First week in Uherské Hradiště

Elder Shirley with his new companion Elder Suwyn. This will be the last transfer for Elder Suwyn before he finishes his mission.

Fresh, New Year's Day snow

A picture taken from an old area book in Uherske Hradiste.  Elder Shirley's first cousin, once removed (Brett Shirley), served in Uherske Hradiste a number of years ago. Elder Shirley now gets to carry on the Shirley legacy in this area!

January 4, 2016

Ahoj!

First full week in Uherské Hardiště went well! I am super excited to be here in a new area. This week was a little weird with the New Year, but this is the simplified run down.

Monday was the day I traveled to get here! I spent the night unpacking my suitcases and getting settled in. My apartment here is huge; so much bigger and better than my old apartment. Also, the view from our apartment overlooks the entire city. We probably have one of the best apartments in the mission :)

Tuesday we had a meeting at a senior home. We talked with them and sang them some carols and that was fun. The rest of the day was spent contacting and tracting! 

Wednesday was district meeting! We traveled to Zlín and had it there. There are 2 sets of Elders here in UH and one set in Zlín. I am in the same district as my MTC companion Elder Newman which is pretty cool. 

Thursday was a little different schedule. Because it was New Year’s Eve, we had to be back in our apartment at 5:30 just in case things started to get a little crazy. We contacted most of the day until that time and also did a board display on the town square with the other Elders. We made it back to the apartment. Our mission President told us that we were allowed to stay up for the New Year, but that we still had to wake up at 6:30 the next morning. We stayed up to watch all of the fireworks and they were amazing! With our view out of the apartment, we could literally see every firework being set off in the city. It was probably the coolest firework show that I have ever seen. So it was totally worth it to stay up :)

Friday, because it was New Year’s Day, was basically like a P-day for us. 

On Saturday, we did some service for a member here. Their family owns some land outside of the city in a forest. Our job was to clear the land of all the branches and trees on it. So we built a massive fire and burned everything. It was a fun service project! They invited us over to eat lunch at their house afterwards too! We had mutual on Saturday night. The youth program is much larger here than in Jičín. We played some games and shared a spiritual thought. 

Sunday, we had church! The branch here is awesome! The branch here is one of the largest in the mission. The members are great and I am trying to get all their names down still. 

Hope everyone has an awesome New Year! The church is true! Love you all!

-Starší Shirley

{Here are a few additional snippets taken from some of Elder Shirley’s answers to our questions}

The weather has gotten pretty dang cold here too! My face basically freezes every time we go contacting haha. It's always under 0 degrees Celsius and the wind chill has to be somewhere around negative one billion degrees.

Uherske Hradiste is bigger than Jičín. by quite a bit. We have two sets of Elders here. The branch is already ward-ready and most of them speak English as well. The Czech spoken in this half of the country is slightly different that the other half. They have a few different words, but nothing that will throw me off.

{We also discovered that there are several family ties between Elder Shirley and his new companion Elder Suwyn.  My brother-in-law’s father and uncle were good friends with Elder Suwyn’s father and family while they lived in Chester, ID in the early 80s and played a role in his family joining the church at that time.  In addition, they discovered that Elder Suwyn has Wasden relatives and that he and Elder Shirley actually share a 4^th great grandfather Thomas Wasden! These two were meant to be missionary companions!}