Happy July 1!

Ahoj my wonderful family!

 

Hope life for you is pretty spectacular as mine is! This week SO many crazy things have happened I don't even know where to start!

 

Monday night we got to do family home evening for the Tuckovi, the family that we live with, and we followed up on the simple commitment that we gave to them, read at least a verse from the Book of Mormon everyday. When we followed up, everyone was either quiet or said they hadn't. BUT! The 8 year old, well 9 today, Anezka said she had read! So we were excited about that. I asked what she had learned and she went off about Jesus and miracles and all sorts of stuff. She had read a lot. I don't know if she has a little kids Book of Mormon or not but either way she is learning a lot from her studies! So exciting, she is amazing. We want to invite them to church and see if she can walk with us if the family wont go. Last transfer we asked her why she wasn't at church and she said, what do you do when mom and dad don't want to go. SO SAD!!! She is so strong and amazing! I can't believe the strength of these little ones, it is amazing!

 

Tuesday we only had one student at English and so it was fun to have a "one on one" with him. His name is Victor, he teaches English (obviously we teach the conversation class) and he is a catholic. At the end of the lesson we were going to share the thought we had planned when he started to ask about favorite scriptures so we went off on talking about that and it was a wonderful little conversation. As we shared scriptures we were able to talk about similar ones in both the bible and Book of Mormon, it was really neat. Sister Cooper spoke this week in sacrament and so he was looking over some of the stuff she had written and she said something about a meaningful prayer. He then said that you couldn't have a meaningless prayer. Luckily I caught myself before I got to far as I was going to say well if you are just saying the same things over and over and not meaning it. Different things kept coming to mind that wouldn't have been good so I was grateful for a companion who talked and allowed me to get my wits together before speaking. ha ha :S

 

Thursday we went to meet with Jarda again but we weren't able to teach him as he had a lot of work to do. But he came out and talked with us for a few minutes. We did some follow up and HE READ IN THE BOOK OF MORMON!!! I can not tell you how happy that made us, it is so neat the joy and excitement you get from investigators following through on commitments! AH so wonderful!

 

We got to watch the world wide broadcast on Thursday and that was so amazing! I must say one of my favorite lines was, "you need to take care of those the Lord has given you before He will give you more." That is so what we have been doing, makes me feel good to know we are inspired by the Lord and are doing the work that He wants us to. It is hard to work with Less actives since you don't see a ton of progress in trying to contact people who tend to hide.

 

It is really neat to see how the Lord works. We had gone through all of our formers and got an appointment with one out of like 3 hours of calls, over a few days. So we showed up for it and waited the typical 10 minutes and then we try to stay at least 15 just in case they are really late. We are sure glad we did. As we were standing at the door waiting, a man walked up and in. He introduced himself and asked some questions and we were able to give him a building tour and introduce him to the gospel. It was really neat! You don't usually get people to come and want to learn a little more. So we spent the hours doing calls to set up with a former that wouldn't show up so we could be at the building to meet this guy that had questions about our religion, AWESOME! This week our phone broke so we had the adventure of losing all our numbers and attempting to get that all straightened out. Luckily we have lots of records so we had most of the numbers. We also have spent lots of time cleaning out our apartment as it is extremely dusty, like 10 years worth of dust behind things and huge dust balls. It is no wonder it is kind of musty in there and sister Coopers allergies are out of control and she has been stuffed up.

 

Sunday was interesting, during sacrament one of the speakers went off on Satan, Kolob and Egypt. He spoke for a good 20-30 minutes. Then in Sunday School an investigator was talking all about communism and Czechs are very talkative and you have to run them over basically to talk. One of our less actives, that we were really excited to have there was not pleased with this investigator and so that was an interesting situation. May have been a bit of an argument there... But we had a delicious district lunch afterwards! I made sweet pork, mashed potatoes, rolls and corn. SO delicious. Although they don't have enchilada sauce here so I improvised, it was definitely different but it was still good.

 

Sunday we also got to go and visit a less active, Vlasta. We had quite a rough time getting there but we waded through all of Satan's traps and made it an hour late! :) Then we had more to wade through. This lady has lots of interesting ideas as she has fallen away. She doesn't believe there is hell, or Satan and she believes in reincarnation. It was a really interesting lesson but eventually after questions, a whole lot of prayer and help from the Lord we found out that she simply feels guilty for not coming and when she heard that there are only 15 people at church she felt horrible and didn't want to be one of those that fell away. She initially told us that she didn't want to and wouldn't read in the Book of Mormon but after getting up and walking out to do something, when she came back she was completely changed and said she would read, not daily but she would start to read. It was really neat to see her change through the course of our conversation. She is a real sweet heart. I wish she wasn't leaving for 2 months! Ahh, summer is the worst!!! Everyone is leaving FOREVER!!!! But at least we got to go and meet with her and help light a little fire and when she comes back, we (if I am still here) will work with her and help her draw closer to her Savior! yeah!

 

Today we had our BBQ. It was wonderful. WE had 4 members (half of the active branch!) 3 potentials and 2 investigators! WOOT and then the 4 of us missionaries. We had delicious food, SO much food. People brought stuff and we didn't plan on that, we have way too many desserts and junk! Luckily we can get rid of it at English and different places so that will be good. But we played fun games and bonded and it was just really neat! I will have to send some pictures. I feel like it was a success except for the fact that the spiritual thought managed to get skipped because they had a long 30 minute one planned and decided it was too long as people were ready to leave and so they just said a prayer! I wish I would have had my scriptures with me so I could have just said something! AHH!!!! So sad that we just ended with a prayer and not thought. At least there was a prayer. Well Family time is almost up and I haven't even sent any pictures! AHH!!! I have been terrible with the pictures I have so many! ha ha anyway. Love you tons. This gospel I have the privilege to share is true. Our Heavenly Father is there, He loves us, He wants to hear from us. He wants to bless us and make us the happiest we can be. Let him bless you, go to him! Love you tons!

 

Sestra Hicken!