1st week in country

Picture of Prague

President James McConkie and
Sister Laurel McConkie with Blake

Well this has been crazy. I am in Ostrava which is the third biggest city in the Czech (300,000 peole here) and is known because the people talk to fast there. and I have definitely noticed it. The plane ride here was super crazy long and fun, there were people who sat in front of us that spoke Czech and we didn't find out until the end so when they spoke it we were like oh man i bet they were just laughing at our bad grammar and pronouncation. (thats not how you spell it but it'll work). When we got here we stayed at a cool little hotel that a member owns and I had the best night sleep ever! Jet lag took over and put me out like a light. the next day we met our trainers, mine is Starsi Breyman who has been out for 10 months and is our District Leader. He has served one transfer so far here in Ostrava so he knows the area well which is good because its so huge! Such a change from the MTC which i was used to haha. It is also freezing here! yesterday we contacted for a while and I literally thought that I lost my toes, which are kind of important. Luckily I didn't so that is definitely a blessing. The difference here is amazing. We walk around and see 12 or 13 year old kids smoking and stuff like that and we have been asked several times if we want to go smoke weed with people or do stuff like that (the people are very blunt here and and not afraid to speak their mind). There are a lot of awesome people here who are nice, and a few that aren't as nice and don't have the nicest things to say all the time but hey that's the beauty of agency. We did have an interesting experience when we were on a tram and contacting about the word of wisdom so i asked a man in my broken Czech if he thought is was important for him and his family to be healthy, he then started yelling and i of course had no idea what he was saying so i stepped back and Elder Breyman said some things then it was clear that we were to go, so i headed to the stairs to the next person and then the guy yelled at elder Breyman and grabbed his arm then the tram stopped so he lost his grip, then went again and was yelling to get off at the next stop and fight ha so i said the quickest most meaning prayer to God to protect his missionaries and he did. The man stepped back and we went on our way talking to more people. The Lord has a hand in all things. I know this because I see it everyday . A lot of the people we talk to are nice but just don't have interest, but even their niceness helps brighten my day and cheer me up enough to keep going. There are a lot of cool people here and the members especially are awesome. I learned alot at church even though i didn't understand much. That was awesome because i am getting to know the members and even though a lot of them have the same name, it is great to put faces with names. It has been a crazy week, everything moves so fast, and at this rate I feel like i will be home in less than 2 years. i'm just getting to like it here! oh I forgot to mention that Elder Marcucci from my MTC group is also here with me! he lives far away but he is in my district which is 4 elders and 2 sisters. I will be going on an Exchange with him later in the transfer. Tomorrow I am going on an Exchange with a zone leader in a city that is so hard to say that i will not be able to even type it to sound it out. My mission so far has been amazing and very hard but I am excited for the trails to come and how they will form me to be the missionary that God wants me to be.

Ostrava