Oct 17, 2016 - Great week here in H.K.

Recording from Blake

Mission Newsletter - Get's one every week


This has been another great week! We are always so blessed to see the lords hands in our work. We recently have seen two of our former investigators while we were on the streets contacting people, both were total miracles, and one of them even set up to meet again! We are way excited to meet with her next Sunday, it should be great. Sadly, the other one didn't have interest, and so we will give him a while before we try again. Sometimes, we need the opportunity to find salvation 1, or 2 or 500 times before we accept it, but we want to make sure its always there so when God has prepared his children, they know where to go to find it.

For district meeting this week, we talked a lot about why missionaries work hard, and what their motive is. One thing we really centered it on, is working hard because these people need the gospel, not work hard because its something that we should just do. Of course, we always need to give our best, but I have personally noticed, that when my heart is in it for the right reasons, it is always a better day for me personally, and for others around us. I took the challenge personally, and have really been focusing on working hard because I want the people around us to have the gospel, to have the truth and light of Christ. When I do this, I notice so many promptings of the spirit always telling me what to say, leading and guiding out conversations and lessons, its such an amazing experience and I have totally changed the way I go about missionary work. 

Today, we had the awesome opportunity to make some great Czech food, one of our members was so nice and taught us how to make fruit dumplings, and some great potato and mushroom soup! It was way good!  here are some pictures of that, sorry about the shortness of the E-mail, kind of ran out of time without realizing it haha have a great week. 

Oct 10, 2016 - Recordings and Conferenc

Recording 1 from Blake

Recording 2 from Blake

Wow, Conference was amazing

Well, like the title has, I absolutely loved conference. It couldn't have came at a perfect time for us as well. Most of our mission (including almost my whole district) is sick, so to be able to have 8 hours reserved to sit down and rest, and spiritually reload for times to come was truly a tender mercy for us all. One of my favorite talks was the very first one given by President Uchtdorf. For those of you that don't know, he was here a while ago and was able to establish the first stake in the Czech Republic, and I was able to help assist in him returning to his small home when he lived in Ostrava. While he was there, I had the opportunity to meet him and talk with him some, it was truly an experience I will never forget. 

One of the things I love most about his talk, is that it applies to us all, the young and the old. We are never to young to help others understand what we know about Jesus Christ, even though I'm told that almost daily, that I'm to young to tell a full grown man how to live, I know that it's not coming from us, but that its coming from God, and that we are simply his messengers, his helpers, helping bring the message to every one of God's children. I could not be more grateful for the opportunity that I personally have to do that. 

Well everybody, fall is coming, that means the cold and the ice is sweeping in and wanting to take us down a level before the holidays bring us up. I encourage and challenge all of you to always look for the small ways in how we can always have Joy. There was an amazing conference talk focused on joy, and how we can have it and the ways we can always invite it into our lives. Never forget that's why we are here, and that it's on us weather we want to only endure life, or enjoy it as we go. 

Thank you for all your prayers and E-mails, I love hearing from you, have a great week. 

Here's some pictures of a small trip we went on today with a member, we were able to see some old bunkers made in the 1930s and the beautiful Czech mountains.

October 3rd - Pictures and Audio Files

This has been a great week! We had an amazing training on Tuesday in prague. President and Sister Pohořalicky taught us about how to teach the first lesson and the importance of starting from the bottom and working up with our investigators. Sometimes we forget how new religion can be to some people. They taught on how it is important to start with them first understanding fully who God is, and what this means to us. From there we can work our way up teaching simply and with the spirit. It went very well with our Zone Leaders training about improving our teaching skills, especially on how to teach simply. Sometimes as we learn the language enough to get complicated, we feel like we need to teach things differently, but the best way to teach is simply, with easy words, and expanding the scriptures. They showed the importance of why we need to teach simply by using a very cool example. They asked a new missionary who has been in the country 3 weeks, to explain to President Pohoralicky american football in English. Sounds simple, but when it isn't his first language, and american football isn't something he is familiar with, it made for a perfect lesson on how easy it can be for us to expect what little words mean such as quarter back, defense, offence, line of scrimmage (not sure how to spell that one....) and other things like that. I really learned a lot and it has helped me and changed the way I look at teaching.

Fall is coming, which means that its still the season to harvest. I'm very excited to continue working through and finding the people who God has prepared to hear his gospel. The trees are beautiful and the air is getting colder, I love fall. I've seen more and more people out during the day, maybe because of two reasons, one is college here is in, and two its not so hot, but either way I believe that God is preparing the people of the Czech Republic to hear his gospel more and more. I love the work, I love the Czech Republic. Thank you for all of your prayers.

Today we went and saw a ruined castle, here are a few pictures from that.

Audio files from Blake...

Blake Recording

Another Blake Recording

And Another...

Great week!

Well this week has been great. I got my new companion Elder Rees on Monday, and ever sense then has just been great. We had the opportunity to do a lot of finding this week which is awesome to start off a transfer. We are learning how to work and teach together in unity and it is helping us in the work so much. I am blessed to serve with him, he is in his last transfer and I have so much to learn from him.

He also just came from Ostrava, so I was able to get an update of the amazing people there and how they have all been doing in the last two months. It's so great to hear how they are doing and how the Lord is continuing to bless them. 

We had the opportunity to teach a recent convert on Sunday. We taught her about the priesthood and how its a selfless gift from God. She really enjoyed how we told her that its like an umbrella, that one man can stand there and hold it, but everybody surrounding can receive the benefits and blessings of it. She really liked that and now understands better that not every member man and women needs to hold the priesthood. It's literally a selfless gift, we can't lay our hands on our own heads and give ourselves a blessing, its only to help bless others. 

One huge amazing experience this week, was being able to participate in the Toronto Project. We were able to help clean out an old hospital which had some pretty random stuff in it. We were able to help there doing that and other odd jobs that needed to be done. The place was for physically disabled people, they plan on using the old hospital for something, so we helped them get a jump start on preparing it. It was a great day, there were members from all over the Czech Republic, and working with them was so great. I was able to hear several conversion stories and see how the church has changed these people. We are looking forward to a great week, very excited for what it will bring. Also i got a camera charger so here are some pictures =) I got a hair cut 

What a great week.

This has been another great week, just like the title says haha. The weather is cooling down a little bit so that's a blessing. It's sweater weather I guess you could say.

This week we were challenged by our zone leaders to call at least five people a day. I'll explain why this is important. The main way of finding people here, is street contacting. Lots of times on the streets, people will give us their numbers so we can set up to meet, however with time, for whatever reason, if these people loose contact for a while or say call me in a month of so, communication with these people gets lost. So when we go through old records and find these people and call them again, we get back in touch with them and get them thinking about God again. It's really awesome. We were promised blessings if we would call these people, and we have been diligently calling people and seeing the blessings. One blessing paid off today. We just had a lesson with a man who was contacted by missionaries about 6 months ago. He had interest so we set up and met with him, and had a great lesson today. He wants to keep meeting and we are very excited to keep working with him. 

Our mission is really focusing on working with faith. I am very excited for this. I have seen how much of an impact faith has in the work, and how much we need it as missionaries. We often hear that people don't need faith in life to be happy, but from the way I see it, everybody needs faith in some way or another. Faith the bus will come on time, or that the sun will rise, or that the other drivers on the road will do their best to be safe. Tons of things, and I've noticed that when we have faith in God, there is literally no bad thing that can come from it. There is no point not to have faith, not to better and strengthen your faith, it only does good things for us. I love helping people realize that for themselves, its the best feeling. 

That's about all for this week, thanks for all you prayers and support, your great. I love you tons.

Our district after district meeting, and i found a cool bear on the road and took a picture with him

Fall is here

Well, like the title says, fall is here. The leaves are falling the its getting darker sooner and not as light in the mornings, but the fields are white and ready to harvest. This has been a true missionary week, we experienced a lot of ups and downs with invistigators, but, the Lord is in the work, and the goods always outnumber the bads. We see blessings everyday that God showers down upon us. One of the best things about that, is when we work our hardest doing His work, He never leaves us. We always are blessed in so many ways that we can see, and always that we can't see.

We had the oppertunity to go and offer service on saturday to a place that works with blind people. We as missionaries had the oppertunity to serve with the ward and help clean the place and get things ready for fall. It was an amazing experience to be there and serve people with the ward, those are the best kinds of service projects. 

This week we had a great church meeting, Honza is leaving for his mission to Manchester Englad on wednesday! We are all excited for him, he gave his homecoming talk about being greatful for things in life. We are always blessed in so many ways, and I really ike how Honza said that the more greatful we are, the more we see our blessings in our lives. I really have been trying that latley. Counting blessins and seeing them is one thing, but then being greatful for them is totally different. I encourage all of you to not only count all of your blessings this week when you are having a tough time, but also to be greatful for them. Realize what a blessing is, and where and from who they came. I promise that they will brighten your day and bring a smile back on your face. I love you all, thanks for all of your love and support. 

Amazing way to end the transfer

This transfer with Elder Andiarena has flown by so fast. It was a very fast 9 weeks of my life. At least we can say that the week went out with a bang. We had tons of great full days of finding and working hard together. On saturday, we went service tracting with the other Elders, and that basically consists of going door to door and asking people if we can help them in their yards doing free service. It's a great way to get people to like the missionaries and build a trust relationship with them. We had gone through a whole town of people and nobody wanted/needed any help. (czechs love to do things on their own) Once we were leaving the city, one man came back on his bike and said if I feed you lunch will you help me? We said we will help you without lunch. So he agreed to give us some lunch and then we spent an hour and a half digging up his potatoes. It was so awesome to get out and help and have a great time doing it. His wife cooked us an amazing lunch of some kind of soup and then a fruit dessert which was really good.

Sunday we had the oppertunity to go and see the re-dedication of the Fryberg Germany temple, which is the closest for the Czech people to go to. It has a crazy history behind it, and is now opened again so that God's children can be sealed together forever with their own families. Such a huge blessing for the people here. It was origionally in German, with President Uchtdorf and Bednar there. It was translated into czech and we were able to watch it with some of the members. It was such a great experience. The spirit is always so strong when the temples are involved in any way, shape, or form. It's one of my favorate lessons to teach because the spirit never holds back. 

This week, there was a celebration in Hradec Kralove, I guess a long time ago a king loved his queen, so he commanded a city to be built for her, and well, the reslut was Hradec Kralove! What an awesome gift! I hope someday ill be able to give my wife something as cool as this city. 

I now have my new companion..... His name is Elder Rees. We had the oppertunity to serve around each other in Ostrava, and now we are companions here. This will be the last two months of his mission, so I have tons to learn from him. I'm very excited. We have a lot of work to do and I know that we will be blessed with finding the people that God has put into our paths. 

Here is a flash back to Ostrava because its a picture of my companion and I before we were comps, and hes the one off to the left. =)