Ahoj!

Wow this week has been crazy busy, hopefully I can get half of it down for you to hear about. So to start off I guess Hicken is a way common last name around here because everyone asks me about someone else. Evidently there is a Branch President here at the MTC named Gary Hicken and at the temple, a worker told me there is a Hicken couple in their ward in Springfield, so I guess there are a lot of us Hickens. Starsi Payne, an elder in our district has brought it upon himself to beat all the records here at the MTC. He beat the sit up record, he went for 45 minutes straight and the old record of 571 is now 1362. He wants to beat 1500, evidently that is what it was last year and they reset the records the beginning of each year. He also beat the push up record and is doing dips soon. He is crazy!

We are losing some of our zone tomorrow. Our Polish family is headed out bright and early tomorrow, sad day! And then the Bulgarians leave next week! I don't know how I will survive without them, we will be the old ones in the district. A week from Wednesday we get new missionaries in our zone and we have to be the example! I have only been here a month! Kind of crazy that my MTC stay is half over! AHH!!! I don't know enough I better hit the books harder. :) We started learning cases this week. Basically every word can end 7 different ways, it is exciting. I more fully understand what our teacher meant the first day when he said the learning Czech is like putting your head through a cheese grater.

 Sister Shakespear came in today. I managed to meet her about the time she walked through all the crazy lines and welcome her, it was great! Then we have found that we basically have the same schedule so that has been fun to see each other at meal times as well as at gym time. We played volleyball together and it was a blast. This week we ended up on a court with people who actually knew how to play so that was a blast! She also decided to come to choir and sat right next to me, that was a surprise, but it has been fun to see a familiar face that I actually spent time with.

 For dinner on Wednesday it was CRAZY! It was the first night with all the new missionaries. My companion and I were just getting ready to swipe our cards and the lunch guy said, "Sorry." and closed the doors on us! We were like, "What the?!" So we had to stand outside the door and wait to eat. The guy told us there are over 1,000 missionaries in there, and there was no where to sit. They had so many people with trays not able to sit down yet, so that was an adventure. After waiting 15 or so minutes they allowed the sisters in to get food and eat. They were making announcements over the intercom that if you were done eating you needed to leave so that others could sit down and eat. That hasn't been a problem since and hopefully it doesn't happen again cause we were then late to class and it just was a mess, but quite the adventure, you never know what to expect! :)

 So in class we get to do role plays where we act like an investigator so our companion can work on extending invitations and things. It is so interesting to take on the role of someone else. My companion was extending the invitation to go to church and explained what it was, obviously I already know, but the person I was being didn't. So when she said that they call on people in the audience to speak and give prayers and went on as if it was no big deal and then asked me to come I was surprised that the person I was acting as was afraid. As I thought about it I realized why there was that fear to attend church. I was afraid that I would be called on to say a prayer or give a talk, it was so strange to have that fear until she explained that they are called weeks in advance. I don't know if that made any sense, but I don't have time to check and fix it. So it is interesting because I know something, but I am able to see how and investigator would feel and better understand how to teach so we don't confuse or scare our investigators. Ha, ha.

 When we walked into class on Valentine's Day our Starsi had left us candy on our desks. Then Sister Donaldson decided that we needed to decorate brown paper bags and have a Valentine's bag. So we ended up doing that as well as everyone writing notes and sharing treats they had. It was a lot of fun, gave us an opportunity to think of others a little more and thank them for who they are.

We have come to find that Saturdays we are usually worn out and that class from 6:20 to 9:20 is really hard to handle after a long week, our poor teachers. This Saturday our teacher, Brother Thompson, ended up trying to teach us some Czech concepts so it was in English. He was showing us all sorts of charts and things on our walls and trying to teach them, but it seemed kind of vague and he got way sarcastic and had all of us laughing. As you may expect I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face. Good news, my companion has the same problem! So we were sitting in the back corner of class crying and one of us gets under control and the other busts up and we just set each other off. Luckily everyone else was laughing at what our teacher was doing so we weren't too out of control. It was so great! I love our teachers, they are so wonderful!

 Alright I will end talking a little bit about our investigators Honza and Petra. In a lesson with Honza I may have accidentally asked him to pray in our second lesson not realizing we hadn't taught him about prayer or anything so he just looked at me wondering what I was talking about and a little afraid and unsure. So we quickly attempted to teach him about prayer and then asked if he would pray in our next meeting he agreed and I ended the lesson with a prayer. So that was funny. Then we had assigned him to read Alma 7 and then asked if he had any questions. He asked what repentance was and so I explained that repentance cleans us and is the path to baptism and to return to our Heavenly Father. I felt like I was to commit him to baptism and so I kind of paused and was working to figure out how to exactly say it and then my companion took over and I thought it is the beginning of the lesson why would we commit him now. But yeah we should have done it and I chickened out. It was the perfect set up and he so would have accepted the spirit was so strong! We ended up committing him at the next lesson.

We had a wonderful lesson with Petra and we got her to kneel and pray with us, the spirit was so overpowering and strong when she prayed it was amazing! We also taught her without a written outline so that was scary, but the spirit was so strong and we relied on the lord and it went well. We had Czech words and a English outline. So wonderful!

Any who out of time love you all tons! Thanks for the letters, support, and prayers!

Sestra Hicken