Well, there goes the first transfer...

Kuba! a great member here

 a great family

This has been such a great week! I first have to talk about a miracle! A few weeks ago we were tracking, and here we set letters telling about us, and that we will be returning in a few days. It just lets them know we will be stopping by and tells a little about our church to get them interested. When we followed up, we knocked on a house and the owner was very interested, but had a lot going on so wanted us to come back. We tried setting up several times but she was always busy, but we finally got to meet! It was so great, she said she read about our church on Wikipedia, or however that is spelled, and she really likes our church and said it fits her the best. If she read about us on the internet, and still has interest, then wow she must really like us. We were able to set up again to meet this week, and continue to teach her, and she wants us to send missionaries to her husband who lives in the states. Of course we will! This is so great! This was also the last transfer, I just dropped Elder Breyman off at the train station, he will be serving in Plzen, and I will be staying here with my new comp Elder Karjalinen from Finland! He has been Assistant to the President for 4 transfers.

Wow, last week already?

This week is my last week with my trainer Elder Breyman who has been so great, and maybe my last week in Ostrova, I hope not because I reallly love it here and don't want to transfer out. Anyways this week has flown by! tons of great experiences, miracles, and countless blessings. I currently just ran out of things to say that won't také the rest of my time in the Czech Republic to explain how awesome those experiences were. Just know that I'm having an amazing time and am learning so much and enjoying helping others. I have learned so much in the MTC, and am learning so much here! Contacting people is great, sometimes people don't show up to meet which is always sad, but they will have another chance. I love my mission and I love all of you. This week we were able to go to bolt tower for our culture night, and it was cool because Usian Bolt, or however you spell his name, comes and runs there every year. I touched the wall he signed, and it felt.... a lot like a wall haha. I touched the signature of the world's fastest man, and it felt like a wall. but i took a Picture by it anyways. That was a cool experience, but there is no better experience than to sit down with an investigator, and teach them a lesson directed by the spirit. I love my mission and all of you.

Well, time flies

This has been another great week, by the way happy Valintines Day everybody, not going to lie I totally forgot it was until I saw everybody walking around with Roses. Then it clicked ha, that makes sense. This week has been really great, we have three investigators on date, but couldn't meet with any of them! which was a little upsetting but they were sick or out of town or working, and they are still going to get baptized so theres no worries there. It's so great to see the people here love the Gospel as much as they do. We have been teaching another investigator about Joseph Smith, he thinks that all the good that Joseph did is to much to do because God asked him to, and that he did it for other reasons like attention and money and fame, and women, it appears he knows about poligimy (that may be spelled wrong) but it opens up great teaching oppertunities. Everytime somebody brings up something bad, they give us an oppertunity to teach them about something good. Every week we have a sports night with our branch and allow everybody to come and play a sport, this weeks was basketball and we had the oppertunity to play with some really cool people that we met at the court. I realized a couple things, first off being im not good at basketball, second is theres always oppertunities to teach, and third which has been pounded into my head over and over again, is if you look for good, you will find it. I don't have much more time but im doing well here and this country is amazing.

Another week gone... Wow, That was fast!

This week really went by fast! It was so awesome! We were only able to meet with a few investigators and so we had a ton of contacting which always has great experiences involved. One of the best is the Gift of Tongues. Elder Marcucci and I (same MTC group so we are both still learning Czech) had an Exchange. Well this was interesting because we had no lessons scheduled, so 6 hours of contacting was our daily plan. This came as a bit of a shock because our trainers had tons of lessons to do and I think they planned it so we only had contacting. Oh well haha so we set off and go on a 6 hour contacting spree, which involves us talking to anyone and everyone we see. So we decided to go to the park which is huge here in Ostrava, and at the park we met a ton of cool people! and with the Czech language experience that we have, there's no way we should have been able to understand what we did, but the gift of tongues took over and we were able to have so many great conversations with a wide variety of people, and teach three discussions and setting up to teach 3 other people! We also had so many that were so close and had interest in our message, but wouldn't take the time to meet and talk more which was very disappointing but if they are prepared, we will see them again. Even in this city of 300,000 people.  We did some great service on Saturday which involved taking the wooden decorations of walls out of an old bar, and helping turn it into a new fabric store for some of the members here. It was such a great experience to be able to work with my hands again! Other than that things are going great! We currently have 7 progressing investigators which is so great! 3 with baptismal dates and its so great to see them progressing and coming to the Gospel. That's why we're here.

One month mark in country.

Well, yeah I have been in the Czech Republic for a month now, and that month flew by! So crazy. We had a bit of a crazy week, lots of running everywhere, and I mean a lot of running haha. We also had a weird experience for a missionary, it usually doesn't happen anyways. So we were going to meat with the President of the Ostrava Branch, and we arrived early so we went and contacted while waiting. While contacting, we were talking to everyone we saw and what happened was what I call the chain reaction. It happens often. We start talking with someone and they say they have no interest, so we go to the next person, and they saw us start talking to the first person then leave, so we introduce ourselves and then they have no interest, then we go to the next person and they have seen us talk to the other two people so they just wave us away before we say hi and so on. The chain reaction is evil. Anyways we get the attention of a girl who came around the corner and didn't see any of this, so we are able to talk to her and she said she had no interest, but she wasn't mad or swearing at us so we starting bearing our testimonies and then she kinda looked around, then walked up and gave Elder Breyman a big old hug, then walked off. The whole time Elder Breyman and I stood there in unbelief trying to figure out of that just happened. The look of surprise on Elder Breymans face when he couldn't get away will forever stay with me. Then we went and met with the President and had our scheduled meeting. Tomorrow I am going on an exchange with Elder Marcucci who was in my MTC group. This will be very interesting contacting all day, and neither of us speak very much Czech, so yeah that is going to be great, hopefully I can learn how to speak fluent Czech tonight. While on the topic of Czech, I would like to testify of the Gift of Tongues. The Czech language is so hard, and I have never been good at learning from books and things in my life, but the fact that I can understand even a little of the Czech here, and follow conversations and kind of talk with people, proves that the Gift of Tongues is real and that God loves his missionaries. I am over halfway through this 9 week transfer, and it will be interesting to not have a trainer when or if I get transferred. I know at this point though that I will be okay and that God will take care of me. I have learned that much while here. God will always take care of me and keep me protected. here are some pictures of us today, we went and visited the top of a clock tower and got some great pictures. We also went and visited a member who lived kind of in the woods and so I had to get a picture of the woods.