June 20, 2011

Hola Familia!

Big news! well, awesome news. It seems like I am following what mom did. My companion knows soooo much about health and fitness and I have been following his counsel and have lost weight. It is noticeable to the people. Elder Walker (my Zone leader in Concepcion) got a special change to Pedro Juan Caballero this week so it is awesome to see him again and one of the first things he told me was that I have lost weight! Wooo, and some people have been commenting about it to me. Some of the shirts that you sent for Christmas, there was a time when I had gained a little more weight because of poor eating and they didn't fit. Now they are normal and fit perfectly. So I am working on that. I am not sure if I mentioned but when I came here I found an LDS missionary exercise book called ¨The LDS Missionary Workout Program¨ that has exercises for every day of your mission and talks to help you do more and more. I wanted to weigh myself before writing this email but I forgot so I will send it next week. I have been getting a lot more done day after day, and feeling great. This week for me just flew by. We have been working really hard and have been finding some cool people.

Last week we were doing our food buying at a store called Maxi and guess what we found - ROOT BEER!!!!! and V8. So I have been drinking V8 after my daily exercises haha, and at night (not the best hour of the day, but the only hour really available, and only 2 days this week) we had root beer floats!!!!!!!!! It was amazing haha then. Also when we were buying food we got good bacon, real cheese, ham, eggs to make EGG McMUFFINS!!! and we had that on Sunday before Church. But the biscuits that we made did not turn out anything like English muffins, but it was okay. We also made the mac and cheese and it made us a little jealous of all the missionaries that live off it haha, just kidding. We are using it sparingly. And more news, I got a call from Elder Halliday this week because he as well had a special change and with his new companion came my SECOND BOOT haha so today we are getting together with some of the elders to play sports and have a snack (root beer floats) and he will bring it for me.

That picture that I sent was a bull horn that was converted into a trumpet thing. You could play it and sound would come out like an old fashioned horn.

The president of the branch called us to a family home evening Sunday night. It was very entertaining. It was a picknick (I totally forgot how to spell that). It was with some of his family who were less active. I shared the story when we were hiking to Lineham Lakes and we had to hook ourselves together so the wind didn't carry us away. They found that very amusing, especially when I said that the fins that I was carrying would once in a while smack me in the face.

Something that me and my companion were talking about is that when we teach people we have to build off their foundation. We have to find their foundation to build off it. Neither can we build their foundation on our land or vice versa. We need to know their needs and teach accordingly.

But thanks for the letter. Like I said I was planning on sending a package but with this strike in Canada, maybe that would not be a wise idea. And sending out letters, things, to Canada, let me know about that.

Thanks for everything!

Love Elder Rodgers

P.S. there is a photo of an ant invasion in our house, nothing big at all but kinda funny.