Ahoj!
So if our mission had been changed to a 6 week MTC stay I would be leaving today! Wow!!! Lucky for me it isn't because I am still in need of great help with the language, got three weeks to crack down and figure it out. We took a language assessment this week and then our teachers let us know our strengths and weaknesses. Come to find out I have really good pronunciation. They rate us on a scale of 1-7, 7 being fluent. They say if you are at a 2 or more then you are doing well. So I got a 4 on my pronunciation and then a 3 on everything else except for grammar where I got a 2. Guess I need to work on that. The teachers notes told me that I am an odd ball. Basically my grammar is opposite of what she has ever seen. I have really good prepositions and conjunctions, but I mix up the nouns and verbs. So I guess I need to get working, but it was good to see that I actually can do stuff. Although if you ask me to do anything not related to the gospel in Czech I will probably fail ha ha. Becoming a fluent gospel Czech speaker. We have discovered that "obej mi" (pronounced obey me) means "Give me a hug"! Also we were learning about the verb "to like" so we went around the class asking and responding about what we like to do. I decided to look up the word party so I could say I like to party. The word I found in a little dictionary was flamovat. So I used it, then asked the teacher if it meant what I thought it did. Well as always none of the words in the dictionary mean what we want. We tried to find a word that would work, but we couldn't. So basically I was walking around saying I like to rave, it was great, won't do that in the Czech, but everyone is enjoying saying it now. The only other word we could find was ridiculously long and turned out to mean that I like to go clubbing every night. So yeah the language is wonderful!
Tuesday we somehow managed to convince our teacher that she should let us out of class early so we could sing in the choir because we really like the song, "Consider the Lillie's" and wanted to sing it. Well that was one of the best decisions ever because we not only got to sing, but we had a seat for the devotional. Upon arrival we found out that it was Elder Ballard who would be speaking to us, so that was awesome! He spoke simply and powerfully, just like we should do as missionaries, it was a great example of how to teach. He instilled confidence in us that we know more than we think we do. Through a serious of questions and different things he made us realize how well we do really know the gospel and can teach. We aren't teaching deep doctrine, just the simple gospel. He then left us with an apostolic blessing and said that if we are learning a language if we will diligently try we will be able to teach and testify in the language. Yeah, there is hope for me! :) It was a really good talk.
Did you happen to see the announcement that they are coming out with new scriptures, this year? They have made some corrections to dates and made more cross references, kind of awesome! I started to memorize the first vision this week, I almost have it down in Czech. I must admit that it is easier than I expected especially where I don't know the words I am learning. I know what it means when they are put together, but it is just a lot of jumbled letters! In the lunch room this week one of the huge glass covers of the food, sneeze guard if you will, shattered. That caused a huge problem with lines and what not, slowed things down but they have it all cleaned up now and the station is in use with out the glass covering. Not long after that a server dropped a huge tray of plates, the servers were just struggling that day, poor people, hope that it wasn't the same person that broke the glass with the spoon!
Lastly I will share our teaching experience with Petra. We taught her about the Sabbath day and keeping it as well as the importance of the sacrament. The lesson went so well! She was just eating out of the palms of our hands as we talked about the sacrament and it being an opportunity to renew our covenants and to be made clean again. It is like being baptized. She loved it so much and I didn't realize why until I thought back on it. If we thought baptism was our one chance to be made clean and then we could never make another mistake, I would be scared to get baptized now as well. But with the knowledge that we can continually be made clean, it makes the decision of baptism much easier. It was really neat wish I had time to expound more but I don't.
This gospel is true and it brings me so much joy! I know that we can be made clean each and every week as we partake of the sacrament, it is such a special blessing, take advantage of it! love you all!
Sestra Hicken
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