the Spirit was definitely there during our lesson.

Okay, one last fun thing! Sunday was Pioneer Day, which is apparently a really big thing in Utah. To celebrate, we had the Nashville Tribute Band come perform for Sunday devotional! It was so cool. They sounded amazing, and invited the Spirit so quickly even though they were singing mostly upbeat songs. The choir got to sing with them for a couple of the songs, which was wicked cool. There are so many missionaries here now that they filled 2/3 of the auditorium with the choir, and they have to put about 200-300 missionaries in an overflow room because the auditorium is filled to capacity. I managed to get in the second row for the performance, so I snuck a photo. It was so awesome!!

Anyway, I love hearing from everyone! Thanks so much for your emails and letters. Getting mail is the best! I love you all, and I'm excited to send pictures of France!! À bientôt!

Sœur Rogers

 Soeur Rogers, Sister Packard and Elder Xu--all together again.