Into the Flow of the Mission Schedule

Sister J. She is a member here. We meet with her every week and she is awesome

This is in Sobotka, a small town near Jicin.

A view of the countryside outside of Jicin

The tower in Jicin

Every road here is cobblestone like this

Some other food that we eat. Those are like 100 pound pieces of meat. They shave it off and put it into a tortilla. I thought Dad would especially like this. We eat here once or twice a week. I don't think this is traditional Czech food though.

September 7, 2015

Ahoj!

This week was a good one! After almost 2 weeks in the Czech Republic, I feel like I'm into the flow of the mission schedule. This week started off with a progression training this last Tuesday. All of the people that came in my group gathered in the city of Brno to talk about adjusting to mission life and talking a little bit more about what goes on in the mission field. The travel there from Jičín to Brno took about 3 ½ hours there and 3 ½ back. It ended up being a pretty long day. Our mission president, President McConkie also shared some good thoughts at the training. He talked about a story in the Bible, in Mark 2. It is about how the four men carried their friend to the house where Jesus was teaching the people and lowered him down into the room from the roof of the house. He talked about how we are the 4 men that are carrying our friend, or our investigator, to the Savior. It probably wasn't easy to carry someone through the city and lower them down into the house, just like it isn't easy to carry our investigators to the Savior and his gospel. But the love that we have for the people will allow us to keep going and keep teaching. 

We taught a few good lessons in people’s homes this week too. The family that we tracted into 2 weeks ago unfortunately dropped us midway through this past week. It’s hard to find someone that is as great as they were and then to have them not accept your message. But the work goes on! We decided to go tracting again a couple days ago. We knocked on about 5 doors and got to teach a couple lessons on their doorsteps. As we were stepping away from the fifth house, a man walked by us and asked us how we were doing and what we were doing. We got to share a quick version of the Restoration with him too and he really liked our message. We are meeting with him again later today to teach him more. It is awesome to have those experiences and realize that the Lord is helping us in this work. 

Every week here, we teach an English class. We share a spiritual thought at the end of the class period also. This last week, one of our English "students" really liked the verse that we read from the Book of Mormon. We set up a gospel lesson with her and taught her today. She liked the story of the Restoration and we actually put her on date for baptism for the 10th of October. She is the first person that I have had on baptismal date so that is awesome! 

This past Friday, one of our investigators invited us to a singing thing that she had at another church. We decided to support her and we attended this Czech church meeting/concert. It was definitely different than any other church meeting that I have been to. It also made me realize that every church has some truth, but because we have the Book of Mormon, the priesthood, and a prophet today, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints contains the fullness of the gospel. I am grateful to be a member of this church and get to share this message with the Czechs. 

We had a service day on Saturday. Elder Bitner and I went over to one of the member’s homes and he asked us to help him work on this house that he is building. This week, he wanted to put some cement stairs in on the outside of the house. He had us dig a huge hole by the side of his house so he could pour the concrete. It was some pretty hard work but it reminded me of my job at Western Fence these past 2 years where I had to dig all the post holes. We had a good time.

That is all for this week! The Czech is still pretty hard to understand and to speak, but I'm slowly learning. The people here are awesome and I'm learning to love being a missionary of the Lord. Have a great week! everyone!

-Starší Shirley