Amazing Week

I don't have a lot of time today, but I have to tell you about the best time on my mission so far. Here in Ostrava, we have 4 elders, and then in a town about 30 minutes by train away, we have 2 sister missionaries who are in our district. This week, the elders were able to baptize an investigator, who is so amazing. His story is one of a kind, it started with a less active member hunt, and turned into a re-activation, one baptism, and two others soon. It was so amazing to witness the baptism of David who is an incredible 17 year old boy who was been waiting for the missionaries to find and teach him the Gospel. We had his baptism on saturday and he was confirmed on Sunday, and I was so honored to be able to stand in the circle as he was confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Such an amazing experience that I wish I could share with all of you. After the baptism, we went to a big park and all played baseball together and had a blast!

This transfer is almost over, and I have learned so much! I have learned to love everyone and always work hard. Thankyou for your love, prayers, and support

what a crazy amazing hard week

It's been a way crazy week for me. It went by so fast, yet so long, just like my mission up to this point haha. The weather has been getting nicer! So amazing to see all the trees getting green and beautiful.  This week was hectic, but awesome haha. It started really good, and then on Wednesday night, I went on an exchange with Elder marcucci, and then the next day, him and I went to Prague to do visa work, (which was on Friday) and on Thursday, we went on an exchange with the AP's which was fine haha, I've been serving with an AP this whole transfer haha, he was assistant for 8 months, so crazy, he's such a great missionary, I've learned so much from him. Anyways, on our exchange, we got our picture taken by some guy and I noticed he was trying to sneak take a picture, so during our contact I looked right at him and smiled as he took the picture, he then noticed that I saw him, so get got mad and was like I'm going to call the cops because you are going around bugging people, I was like excuse me sir, come here for a second and let me tell you what we are doing (I said it nicely of course, it just sounds mean typed, we really wanted to explain what we were doing but he ran off). he didn't come, he left and probably told the cops haha but who cares, good luck finding two innocent kids in a city of 2 million people, plus however many tourists haha. We also had some way good burritos for lunch! that was good. When we first started contacting with elder needham (he is the ap now, and he trained Elder Paxton, my mtc comp) our first contact was a guy, and we took him to the building and taught him and then set up to meet again, (that doesn't happen very often, it was such a blessing to have this guy give us 15 minutes to teach him the restoration) after the exchange when I was home, Elder Needham texted me and told me that the man we found was now on date and getting ready for baptism! woot woot! on Friday, after the visa work, we had the whole MTC group there, and their comps, and we all went for lunch (at the burrito place) and then did a singing display, which is when we all get together and sing hymns, and some people go out and contact people who are walking by and explain why a bunch of people are sitting there singing haha. after that, we went and got our train, headed home on a 4 hour train ride, then hit the ground running with a great lesson (elder Marcucci and I, who have both been here the same amount of time) we taught our investigator about the Book of Mormon, I've been teaching her my whole time here, and we had a great lesson and she loved it and was excited for church and to keep reading and find out what happened at the end of the book of Mormon. Unfortunately, on Saturday morning we woke up at 6 to go running like we do, and we woke up to a text from her, telling us that she didn't want to learn anymore. we haven't been able to get in contact with her sense then, we have no idea what happened. She was going to get baptized soon. We also had two other investigators drop us this week, both working to baptism, and they won't tell us why. but as we know, the blessing always come, and one investigator that Elder Breyman and I found my first week here, is making amazing progress and is working towards being baptized on the 30th of this month, so awesome. Saturday, we did our culture night, which was really awesome! we went and saw Hamlet, a play in French, translated into Czech, so I still had no idea what was going on haha. Before that, we went to have dinner, and on the way we realized we forgot tickets! so we rented a taxi that we found by miracle and got there and back in literally no time, this guy was so crazy and so funny. The opera was way great, its so great how our mission gives us one night a transfer to go with members of the branch to a culture night and learn more about Czech culture. We ended the week with three investigators at church with us, two of them we haven't been in contact with, and they just showed up! and they loved it! So many great blessings happening here. This week was so amazing, so many great things happened, and I've learned so much. 

The pictures are of the cool taxi driver, and of about half the missionaries singing, not sure why i look weird in them, but that's me =)

Conference weekend!

It was such a blessing to be able to listen to General Conference with the members here in Ostrava. I hope you all got as much out of it as I did. We listened to it in Czech, but were able to have English subtitles, (otherwise I wouldn't have understood much) but that built my testimony of D&C 90:11 that all man shall hear the gospel in their own tongue. We have missionaries all over the world, and I am so blessed to be able to be here in the Czech Republic and help spread the gospel here. We had an amazing week finding and teaching new people. There are really people out here who need this gospel, and God has prepared them for us to find and to help. As Elder Kearon said during conference, we need to come out of our refugee and helps others. That hit me personally because the church is strong in my home in Idaho, and that means that I needed to come and, and help the people seeking refuge and the true gospel.  I know that I am called of God to be here in the Czech Republic laboring among his children here. I know that every trial and difficulty that I personally face is given to help me grow, so that I can help others grow. "Because I Have Been Given Much, I too must Give" One of my favorite hymns. I have been so blessed in my life, that these two years aren't enough to help pay back my countless blessings. I didn't take any pictures this week, we had a lot of good hard working days, so there is my testimony for this week. =) I love you all, have a great week. 

Such a great busy week!

The first picture is when we went to Prague, and the second is our sports night we had with the branch here, a lot of people left before the picture but we had a great time playing volleyball and soccer. 

This was such a great busy week. We went Monday afternoon to Praha for a doctors check up, and then stayed at the assistants apartment because we had training the next day. On the way there, the train was so packed from Easter, that we had to sit by the doors because there were no seats haha great experience. We went on a beautiful run, up some crazy stairs, that are just like... man who had time to put over a thousand stairs up through the middle of nowhere? Such a fun run and beautiful view at the top. Tuesday we had a great training about mixing things up and not getting into ruts and doing the same thing day after day. We also talked about the importance of commitments and why we give them to investigators and why it's important to always follow up. Then we had the prime example of why we should follow up. During one of our lessons with an investigator, she told us that she had been waiting to tell us that she has been living the word of wisdom and she was so excited about it and we were like yes! way to go! haha man...we forgot to ask you about that.... of course we didn't say that to her but it made me realize wow, that training was for me haha. That lesson will stick to me like glue for the rest of my mission. After our training we went to Hradec Kravala on an exchange with the zone leaders. I was with Elder Nelson who is such a great Elder. We taught some lessons, and got two new investigators for them. We met with one they had found earlier and had a great spiritual lesson about the Plan of Salvation and I had the amazing privilege to listen to a wonderful mans first prayer ever. The first prayers are always the most sincere. After that lesson we went and contacted in the pouring rain for about three hours, then taught English. During our English lesson, the people there who aren't members, wanted us to teach them why we didn't smoke or drink, so we taught them the Word of Wisdom and they all thought it was really cool. After our exchange we came back late Wednesday night and went to work so we could get all of our lessons in and hit our weekly goals. Hard work pays off, it always does. This week two missionaries who served here about 2 years ago came and visited and we were able to have a lesson with them and it was so great to see how they changed peoples lives here. We had some funny experiences with drunk people, they really enjoy yelling and being loud and funny. Nothing bad, just funny experiences that always brighten your day and build my testimony of the Word of Wisdom. They are all the funny drunks here, not the mad ones so it always makes me feel good about my Czech when I hear them speak and they have no idea what they are saying as well haha.